Kent State’s Writing Commons Partners With Area High Schools

The Writing Commons at Kent State University is partnering with local high schools to help their students become college- and career-ready writers. 

The College of Education, Health and Human Services won funding from a Race to the Top grant, a contest funded by the Department of Education to initiate education reforms in state and local schools. Kent State will partner with Aurora, Tallmadge, Stow-Monroe Falls and Theodore Roosevelt high schools to provide services from the Writing Commons to guide students through the creation of writing centers in the schools. 

“We are supplying writing center services to some of our biggest feeder high schools as one intervention to try to reduce the rate of remediation in our English classes,” says Jeanne Smith, director of the Writing Commons at Kent State.

Smith says the goals for the high schools’ writing centers include delivering writing center services to high schools, helping pre-service English teachers gain experience, offering Kent State students a service-learning experience and recruiting Kent State students as Writing Commons tutors.

The Writing Commons has collaborated with the College of Education, Health and Human Services to appoint tutors, teach students self-sufficiency in writing, persistence when faced with challenges in writing and regular revision habits. Smith says the tutors were nominated by instructors in the school.

After the grant ends in 2014, the Writing Commons will continue to assist the area high schools and writing centers. Appointed members of the College of Education, Health and Human Services, the College of Arts and Sciences, and teachers and administrators of the schools will evaluate the success of the new writing centers. Smith says each school plans to make the new writing centers self-sustaining after the grant period ends. 

“The schools are in the process of identifying students who can take over, and we will train them as part of our work before the spring semester ends,” Smith says.

For more information about the Writing Commons, visit www.kent.edu/writingcommons.