Mutual Benefits: Pre-Service Teachers and Public School Students in the Writing Center

The authors have discovered that working in a writing center setting within the classroom provides pre-service teachers with an opportunity not only to work with student writers one-on-one but also to experience a model of best practice in teaching writing. In this article, the authors describe a program, focusing on the partnership they have developed--between Montclair State University (MSU), a large public university in New Jersey, and The Writers' Room[TM] Program, a center-less writing center that brings trained volunteer coaches into the classrooms of students in 10 public schools in Montclair, NJ. The authors believe their collaboration suggests the short- and long-term effects of offering such instruction in the schools. In the short term, the authors provide school children with trained, engaged readers and listeners, while in the long term they provide university students with effective writing center practices that they can eventually incorporate into their own work as English/Language Arts teachers. (Contains 2 notes.)