Jane Rosenzweig, Former Director of Harvard College Writing Center

I think that there's a lot of... really interesting work being done on how to teach writing and how we can help writers when they're struggling.

But a lot of what you end up doing when you're working with students, either in the classroom or one-on-one outside the classroom, is just being a really attentive reader.

So I was listening.

I was paying attention.

For whatever reason, I never lost interest in in whatever was in front of me, right? It was always an interesting problem to solve.

Somebody has an idea, they don't quite have an idea, they're trying to develop an idea.

And it was the kind of problem that I'm drawn to solving.

And so I think a lot of what works in the classroom, and we may come back to this when we talk about AI, right, is...

the human interaction that you have between a writer and a reader.

One of the things in the United States that I think is something that we struggle with a lot is that writing up through the high school level is not often pitched to students or taught as something that you do because a reader cares what you think.

It's much more, and there are good reasons for this and some less good reasons wrapped up in it, right? The idea is that you have to learn this skill, this competency, but it's often just divorced from the idea that the only real reason you would do this is because you have something to say that somebody is going to want to hear.

And so while I think there's a lot of different ways that you can frame why someone is a good writing teacher or a good writing tutor, a lot of it just comes down to A combination of I care what you think and I want to hear what you have to say and being able to ask questions.

What do you mean here? What can you tell me a little bit more about this? Let's write that down.

So often what I would do when I was in my office one on one with a student who was in my class and they'd be trying to work out an idea.

They would say something and I would hand them a pen.

I would say, that's it.

Write that down.

Right.

And then suddenly we don't have a blank page anymore.

And the whole conversation and nervousness changes because then you're a writer.

You've written something down.

You have something to say.

So I don't know if I can think so much of examples of this individual student or that individual student as much as the approach.

But I will say, I had a conversation this spring with a student who was in my office.

And we were actually talking about, he was writing a paper about AI and education.