Course Syllabus

Course Description

Welcome to the Learning Center! I am so excited to have you here this year. Learning Center may be a very different course than you have had in the past: it is more like an internship or a job than a course, and you have responsibility for yourself, for your fellow Learning Center students and the writers that use our services. Your co-workers rely on you to help create a caring, welcoming community, and the people we tutor rely on you to provide prompt, encouraging feedback that affirms their brilliance and helps them find and honor their own voice. What we do here also goes beyond just individual tutoring sessions. We have the opportunity to work together this year to close resource gaps, celebrate student voices, and advocate for important changes in our school and with our community.

Core Values

We have four core values that guide our work: growth mindset, funds of knowledge, shared vulnerability, and community collaboration. You can learn more about how we define these terms below and in our equity and access statements.

Image credit Jeffrey Austin

Tutoring

This year, our tutoring will take three forms:

Face-to-face tutoring with individual students or small groups in the Learning Center. Students can drop in with anything they’re working on, school-related or not, at any stage of the writing process and get affirmation and support.
Face-to-face tutoring with individual students or small groups in classrooms by teacher invitation.
Asynchronous OWL tutoring where students send us their work and we offer growth-oriented, supportive feedback through Google comments or videos and write a short email in return.

During your Learning Center hour, tutoring is your priority. Our job is to provide everyone who enters our space with our full attention and focus, so that they can leave feeling stronger about their writing ability than when they came in.

Skytime

We’ll spend parts of our Skytime working together to develop strategies to provide student-centered tutoring across all of the forms. Therefore, it is very important that you are present and engaged at Skytime. This is not a time to catch up on homework or retake a test. Your attendance and participation are really important in making the Learning Center successful!

Assignments

In the Learning Center, your primary role is tutoring students and working to hone your tutoring skills through reading, reflection and discussion. However, you also will have the opportunity to do your own writing and pursue a badge project. You will make choices about what you learn and how you share your learning with others. You will have the opportunity to work on projects that are meaningful to you, and you will learn important skills such as how to set personal goals, create meaningful projects and reflect on your learning. Your voice and perspective are important and can make a difference in the Learning Center world and beyond; your teacher and peers in the Learning Center are here to help support you in your work to transform our school and community spaces to be less harmful, more fair, and increasingly responsive to students’ needs.

Each week, there will be one or two assignments as well as ongoing writing in our Writer’s Notebooks. There should be little/no work that cannot be accomplished during your Learning Center hour during the week. The syllabus and all assignments will be posted in Schoology. If you are struggling with an assignment or deadline, reach out to me so that we can work together for your success.

Daily Routines

Sacred Writing Time–3 Days a Week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday)
Reflection Thursdays–reflect on the tutoring work you have done this week.
Feedback Fridays–share work/get feedback on what you are working on from Ms. Feliks and your fellow tutors.

Assignment 1 (Week One): Tutor Introduction + Reading & Reflecting

Choose a reading and write a one-page reflection on what you read.
Write a tutor introduction and add a picture for our Learning Center display.

Assignment 2 (Week Two): Writing Autobiography OR Statement of Purpose + Getting Started Meeting (Tutoring Goals)

Create a reading autobiography (new tutors) OR a statement of purpose (returning tutors).
Set tutoring goals for this trimester and meet with Ms. Feliks to discuss these goals.
Reading + one page reflection.

Assignment 3 (Week Three): Badge Project Plan + Meeting

Write up a badge project proposal and meet with Ms. Feliks about it!
Tutoring Readings & Reflection

Assignment 4 (Week Four): Reading + Reflecting–Building Context

Read/watch/listen to at least two things that will help you build context about your badge project. You may find relevant texts in the course pack or from your own personal research.

Assignment 5 (Week Five): Project Check in + Reflection

Write a reflection on what you accomplished on your badge projects and meet with your Learning Center hour to reflect, plan and problem-solve.

Assignment 6 (Week Six): Mid-term Tutoring Check-in + Reflection

Students review their reflection journals + confer with Ms. Feliks using journals as evidence.

Assignment 7 (Week 7 + 8) Project Check-in + Reflection

Write a reflection on what you accomplished on your badge projects and meet with your Learning Center hour to reflect, plan and problem-solve.

