This is part three of our series where the peer tutors who attended the DePaul Writing Center’s dinner party on Friday, February 21, 2025 reflect on their experience. Keep reading below to learn more about peer tutor Jasmine’s experience.

Jasmine E. – Peer Writing Tutor Fall 24 Cohort

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Chicago Writing Centers Dinner Party at the University of DePaul. At this event there were many other tutors from schools like Lewis University, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), North Park University, Loyola University, and DePaul University.

The event started with an activity named Tutor Bingo where we were given a sheet with boxes that had personality traits, and we had to find someone from a different school other than our own to sign their name on that trait. This activity was more like a game since there was a prize if you filled out every box (I won a prize). The game gave us the chance to warm up to each other in a fun and competitive way while meeting and conversing with tutors from all of those other schools. I had even more of a chance to conversate with tutors who sat at my table. These tutors were from the schools Lewis University, UIC, and Depaul.

At this event, I was a co-facilitator and was in charge to help spark conversations over a wide variety of topics at my table. We got to converse about topics of AI at the writing center, linguistic justice and diversity, and working with writers for whom English is an additional language while eating some delicious food. There were many other topics that we didn’t get the time to discuss because we just had so much to talk about (even though we got over an hour of discussion).

The topic of AI took up a lot of our time. AI is talked about a lot everywhere and someone at my table even mentioned she was tired of hearing about it so much. Although I can agree, it’s overrated, there’s just so much to talk about it since it’s so new and upcoming. We discussed how we’ve seen it used in some students’ papers who have come to the writing center for help and how we approached or would approach this type of situation. We also discussed how some professors should have set rules for ways AI can and can’t be used in the classroom. There are a lot of negative ways to use AI, but there are also positive uses of it. We talked about ways AI could be helpful in and outside of the classroom and ways some of us may have used it in the past.

When it came to the topic of working with writers for whom English is an additional language, we each went around and individually spoke about our experiences with working with ESL students and some of our strategies. Someone at my table mentioned how she once had a very shy ESL student and she was having trouble helping him because he was very quiet. During their next appointment she took him to a more private area in their center and she was able to help him more efficiently. She mentioned that he even thanked her because he received a good grade on his paper. I think this is a great strategy to help any student who may be shy or embarrassed and doesn’t want others hearing them.

Afterwards, we were able to get together with the people from our own school and reflect on the whole event together. We took this time to discuss things we found interesting, new things we learned, and just our overall experience. I had a great time at this event, and I am hoping for more events like this one in the future. I want to give a big thanks to Erin Herrmann, Claudia Nieves, and anyone else who helped coordinate this amazing experience.

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