"Engaging Dual Enrollment Students" (Jennifer Nestojko)
Dual enrollment is growing as a strategy for bridging high school and college. This can happen in high school classrooms and college classrooms as well as in hybrid programs such as middle colleges. What differentiates such a class? What leads to a true bridge between high school and college? What can create meaningful engagement that leads to student growth and college readiness. This class will be hands on and use various exercises to explore these questions from a teacher of both college and high school students who worked in a middle college program for 19 years.
"Developing a Robust Antiracist Curriculum Intervention in a Digital-rich Composition Classroom" (Sasha Osorio)
This study aims to build upon the works of scholars by acknowledging that current events affect students' composition and attempting to measure the depth and breadth of students’ current event knowledge. Through practical class activities, I invite students to write about a current event, reflect on how they understand it through ideological lenses, and then consider how those lenses affected their writing. Students participate in small group and class discussions about the material and our experiences. Based on the activities, this research project investigates a possible gap in our literature by focusing on how the intersection of antiracist teaching practices and digital literacy affects students' writing (Alexander & Rhodes 2018; Lockett et al. 2021). Essentially, I’m asking what current event knowledge students bring into the classroom, how it connects with their ideologies, and how those affect their writing and world-building. Then, how can we use that knowledge to build a robust antiracist curriculum that converges with the digital literacies of our 21st-century students?
This proposal aims to foster a community among writers, writing departments, and the broader community by practicing strategies that encourage dialogue and writing about our country's most perplexing issues. The session will be structured as a one-hour teaching circle to discuss contemporary event themes in the writing classroom and develop relevant lesson plans. One key objective of this workshop is to facilitate connections within ourselves, our writing communities—in and outside of academia—and extend those connections to our larger communities (Flower 2021). Another goal is to practice having these discussions so we feel prepared to bring them into our classrooms and communities. Last, to establish groups where participants can share their experiences with these conversations and encourage others to join the dialogue. Education and communities must collaborate; writing is a powerful platform for fostering collaboration and unity.
"Two Writing Assignments to Engage and Bring High School Students Well-being" (John Creger, Dan Zhou, Daniel Davis)
This session introduces participants to practices that connect students with needs rarely met in school. These practices engage students’ interest in learning, broaden their knowledge, and nourish their wellbeing. Students’ first need is for a deeper connection with themselves. A few years after I entered the classroom in 1987, California introduced statewide assessments in reflective writing. Inspired, I developed a practice to help students better understand themselves through regular reflection. Over time, this practice evolved into a semester-long sequence of weekly writings I call sustained purposeful reflection, guiding students to explore the people and forces shaping their identities.
With greater self-awareness from these extended reflections, students are ready to meet their need for richer bonds with their classmates and teachers. They gain these connections through a culminating presentation when each student shares: a) the most significant influences in their life, b) the values they choose to stand for, and c) the difference they hope to make in the world.
These presentations become powerful rites of passage, fostering deeper, more meaningful connections than most students have ever experienced with their classmates and even teachers. In directly meeting teenagers’ two primary developmental needs -- forming healthy identities and gaining increasing autonomy in relationship with others – this project can both engage/re-engage students in learning and elevate their sense of wellbeing.