Dear list members of LDHEN,

I would like to use the opportunity of my new membership to this list to
introduce myself to you.

Since the early 90's I have been interested in writing pedagogy in general
and in the work of writing centers in specific. Between 92 and 94 I had a
post-doc scholarship from the Germany-based DFG to get an extensive
overview about US writing pedagogy.

Even though I was very eager to put into practice in German higher
education what I found in American writing pedagogy, I was not able to
find the right job for that in my home country. I finally decided to
accept a position at Emory University in Atlanta where I have been
teaching since 1995 in the field of German Studies (but always with an
emphasis on things writing).

Nevertheless, since 95 I have been involved heavily in teacher training
and further education in the German-speaking countries. In 2001-03, a DAAD
project brought me to the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany,
where I started a writing center, which is the first one of its kind in
teacher education in the German-speaking countries. The primary goal of
this writing center is to train future students not only for tutoring
writing but also in a broader sense in writing pedagogy. It is my hope
that these students will start their own writing centers at whatever
school they maybe teaching in the future.

 If you want to find out more about the writing center, please check
www.ph-freiburg.de/schreibzentrum. Under "Was wir wollen" you can find a
link "Gesamtkonzept" to a concept paper in English, that describes the
setup of the writing center in more details. If you have trouble
downloading this rather big file, please let me know and I can send you
the pdf as an email attachment. May I please also invite you to use our
online writing support in case you or your students work on papers in
German. Of course, English would always work as the language of
communication with my writing tutors.

I have contacted this listserv because I am interested in sharing
expertise about peer tutoring, the training of writing tutors, and the use
of portfolios and other forms of reflective practice.

I look forward to collaborating with you.

Best regards,
Gerd Braeuer