This is Jeff, the Writing Center director. We've just started a new semester at the Writing Center. September 4 was our first day open.  Business has been relatively brisk for this time of year--a good sign.  We are doing more outreach and advertising this semester.  I would say it has had only minimal effect so far.  We are having "open house" for our first two weeks of operation.  Students can get a pen with our unit logo and can sign up to win a Writing Center T-shirt. On the front, it has a cute dinosaur (a "thesaurus"--I am not making this up and I did not make that up; the shirts had been designed and printed before I arrived) uttering the word "Word". To the best of my knowledge, only a handful of students have come by to avail themselves of this opportunity.  And though many students have come through as part of class visits (see more below), so far, only two students have filled out the card to try to win the T-shirt.  I guess "Roget" (yes, they named him before I got here, too) is not as cute to others as he has come to be to us.  But he is rather lovable, even if he's somewhat sketchy--literally. He's shown below.

At the same time, we have visited, or had visits from numerous classes.  There are certain "intro-to-skills" courses on our campus: Among them are GEW 101 for writing and GEL 101 for study skills and orientation to the university.  My tutors (we call them "consultants") and I visit many of these classes to introduce our services, or receive visits from these classes in the Writing Center to do the same thing.  One of my goals for this year during these information sessions is to help new students understand that we need their participation in the process of helping them write.  A typical student who has not yet begun to understand the "depth" of the writing process will come to a tutoring session with desires such as "Please check it over for me," or "Make sure it flows OK," or "Tell me if this makes sense."  It's not just that these requests don't allow us to get a clue about how to help the student; it is the very fact that a student thinks that such goals are relevant to a paper that signifies his lack of understanding of the writing process.

So, as is so often the case when dealing with students at developmental crossroads, we have to ask whether explaining and modeling the behaviors associated with a particular level of awareness can propel students to the next necessary developmental level.  For some students, the answer is probably yes.  For many students, perhaps most, the answer is no.  A student who is not developmentally ready will not be able to perform as if she were.  In fact, she may not even be able to grasp the significance of the explanations and models we provide.  Thus I worry that in the name of "educating" unsophisticated students about how to have a useful tutoring session, we are only convincing them that there is no viable pathway available to them for getting help with their papers.  A student who needs to know, "Does my paper flow?" needs the answer to that question, and needs a place to find an answer to that question--or at least believes so.  In reality, a good tutor can draw out of that student some important and relatively well-formed concerns--but only if the student feels comfortable enough to walk in the door.