Personal Writing: Empathy, Student Voice, and Belonging
"Empathy-Based Memoir: Bridging the Gap Between Community and Classroom" (Paul Mikel Watts-Offret)
In the Fall of 2020, after teaching Middle School ELA for eight years, five in the Bay Area, I was selected for the Herstory/Coalition for Community Writing (CCW) Graduate Fellowship: Teaching for Justice and Peace, where I learned an empathy-based memoir writing pedagogy from Erika Duncan, the founder of the Herstory Writers Network. Duncan's pedagogy was originally developed in memoir workshops she facilitated with incarcerated women. These were women who needed to tell their stories in high-stakes situations, and Duncan helped them to write personal narratives that dared a stranger reader to care, personal narratives that were strong enough to change hearts and minds. Duncan's workshops eventually expanded out of prisons and into the community, including schools, before officially becoming the Herstory Writers Network. In the four years since my time as a Herstory/CCW fellow, I have been teaching First Year Writing on college campuses (first at the University of Arizona, currently at the University of Oregon), and I have been adapting Duncan's pedagogy into my academic instruction. Duncan's pedagogical terms (terms like Stranger Reader, Dare to Care, Page One Moment, Thereness vs Aboutness, and Jaggedy) are an accessible entry point for students to understand traditional academic terms like Discourse Community or Rhetorical Analysis. I am proposing a 20 minute panel discussion to share how I incorporate empathy-based memoir into my First Year Writing classroom, which is applicable to any writing classroom exploring the genre of personal narrative and the writing process.
"Fostering Belonging in the College Writing Classroom" (Lindsay Knisely )
This presentation will include information on why belonging matters in higher education and offer methods for creating a sense of belonging in the college classroom. Research has shown that increasing students’ sense of belonging builds equity and improves student success, confidence, and retention. Research-supported techniques for fostering belonging by creating a classroom community of care will be described. This presentation will offer ideas for increasing students’ sense of belonging by using collaborative exercises, classroom activities, and short-answer reflective writing prompts.
The Power of Visual Texts
"From Image to Argument: Harnessing the Power of Visual Texts " (Shalle Leeming)
This session explores how artistic interpretation serves as a powerful entryway into argumentation in writing classrooms. Visual texts, such as contemporary illustrations from The New Yorker magazine, provide students with an accessible and engaging way to build analytical skills and craft compelling arguments. The presenter will share activities that guide students through image analysis, including differentiating between fact, inference and opinion, and grounding assertions in visual details, to foster critical thinking and develop persuasive, thesis-driven essays.
"Writing Captions for New Yorker Cartoons in Pairs: Boosting Student Awareness of Genre and Multimodality" (Casey Manogue)
As an on and off subscriber of The New Yorker magazine, I have long enjoyed the magazine’s signature cartoons. Teaching first-year composition at a large public research university, I have had success with a warm-up activity I implement once a term, where I require students to collaborate in pairs to write captions for New Yorker style cartoons. While this activity is short, light, and fun, it aligns greatly with the goals of my specific FYC course: The course learning outcomes are based on the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ “WPA Outcome Statement for First-Year Composition,” which require me to foster a “knowledge of conventions” among students and help them develop an awareness of genre. As students are writing in different genres over the quarter, I aim to reinforce student learning by demonstrating that New Yorker cartoons function as a genre of their own.
I am also required to provide opportunities for students to engage in multimodal forms of composition, and because there is a large visual component to this genre, students enjoy working with a form that deviates from text-heavy academic essays. Most importantly, the activity also creates an opportunity for students to socialize. Many find writing captions surprisingly challenging, as most collaborations in my FYC class are focused on academic writing and never involve comedic writing. Everyone has a different sense of humor, and at their best, the final products will require a merging of two approaches to humor. I will talk about how I use this warm-up activity to foster classroom collaboration and show how the activity can be adapted for different grade levels and allocations of time.
AI Literacy, Belonging, and Community in Physical and Digital Spaces
"Collaborating in Our Community: Promoting AI Literacy From High School to College" (Guy Krueger)
A common refrain from my first-year college writing students when we start working with generative AI is that they were prohibited from using such tools in high school. This has led to productive discussions about the affordances and limitations of generative AI; however, many students still seem to be wary of composing with it openly in academic settings. This presentation, then, will cover teaching strategies and practices using generative AI in my courses and many of the courses in my department as well as a recommendation for more communication and collaboration between high school and college teachers of writing. As such, I offer thoughts on ways this can happen, with the goal being students who are more knowledgeable about the practical uses of generative AI, ethical implications, and likely employer expectations in the near future.
I see ample room for collaboration between high schools and colleges to ensure that students get more streamlined messaging and information about the use of generative AI, and I will cover one potential partnership I have proposed that addresses this gap. Seeking to collaborate with a local high school teacher, I designed a bridge assignment for students to gain some guided experience using generative AI. It is my hope that the students who complete the assignment will enter college more prepared for the work that we will be doing. Though it is currently the prerogative of teachers to ban use of generative AI in their classes, I make the case that, instead, actively working with it and building AI literacy will make students more informed and critical users of the technology. Open conversations about and meaningful use of generative AI, spanning high school and college, will also help guard against more nefarious use and will empower students.
"Building AI Literacy through Team-Based Inquiry" (Lisa Sperber)
AI literacy is an emerging 21st century skill, and whether or not we teach students about AI, many middle, high school, and college students will use it, potentially in ways that hinder agency, cognitive and metacognitive development (Darvishi et al., 2024; Molenaar, 2022). The popularization of AI tools can also force teachers into “policing” students for AI plagiarism. To counter this tension and mitigate negative impacts on learning, teachers can partner with students to learn about AI and develop pedagogically sound ways to use it. The presenter will discuss implementation of a collaborative AI literacy project developed for college writing classes, but highly adaptable for different grade levels and subjects (Buyserie, 2024). AI literacy can be defined as “a set of competencies that enable individuals to know and evaluate AI technologies, communicate and collaborate with AI, and use AI effectively [,] ethically” and critically (Long & Magerko, 2020; Ng et al., 2021; Ranade & Eyman, 2024; MLA-CCCC, 2024). Students work in teams to research aspects of AI: how it works, prompting, evaluating outputs, impacts on learning, and ethical considerations (including bias and environmental impacts). They conduct secondary research for background knowledge and primary research to test AI capabilities and limitations. Teams are tasked with teaching peers what they need to know to make informed decisions about AI use. Teams collaboratively compose a recommendation report (a type of professional writing) and design interactive presentations.
In two college writing classes, students were highly engaged in learning about AI, finding it relevant to their lives. They appreciated the authentic writing and presentation tasks. Class discussions allowed the teacher and students to develop clear, ethical roles for AI use, including choices not to use AI. The presenter will discuss the assignment, readings, examples of student work, challenges, and student feedback.