Subversive Work: A Response to Melissa Nicolas' "Can WPAs Align Their Beliefs With Their Practices?"

In her recent post on the subject, Melissa Nicolas notes that “writing centers sabotage themselves everyday by continuing practices that feed into our perpetual marginalization.” I, and many others like me, represent the result of staffing practices that lead to problems in writing centers. If we halt these practices, though, where would we turn in order to appropriately staff a writing center? The English department? Who exactly is qualified to work in a writing center? 

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Can WPAs Align Their Beliefs With Their Practices?

When I asked the current editors of Praxis if they could dig out an old article I had written, they not only graciously did so but also asked me if I would be willing to reflect on the article. In particular, they wanted to know if my polemical 2005 piece, “Writing Centers as Training Wheels: What Message are We Sending our Students? (3.1) still represented my thinking about writing centers. The short answer to that is "yes!"

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