This year, English teacher Brenna Killeen has taken over the Writing Center after English teacher and previous sponsor, James MacIndoe left. Killeen said that MacIndoe asked her to take the position because of her previous experience as writing tutor in college.
“I think he knew I had experience and we had talked about it a lot,” Killeen said. “I was really excited to take over when he asked me because all the [student tutors] are great and I love working with them.”
The Writing Center consists of a group of tutors who offer help sessions every Tuesday and Friday during Learn. Through peer tutoring, they help other students work on essays, research papers, or creative writing pieces.
“The greatest thing about the Writing Center is that it’s student led,” Killeen said. “I think our job [as sponsors] is continuity… keeping the craft of our writing as primary focus, supporting student writers and helping empower students to make the changes that they need to make, rather than telling [them] what to do.”
The only change in the Writing Center is that meetings will now take place in room D201 instead of A201. Head tutor Jacob Zahalsky, who is in charge of website and social media management, said he would like to continue the social media outreach for the center.
“Our social media kind of stalled last year,” Zahalsky said. “I want to get more communication between all the tutors, so that we can get each Writing Center session to be more orderly and professional.”
Senior Laura Boyle has been a tutor for the Writing Center since her sophomore year. She said her experience of tutoring has helped her grow as a writer.
“When you’re looking at someone else’s writing, it becomes so much easier to see all the issues in it because you’re separated from it,” Boyle said. “So learning what to look for has [taught] me how to go through the same process when I’m looking at my own stuff.”
Boyle said she hopes to continue on the basis of what MacIndoe already created for the Writing Center.
“I’m sad that MacIndoe is gone but we’ll keep working off of the foundation he built here,” Boyle said.