I was invited to the White House by one of my professors this past spring as an academic writing consultant for a writing and leadership initiative sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama. My task was to lead a discussion between a group of prospective college students and their parents.  The goal was to instill in them the tools needed to write a good college admission paper.  I obviously accepted the challenge even though I had no idea what I would say or how I would say it.  I was so worried about saying the right thing; after all, I was in the White House and they called me Mr. Jackson, no one every calls me that…I have to be right, right?  So during the first half of the discussion I found myself mostly watching, nodding and agreeing with my peers who were from other universities given the same task as me.  Each of my fellow peers offered critiques, telling these highly influential teens to be honest and speak their mind, tell a different story, don’t talk about their parents as role models, don’t talk about your trip to Africa.  I could see their faces, blank stares, taking notes, the occasional laugh at a bad essay prompt.  All of them asking safe questions and receiving just as safe responses that pleased the parents more than them. 
It was roughly 30 minutes into the discussion when my professor who stayed to watch the discussion (probably hoping Michelle would show up) looked at me, and I looked at her.  I knew what she was going to do next; she had done it all year in class.  She brought up how quiet I had been, alluding to the fact that I had some grand statement I wasn’t saying.  Although the fact was I didn’t, at least not yet.  So the discussion continued.  Ten minutes later, I knew exactly what I wanted to say.  I first asked if their parents could leave, then I assured both the students and the parents that everything would be safe; it was just an important exercise for my comfort. If these kids were anything like me at that age, the idea of adults hovering over me in any situation was like trying to exhale while standing three inches away from someone on the red line at 5pm.  I could tell they were holding back because so was I. 
After the parents left and I assured them that my professor was “cool” I asked them about their lives, the things they really cared about beyond their high school sports teams and student government, the small things that make them tick, why they think that “The Lion King” was more influential in their lives than JFK or how awkward moments don’t exist for them because they thrive when placed in the unfamiliar. After a few minutes of meaningful small talk I said to them what I’ve said to every client and friend that has I’ve ever worked with on writing.  “Why don’t you just say that?” at first they gave me excuses, mostly about not knowing how to begin to write that.  I knew exactly what they meant by that, “How would they fit that into five paragraphs?”
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The field of academic writing is one that one that is often given too little attention, too late.  Hundreds of thousands of high school students every year from thousands of schools go through years of education, being taught how to write in the same manner they are taught calculus and physics.  They are given formulas and formats and are tested on their ability based on this platform.  Thousands of these students then graduate understanding the basic language of science and math and then move on to college. Many of these same students, though, come to college unable to write.  There are many variables that can account for this short-coming in academic writing ability, but in my experience as a secondary and post-secondary academic mentor I have found that the majority of these students do not lack the ability to write -- they are simply incapacitated by the traditional platforms in which they are accustomed to writing in.  This is not to say that the current platforms in secondary education do not serve a function, but that they do not provide the most effective tools to allow for young writers to find their voice and become adaptable as writers.
After having the opportunity to work with a variety of students coming from different social and academic backgrounds over the past few years, I have found that these issues are not isolated to one group or type of writer.  While there may be some statistical analysis for support, I have chosen to focus most heavily on my past experience working in different regions of the DMV educational system; as student, mentor, and now administrative advisor I hope to offer a holistic approach to this discussion.  Which in turn I believe will support my legitimate proposal of a high school level writing center initiative.
The issue that I have found is the trend of schools and their emphasis on standardization.  Using standards to assess a school’s success and the success of students has been one part of the current structure since even before “No Child Left Behind”; a policy implemented by former president George W. Bush in 2001 that essentially used standardized test scoring and attendance to assess the success of a school and determine federal funding.  Under this policy states could control the testing standards which led to the development of standardized testing; this consequentially stopped fostered education, but led to a trend in public education of, “teaching to a test.”  A few years later College Board added a writing section to the SAT because of pressure from multiple universities, in particular University of California .  The University was concerned with the ability of incoming students to handle intense writing requirements.  In addition, a panel of educators and business leaders, who were commissioned by College Board as part as a reform panel, saw that employees needed a more comprehensive grasp of writing because of society and business trends.  Ironically, but not surprisingly, these administrative actions led to an overall decline in academic performance and no  field of education was more heavily damaged than that of writing and literacy analysis. 
