Fall 2016

WRITE TO LEARN,
LEARN TO WRITE
WRITING INTENSIVE CURRICULUM PROGRAM NEWSLETTER

Index
Creating a Community of Writers in the
Mary G. Walsh Writing Center
Rebecca Hallman Martini
Remembering Forward: The Art of
Autobiography in Nursing
Anne M. DeFelippo and
Janice Chasse-King
Low StakesHigh Payoff: The Benefits
of Daily Writing Prompts
Jill Sullivan
Spotlight on Faculty: Keja Valens, PhD
Matthew Burton
Book Review:
Portfolios: Process and Product
Matthew Burton
The WIC program will host a
two-day intensive professional
development seminar in May 2017
for W-II/W-III instructors or other
instructors who want to integrate
writing and the teaching of

Welcome to the fourth issue of Write to Learn, Learn

to Write, the Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC)
Program newsletter. This issue presents an exciting
array of articles on the teaching of writing, and on
support for writing instruction and writers at our
institution.
In Creating a Community of Writers in the Mary G.
Walsh Writing Center, Rebecca Hallman Martini,
Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD
the new coordinator of the writing center, responds
to common questions about writing centers in general and the Salem State writing
center in particular. She describes new initiatives and future plans for the
writing center.
In Remembering Forward: The Art of Autobiography in Nursing, Anne M. DeFelippo
and Janice Chasse-King discuss an autobiography assignment used in the psychiatric
mental health nursing courses at Salem State University. The assignment, they argue,
guides students in learning more about themselves and how their life events have
shaped their personhood. Self-reflection and exploration of the self helps nursing
students build empathy, develop listening and therapeutic communication skills, and
gain confidence, all of which are needed for good patient care.
While DeFelippo and Chasse-King discuss one specific assignment, Jill Sullivan, a
visiting lecturer in English, discusses a particular genre of writing assignmentslowstakes writing. In Low StakesHigh Payoff: The Benefits of Daily Writing Prompts,
Sullivan claims daily in-class writing activities with minimal grade weight are valuable.
She provides specific guidelines of how and why instructors may use these writing
activities to optimize learning.

writing in their courses. Full-time

faculty will be given priority. More
information will be circulated
in March.

The Spotlight on Faculty section features Keja Valens, PhD, an associate professor
of English. Valens discusses how she approaches the teaching of writing within the
vertical model of writing instruction at Salem State, particularly in a W-II course.

Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 1

Welcome continued
Matthew Burton, WIC graduate assistant, wrote this issues book review on Pat Belanoff and Marcia Dicksons Portfolios: Process
and Product.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Write to Learn, Learn to Write. Stay tuned for the Writing Intensive Curriculum blog, which will be
launched next semester.
Sincerely,
Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD
WIC Coordinator and Assistant Professor of English

The WIC program will launch the Write to Learn, Learn to Write blog in the spring! If you are interested in writing a blog post,
an article-length piece, a tip on the teaching of writing, a book review, or a reflection piece, please contact Tanya Rodrigue at
trodrigue@salemstate.edu. The blog will take the place of this newsletter.

2 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016

Creating a Community of Writers in the

Mary G. Walsh Writing Center
By Rebecca Hallman Martini, PhD,
Writing Center Coordinator, Assistant Professor of English

The Mary G. Walsh Writing Center has

made several noteworthy changes in
fall 2016. Energized by the universitys
commitment to writing instruction
via the vertical model and the English
departments ongoing support, I began
my work as the new writing center
coordinator with much enthusiasm.
With ten years of experience working
in writing centers at five different
institutions, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to coordinate
the Salem State University writing center (SSU WC). In this
article, I would like to share with you some of my approaches
to writing center administration and some plans I have for our
centers future.
Question #1: What is the purpose of a writing center?
Traditionally, writing centers have been places where students
go for one-on-one writing tutoring.1 2 While much of our current
work in the Salem State WC is with undergraduate student
writers in one-on-one conferencing, we have also worked with
graduate students, staff, visiting scholars, and faculty. Weve
provided writing support in small group, full-class, and workshop
style forms. Our center has been used as a meeting and
workshop space for student groups who are working on writing1
2

