Leadership at an angle

So I'm about to embark on a new journey this fall semester: I will be teaching the tutor training practicum at my institution, the required course for all undergraduates who want to serve as paid peer tutors in our university's writing center. In some ways, this is a return to my roots; writing center work is what made me passionate about teaching writing in the first place, and honestly, without those hours every week to sit one-on-one with a writer during my first horrifying semester as a graduate teaching assistant, I likely would've thrown in the towel on the whole teaching career entirely. At the very least I would have retreated into something far less pedagogical, like being a professor of medieval literature, where the fact that I was a terrible teacher might have been misconstrued as the fact that I was teaching a difficult, esoteric subject matter.

I'm deeply committed to writing center work, and frankly, I'm concerned by the state of my university's writing center. The center is managed by Academic Skills, and I believe the folks who manage it have the very best of intentions. But the center reaches very few students; those it does reach are generally considered remedial, so despite decades of writing center research and growth, our center is still seen across campus as at best a grammar fix-it shop (and at worst, the last place you want to send your students because they might come away with some totally screwed-up essay that in no way reflects the assignment you gave, and this is considered the tutor's fault). I'm taking a first step toward ameliorating this problem by taking over the tutor training course. My hope is that, as I help the new tutors (writing consultants, as we call them) create a reflective community of practice, I'll gradually assume more influence in the mission of the center, until I'm able to shape it into the kind of place writers of all levels want to come - and a place their professors heartily encourage them to seek out.

But coming at this leadership position from such an angle gives me pause. It feels underhanded, somehow, not like the frank way I've declared myself to be the director of the National Writing Project site we're applying to establish at my university. Although here again, if I really think about it, I still feel like I've approached that position sideways, too: My real reason for wanting an NWP site at my university is because I see ways we can make writing so much more meaningful in the curriculum, at my university and at the elementary and secondary institutions in my area, and because I'm again appalled at the preparation (or lack thereof) for teaching writing at all levels.

So I'm thinking about leadership tonight. And as I'm boning up on my writing center research and theory for this fall's class, I came across a powerful description of leadership in a golden little text titled The Everyday Writing Center, which distinguishes between "structural leaders," who "have a leadership role by virtue of their position within an institution" (10), and "functional leaders - those who assume a leadership role out of a sense of mission, of need, of purpose and who require the participation of others to accomplish this purpose" (11). Without placing a value on either of those leadership roles, the authors go on to argue - and here is the meat of the passage, and this post:

In order for leaders in the post-secondary context to instigate, promote, and effectively sustain institutional transformation, [John] Tagg writes that structural leaders must also be functional leaders who 'will use the authority of their offices to achieve the mission of institutional transformation' (339). He proposes that we move beyond maintenance mode, beyond filling the squares on the organizational chart, and embrace the mantle of institutional leader as well. (11)

I suppose I'm proud to consider myself a functional leader. My interest in writing program administration, whether that be with the first-year writing program or the National Writing Project or our underused writing center, stems from my "sense of mission, of need, of purpose," and I've always recognized that I can't achieve that mission alone - I don't have the unilateral power of a dean, a provost, or a department chair. And I'm pleased that as a move into structural leadership roles, especially with the NWP, I'm going to have the attitude of a functional leader who won't be satisfied with the status quo, who won't be afraid to rock the boat if necessary to achieve real, necessary change.