For a statistical standpoint the average score of all portions of the SAT between 2004-2011 dropped between 6-8 points .  During the first implementation of the writing section of the SAT in 2005 Dr. Les Perelman, MIT’s undergraduate writing director, did a case study on the new writing section and found that it actually caused poor writing habits.  Perelman was not alone in his critique.  The National Council of Teachers of English was also critical of the writing section for damaging standards of writing in the classroom. Much of the criticism was that the foci of these papers were length, fact loading, and formulized writing.  All of which are factors that those in the NCTE does not consider the keys to good academic writing in any discipline.
Unfortunately the criticisms were not met with reform, and this system of writing was put into practice.  The importance of depth and content analysis was replaced by a set of standards that I, myself, was to be judged by for the next four years of high school.  What was going on during my section with the high school students in the White House was now just being implemented as a national standard; students were constantly striving to achieve standards rather than actual development. Thus students never developed their own good or bad writing habits, but only wrote what they knew others wanted to hear and only asked the questions that were expected of them.  While I was deemed an exceptional writer by the standards of Virginia, upon coming to Georgetown, I realized I was a far cry from where I needed to be.  There are thousands of students who naively believe they, too, are college-ready writers because of some standardized test and come to college with the knowledge of how to write but are unable to navigate the medium of academic, critical writing. 
So where does that put us as writing tutors?  We’re now confronted with the challenge of countering, on average, four years of poor writing techniques, competing with a system that is "…getting teachers to train students to be bad writers", as Perelman concluded .  I think that every day here at the writing center, different tutors take varied approaches on how to temporarily counteract the symptoms of this formulaic writing.  I myself always tell clients that they do not have to write in the traditional five- paragraph structure, that their thoughts, experiences, and analysis is not limited to three body paragraphs.  But then I usually find that without that structure, these young writers seem more lost than before they came it.  Authors Stephen North in his piece The Idea of a Writing Center, and Anis Bawashi co-author of Post Colonialism and the Idea of the Writing Center, offer two very polar criticisms of the writing center and what its task is when dealing with tutoring clients who seem under-prepared for the task of academic writing. Admittedly, the targets of both authors in their pieces are not necessarily the same as mine, but I believe their criticisms are broad enough to apply to my argument based on the fact that the focus is how to support struggling writers. 
My interpretation of North’s piece would lead me to believe that when working with these writers, the key is the assimilation of these clients into the current standard of academia.  He would emphasize a pushing on my part of the appropriate discourse in their writing.  reword this sentence.  It is confusing.  I understand this to mean that these students are expected to exchange one standardization for another.  My criticism with this is similar to that of Bawashi; this indoctrination is simply a quick fix.  It does not give the client a voice.  Simply put, all that occurs is that we’ve removed one parent from the conference room and replaced it with another.  The writer/client is still feeling the pressures and influence of another while writing, they still have no voice and they focus on what they believe the professor wants.  One can even argue that if the tutor isn’t cautious, they could risk becoming that source of influence because the writer has not developed confidence in themselves.  I believe this is the risk that Bawashi fears with the writing center, a mental colonization; that in the end these colonization forces writers to not only write differently, but to think differently or inorganically.  What Bawashi would suggest is the role of the tutor is to, "teach students how to retrace the formal and textual effects of academic discourses to their rhetorical and social sources, allowing them to look prior to and outside of these discourse" (Bawashi,54);  thus giving writers the rhetorical tools and knowledge of discourse.  With this grander understanding of themselves as writers and of academia, the writer has the confidence and knowledge to make an informed choose when manipulating and implementing rhetorical tool and still satisfying the requirements of university writing.
I myself agree with Bawashi, but realistically the task of this magnitude is not one that cannot be accomplished in a one-hour writing session, nor is it reasonable to expect a tutor to command enough authority or have enough knowledge to be able to implement Bawashi’s ideals.  Where does that leave the role of the tutor?  I believe as far as working with undergrad students, a tutor should continue to do what works for them; my focus is changing the writing culture at the source.  I would propose a component of the writing center that offers an option for tutors to work with high school students and administrators to develop their own peer-run writing center.