related projects, such as the Community Garden Collective and

the Soundings East fiction staff. Thus, we do and will continue
to do much more than one-on-one writing tutoring, and our
activities will change as the needs of Salem State
writers change.
Rather than offering a static definition for the purpose of a
writing center, I envision our ultimate goal to be cultivating a
community of writers on campus. In other words, I want the
Salem State WC to be a place for writers to come together
and talk about their writing in a non-judgmental, supportive
environment. Part of what we can offer is a live, engaged
audience for writers who are working on projects in-progress.
Thus, in the Salem State WC, we strive to do the following:
Support writers not just writing
Most people assume that student writers need to show up in
the WC with the draft of an essay for an Salem State course.
However, we often meet with writers to talk through a prompt or
assignment, brainstorm ideas, or make a plan for revision based
on professor feedback. Weve met with students who want
to practice their oral presentations, go over their PowerPoint
slides, plan elevator speeches, work on their own creative
pieces, and create job application materials like resumes,
continued on page 4

Stephen North, The Idea of a Writing Center, College English 46.5, (1984): 433-446.
Jackie Grutsch McKinney, Peripheral Vision for Writing Centers (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2013).

Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 3

personal statements, and cover letters. In all of these scenarios,

we focus on working with each unique writer and matching our
level of instruction to their particular needs. While we recognize
that both the writing process and the writing product matter, we
focus more on teaching writers strategies that can serve them
well beyond one particular assignment.

Question #2: What happens in the Salem State writing center?

According to Salem State WC usage data from September- midNovember, weve conducted over 950 writing consultations with
approximately 455 different writers. Based on these visits, heres
what we know about who uses the SSU WC and how:
Who visits the writing center?

Create a collaborative and inclusive environment

Our tutors are highly trained in writing center theory and
practice. All tutors must take ENL 502/870: Writing Center
Practicum: a cross-listed, upper-level undergraduate/graduate
course in which they read widely in the field of writing center
and composition studies, reflect on their weekly work in the
writing center, and carry out an original writing center research
project. These tutors-in-training work three hours a week in
the WC and discuss their experiences at length during class,
theorizing about them via course readings. In the course, we
focus on how to collaborate with writers and how to gauge
writer need. In some scenarios, writers need their tutors to be
more directive and guide them through revision with explicit
statements and specific examples. In other scenarios, writers
have a wealth of experience and simply seek a second set of
eyes for their writing. Instead, writers most often make the same
three or four errors multiple times. Either way, tutors always
seek to engage writers in conversations about their writing,
recognizing that the writers input and active participation in the
tutoring session is necessary for success.

400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

In which colleges do Salem State writers who visit the Writing

Center reside?
School of Gradute Studies
School of Education
College of Health and
Human Services
College of Art and Sciences
Bertolon School of Business

The Salem State WC also seeks to create an inclusive space

for writers of all intersectional identities and backgrounds
with attention to race, nationality, ability, gender, sex, sexual
orientation, veteran status, first generation status, and linguistic
background. Any behavior in the WC that threatens our
commitment to inclusivity will not be tolerated.
Work from a peer-to-peer approach
Our WC works primarily from a peer-to-peer model because
we believe that writers can learn in meaningful and significant
ways from their peers. 3 4 The learning and collaboration that
can happen among peers is different from classroom-based,
professor led instruction and discussion. Writers greatly need
an alternative to the classroom,5 where they can share
their writing in a non-evaluative environment and learn from
peer tutors who can relate to writers as fellow students. We
also encourage writers to set up recurring appointments with
the same tutor over time, so that they can make significant
improvement as writers.

50

4 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016

150

200

250

300

What do writers who come to the Salem State Writing Center

work on?

* Includes adding material,

formatting, getting started, using
professor comments to revise, and
time management.
Brainstorming and Topic Development

Sentence-level Issues and Editing

Organization and Coherence

Thesis Formation

Research and Documentation

Other

Brian Fallon, Why My Best Teachers Are Peer Tutors, National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (2011).
Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta, The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
5
Kenneth Bruffee, Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind, College English 46.7 (1984): 635-652.
3

100

*Graph does not include appointments from students who have not yet identified a major
within a college

Question #3: Will the writing center help my students with

grammar?
The SSU WC resists the idea of the writing center as a fix-it
shop, where students can drop off their essays for proofreading. That being said, we will work with your student writers
on sentence-level issues and editing, which includes diction
(word choice), syntax (word order), vocabulary, and tone, in
addition to grammar. Our approach to this work is not simply
error correction, but rather, we work with writers to help
them identify their own patterns of error in their writing. This
approach recognizes that writers rarely make 30 different errors
in a three-page paper. Instead, writers most often make the
same three-four errors multiple times. Thus, we help writers
to understand their repeated errors and assist them first, with
revising these errors, and second, with learning to identify these
errors themselves.

