Conclusion:
"Kairotic Leadership and the
Activist WC"
Through the lenses of kairos, constrained agency, and the act of reframing, we are now able to envision what we can do and not what we think we can or are told we cannot do. We define ourselves by what we are, and not what we are not. Through our kairotic analyzing and reframing work, we have identified ourselves in a more active, activist way, an identity that allows us to see ourselves as part of the "larger circulation" that Singh-Corcoran and Emika (2012) wrote about. As actors and activists, we have found ways to use damaging narratives about writing centers to our advantage, reframing them and giving them positive power. We have, essentially, identified kairotic moments in our own work as WCAs and then acted in/on these moments rather than reacting to them. We are not disempowered but are, in fact, a concrete entity that can affect the community around us. In adopting this stance, we have modeled the act of "mattering" as opposed to "marginalizing" one's research, engagement, and work within the writing center (Geller et al. 2007, 125). WC work and WC engagement matter. We have something valuable to teach others within our own writing centers, institutions, and local contexts. If as writing center coordinators we create a culture that matters, we can then locate opportunities for collaboration with our many partners and ways to meet shared goals.
Believing in our own "mattering" became a feedback loop of positive (re)framing of WC work and potentials. In our WC space, the stories we began telling ourselves about our tutor training and our impact on campus started coming back at us, manifesting in concrete changes in the TANK and on campus as a whole. The math and science "Tutor Enrichment" sessions have slowly morphed to mimic what the WC does, with a set session curriculum by level and a required tutoring philosophy essay for tutors to achieve Level 2. The math and science specialist spoke extensively with Chris about her approach to the CRLA requirements for the WC, and modeled a revision of his training for his tutors on her philosophy and ideas. The WC is now seen as a pedagogical and ideological agent within the TANK, leading us on our journey to be the "world-class" student support center our director wishes us to become, not as simply one service among many to be accounted for.
As regards assessment of the efficacy of our WC, the TANK has taken on the language that Chris introduced: We now talk about impact, not just numbers representing seat time by individual students per semester (although we still do that too, but now those numbers are more concretely contextualized). We now, as a tutoring space overall, are beginning to look at the effects of our tutor training on our tutors' success both as students and post-grads, as well as how that training impacts students' own self-efficacy, metacognition, and transferable problem-solving skills. We are also focusing on ways to evaluate changes in faculty pedagogies regarding writing in their courses due to their collaboration with the WC. These changes in assessment represent a view of the WC as an agent within the university writing culture, wherein we are actors with something to teach others, and not simply a unit to provide service in response to the demands of other areas on campus.
The journey Matthew Schultz (2013) described in "Recalibrating An Established Writing Center: From Supplementary Service to Academic Discipline" echoes our own here. We too "set out to redefine and represent the Center as an academic department that houses a reflective and innovative discipline whose mission is central—not supplementary—to the task of discovering, creating, and sharing knowledge" (2). To do this, we first had to believe it ourselves, consciously stepping out of reactive mode and not engaging in knee-jerk fashion to the damaging narratives that so often characterize—and limit—the role of WCs on campuses. Postmodern mapping gave us a tool to see how we had done this unconsciously in recent moments, and thus how we could more effectively and overtly do so in the future as a conscious, determined practice. This growing awareness of our space in our home unit and in the university as a whole has given us a control over that space—constrained, of course, by institutional realities—that allows us to engage in activism, carving space for our practices within the larger campus community mission and goals. We are able to look ahead to moments where we can engage in the "issues-based organizing" that Adler-Kassner (2010) characterized as the most productive way of effecting change, of becoming activists.
Almost by accident, by staying open in the kairotic moments we encountered, we were able to address through immediate, short-term actions the immediate interests of the parties intimately involved in those situations, as well as stay focused on "the long-term, values-based implications of these actions and make conscious decisions about how, when, and whether to take particular actions with these bigger-picture strategic values in mind" (Adler-Kassner 2010, 223). As WCAs, we can consciously engage with this approach and make it our chosen strategy as we face our unit and our campus. We can choose to acknowledge that we are affected by the power of those around us, but, instead of stopping there and remaining locked in damaging narratives, we can remember that if we are affected by "the other side of the coin named power" (Edward Chambers, qtd. in Adler-Kassner, p. 228), we can manifest some agency for ourselves. Power manifests in relationships, and it is that web of shifting, complex space that all WCs can use to reframe their stories and envision themselves—and thus, be seen by others—in new institutional spaces.
Using Peeples's (1999) postmodern mapping, we came to read our particular complex of positionalities as an opportunity for bringing about productive (re)framings of narratives about our WC's potential. We can now claim a different kind of space in our institutional home, a space based on our new narrative about creating new conceptions of writing center spaces. These new conceptions are necessary for ourselves and for the institutions of which we are a part. In many ways, our daily practices of activism within our own writing center have called us to consider ways of making space, space for our writing center theories, histories, and best practices—and to examine how these theories, histories, and practices benefit and connect the larger institutional structure of the TANK and the mission of our university. Rather than subscribing to marginalized narratives about writing center spaces, we have, through the lens of constrained agency and kairos, begun to define space not as a limiting factor in achieving our goals as a writing center, but as relational, fluid, contextual, and situational.
Introduction - Top | Kairos Part 1 | Kairos Part 2 | Conclusion | Activist Mapping | References