The Writing Center is the perfect place to get advice and constructive feedback on your assignments. However, some changes have been made to this learning resource due to the Covid-19 health guidelines.

In order to keep both students and educators safe, the Writing Center is now online.

Students can find the Writing Center by logging into their student portal through the school website and clicking on the Academics tab. At the bottom of the list of resources is a link titled Writing Center. Clicking on that will lead students to the new site. At the bottom of the page are some frequently asked questions and answers for anyone new to the Writing Center.

From this site, students can view hours, make appointments, and join their tutors through Zoom. 

English teacher Dr. Stephanie Kucsera, who also serves as the Writing Center director, said, “We don’t have room to socially distance, so we chose to move our center online. We still offer all of the same help online that we had in person, though the website may seem more intimidating. Many colleges have many of their writing centers online now also. For me personally it made sense for a college preparatory school to imitate what colleges are doing.”

Kucsera stressed that feedback is not limited to English class assignments. Students may bring in a full range of work for writing help, such as history homework, chemistry reports, college application forms and job resumes.

However, students cannot bring in an assignment and expect the tutors to fix it for them. The student tutors are there to help a student’s way of writing and point out repeated mistakes, but they are not there just to correct the grammar errors in English essays.

“The Writing Center is still run by senior tutors who are students in AP, IB or ACP level English classes. They are still trained, and we still help with all stages of the writing process. If students want help brainstorming or need help putting together an outline and need help on a full draft, we help with all of that,” Kucsera said.

“The thing that is different is that we’re on Zoom, which means you need to screen share to mark up or work with the tutor since you aren’t meeting face to face. Essentially the way that it happens hasn’t changed very much. Our focus is still on giving collaboration or guidance.”

The next time you’re looking for extra help with an assignment, the Writing Center is a perfect place to go.