When we work with writers on sentence-level issues and
editing, we expect them to be fully engaged in the conferencing
process. We expect them to help us differentiate between
their mistakes (unintentional but recognizable to writers upon
proof-reading) and errors (unintentional and unrecognizable to
writers). Oftentimes, tutors will read the first page or two of a
draft using minimal marking6 to identify a writers pattern of
error, ask the writer to identify and revise the first error type if
possible, show the writer how to revise the sentence if the writer
cannot do so, and then ask the writer to identify and revise the
next sentence with the same error-type. After this process, the
tutor directs the writers attention to the next error-type and
repeats the process. Near the end of the session, the tutor might
ask the writer to read the next page of the draft with an eye for
these particular error types, in an attempt to teach the writer
self-editing and revision.
Question #4: Whats new in the Salem State Writing Center and
what does the future hold?
Our new fall 2016 initiatives include the following:
New online scheduling system, which allows writers to sign
up for appointments online from their own personal devices
New assessment program, which tracks writing center
usage and writer feedback
Graduate Student Write-In Series, which consists of
workshop-style writing instruction, one-on-one tutoring,
and three-hour long sessions during which writers are
invited to simply sit and write in our space

Full-Class Writing Workshops, which consist of entire

classes visiting the writing center during their actual
class time. In these sessions, we block one-hour off the
schedule for all tutors so that they can facilitate small group
discussions and workshops with writers in the same course
working on the same or similar assignments 7
Continuing Education Opportunities for Current Tutors,
which include monthly staff meetings, ongoing professional
development, and the beginning of writing center research
projects geared toward regional and national conference
themes
Salem States First Long Night Against Procrastination
Event, during which the writing center will be open for
extended hours for one night close to or during finals week
to offer walk-in, flash-appointment style tutoring, a reserved
quiet writing space, and snacks
The Start of the Salem State Peer Tutor Alumni Project,
which follows up with Salem State WC tutor alumni to learn
where theyve ended up and how their experiences tutoring
have impacted them

Our plans for spring/summer 2017 and beyond include:

Revamping our writing center website to offer writing
materials/support for students, faculty, and staff
Creating a writing center blog to be written by our current
tutoring staff and invited Salem State writers
Piloting a course embedded tutoring program, where
tutors with disciplinary expertise will be placed within W-III
courses and will work closely with writers on each major
assignment 8
Piloting fully online writing center sessions, which we hope
will increase access to tutoring for students who commute,
work full-time, and prefer learning in virtual spaces
Conducting a limited number of online writing
consultations for Salem State faculty, where experienced
writing consultants will offer close-reading style responses
to faculty writing projects nearing completion
Offering Creative Writing Groups, where writers can
workshop materials and get together to write
Developing programs for reading support for students who
struggle with reading comprehension as it relates to writing,
research, and coursework
Participating in the Summer Bridge Academy whereby we
will provide writing-based instruction as it relates to writing
and research in the university 9
continued on page 6

Jeff Brooks, Minimalist Tutoring: Making Students Do All the Work. The Writing Lab Newsletter 15.6 (1991): 1-4.
These must be planned at least one month in advance. Sessions work best when the instructor sends the assignment ahead of time so that the tutors are already familiar with it before
students arrive.
8
This pilot will be done in close collaboration with Tanya Rodrigue, the WIC coordinator.
9
This project is in collaboration with the Salem State library.
6
7

Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 5

If you have any questions or would like to talk about partnering

with the SSU WC, please contact me at rmartini@salemstate.edu
or 978.542.3009. If you know of any current or past students who
would make excellent writing center tutors, please send me their
names and emails.
Bibliography
Fallon, Brian. Why My Best Teachers Are Peer Tutors. National
Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (2011).
Brooks, Jeff. Minimalist Tutoring: Making Students Do All the
Work. The Writing Lab Newsletter 15.6 (1991): 1-4.
Bruffee, Kenneth. Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of
Mankind. College English 46.7 (1984): 635-652.
Fitzgerald, Lauren and Melissa Ianetta. The Oxford Guide for Writing
Tutors. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Grutsch McKinney, Jackie. Peripheral Vision for Writing Centers.
Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2013.
North, Stephen. The Idea of a Writing Center. College English
46.5, (1984): 433-446

Remembering Forward:
The Art of Autobiography in Nursing

By Anne M. DeFelippo, PhD, JD, RN, CNE, Associate Professor of Nursing and Janice
Chasse-King, DNP and Assistant Professor of Nursing
Imagine a world where we could stop, listen, and come to know
those who pass through our daily lives, by listening to their story.
We could look into their eyes and see the pain, the joy, the hopes,
and the disappointments that are part of their journey. While this
is a remote possibility for most people in this fast-paced world, it
is a distinct and unique privilege for nurses. In a profession that
is patient-centered and interactional, we listen to patient stories
to help them reshape their lives, and in turn, we become part of
their stories. But what about our own stories and their impact on
ourselves and our patients? Knowing who we are and how we
came to be could help us come to know and better care for our
patients. With this premise in mind, and the mandate of Socrates
to know thyself, the autobiography writing assignment has
become an essential component of our psychiatric mental health
nursing courses at Salem State University.

6 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016

Many students who enroll in our undergraduate baccalaureate

nursing programs have significant life experience. Some come
from distant countries and diverse cultures while others are
non-traditional students whom have had previous careers. The
Nursing department seeks to balance nursing theory knowledge
with life experience. The autobiography assignment is one way
to tap into the knowledge, experience, and wisdom that each
student holds. Through reflection and remembering, students
compose autobiographies that help them find their voice,
practice listening, and engage in therapeutic communication
all of which are essential in being a good nurse. Further,
students build empathy and confidence: they become sensitized
to the plight of someone with mental illness and strengthened
in their own beliefs about themselves. Wed like to think this
assignment is professionally and personally transformative,
particularly when students begin to work with persons who have

mental illness, as it shifts students from an observer mode to

a participant mode of inquiry.10
Senior nursing students are often surprised and sometimes
displeased to learn that they are required to write a 10-page
autobiography in the Mental Health Nursing course. Yet many
soften to this assignment when they are given it at least one
month before it is due and again, when they learn that their
writing assignments are a substantial portion of the course
grade.
Yet most importantly, many students find much value in the task
of looking back to look ahead. After two months into this course
and completing one half of the psychiatric mental health clinical
nursing experience, students were asked to describe how the
autobiography assignment impacted them.
With their permission, here are some of the student responses:
Doing an autobiography before my clinical experience
allowed me to understand myself
I thought my autobiography was unique. It helped me
realize that Ive completed a lot in my life. I set goals for
myself years ago and Im actually seeing them come to life.
It gave me some perspective about who I am as a person.
And how my life has shaped who Ive become.
The autobiography prompted a lengthy period of selfreflection: no easy feat.
It is very helpful to share my goals and values my
strengths and weaknesses [It] made me realize that I
became a really stronger person than before.
While I have not made every correct choice for myself and
in my life, I do not regret the choices I have made because
they have helped to shape me into the man that I am today.
My autobiography helped me find inspiration within
myself.
As faculty, we have come to view the writing of an
autobiography as a challenging and rewarding experience in
remembering. We encourage students to look at how far they
have come in order to move forward. Most importantly, for all
of us who seek to improve ourselves, our work, and the quality
of our lives and the lives of others in our care, when we reflect
on memory and experience, we remember who we can
be.11 Nurses can become more caring and more fully present
to others. At that very juncture, mediocrity is transformed into
quality.

