Meghan Flannery
Tutoring Philosophy
I knew when I came to college I wanted to become a writing tutor. Throughout all of high
school and into college I enjoyed working with friends on their different projects. In fact, this is
one of the ways I made friends when I first came to campus. I would sit down with a person to
talk about what they wanted to say in their project which would then lead to me helping them
outline and pick out quotes. I have always been a personable person, so not only did I enjoy
working with them, but I also seemed to be able to help people open up and start to connect with
their papers. Signing up for Writing Center Theory and trying to work in the Writing Center
seemed to me to be the best way to continue this.
I like to get to know people and create a comfortable environment. I feel that this allows
writers to believe they can open up and discuss their work as they would to a friend. This
atmosphere also gives me the chance to help them create a stronger argument by really engaging
them about their ideas and what they are trying to convey. Sometimes this results in a friendly
debate; sometimes it results in me sitting there listening to them talk as they try to explain to
themselves what they have to say. I am confident during these times and believe it to be one of
my best strengths. Once I am able to help them properly extract their purpose, I feel like I have
all the apt tools to aid them in shaping and structuring a paper that best shows their argument.
Just like those times I used to sit around with my friends outlining along side them, I consider
myself helpful in planning how to put a writer’s purpose in the best light.
When I think about what I want to focus on as a writing center tutor, I think about how
deeply I want my work to matter to and to resonate in the writers that come to see me. My
greatest desire and hope in my tutoring sessions is to help increase a writer’s interest and
investing in her writing. If I am able to help writers do this, then I am able to leave them with a
skill that continues far after our brief thirty to sixty minute session. For quiet some time I did not
know how I could best achieve this platform. It was not until reading College Writing,
Identification, and the Production of Intellectual Property: Voices from the Stanford Study of
Writing, by Andrea A. Lunsford, Jenn Fishman, and Warren M Liew that I realized the best way
to accomplish my goals as a writing center tutor is to concentration on how to best address the
issue of intellectual property (IP).
Intellectual property, referring to any creation of the mind, allows students to see their
writing as something “intrinsically valuable”, according to Lunsford, Fishman, and Liew (471).
Thinking about a person’s writing as intellectual property means being able to think about the
writing as something that is solely a part of her ownership. Although this idea seems simple at
face value, it felt radically to me when I first read it. I had never thought of anything I have
written as my own property, something that no one else can take from me. Yet, the more I
ruminated on the subject the more I came to agree with the authors’ argument that being able to
view writing as an intellectual property is one of the best ways to think about it as something
with value and meaning, and, in my mindset, a person becomes much more invested in
something that she believes holds value. While I had yet to consider writing as an intellectual
property before, I now believe that it is one of the best ways to help me as a tutor push writers to
take a sincere interest in their writing.
In order to find the best way to help writers see their work as intellectual property I need
to discover what initially prevented them from doing so. After a lively class discussion, the topic
that most of my classmates seemed to believe the biggest hindrance to viewing their work as
their own is the reliance and use of other people’s writing. Many stated that by using outside
sources to argue their point they felt less like the work was their own and more like they were
borrowing from others. Using this idea as to why many writers find it hard to consider ownership
of their writing, I shaped my manifesto as a way to help improve this issue as a way of increasing
writers’ investment in their work.
My multimodal writing center manifesto is comprised of two art canvases completely
covered in the pages from old books. A display of birds perched on branches covers one of the
canvases. This is a hand-sketched picture on a poster board that was then cut out and completely
and meticulously covered in paper so that the original image remains visible. The picture of the
birds, while matching the background of the canvas also has a three dimensional element to it.
The second canvas, while also is completely covered in old book pages, bares the message
‘Make It Your Own’ in large letters spaced out across the entire surface. The purpose of this
multimodal presentation is to visually represent the ability to take work that belongs to others but
still be able to use it to form something that is uniquely your own. This is why both canvases are
covered in the book pages. They form the basis of my project, but I am still able to use them to
create something that has not been done yet. It may be something subtle and simple, such as the
image of birds perched on a branch. But even this image gravitates away from the surface that it
is on and it becomes its own unique. It may not be subtle at all but bold like huge letter shouting
out a message. Although different, both canvases are meant to show that a person can use outside
texts to create something new. In this case the project is completely made of other’s works that a
used to create my own message. By encouraging others they are able to make their own message
using outside source and still make something valuable to them, I hope inspire writers to take
this idea to escalation their passion and ownership of their writing.
The main way that I plan to implement my manifesto in my day-to-day tutoring practices
is too work specifically on challenging writers on their arguments and use of text. I feel that this
is one of the best approaches to both get them to see that they can use other sources in a way that
is uniquely their own and to get them to view their writing as something that is valuable to them.
I think this can manifest in many different forms. It can result in a writer dominating the session
as they explain to me the core of their argument and how the sources highlight this. It could be a
friendly debate between a writer and myself as we try to tease out the argument. Or it could
result in a conversation where I use lead in question to help the writer fully understand where she
is trying to go. All of these way and many others are, in my opinion, the best way to get a writer
to think critically about their use of sources to create their argument and, in turn, peak their
interest in their topic.
Lunsford, Andrea A., Jenn Fishman, and Warren M. Liew. "College Writing, Identification, and
the Production of Intellectual Property: Voices from the Stanford Study of Writing."
College English 75.5 (2013): 470-92. Web.