FROM PRESENTATION TO PUBLICATION

Adapting your SSWCA tutor presentation for JPTSS

AGENDA

• What is JPTSS and why submit a tutor article?
• JTPSS call for submissions
• Publication timeline
• Benjamin and Keshav present a case study
• SSWCA submission guidelines and resources

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THE JOURNAL OF PEER TUTORING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

JPTSS (est. 2020) is a scholarly academic journal, distinct in that it focuses solely on tutoring within secondary schools.

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Your role as tutor is essential to fulfilling the goals of secondary writing and learning centers; likewise, tutor articles which address the specific issues of your center are central to the goals of JPTSS.

JTPSS is a peer reviewed journal and is published by SSWCA.

Find the journal online here: http://sswca.org/journal

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JPTSS CALL FOR TUTOR ARTICLES

Find the call for articles here.

Word count: 2000-3500 words (8-14 double-spaced pages), including Works Cited.

Articles should:

• Clearly present a question, problem, or challenge.
• Provide context.
• Reference your sources.
• Describe the intervention, initiative, or change you implemented.
• Share your outcomes and your reflections.
• Extend your findings.

CLEARLY PRESENT A QUESTION, PROBLEM, OR CHALLENGE.

• Vague questions, problems, or challenges:
• We would like to increase the number of students visiting our writing center.
• We recognized the need to increase diversity within our writing center.

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• Specific questions, problems, or challenges:
• Our WC data revealed two opportunities: the need to attract students who are developing writers and the need to increase accessibility to our services.
• When we became the new junior leadership team members within Etowah High School’s tutoring center, we noticed a lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among the center’s leadership when compared to the school’s student body.

PUBLICATION TIMELINE

JTPSS is a peer reviewed journal.

Issue 5.1

• May 15: Submit by this date for a pre-submission review; we can give you feedback before our break (June 20-Aug 24)
• September 15: Submissions Due
• October 1 – December 15: Window for peer review, revisions, back and forth with editors
• December 15 – January 10: Time for writers to work on revisions, if necessary
• January 10 – January 31: Window for final editorial review, minor revisions
• January 31: All finalized articles sent to FPS
• January 31 – March 31: Faculty Publishing Service copyediting, author review, typesetting, proofreading
• Early April: PUBLISH ISSUE 5.1 ONLINE

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO OUR SCHOOL

• Stanford Online High School is—as its name suggests—an online high school. Classes take place synchronously.
• 986 students enrolled in grades 7-12
• 48 states represented
• 42 countries represented
• 82 academic courses

QUESTIONS FOR BEN AND KESHAV

1. To begin, can you tell us about your conference presentation? What issue did it address?
2. What motivated you to write an article for JTPSS?
3. How did you determine where and how to begin the process?
4. How did you divide the writing between the two of you (and work to ensure it is consistent in style and voice)?
5. Did your completed article follow the same organization as your presentation?
6. What challenges did you encounter along the way?
7. Are there particular tips you might offer those starting this process, especially if they are doing so in collaboration with another student author?

DISCUSSION

• What issue did your presentation examine? Did it present a specific question, problem, or challenge?

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• What questions or concerns do you have about the publication process?

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• How might we support you during your article writing process?
• Email check-ins
• A summer writing group that meets once every week or two
• Zoom office hour

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POSSIBLE ARTICLE STRUCTURE

• Open with an anecdote that illustrates the issue that your article will examine.
• Follow the anecdote with a statement of the problem.
• Provide context. What do we need to know about your WC to understand the issue?
• Describe how you addressed the issue. What intervention, initiative, or change did you implement?
• Share your outcomes and your reflections. Exploring nuance is important here.
• Extend your findings. Consider how your experience may benefit other centers.

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OPEN WITH AN ANECDOTE

• It is 10:59 a.m. Pacific Time on a Saturday. A student and tutor prepare to log on to their computers for a meeting, one in California and the other in Shanghai. A different student, also seeking help, opens their laptop. However, they are not joining a scheduled appointment; instead, they are messaging a Skype group of over a hundred fellow students and peer tutors worldwide for help with an assignment. At our school, this is a daily occurrence.

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CONTEXT AND THE PROBLEM

Stanford University Online High School (Stanford OHS for short) is an accredited global online high school with live classes, in-person meetups, and over nine hundred students. Our Writing and Tutoring Center (WTC) consists of over a hundred peer tutors and several full-time staff. It is a multidisciplinary center that offers support in a wide range of subjects, including lab writing for science, tutoring for math, and revision for college essays, though approximately 75% of all appointments are booked for support with English and philosophy essays. The WTC fosters a vibrant and active community, with over three thousand appointments scheduled annually by over five hundred students. Most students return for ten or more sessions throughout the year, 88% of which last for up to thirty minutes, with the remainder extending for sixty minutes.

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The learning landscape at our school is diverse and often extends beyond the virtual walls of our classes and writing center into the metaphorical hallways of our chat platforms. In 2022, two Stanford OHS students and peer tutors, Benjamin Klieger and Keshav Narang, had an idea that started with a question: Can we leverage existing and collected data around evolving spaces for learning within our school to increase the inclusivity and accessibility of our writing center? Thus, we, Benjamin and Keshav, set out to develop and execute a repeatable methodology for gaining insight into enhancing the center by studying informal learning.

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RESOURCES

JPTSS Call For Tutor Articles

JPTSS Guidance for Tutor Articles (8 min video)

Sample tutor manuscript: Small Stuff? No Problem! Creating a Mock Admissions Board to Meet Tutoring Demand

Sample published tutor article: Building Diverse Tutoring Centers

Questions: Rebecca Shields kessloff@stanford.edu

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