Reading and Writing Studios

Macomb Community College’s Learning Centers and Reading and Writing Studios (LC-RWS) support students, staff, and faculty to reach their academic and professional goals using ethical and learner-centered tutoring practices. We provide effective learning supports by implementing current scholarship. We operate by the following four tutoring principles:

• Collaborative learning processes
• Student agency
• Critical engagement
• Equitable access

The LC-RWS enact these principles through one-on-one tutoring, online resources, group study, and classroom workshops.

Collaborative Learning Processes 

Collaborative learning is at the heart of all tutoring centers, including ours. Our academic supports position learners centrally to reveal their own patterns of efficacy in learning and action and build students' confidence in their role as learners and doers to emphasize their active role in their education. The role of the tutor is to support learning through dialogue. By having conversations with students about their learning and goals, we approach academic support as fellow learners, establishing common ground. This dialogue results in students developing a sense of academic inquiry to form unique perspectives.

Student Agency

The LC-RWS's goal is to provide a safe space where students' voices are respected. We operate with unconditional positive regard for students, respecting their personal experiences, knowledges, and insights as essential parts of their education. Furthermore, we recognize and honor each student's culture and background, which also broadly inform their learning process. By respecting students' past actions and knowledge, we cultivate an environment where students are positioned with authority and ready to challenge themselves to learn new concepts and skills. To this end, we believe that the ownership of learning lies with the student, and that ethical academic discourse respects the student's language and voice and empowers their personal exploration. 

Critical Engagement

We center the learner by activating their existing knowledge and encouraging them to explore options for processing the material and applying it to their academic and professional work. LC-RWS tutors empower students to use new strategies to add to their growing knowledge of course content and academic discourse, challenging them to think critically not only about what they’re learning but how they are learning. This practice values students' contributions and helps them to build new knowledge and make new connections. By prompting learners to challenge assumptions about literacy and education, we motivate them to shape their own learning and language usage. Our goal is to support learners in engaging their unique learning and communication processes.

Equitable Access

We believe in equitable and obtainable education. Education should be an inclusive experience for students seeking to empower themselves through the attainment of knowledge, as aligned with Macomb’s values. These values provide the opportunity for all students to acquire knowledge and achieve their educational goals. Destigmatizing and ensuring equitable access to tutoring services are essential aspects of the LC-RWS's mission of just, procurable, and sustainable education. We provide quality, student-centered academic services including free tutoring and learning resources, online and in-person modalities, and in-classroom support.

Language Rights Statement

As a tutoring center at a community college whose student population is comprised of learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, we respect students' language of origin and seek to help them to use it to enter the academic conversation in a way that draws on their existing language skills and cultural context. While we help students familiarize themselves with discipline-specific conventions to meet faculty and professional expectations, we also consider valuing one variety of a language over another to be systemic racism. We join our colleagues in the composition and communication fields in manifesting in our community the NCTE Statement on Students' Rights to Their Own Language, thereby championing linguistic justice.