The SHS Writing Center

Grace Morton

Souhegan’s writing center is a collaborative space where students can meet with trained writing coaches and improve their work. Any papers can be edited, from creative writing to research projects. Coaches focus on helping the writer perfect the message and tone of the work, but will help with sentence structure and grammar if that’s the type of feedback the writer requests. Writing coach Abby Tesconi says about the process, “There’s two types of revision, the global, overall, overarching questions about the paper, and there’s local revision, the sentence structure of the paper.”

Abby Tesconi and Hannah Parrott in a training session

Training for these coaches consists of an eight week training session where the students meet with Writing Center Coordinator Jeanne Sturges to discuss writing techniques and tutoring methods. After this, they join Souhegan’s current writing coaches. They meet with students who schedule appointments through an online calendar and staff the writing center during regular hours, currently Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays after school from 2:30 to 3:15.

There are many reasons why students choose to become writing coaches. All of the coaches love writing, and want to help others write as well as possible. In addition, the Writing Center looks good on college applications and serves as volunteer hours for graduation requirements and National Honors Society. Most of all, it’s fun. “I really like writing, and I really like talking about writing, so it’s fun to do every week,” says Luke Henry, a senior.

In addition to helping others, last year’s tutors say working in writing center has improved their own writing. Jackie Chistolini, a junior, says, “I often find myself asking in my head, ‘Have I connected these ideas to my thesis? How can i make more connections? Does this topic sentence give a general overview of this paragraph? Does this transition sentence connect these two paragraphs?’ ”

Jackie Chistolini coaches Wallisch’s freshman science class

Sloan Facques, a junior who served as a writing coach last year, uses the writing center herself, and says “having someone else look over your writing and have a conversation with you about it is an invaluable tool…We can help students with any piece of writing, across all subjects (except for foreign language). It’s free and you don’t have to leave the school.” You can schedule a meeting with a writing coach by visiting the calendar through this link. Simply create an account, choose the time and date of the meeting, and specify what project or assignment you’d like to work on.

Sloan Facques trains new writing coaches

Current writing coaches are Anna Quinlan, Mary North, Jane Leighton, Abigail Tesconi, Beka Adams, Anna Schulte, Hannah Parrott, Caterina Coppola, Lucas Henry, Sophi Oehler, Eliza Mastergeorge, Isabelle Nierman, Lucy Stover, Jackie Chistolini, and Sloan Facques.

For more information on the writing center, talk to Jeanne Sturges or any of the writing tutors.