Unconditional Positive Regard: TYC Writing Centers as Spaces for Self-Invention

Alumni Boardroom

Students in TYC are uniquely diverse, and often their life experiences, values, and needs can differ from “traditional” students attending four-year colleges. As TYC writing centers work with students to develop an individualized process for writing and learning, so too do we find ourselves honoring their individual perspectives, experience, and process of of self-invention. Humanist psychologist Carl Rogers provides a definition of unconditional positive regard that emphasizes “permission for [the student] to have [their] own feelings and experiences, and to find [their] own meanings in them.” (Rogers 283). In TYC writing centers, we are in a position help to reinforce each student’s self-invention and act as a mirror for their visions of their best futures. Writing Center spaces guided by and imbued with unconditional positive regard can not only support students as they use their perspectives to analyze the world around them, but also carve out a space where students perceive that their experiences and perspectives are acknowledged and respected. This presentation will develop a framework for unconditional positive regard in the Writing Center and provide participants an opportunity to consider how their own writing centers provide a space for students to innovate their own stories.