Assignment 8 (Week 9 + 10) Project Check-in + Reflection

Write a reflection on what you accomplished on your badge projects and meet with your Learning Center hour to reflect, plan and problem-solve.

Assignment 9 (Week 11) Mastery Badge Project Reflection

Write a 1+ page reflection on your badge project and submit any artifacts associated with your project.

Assignment 13 (Week 12) Final Portfolio & Self-Assessment Meeting (Mastery)

Reflect on your tutoring and the work you put into growing your tutoring skills and participating and leading in the Writing Center community.

Writing/Writing Process Work–due by week 10

Writing Assignment: Blog Post (Non-fiction Writing)
Writing Assignment: Creative Writing
Participate in a Tutoring Session + Reflect on it in the reflection journal.

Image Credit Jeffrey Austin

Labor-Based Grading

One of the core values of Writing Center is having a growth mindset. In order to grow, we have to make mistakes and focus on learning, not scores. To facilitate growth, we will follow a labor-based grading system.

What this means is that you’ll spend a lot of time goal setting, assessing yourself, working through feedback in order to learn. This course values the labor you put into the learning, which leads to new skills. While this kind of learning is self-directed, it’s also important that we seek each other out as resources.

All weekly assignments will be labeled as “process” in the gradebook, and they will be graded based on completion. At the end of the trimester, you will have two Mastery Projects: 1. Your badge project and 2. tutoring portfolio.

For the tutoring portfolio, you will self-assess on the trimester’s work, and we will do a grading conference, using the rubric below as a guideline.

A note on Skyline High School Grading Philosophy

Final Mastery Portfolio

A	B	C	D
Has fully engaged in learning about tutoring through class discussions and readings: there are 1 or fewer missing tutoring assignments	Has MOSTLY engaged in learning about tutoring through class discussions and readings: there are 2 or fewer missing tutoring assignments.	Has PARTIALLY engaged in learning about tutoring through class discussions and readings: there are 3-4 missing tutoring assignments.	Has MINIMALLY engaged in learning about tutoring through class discussions and readings: there are 5+ missing tutoring assignments.
Has fully engaged in tutor training by attending, engaging and participating in the majority of Skytime meetings.	Has MOSTLY engaged in tutor training by attending, engaging and participating in the majority of Skytime meetings.	Has PARTIALLY engaged in tutor training by attending, engaging and participating in Skytime meetings.	Has MINIMALLY engaged in tutor training by attending, engaging and participating in Skytime meetings.
Has excelled at the tutoring goals in the tutoring rubric. Presents compelling evidence of this in the final portfolio through reflection on the trimester’s tutoring and through a completed tutoring reflection journal.	Has MOSTLY met the tutoring goals in the tutoring rubric. Presents good evidence of this in the final portfolio through reflection on the trimester’s tutoring and through a completed tutoring reflection journal.	Has PARTIALLY met the tutoring goals in the tutoring rubric. Presents some evidence of this in the final portfolio through reflection on the trimester’s tutoring and through a tutoring reflection journal.	Has MINIMALLY met the tutoring goals in the tutoring rubric. Presents little evidence of this in the final portfolio. Tutoring journal may be missing.
Fully engages in the Learning Center by taking on a leadership or committee role. Attends committee meetings and consistently contributes to committee goals.	MOSTLY engages in the Learning Center by taking on a leadership or committee role. Attends committee meetings and usually contributes to committee goals.	PARTIALLY engages in the Learning Center by taking on a leadership or committee role. Attends committee meetings and sometimes contributes to committee goals.	MINIMALLY engages in the Learning Center through leadership or committee roles. Sometimes attends committee meetings and rarely contributes to committee goals.

Care and Safety

In the Learning Center, we will, at times, read literature and discuss issues that may be upsetting to some students. If you are aware of particular material that may be distressing to you or if you ever wish to discuss your personal reactions to coursework, I’d be happy to discuss concerns you may have with it before it comes up in class or afterwards. If you ever feel the need to step outside during a class discussion, you may always do so without academic penalty. If you do leave class, please let me know that you stepped out for wellbeing and see me individually to discuss the situation.

In the Learning Center, we prioritize caring for ourselves and each other. In a large group like ours, there may be conflict, but we commit to honoring each others’ boundaries, respecting each others’ viewpoints and engaging in respectful, generative conflict that can make us a stronger team. We prioritize caring for each other and for ourselves to make this a safe space for all.