College and Prep School Essay Tutoring
Experience. Practical Advice. Personalized Service.
WriteVision’s goal is to alleviate the anxiety around the admissions process while helping our students develop confidence and pride in their own writing.
The WriteVision Program
Under the direction of long time writing teacher Dean Charpentier, the WriteVision program allows you to choose your level of involvement, from one-time live video-conferences, to asynchronous feedback, to a series of conferences and feedback sessions.
While WriteVision is not an editing, rewriting, or proofreading service, WriteVision will use this opportunity to educate your student on proper mechanics in a real world, practical sense, using the student’s own writing as the model text.
WriteVision will work to get to know your students as young people even before diving into work on the essays themselves. This step will ensure a unique and personal college essay that will help college admissions officers truly understand your student.
“Working with Mr. Charpentier has transformed my writing skills ... I enter college this coming fall as an English major, and I give credit to Mr. Charpentier.”
“Dean is an excellent writing coach. Emphasizing a philosophy of showing over telling, he is terrific at guiding students of all ages. He brings out the writer in anyone and everyone.”
How does WriteVision work?
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Initial Meeting
An initial video conference will determine a way forward that will be unique to your student. Your individual plan can include both in-person and written feedback on the student’s writing and will focus on the main, long essay response unless there is an additional request from the student. Students may come to WriteVision at various stages of progress—full polished drafts, rough drafts, outlines, or even still in the brainstorming stages! WriteVision will meet students where they are and work from there, whether it be polishing and revising a draft or utilizing writing exercises and prompts to give the student a jumping off point.
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Feedback & Coaching
Students will be asked to fill out a questionnaire to provide helpful information and insight to WriteVision. WriteVision utilizes the Google online platform, and asynchronous feedback will be delivered via Google Docs, though accommodations are possible. Depending on where students are in the process, they may be prompted to take “next steps.” These steps could mean further work on a draft, alternate approaches, or even writing exercises, idea generating exercises, and brainstorming methods. Feedback on a student’s writing will occur on two levels. At the macro level, we will discuss ideas, overall structure, storytelling methods, and thematic concepts; on a more micro level, we will deepen the students’ understanding of mechanics and grammar.
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Finished Product
The student and family will control the pace and duration of the WriteVision process and can bring it to a close at any time. Of course, WriteVision will also advise a student when we believe the essay is ready to be submitted. If requested, we will work on shorter application responses and supplements as well. Our goal is to produce a piece of writing the student is proud of and instill confidence in the students—not only in the specific essays we work on, but in their own writing ability as well. We hope that students take from our time together a respect for their own writing, something that might produce improved results in the classroom as well.
Dean Charpentier
Dean Charpentier has been teaching English in independent schools and working with students on college essays for over three decades, most recently at Brooks School in North Andover, MA, where he served for ten years as English Department Chair, and where he is currently the Writing Center Director.
A 1990 graduate of Yale University, Charpentier did his graduate work in the teaching of writing. In addition to many administrative roles, he has taught both literature and writing classes. His writing classes over the years have included Personal Essay Writing, Memoir Writing, Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, The Short Story, Storytelling, and Poetry Writing, and for the last ten years he has facilitated an annual winter term creative writing workshop.
Charpentier also captained the Yale lacrosse team and has been a varsity lacrosse coach in independent schools for over thirty years, garnering four league Coach of the Year awards in that time.
Scheduling
Please submit an inquiry via the contact form. We will schedule the initial conference, during which we will devise your own unique action plan. Due to limited spaces, you may be asked if you wish to be placed on a waitlist.