Blog

As a tutor in the writing center, I don’t know many other classes that are this integrated as a community. Freshman and seniors work together, while usually they wouldn’t even know each other. You sing happy birthday when it’s someones birthday and it would never be awkward. The writing center is a class for a community, working well with others, to help you excel in writing, and it’s good for colleges. Not many classes are as unique as the writing center.  

As I was saying before, the community in the writing center is hard to find anywhere else. One of my close friends in the writing center is a senior, and I’m a sophomore. No matter who you are, you will find friends in the writing center. ... more

For all of the unique benefits that they provide, writing center tutorials come with several drawbacks compared to regular writing instruction. Chief among these is permanence. At Lane, an average student spends about 4 hours a week in an English class, working with the same teacher and classmates. This same student might come to the writing center a few times a semester, mostly when required to, for a 20 minute appointment with a tutor that they probably haven’t worked with before and may not work with again. With this in mind, what can tutors do to make sure that their sessions with writers have an impact once their 20 minutes together are up? It’s standard procedure to send our writers accounts of the discussions that we had in the session, but this falls firmly ... more 

At Lane Tech, the debate between a block schedule and our traditional schedule of 8 periods a day has been persistent for years. What is a block schedule? For those unfamiliar with it, a block schedule typically follows the pattern of where classes meet every other day, instead of classes meeting everyday from Monday through Friday. That means the periods will be double the length ranging from 80-100 minutes. ... more

Creative writing, I would say: the heart and soul of writing. But what is it? A representation of the author? Is it something completely different? I always seem to notice that an author illustrates a character or situation that relates to their life, whether past, present, or future. But you have to be wondering, why? Why write about something in fantasy? Why, in concept, am I writing this at all? Writing is all about the big questions: who, what, when, where, and how. Who is being represented, what is it about, when is it being established and when is the timeline, where is the setting, and how did the author come up with this book’s concept. But the main question I’ve had is why don’t I see writers come into the writing center for creative writing? . . . more

While the most important function of the writing center is to help students with their compositions, it also serves as a unique place to build relationships. Writers come in to interact with tutors and, in doing so, might also find a new relationship with their teachers, their writing, and themselves. Maybe they won’t come back again, or won’t work with the same tutor if they do, but we as tutors can hope that they have left the session with a new outlook on their writing, and on so much more by extension. I include that second part because writing is more able to put a student in touch with everything around (and inside) them than perhaps any other academic discipline. . . more 

Reading and writing are very closely related, and schools usually group them together under the umbrella of “language arts” classes. The most common way in which the two are connected in these classes is in the form of literary analysis; students are assigned a book, article, or other composition to read, and then they analyze it either on their own in an essay or with their classmates during discussion. While this process makes up the bulk of classwork (and the entirety of my job) in the writing center, the inverse is also observed; rather than writing about reading, tutors often read about writing, both to improve their own compositions and so that they can pass their knowledge down during their tutorials. The relationship between reading and writing, especially as it applies to the writing center, is particularly interesting to me. For this reason, Ellen Carillo’s 2017 article “Reading and Writing Centers: A Primer for Writing Center Professionals” recently caught my eye, and will be the subject of this commentary. . . .  more

As October arrives and Lane’s seniors finalize their college applications before the November 1st deadline, many of those seniors will be visiting our writing center to help them with their college essay. College essays pose a unique challenge for writers and tutors alike. For many, this is the first essay that they’ve written in years without a concrete rubric to judge their composition against. They are given a prompt (sometimes not even that), and left to their own devices. The purpose of this from the college’s standpoint is to gain a more personal, more complete picture of who they might be admitting to their institution, something beyond GPAs and standardized test scores. . . . more 

Published 10.04.2024 by Andrew K. 

So, you sit down at your dining room table, staring at a blank google doc, a couple months before college essays are due and you have no idea what to write about. You’ve heard people say that you should write about your trip out of the country, or that time your life somehow changed, but you want your essay to be unique, different. What do you do? Well it’s hard to write an essay that’s the same as someone else, so you got the difference down, but how do you make it unique? It seems everyone has written about everything, but you have to make your essay stand out. . . . more

Published 10.03.2024 by Isabella S. & Peyton K.