This writing center initiative is multi-layered inspired by the multiple forms of mentorship I’ve engaged in over the years, writing center academics, as well as my reading of personal accounts of TFA corp. members. The idea behind it is to reform the culture of writing in high school in a way that is efficient and flexible.  The hope is that this initiative would be the key to help high school students not only develop their own voice as writers (understanding rhetorical techniques, diction, editing techniques) but also to instill confidence in these writers to teach each other and communicate with educators much more effectively, which in turn allows them to balance their voice with the parameters of their academic standards.    Ultimately this would lead to not only to a better grasp of academic writing in secondary school, but in turn will give students the tools necessary to adapt to the rigor of post-secondary education and professional  level writing.
To be clear, this initiative is not based all in theory but is one I am in the process of implementing at a local charter school, Thurgood Marshall, which has a strong relationship with Georgetown University and has been working with a tutoring organization I have been the head of for the past year: the Georgetown University Mentors and Tutors. Some of the key pieces are in place: I have a group of school administrators and teachers who are supportive and some members of GUMAT are eager to begin tutoring.  In addition, Thurgood Marshall already has its own peer-driven writing center that they want to reform, full of students with a variety of applicable skill sets; some students are strong writers, others are outspoken in class, and others work well in groups.  The task then is not to start from the ground up, but to take this functional model at Thurgood Marshall, improve upon it, and hopefully if it is fruitful, implement it in other schools. 
So again the same question presents itself, what is the role of us as tutors? I would like to model this initiative after some of the techniques used by successful TFA teachers.  Some keys to their success that I believe can be implemented in this tutor curriculum are based  on the following central tenants: establishing major goals, facilitating communication between student and teacher, developing smaller leadership cores amongst students in the classroom and constant reevaluation of the curriculum based on the atmosphere of the classroom, and student peer communication. The tutors in tandem with the teachers are to come together and formulate a flexible set of guidelines for these high school tutors that act not as rules to live by, but as skeletal structure to build their own writing around.  This is similar to the ideas of Graff in I Say, They Say, simply helping these high school students to use evidence and rhetorical techniques not simply to prove they can, but as the foundation for creating relevance in their pieces.  The key is also that the high school tutors do not lose their language in the process; they should adopt the language of academic writing and they should understand how this language is applicable so they may convey the relevance of this writing to their peers when assisting in their writing. 
Students are expected to first learn these guidelines and understand the basic rules of rhetoric across writing disciplines. Upon gaining this basic understanding they are expected to apply their knowledge as a group, analyzing different pieces of writing from different genres, disciplines, time periods, and academic levels.  The third step is to engage in tutoring sessions with each other on their writing, with a Georgetown tutor as an intermediary, offering constructive criticism. This step by step approach allows for the students to bounce ideas off each other, gain confidence in their own ability and also present them with the tools to work within any discipline. In addition, with this method of peer-based teaching and support, the high school tutor grasps the concepts and is able explain in a manner that their peers will understand, which is key to tutoring.
  Ideally this process will occur either as a class or a separate club with the potential for a college class or college credit for the high school tutors.  Also when involved with this writing center clinic, they will still be expected to handle their normal writing center hours.  While this initiative is still in its development stages, I find it to be a very functional proposition.  At the same time, it is very much subject to change and is open to constructive criticism.

 

 

 

Works Cited
"Fast Facts." Fast Facts. Digest of Education and Statistics, 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
Graff, Gerald, F, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York; London: W.W. Norton &, n.d. Print.
Members of the NCTE Task Force on SAT and ACT Timed Writing, comp. "The Impact of the SATand ACT Timed Writing." National Council of Teachers of Englihs (2005): n. pag. 16 Apr. 2005. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Msnbc.com. "Sharpen Your Pencils, Please." Msnbc.com. Msnbc Digital Network, 11 Mar. 2005. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Ripley, Amanda. "What Makes a Great Teacher?" The Atlantic. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
White, Deborah. "Pros & Cons of the No Child Left Behind Act." About.com US Liberal Politics. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
Bawarshi, Anis, and Stephanie Pelkowski. Postcolonialism and the Idea of the Writing Center. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Winerip, Michael. "SAT Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Mar. 2005. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.