10
11

Bibliography
Newman, Margaret. Transforming Presence: The Difference that
Nursing Makes. Philadelphia: FA Davis, 2008)
Dewey, Art. Remember, remember. The Fourth R Magazine
Vol. 29, no.5, 2.
Autobiography Assignment: The Process

Divide the class into clinical groups of six students

and one faculty member

Students write about their families, their earliest

memory, their favorite place, a positive experience, a
negative experience, a role model, and their dreams

Students identify their strengths and goals, and

recognize their courage and resilience

Students reflect on how they and other describe them

in their life story writing

Students compose their autobiography and submit it

to the faculty member

The faculty member meets with the student one on

one to provide revision feedback

Margaret Newman, Transforming Presence: The Difference that Nursing Makes (Philadelphia: FA Davis, 2008): 74.
Art Dewey, Remember, remember, The Fourth R Magazine, Vol. 29, no.5, p. 2.

Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 7

Low Stakes High Payoff: The Benefits of Daily

Writing Prompts
By Jill Sullivan, MA in English, Visiting Lecturer
With the adoption of the vertical
model of writing instruction, Salem
State professors are faced with
the question of how to incorporate
writing and writing instruction into
their classrooms without sacrificing
content or feeling overwhelmed by
grading. If you are such a professor,
I have a great suggestion for you: the
daily writing prompt. This low-stakes
writing exercise occupies little time
but pays huge dividends in student
engagement and learning, while
simultaneously helping students become stronger writers.
What is a daily writing prompt? It is a five-minute freewriting
exercise in which students are asked to respond to a specific
question posed by the professor. The writing prompt is lowstakes: it can be minimally graded or not graded at all. As such, it
is simple to create, swallows up little class or grading time, and
offers students stress-free opportunities for practicing writing.
Professors may engage with student responses to writing
prompts in numerous ways. One possibility is to read them
not to assign a gradebut to offer comments and ask probing
questions that support and push students thinking. From a
pedagogical standpoint, reading the writing prompts offers a
window into the progress that students are making relative to
the learning objectives of the course, and does so in real time.
Because the prompts are assigned daily, you can address areas
of concern or confusion as they happen, developing lectures and
activities that respond accordingly. Thus, far from being a time
suck, the writing prompt can help you get the maximum benefit
out of each class period, targeting your teaching to student
needs.
The writing prompt is appealingly flexible in a variety of ways. It
can be used in any discipline at any time during class to support
learning objectives. In a British Literature course I worked in,
the writing prompt was most often used as the first activity of
each class period. As students straggled into classrushing,
chattering, checking their cell phones, the writing prompt was

12

an excellent way to settle everyone down to work, immediately

focusing attention on a task. This first-thing writing prompt
can be extremely specific, setting up the learning goals of that
days class. For example, while working on a Daniel Defoe novel,
one writing prompt asked, Do you think Moll Flanders is an
opportunist or a redeemed sinner? Explain your answer with
examples from the text. This prompt led directly into the class
discussion planned for the day.
Other times, however, writing prompts can be more general.
The simple questions, What did you understand from last
nights reading? What did you find challenging? make a terrific
writing prompt when students are assigned difficult texts. A
class lecture will be far more productive if you know exactly
in what ways your students are struggling. At other times, you
might reserve a writing prompt for the middle of a class period.
A particular problem can be posed in order to either re-energize
a flagging discussion or to switch gears when it is time to move
on to something new. For example, How do you think our
discussion of the physical geography of the Balkan Peninsula
might inform how we start to talk about the seeds of the Balkan
war? At the end of class, a writing prompt can help you assess
how things went: Did this lab help you better understand the
action of sound waves through water? or What did you learn
about American jurisprudence from our mock trial today?
Thus far, I have articulated the benefits of the writing prompt
primarily in terms of how it might help you best plan your
class time. You might be wondering, however, how a fiveminute ungraded writing assignment really benefits student
learning. The buzz words critical thinking appear in the
learning objectives and class goals of almost every class at
the university. As succinctly stated in the National Council
of Teachers of English Beliefs About the Teaching of Writing,
Writing is a tool for thinking12 . Writing does not simply record
or communicate ideas it generates them. A writing prompt
can pose a question in a low-stakes way that allows students
to question assumptions, explore alternatives, and try out new
ideas. These are all activities that are encompassed in the notion
of critical thinking.

NCTE, NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing, National Council of Teachers of English, November 2004, www.ncte.org/positions/writingbeliefs.