The writing center is more than a class: It’s more than a place to collaborate freely on writing or a place to find help when you get stuck, it’s more than a community of fellow students, it’s more than a place to sit back and read a book. The writing center? The writing center is all of those things. While the Lane Tech writing center is almost entirely student run, a place based on democracy and discussion, there is one person at the head of it all. One person who taught each and every tutor in the room how to, well, tutor. How to collaborate on writing, how we can accomplish our goals of making the writing center a place for everyone. That person, that teacher, . . . more

Published 02.06.2024 by Avery H.

The magical time of the year in which most Alpha students begin to look like raccoons by how deep their eye bags become, AKA the annual December science fair. It would be a shame, as an Alpha student myself, if I weren’t to commemorate this occasion with an article honoring STEM in the writing center. Other than the 30 page research paper each Alpha student must write at least twice during their time here at Lane Tech, most people see no correlation between the Alpha program and what the Writing Center has to offer. There is often a disconnect between the humanities and STEM, whether it’s false rivalries between students in Alpha or Omega, or perplexity at studies outside their interest. Rollins et al., studied how undergraduate STEM students can become better writers. . . more

Published 01.12.2024 by Rachel L. 

Horror is a staple genre amongst several different mediums. Audiences are pulled into horror stories by its grotesque nature. The intense grip that horror is able to put on its audience is part of the reason this genre is so compelling and why it has lasted for so long. Although many people think of horror stories as recent horror movies such as It or The Conjuring, horror stories have been written for centuries. One of the most famous examples is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Even if most people haven’t read Frankenstein, the legacy of it continues to live on through multiple pop culture references and remakes. Frankenstein is just one example of how horror stories evolve throughout the years and how these evolutions have continued to sustain its grip on society. . . . more

 Published 11.15.2023 by Rachel L. 

It’s a classic argument: Tradition versus progress, analog versus digital, how things were back in the day versus how things are now. Handwriting, versus typing. Whether you’re scrawling out notes or practicing calligraphy, whether you’re grinding out digital homework or typing up the next great American novel, handwriting and typing have advantages and disadvantages that are ingrained in our very own minds. Regardless, it’s always been a hot topic— but who is really right? What are those advantages? . . . more 

Published 10.18.2023 by Avery H. 

Colonialism drastically changed the way women were perceived in Latin America. In the Andean mountains, indigenous women had equal standing with indigenous men, until the conquistadors introduced a gender hierarchy. This gender hierarchy, at which men are placed at the top, severely limited indigenous women’s freedom and social roles. In pre-colonial Mexico the current day gender binary did not exist, until the Spanish conquistadors introduced it. Although most Latin American countries have been free from colonial rule for over a century, these patriarchal ideals still exist among them, as seen in Naomi's Lindstrom’s Article: “Feminist Critic of Latin American Literature.” . . . more

Published 10.30.2023 by Rachel L. 

C. Connor Syrewicz’s article, “The Motivations That Improve the Creative Writing Process: What They Might Be and Why We Should Study Them,” goes in depth about different strategies writers can use to motivate themselves. One way I classified the differing strategies of motivation is by whether or not an individual’s motivation is coming from an internal or external source. Internal motivation comes from individuals' personal motivation to write. While external motivation is motivation found from other people such as teachers, writing center tutors, or friends encouragement. Each person is different and finds motivation in different ways, you may find that you don’t respond to all of the motivation tactics in this review, or Syrewicz’s article, . . . more 

Published 10.03.2023 by Rachel L. 

Once again, to the absolute despair of the newly-minted seniors, it’s college application season. Between letters of recommendation, the endless forms asking for everything from your social security number to how many siblings you have, the ACTs and SATs, campus visits and early action and supplementals and the Common App and figuring out how to finagle SchooLinks into working in a post-Naviance world, the beginning of senior year is as overwhelming as it is terrifying. Hanging above it all, like a nightmarish symbol of everything a senior wants to run away from, is the penultimate obstacle, second only to actually getting into college: the dreaded college essay. The personal statement. The only chance you have to distill your personality into a 250 to 500 word piece that could determine your entire future.

Terrifying. Good thing the Lane Tech Writing Center is here to help! . . . more 

Published 09.26.2023 by Avery H.