Published: November 17, 2009 09:54 pm      

WRITE THIS WAY: IUS, New Albany High School start pilot writing program for teens

Indiana University Southeast is teaming up with New Albany High School to start a pilot program aimed at improving literacy among high school students.

IUS already has a “Writing Center,” a place where students can go to receive a second opinion and help with their essays. Now, they are expanding. They trained their first group of high school students Thursday to start a pilot program in a high school setting, which would open to students in January.

“It’s the same reason it’s needed in college,” said Leigh Ann Meyer, director of the Writing Center at IUS. “Every writer needs a second opinion and every writer needs an objective viewpoint.”

She said that’s not possible with large class sizes in high school.

Jason Flener, a teacher at NAHS, agreed. He said he has 132 students this year, making it hard to get one-on-one time with each student.

About 30 students with a newly formed writing group, sponsored by Flener, will alternate as the tutors for other students on Wednesdays after school once the program starts, Flener said. He said the goal is for students to help others develop thesis statements, organization for their papers and basic grammar rules. He said they will not be editing other students’ work.

More than helping others, he said students will end up benefiting as well.

“There’s no better way to learn something than to teach it,” Flener said.

At IUS, tutors get paid. However, it will be all volunteer work for high school students.

“It looks good on college applications,” 16-year-old Haley Kasteler said as to why she is one of the high school tutors. “Not many people can say that they started a writing center at their high school. Hopefully, that’ll set us apart from others.”

She also sees another benefit.

“You’ll learn by helping others,” she added. “You have to know the information to teach it to other people.”

If this program goes well, Meyer hopes to expand it to any high school that wants it. She said IUS will provide training and materials and the high schools will provide the space as well as peer tutors.

However, setting the bar has its challenges.

“I think it’ll be hard to get started,” said 17-year-old Jamie Ferguson, one of the high school tutors. “We don’t have anything to base this off of, but once we get started, I think it’ll be successful.”

Students said they are also intimidated to help students who are older.

“It’s going to be nerve wracking at first, but the more you do it the more confident you’ll be,” Kasteler said.

Meyer said all the bugs will be worked out in the pilot program this school year. She said she hopes many more schools will take advantage of the university offering this service to help schools get started in the future.