8 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016

As John Bean puts it in Engaging Ideas, we need to offer

reflective tasks aimed at encouraging students to think
metacognitively about their own thinking processes13 . Students
who understand how they think are in a better position to
apply their thinking to course material. Far from wasting class
time, Bean argues, integrating writing and critical thinking
components into a course can increase the amount of subject
matter that students actually learn.14 Senior English major,
Joselin Lemus concurs. She said, The writing prompts helped
me analyze things better when it came to our readingsit really
does help with your writing and critical thinking. Composition
scholar Peter Elbow agrees, noting that low-stakes writing
assignments in particular help students involve themselves
more in the ideas or subject matter of a course not least of
all because, through writing, they find their own voice in the
particular vocabulary of the discipline.15
It is in this notion of finding ones own voice that you will see
one of the greatest benefits of the writing prompt. Early on in
the semester, students approach the writing prompt with a bit of
unease, worrying about getting the right answer and fussing
to create perfect sentences and organized paragraphs. Once
the students realize, however, that the writing prompts are not
graded, those sorts of concerns fall away and the students begin
to write their way into their own thinking. Senior Education and
English double major Elizabeth Soule had this experience in a
literature class: I felt like [the writing prompts] were kind of
shooting over my head or that there was a correct answer to
them, and that frustrated me. However, things changed over
the course of the semester: As time went on I realized that the
writing prompts were not a test, but a literal PROMPT, something
to prompt my thinking. English professor Lisa Mulman, who
uses daily writing prompts, reinforces this connection. She
says, Importantly, writing prompts provide a way for students

who dont see themselves as accomplished writers to enter into

the intellectual content of the course, and to try out their ideas
without fear of judgment.
As Elbow suggests, We should honor non verbal knowing,
inviting students to use low-stakes writing to fumble and fish
for words for what they sense and intuit but cannot yet clearly
say.16 This finding of the voice pays off in a myriad of ways. In
this sort of writing, not only are students learning how to unleash
and feed their critical thinking skills, but they also without
even knowing it are practicing the voice they will use in more
formal writing assignments. Through the completion of multiple
writing prompts, with your supportive feedback, students
develop a discipline-specific vocabulary and style appropriate
for more sophisticated academic writing. In my experience using
daily writing prompts, I saw students who were anxious and
furtive early on, finish up the semester writing elegantly argued
research papers that had built on ideas and writing techniques
they had practiced during the first five minutes of each class.
The blooming of student voices was the biggest payoff for a lowstakes investment. You cannot get better odds in Vegas.
Bibliography
Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: The Professors Guide to Integrating
Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom.
2nd Ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.
Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.
NCTE. NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing. National
Council of Teachers of English, November 2004, www.ncte.org/
positions/writingbeliefs.

John Bean. Engaging Ideas: The Professors Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, 2nd Ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 8.
Ibid, 9.
15
Peter Elbow. Writing with Power (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 353.
16
Ibid, 352.
13
14

Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 9

Spotlight on Faculty
On September 19, 2016,
I had the pleasure of
speaking with English
Professor Keja Valens
about writing at the
university level, the
WIC program, and how
her experience in the
WIC Seminar Program
informs her pedagogy.
The conversation was a
productive one, and should
serve to aid any teacher
looking to incorporate
more writing and writing
instruction into the classroom.
Professor Valens received a PhD in Comparative Literature from
Harvard in 2004, and serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the
MA in English program at Salem State. Outside of her work at
Salem State, she has written or edited several books including
Desire Between Women in Caribbean Literature, A Barbara
Johnson Reader, and Passing Lines: Sexuality and Immigration.
She has also published many articles, essays, and book reviews.
MB: Do you feel universities are properly preparing students
moving forward as writers?
KV: I feel like it is a struggle, but I genuinely feel like it is a
struggle our new vertical model can meet. I think this for a
couple of reasons. Partly, because I think if you section off
writing instruction from everything else, then youre just learning
writing for the sake of writing, or a standardized test, and there
is no motivation for students. It cuts off all reason to learn
writing. It turns writing into this remedial skill, as if you could
learn writing as a remedial skill and then go on with the rest of
your life. So, I think the vertical model, where you say writing
is something we are always in the process of learning, we just
learn different parts of it as we go, and we revisit the same parts
with more depth as we go, is a solid model of writing instruction.
I think the W-II and W-III are especially good: you have a topic
you want to explore, and you explore it through writing.

