Bedford Guide, Chapter One: “The Writing Center as Workplace”

Main Points:

This chapter is all about ethical behavior in a professional setting, which a writing center is. This chapter discusses how a person should behave towards writers, other coaches and teachers. The most important thing they stress is that a coach should respect the others that they encounter while working at the center.

What I Got:

I understood that coaches should behave in a professional manner and never say or do anything that could be taken as disrespectful towards either writers or faculty.

What a Beginning Coach Needs:

This whole chapter is geared towards beginning coaches, as it deals with professionalism and how to act while at work.

Best for:

I doubt that an experienced tutor would get much out of this chapter, since it is basic information about professionalism. The exercises at the back of the chapter also work very well for beginners, although there is a lot that wouldn’t work for our writing center (such as learning the history of our particular center, since we are a new center and are making the history).