The Benefits of Blending Boundaries
Rebecca Dey
The Academic Support Center (ASC) at Chesapeake College has an ambiguous and fluid relationship with boundaries. In this case, I don’t mean personal or ethical boundaries, which we strive to keep firm for both students and staff; I mean boundaries between academic subjects. Our writing center has an uncommon setup in that the tutoring services provided by the college are offered in one communal space. Writing, science, and math tutors all work elbows to elbows, sharing rooms, supplies, and sometimes even students, so the academic spheres overlap like a Venn diagram. For our institution, there are definitive benefits to this educational model. A communal environment improves the overall effectiveness of our tutors and tutoring in general on campus, which enhances the goal of our center’s mission—to help students succeed by improving comprehension skills to further academic achievement.
It should be emphasized that the culture around the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where Chesapeake College is located, may contribute to the success of a communal tutoring center. While “some argue that the writing center can disappear within the library or learning center and lose its unique pedagogy and training,” say Muriel Harris in an interview, she adds that “local contexts would determine how successful such collaborations would be” (Threadgill, 24). The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a tapestry of farmlands, lowland forests, and estuarial marshes—a place minimally tainted by progress and steeped in tradition, where neighbors know neighbors and community is important. Being a small, regional college for folks of all ages and backgrounds, a communal tutoring center dedicated to convenience, comfort, and familiarity, rather than separate spaces for each subject, works well for Chesapeake.
Having been a writing tutor at Chesapeake for almost four years, I have seen how the collectivity of our ASC enriches both students and staff and strengthens our mission. For one thing, our staff reflects the college’s student demographics; we have work-study students tutoring next to retired teachers and all types in between. This generates a diverse selection of tutors from which students can choose, and with the lines between academic subjects smudged, student tutors can gain skills as they take classes, allowing them to tutor in multiple subjects from one location. This creates a wider range of tutoring opportunities, and the convenience of having tutoring services in one place allows students to receive tutoring in more than one subject in one afternoon—especially attractive to non-traditional students with tight schedules. Additionally, we provide tech support for the college’s portal or for students unfamiliar with the intricacies of Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. This flexibility enables us to serve the student body better.
The heart of our center’s mission is to hone academic skills and make more independent, resourceful students, but tutoring is more than just instructional help or motivation—it’s a job requiring a Swiss Army Knife of skills. Writing tutors mentor students on how to start and revise their work; we offer guidance if ideas run dry, or if someone doesn’t know how to outline; we are a resource for citations; we act as sounding boards and try to help break down intimidating projects into digestible bites. We are also cheerleaders, shoulders to cry on, voices of reason, and sometimes taskmasters to keep a distracted student on track. Tutoring math, science, or any other subject isn’t dissimilar, despite nuanced differences—we all serve as coaches for skills that go beyond the surface of subject matter and down to the core of work ethic and methodology.
Every student is different, with unique needs, perspectives, and problems. In a center with blurred boundaries, having tutors in one place who tutor multiple disciplines can augment sessions. For example, if a student with a science paper comes in, having a writing tutor able to confer with a science colleague about the content allows that writing tutor to perform their duty on a deeper level. It also demonstrates effective problem solving.
In their article, “The Critique of Pure Tutoring,” Shamoon and Burns talk about theory versus practice in tutoring and provide anecdotes from workshops that contradict the generally accepted “rules” of writing tutoring. They are quick to point out that anecdotes are not synonymous with research, but add “the benefits of alternative tutoring practices are frequent enough to make us seriously question whether one tutoring approach fits all students and situations” (139). If we should continue to assess the way we tutor, why not assess the structures of various academic support centers?
A communal tutoring center allows students to be exposed to an integrated workplace where people with different strengths come together and troubleshoot, problem-solve, and show firsthand it’s okay to ask for assistance if you can’t find the answers yourself. Tutors also demonstrate the types of proactive routines that prosper within scholarly circles: “They put forth effort, challenge themselves, ask questions, learn, and grow, while helping others do the same. These behaviors are on display all day, every day, and others take notice” (Koselak, 62). While the article from which this derives seems to be targeted more towards high school centers, the core objectives are relevant to college tutoring, as well.
In our ASC, we learn from each other every day. This fosters not only well-rounded tutors, but also well-rounded students who are able to see the constant interchange of ideas and the advantages of reaching out to others with different strengths. Our staff serves as a positive example of professional teamwork for students to observe, and that cohesive environment demonstrates one of the core ways that blurred boundaries benefits our center’s mission of student success.
Works Cited
Koselak, Jeremy. “The Revitalized Writing Center.” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 98, Issue 5, Feb 2017, pp. 61 – 66. MasterFILE Premier. DOI: 10.1177/0031721717690368. Accessed 14
April 2019.
Shamoon, Linda K. & Burns, Deborah H. “The Critique of Pure Tutoring.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 134 – 151.
Threadgill, Elizabeth. “Writing Center Work Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Muriel Harris.” Journal of Developmental Education, Vol. 34, Issue 2, Winter 2010. 20-22,
24-25.
Author’s Biography:
Rebecca Dey is a honors graduate of Chesapeake College. She has been a writing tutor since 2015 and had the privilege to be an assisting editor for her college’s literary journal this past academic year. Originally from Pennsylvania, she has been a been a resident of Maryland for eleven years. She loves to draw and write, and hopes to continue her journey toward becoming an author and editor.