Richard Ely.
In the decade before COVID, I worked as a writing tutor at the Madison College Writing Center. During those years, it moved twice, eventually morphing from a tiny windowless space to a spacious, newly constructed second-floor room where I met with students at a small, semicircular table beside a wall of windows. We’d sit close together, most often with a hard copy of a written assignment on the table between us. I’d ask what kind of help the student wanted, and about half the time, they said they wanted me to “fix” the grammar. I could easily do that, but it was my duty to consider all aspects of their writing, so although I liked to be helpful, sometimes our goals were at odds. For the student, the single, overriding goal was a good grade. For me, the hope was to make a human connection, help the student think creatively, and teach skills that would help not just the current paper, but their future writing as well.
About one-third of the Writing Center users were English language learners. Many were immigrants or students on temporary visas. They spoke Spanish, French, Mandarin, Hmong, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Swahili and other languages. Students who had grown up in Wisconsin tended to come from poor or working-class families and often had not received the best high school educations. Fortunately, most students were friendly, motivated and willing to learn. For our part, we tutors needed to be careful not to “take over” sessions. Better to ask questions and let the students speak for themselves. Most students were more eloquent verbally than on the page, and I often wrote down what they said and helped them incorporate those thoughts into their paper.
One of the most frequent writing assignments was the “argument” paper. The student was required to choose a current issue and support one side by following a complex formula for logical argumentation, a process that many students found difficult and confusing, as did I. Nonetheless, I did appreciate that these mostly young, inexperienced students were also studying the tricks of unreliable, manipulative arguments in advertising and political media. In recent years, this kind of discernment has become more important than ever.
For many Madison College students, college was an obstacle course to navigate on their way to getting a job. One white, 30-something woman had worked on a factory assembly line for 14 years until the factory closed. Returning to school to train for a new job, she was struggling mightily with a class called American Institutions. During one session, while helping her decode a short article analyzing socio-political trends, I discovered that she lacked understanding of terms as basic as “liberal” and “conservative.” While she was an extreme case, she was not the only student I watched recognize the enormity of the gap between what they knew and what they had yet to learn. In her case, she did not give up, but bent her head and pushed doggedly forward.
A quote from Richard Ely's August 2026 essay.
The papers I enjoyed most were the personal narratives assigned in the higher-level English classes. These resembled mini-memoirs and employed some of the strategies of fiction. The students were instructed to choose a transformative moment from their lives; to SHOW, NOT TELL, by creating a physical setting, characters, action and dialogue; and to use concrete language and sensory descriptions.
From these personal narratives, and occasionally from other papers, I learned intimate details of students’ lives — love stories, accidents, deaths, displacements, war stories. One day I met with a well-dressed, middle-aged Black woman whose hands trembled throughout the entire session. I learned from her paper that her mother had been murdered in Chicago. The mother had overseen the distribution of government benefits in an area of the city, and the man who killed her had been angry at being denied welfare payments. At the end of our session, I asked, as I often did with older students, what the woman’s goal was in returning to school.
“I want to have my mother’s job,” she said.
Occasionally I encountered difficult students — pushy, entitled, hostile — but far more often I was touched by students’ kindness, diligence and sensitivity. I remember working with a tall, graceful Peruvian woman in her late 20s. Her personal narrative hinged on her relationship with her favorite resident at the nursing home where she had worked as an aide. She always visited this woman last so they could watch The Golden Girls together. Her elderly friend often encouraged her to quit the nursing home and go to college. “You’re so smart and beautiful,” she would say. “You should try for something better.” Finally, when the woman was dying, the student followed her advice and enrolled at Madison College. As she told me this story, tears slid from her eyes and down her cheeks. She didn’t look away or apologize or otherwise betray embarrassment or discomfort — all of which struck me as rare and beautiful. I handed her a tissue, and she lightly dabbed her cheeks as she continued talking.
If this were an argument paper, right now I’d be arriving at the one-paragraph conclusion where I restate my thesis and my main points of evidence. Thankfully, this is a personal essay, and I don’t need to prove anything. I only need to say what is true.
I cared about those students, and I care about them still. Not just the ones mentioned here, but so many others: the ones who liked me and sought me out over other tutors; the ones I dreaded; the happy animal lovers from the vet tech program; the Army veterans; the Tibetans, all named Tenzin; the young Haitian man who dressed like Sammy Davis Jr.; the nursing students; the single moms; the devout Muslim men; the woman living in her car; the blind woman whose dog curled up under the table; the women in hijabs that revealed only their eyes; the Vietnamese Buddhist man who railed against Christianity; the woman named Osama, which she told me meant “lion”; all the other immigrants; all the dreamers.
I hope they overcame their hurdles and found a place in the big world, whether they became good writers or not. Their lives matter. Especially now, with the rise of divisiveness and scapegoating, we all need to know people outside of our tribe, to see how much we are alike and to learn from our differences. Sharing our stories is a first step.
Richard Ely is an artist, editor and writing coach in Madison.
