In training courses for writing tutors, an electronic mail forum is a particularly useful writing-to-learn activity because it gives tutors-in-training important experience with the collaborative intellectual processes at the heart of writing centers. In one particular class for tutors at Marquette University, Wisconsin, the assignment for the forum called for "a weekly screenful of e-mail commentary in which you discuss, question, and tie together (or tear apart) the course readings and your writing center experiences." One of the great advantages of this method over individual journal writing was that everybody, not just the instructor, got to read what everybody else had to say about a given topic. E-mail forums also recast the construction of authority in a course, a particularly relevant effect to strive for in a training course for tutors since they themselves will have to confront issues of authority in their tutoring. A series of excerpts from student discussions shows the extent to which e-mail forums can become an occasion for theorizing about the writing and teaching process. The e-mail assignment changed and intensified the course content by engaging students in the knowledge-making at the heart of teaching composition. (TB)