November 7, 2016
SVSU welcomes Bad Axe, Merrill students for writing workshop
Two tutors from SVSU’s Writing Center, Victoria Phelps, a literature major from Rochester Hills, and Brianna Rivet, a creative writing major from Bay City, facilitated the workshop.
Chris Giroux, SVSU associate professor of English, worked with the pair to submit a grant proposal, “The Prose Project: A Service-Learning Opportunity Uniting Writing Center Tutors and Area High School Students,” that was approved for funding by the SVSU Foundation.
In June, Giroux, Phelps and Rivet attended a week-long writers’ workshop held at the Interlochen School for the Performing Arts, providing an opportunity to engage with and learn from creative writers, who inspired them to create this workshop.
After months of studying and researching, Phelps and Rivet combined their creativity and determination to develop a the day-long workshop, focused on the writing of fiction, specifically for rural high school students. They partnered with high school teachers Stephanie Anderson of Bad Axe and Allison Jordan of Merrill, both of whom are active participants in the National Writing Project.
The SVSU students plan to collect some of the high school students' work in the next weeks to keep up with their progress. The materials and lesson plans created by Phelps and Rivet will also be shared with the tutors who staff the Saginaw Community Writing Center, located at Butman-Fish Library in Saginaw.