Recently, a number of us attended the annual Bright Ideas Share Fair hosted by Oakland University on behalf of the Michigan Writing Centers Association.  It's always a good day because it gives us a chance to see what others in the area are doing in their writing centers, it lets us catch up with directors and consultants who have become our friends over the years, and it gives us the opportunity to showcase our own bright ideas and best practices. 

It always makes me proud as a director when others come up to me and tell me about something they learned at a session given by one of our consultants.  When they ask more questions because they are interested in copying or adapting our activity/event/study/etc., I know that my consultants have done a good job.

I'm also proud when the consultants on the trip begin thinking about ways to adapt or incorporate the things they learned from others on the trip.  Inevitabley, good plans are made in the van on the way back to East Lansing. 

In the spirit of such sharing, I ask those who went with us to the MI-WCA conference to begin writing about the lessons you shared and the lessons you learned.  Then we can all plan together.

I'll get us started:  I attended several sessions on engagement or community outreach.  I was especially impressed by a presentating from Saginaw Valley about a writing center program that coordinates volunteers from the university to work with hospice patients to write various end-of-documents, whether it was memoirs, scrapbooks, video compilations, audio narratives, obituaries, CD/music compilations, or any other number of documents that are important to the patient before s/he moves on.  The student sharing found the volunteer work to be personally rewarding as well as challenging and now she's working as a recruiter to get others involved.  It sounds like a great idea to me.