From Product to Process #HiringProcesses #instaJournal

Event Center A&B

In applying Wenger’s concept of community of practice to writing centers, Grimm pushes for the work of writing centers to not be that of “inducting individual students into a discourse community” but rather that of “recruit[ing] new members [and] welcom[ing] the creativity of those with multimemberships” (91). Perhaps as a means to this end, the work and titles of Laura Greenfield and Vershawn Ashanti Young seek to dispel the “ ‘Standard English’ Fairy Tale” while questioning, “Should Writers Use They Own English?” What better way to open writing centers to “new perspectives, new frames” (Geller 54) than by rethinking and retheorizing the hiring processes that bring people to work at our centers? How can we confront the racism Villanueva has challenged us to eradicate, not only in the goals of our hiring, but in the process itself? In order to challenge existing models in favor of more reflective, transparent, and collaborative hiring processes, the presenters conducted research that engaged participants in discussion and prompted spontaneous writing in order to explore where we are and how we can move forward by asking: What are our hiring processes? What principles and theoretical concerns should shape these processes? What obstacles prevent us from fully realizing our theory in practice?