10 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016

MB: Do you have a hard time balancing the need to stay

competitive content-wise, while incorporating writing skills?
KV: While Im writing the syllabus, and Im thinking about all of
the things that I want to assign but cant because I need to make
space for talking about writing, I think I wish I didnt have to
talk about writing. I wish I could just assign more content. But
then, when Im in class, and Im working with what I think of as a
terribly pared-down syllabus, I realize it is so much better to be
getting the depth of interaction with the content that happens
through working with writing.
MB: You took part in a WIC seminar and taught a WII class,
which is interesting because youre already an English teacher.
Presumably you could have slept soundly at night without it.
What was that like?
KV: It was incredibly useful because Im trained as an English
teacher, but not as a writing teacher. I have no training in how
to teach people how to write. I have lots of training in how to
teach people content about literature and literary study. For
many years Ive been confronted with the assumption, oh youre
an English teacher, you know how to teach writing, when I
really dont. So I took the WI seminar two years ago and the
WII seminar last year and I learned so much about how to teach
writing. It has made my teaching so much better, just to have
some basic tools, like heres how to talk about argumentation
from a rhetorical point of view. Just getting some assignment
ideas, and having someone to say this is what makes a good
revision assignment, and these are fives way to teach revision.
Then I can mix and match them and make my own assignment.
The seminars make it easy. Its 5-10 faculty members from
different disciplines who have all agreed to sit down and learn
something new together. When theres a group of you, and you
all come into a space and say together, OK, we all have PhDs
and were experts in our areas, but heres a really basic thing
called writing that we know we have to teach and we actually
dont really know how to do it. The group dynamic really helps.

MB: Can you talk a little bit about your food writing class
(a W-II course)?
KV: Food writing is an exploding genre. What happens is we
read food writing and then we practice doing food writing. We
analyze it both for what it says about food and how its written,
which is standard English course stuff. So its a real lets read
a text, lets analyze it. Lets analyze it both for what does it say
about food? But also how is it written? Which is standard English
course stuff. You look at form and content together, and then in
the food writing class we add in this piece where not only we
write about the way that its written, but we just try writing the
way that its written.
MB: So it was fairly easy to integrate the vertical model?
KV: Yes, it was a really good class for that. We would read
a description of food, and then we would talk about what a
description of food has. How many senses does it appeal to?
How many adjectives does it use? How does it work to achieve
tone? And then we would eat a piece of food and describe it. Its
a professional writing class, and the professional writing class
already has built in a kind of practice component that makes it
easier. But the idea of drafts and peer reviews is not always
built in.
This semester Im teaching a W-III course, which is a capstone.
Its just started, so I cant say that much about it yet, but this
one is super content heavy. Its transgender lit and film, so
were reading a whole bunch of literary texts, theory, criticism,
and theyre writing essays about the literary texts, so Im really
excited about this idea of building in class time to talk about the
writing process. So today in class we wrote up the rubrics for
their assignments together, and that was amazing because we
spent half an hour of a two hour class talking about what makes
a good outline. It ends up being a good way of talking about
writing. Someone will say how do you go about a writing a good
thesis for this particular book, and everyone shares what they
think a good thesis is, so youre talking about thesis writing and
about the book at the same time. So its like a new way in to
talking about the book.
MB: Is there anything you want to plug?
KV: Tanya [Rodrigue]! She knows so much, and has so many
resources about teaching writing. She packages them in ways
where the first time around I can do what she says and follow
her instructions, and then the second time I can repackage it for
myself.
MB: Thank you so much.
Fall 2016 | WIC Program Newsletter | 11

Book Review

the culture of the course, repositioning their student identities. From

the start I treated them as writers. . ., Gay says, What did they know

Pat Belanoff and Marcia Dicksons Portfolios: Process and Product

about science writing? Lab reports . . . No one knew the New York

(1991) is a collection of articles that describe the undertaking and

Times devoted a section each week to science news19 . She continues

benefits of portfolio-based writing projects. These projects are

to note that most of students could barely recall what kind of responses

comprised of writing assignments composed in a course; some or all

their writing had received in the past. Its with these hurdles in mind

of the assignments are revised. The portfolios vary in scope and can

that she organized her course. In the first half of the class, she assigned

be organized in many ways, though they often align with a courses

short assignments in a notebook. As a result, writing became a primary

essential questions or major writing goals in a particular content area.

focus of the course. Later, students were presented a task, such as

While these projects might seem daunting to teachers already weighed

the observation of the American Daisy, and through their writing, they

down with an overabundance of content and an extreme lack of time,

became active scientists, engaging the content in a more critical way.

