My MAWCA Experience

The MAWCA conference this past weekend was so much fun!!  There were so many different perspectives and techniques to listen to, and everyone was so open with their ideas.  Even the professors and adults wanted to share their knowledge with me instead of enforcing an age barrier.  It was also a great bonding experience with the WWC tutors and the directors.  The campus was also very pretty; it was a nice break from the transience of Northern Virginia.
-Alison

My experience at MAWCA this past weekend was AMAZING! I learned new things from adults, and got the experience of sharing my ideas with other people. Not only did I learn ways to improve the writing center but also there was an amazing keynote speaker. I learned new things from her. 

The food was also amazing. My favorite part of dinner was when Metaxia ate a ball of butter thinking it was cheese. 

I love JMU DUUUUKES

-Sara

My MAWCA Experience

I can say without a doubt that the MAWCA conference was an incredible experience, and something that I definitely want to attend again. The presentations at the conference itself were outstanding and rewarding to participate in. I was especially pleased with the ideas we could exchange with other high schools and universities. (10/10 would do again)

My MAWCA Experience

              This weekend, the writing center went to JMU for the MAWCA conference, and it was so much fun! We got to ride the bus down with a bunch of schools from our area and when we got there the weather was just perfect. JMU has such a beautiful campus, and it was nice and warm. Shortly after we got there, I went to a presentation on accommodating tutees with disabilities and got to talk and share ideas with a group of tutors from West Springfield. It was interesting to see how some writing centers are so similar to ours! A lot are pretty different, though. On Saturday, for example, we went to Katie Kowalski and Sydney Dolan’s presentation on tutor collaboration(which ROCKED) and talked to some college­age tutors. Their writing center has a lot of differences from ours (like the fact that they get paid), so that was cool to hear about. Many of the presentations at the conference were geared more toward college writing centers, but I think we could easily adjust some ideas to fit at our school. One of the panels I went to was explaining a program at UConn where the university teams up with middle and high schools around them to create writing centers. I thought it was a really unique idea, and it might be interesting to try to do something similar with our school. Maybe we could work with the writing center at George Mason!

Sydney Hamrick and I actually presented at the conference, too. We did a workshop about working with ESOL students, and we had about 14 people show up from all different writing centers. It went really well ­­ everyone was engaged in the discussions and seemed to learn a lot from our session! We were both really nervous beforehand, but afterwards we were so happy. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip, because a lot of people told us they were really impressed and that we did a great job. I wish there had been more sessions, because I think there’s even more I could have learned, but it really was an enjoyable and interesting trip! (Also, one of the best moments was when Metaxia put an entire ball of butter in her mouth at lunch. Yum!!!!)

Mrs. Hughes, Sydney, and I after our presentation!

MAWCA

Last weekend, our writing center tutors went to the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association Conference, held at JMU. Some of our tutors even had the opportunity to present workshops and host discussions! Over the next few weeks, each of our tutors will be describing their time at MAWCA, what they learned, and what liked the most. Here are some pictures from the conference!