In less than two years since its grand opening, Ms. Tannous and her team of tutors have molded an empty, unused room at the front of the school into CB South’s very own Writing Center, a central hub of community and student life for all.

While the first round of tutor training began in the spring of 2022, and the center’s grand opening occurred that fall, don’t be fooled—the idea of creating a writing center first surfaced almost ten years ago.

When asked about the center’s origins, Ms. Tannous chuckled: “Let’s see, when did it start? A long, long time ago.”

“It seems like it’s relatively recent that it’s been up and running, but this is something that we floated around back in 2014,” she remarked. “It just took us a while to be able to articulate what we wanted to focus on, how we were going to do it, what it would look like.”

While the idea had sprouted, it was not yet fully developed, and any plans for a writing center would have to overcome a series of hurdles in their early days.

In the era before Lunch and Learn, there was no feasible time to be gathering students and making appointments. But when the plans for the Lunch and Learn schedule change were first announced during the 2018-2019 school year, everything changed. There would finally be a lengthened, common break period during which students could come to a writing center. The next stage of planning commenced.

Ms. Reisinger, one of the Center’s founding pioneers, sprang into action. When asked about Ms. Reisinger’s role in the origins of the Writing Center, Ms. Tannous didn’t hide her gratitude, countering that Reisinger didn’t just have a role, but that “she was the role.”

Ms. Reisinger was about to reach the point in her career where she could take a sabbatical. Instead of taking continued coursework, Reisinger decided to perform her own research and study how writing centers function at different educational institutions around the country. The idea was greenlit, and Ms. Reisinger was prepared to collect valuable information and bring it back to CB South.

Enter the second hurdle. Before the sabbatical could start, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closing of Central Bucks schools, and the idea temporarily had to be scrapped. It was no longer realistic to travel the country and have students in close contact during tutoring sessions, so the formation of the Writing Center was pushed back several years.

Despite the setback, the Writing Center team was undeterred. Ms. Reisinger regained approval for her sabbatical in 2021 and spent the entire spring semester touring schools across the country.

That summer, Ms. Tannous and Ms. Reisinger met to discuss what a writing center would look like, pulling together the best parts of all the writing centers Reisinger had seen.

But in the back of their minds was the third and final hurdle. Ms. Reisinger was set to retire in just two years, putting the Writing Center’s development under time pressure.

“She wanted to be a part of it and get it rocking and rolling because she had done a lot of the legwork. But she also knew, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this and be like bye, you know?’” Ms. Tannous explained.

Despite numerous obstacles and a ticking clock, Ms. Tannous and Ms. Reisinger managed to start training future tutors in 2022, and the rest is history.

It’s clear that Ms. Reisinger’s legacy lives on in the Writing Center, and not just through the dedication plaque bearing her name outside the door.

“She’s always checking in. She’s always asking, ‘what’s going on, what new things are happening?’ She follows us on our social media and everything. She is still very much a part of it.”

Ms. Reisinger is certainly proud of the space she helped create, and its ability to assist writers of all kinds.

Mr. Vogelsinger, a new teacher to CB South this year, appreciates the help the Writing Center can provide—help to which his former students at Holicong didn’t have access: “I’ve enjoyed seeing how students of all levels appreciate the Writing Center. We see students of really strong levels use it, and people who don’t really like to write or feel very skilled at it can use it as well.”

But to Ms. Tannous, the ability of the Center to produce stronger writers isn’t its only benefit. Instead, she is most proud of the Writing Center’s ability to create a “school culture.”

“I think the most important part, and the part that has superseded my expectations, is in terms of the school culture component, the amount of students who come in here of their own volition…the amount of students who are working together in new ways that you wouldn’t necessarily get in your typical classroom setting,” she remarked.

She believes that, despite the Writing Center’s success thus far, her job is nowhere near finished. She has made it her mission to spread the idea of a Writing Center to other local high schools: “I’m still pushing for other English departments to have something like [the Writing Center].”

She added, “I can tell you North Penn is very interested in doing something like we’re doing, and they were here [visiting the Writing Center] in early December. And I just heard from the head of their English department over there… and she will be traveling to Boston to attend the [Secondary School Writing Centers Association] conference that we’re all going to.”

From its humble beginnings as an uncertain idea, the Writing Center has since ingrained itself into CB South’s culture, and now is starting to extend its reach to other schools, both inside and outside the district. And with exponentially growing numbers of appointments each marking period, it doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.