For our Tutoring Inquiry Project, my group chose to research what skills we gain and develop as peer writing tutors and how those extend beyond the Writing Center. We thought this was an important and assuring topic to explore because it reminds us of how valuable our time at the Writing Center is, and it makes us aware of how the skills we’re developing and gaining are likely to apply to our professional lives in the future. In our research, we narrowed down our findings to four areas of skills that we’re developing as tutors:
To determine these four, we looked towards sources that surveyed former writing tutors, such as a publication from the Writing Lab Newsletter and an article from the Writing Center Journal. Almost all the former writing tutors in these sources expressed that their confidence in a leadership position, their skills as writers, and more improved, which are all skills that they’ve been able to apply beyond the Writing Center and oftentimes into their career jobs. One writing tutor, in regard to their confidence as a writer, stated in the Writing Lab Newsletter:
Being part of the Writing Center instilled a confidence in my writing and in my choices. I became more daring in writing for other classes, and it usually paid off.
Dinitz & Kiedaisch, 2009
With this research in mind, as peer writing tutors we should feel motivated and empowered by the fact that so many of our skills are constantly developing while we simultaneously help writers develop their own.