Editorial Welcome
Humor Column
Understanding Today's Students
LSE Writer's Workshop
Using Language as an Agent of Change
When You Are Not Getting A's
Helicopter Parenting
Catch the Last Issue!

Welcome to the May 2007 issue of the new Learning Center Exchange!

CALL FOR ARTICLES

The Learning Center Exchange is now soliciting articles for the 2007-2008 academic year. If you would like to share your good ideas for helping students or with just about anything related to learning centers, contact Mona Pelkey@ mpelkey@learningassistance.com. Deadline for the September issue is September 1, 2007. Guidelines for submissions may be found at http://www.learningassistance.com/2006/common/guidelines.html.

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Editorial Welcome

By Mona Pelkey

Dear Readers,
I think you will enjoy our last issue of The Learning Center Exchange for the 2006-2007 academic year. In it you will find inspiration, laughter, insight, and wisdom, all the usual things you have come to expect from LCE.
• Wondering how the Darton College LSE Writer’s Workshop has been doing lately? (see the April issue for the first installment of this story).`Find out by reading Roseanna Almaee’s sequel piece, “The LSE Writer’s Workshop: A Follow-up—Small Miracles.” (Can’t skip a story with a tag line like that!)
• Cn u rd this? If not, you are not alone, but I bet your students can! This month, Julianne Scibetta gives us a lesson in text messaging student-speak...

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In the Spotlight: Humor Column

By Barbara McLay, University of South Florida

Understanding Today’s Students: txt ur vote 4 me!

By Julianne Scibetta

I am an apprentice teacher in an alternative high school working with students who have been expelled from their previous schools. I gave students in American history a list of strongly negative vocabulary words to use in writing a narrative about the Pequot and the Puritans. When a six-foot, hefty, multi-pierced, scary-looking kid handed me his paper, I did my best to not burst out laughing. He had written about a "friendly massacre."...
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I found a cell phone commercial involving a young girl who speaks to her mother in txt msg to be hysterical, but I didn’t think that it would actually reflect everyday speech. That is until two days later when I heard a graduating college senior spout out a few “o-m-g”’s. I’ve found myself saying “lol” (as a word) while laughing, and I’m pretty sure that’s as redundant as “throughout this entire essay.” Am I right, Kyle…
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LSE Writer's Workshop: A Follow-up:
Small Miracles

By Roseanna Almaee, Darton College

Using Language as an Agent of Change

By Roseanna Almaee, Darton College

In the April issue of the Learning Center Exchange, I reported on a project that I was in the middle of – a Writer’s Workshop for Learning Support English students. I originally got the idea from work I had done with the National Writing Project and from consistently hearing students talk about wanting to get through their English class. They did not see the developmental English class as a way to improve their skills and become better writers for a lifetime...
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“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Ghandi

Well over a year ago a co-worker and I were once again discussing the end of semester goings on of our students. The tension would start building about a week after mid-term when students started realizing that they were nearing the end of the term, and they were not prepared for the exit tests. These adults at our community college, who previously had responded to us in an adult manner, slowly began exhibiting juvenile ...
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When You Are Not Getting A's

By Dennis Congos, University of Central Florida

Many students don’t know what to do when they do not earn A’s. Some study hard, but the grades do not seem to come. Below is a list of things that students who get A’s do. Compare these activities to what you do and maybe you will see why you are not getting the grades that you deserve – A’s...
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Questions or comments? Contact the author at dcongos@mail.ucf.edu.

More about the author

Confessions: In Defense of Helicopter Parenting

By Mona Pelkey

Recently the LRNSST-L listserve for learning center professionals hosted a popular thread with the subject line, “Helicopter Parents.” The various messages on the thread talked about parents who attended advising sessions with their adult children, regulations concerning student privacy, and issues of what rights tuition-paying parents feel they should have in regard to their adult child’s college grades. To read the discussion in its...
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THANK YOU!

Thanks to our volunteer authors, who take time to share their great ideas with you. Kudos to our regular contributors: Dennis Congos (University of Central Florida), Kyle Cushman (Vermont College), Barbara McLay (University of South Florida), Roseanna Almaee (Darton College) and Julianne Scibetta (Albany College of Pharmacy). Thanks, too, to our guest authors for the past year: Yolanda Debose Columbus (Blinn College), Robin Geery (Schenectady County Community College), and Kimberly McManus (Montgomery College).Thanks, too, to Stephen Burns of Antelope Valley College, for serving as webmaster. And last but not least, thanks to Mon Nasser of Accutrack and to NCLCA for cosponsoring our publication. Each of these individuals generously shared his or her precious time and talents to enrich this publication and help other learning assistance professionals help students. Your professionalism and wisdom amaze me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Mona
Editor, LCE