Belanoff and Dickson acknowledge and attempt to address common

They would write, discuss with a partner, and then write some more, a

concerns teachers have about assigning these projects. They lay out

process not foreign to most successful scientists. Students received

these concerns in the introduction: Admittedly, portfolio assessment

peer and instructor feedback on these assignments, and later revised

breaks most of the conventional rules for good teaching practice; its

and included them in the final project.

messy, bulky, nonprogrammable, not easily scored, and time consuming

(though, as youll see, its not as bad in these areas as its detractors
paint it)17. However, Dickson and Belanoff maintain the portfolio is
valuable in that it builds a textured, multi-layered, focused measure
of the writing ability students can demonstrate when given time to
revise papers, and can map the process students go through as
they write18 . Despite the seemingly intimidating nature of establishing
a portfolio as a means of assessment, it still remains one of the best
ways to assess ones growth as a writer

Of course, most educators will want to know what the portfolio

evaluation process looks like. Gay uses a fairly stripped down
approach, which might be attractive to teachers who are new to the
process. She begins by asking students to preface their portfolios with
a cover letter in which they discussed their selections, assessed their
writing and editing progress, and set goals for themselves as writers20 .
This process once again subverts the expectation of the facilitator
submerging themselves in a lengthy grading process. The student will

over time.

fight half the battle. Gay expects students to scrutinize their own work

Several sections of the book lay out different steps for establishing

in conference21. These conferences served as an opportunity for the

portfolio-based projects. The articles featured vary in subject

teacher and student to engage one on one in constructive dialogue22

and include pieces on collaboration, implementation, evaluation,

about the process before submitting final versions.

conforming to state standards, metacognition, training, assessment,

and more. A significant benefit of this collection is that educators write
the articles. These are not people 10 years removed from teaching,
but those still very much in the thick of it. The book contains essays
which appeal to a variety of teachers in a variety of subjects. However,
Id like to spend time discussing one article that will appeal to a large
population of professors reading this newsletter: those who are
apprehensive about portfolios and those who are experienced and

and practices as much as they could on their own before [they] meet

The portfolio process represents an important shift in how to view

the writing done in the classroom. As Gay notes the portfolio
shifts the emphasis from a single writing performance to a collective
and encourages [students] to take increasing responsibility for their
development as writers and learners, thus enabling them to make a
place for themselves in the academy and beyond23 . No one doubts
that the first steps toward establishing a curriculum with a portfolio as

interested in new ways to think about them.

assessment might be difficult, but this book serves to assist as much

In A Portfolio Approach to Teaching a Biology-linked Basic Writing

familiar with the portfolio process new strategies to enhance the

Course, Pamela Gay offers an easy starters guide to portfolio

experience for student and teacher alike.

assessment as well as interesting ideas on portfolio organization and

assignments. While her focus is biology, her approach easily translates
to all content areas. Gay is honest from the beginning in noting the
challenges with using portfolios: her students needed buy-in as they

as possible in destroying those barriers of entry. It also offers teachers

Bibliography
Belanoff, Pat. and Marcia Dickson. Portfolios: Process and Product.
Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 199.1

were primarily interested in science, not writing. Thus, she changed

Pat Belanoff and Marcia Dickson, Portfolios: Process and Product (Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1991), xx.
Belanoff, xx.
19
Pamela Gay, A Portfolio Approach to Teaching a Biology-linked Basic Writing Course in Pat Belanoff and Marcia Dickson, Portfolios: Process and Product (Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook,
1991)
20
Gay, 191.
21
Gay, 191.
22
Gay, 191.
23
Gay, 193.
17

18

12 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2016