(Re)Building Connections and Collaborations Across High School and College Writing Contexts
Zoom; Feb. 28-Mar. 1
Facilitation Team:
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Christina Saidy | Brad Jacobson | Jessica Rivera-Mueller |
Abstract: Connections between high school and college writing are fraught for researchers, teachers, and students. The purpose of this project is to develop an edited collection featuring timely conversations about the ways to best serve writers within and across writing contexts.
Topics may include: increasing standardization of curricula; students developing different skills than they need (esp. underrepresented students in historically under-resourced schools); teacher development and training challenges in both English Ed and FYW contexts; dual credit and time to degree; effects of technological change on writing and writing expectations; public discourse (de)valuing school writing and literacy, in general.
We seek to include teacher voices from a range of institutional (secondary, community college, etc.), professional, and personal positionalities. By including a range of genres, voices, and pedagogical ideas, we hope this collection will find a broad audience among teachers and administrators across institutional contexts.
What Draft Deliverable will be Presented at the Conference Showcase? We intend to present a general outline or framework for the future edited collection, including main topics and associated theoretical frameworks. Each participant will compose (or begin) a proposal for the collection. We will have a general timeline of the work needed to produce and where we hope to end up.
Who Should Apply to Participate? The project aims to center the voices of teachers–both high school and college–who may not be typically heard from in teaching, research, and articulation conversations to provide an “on the ground” focus. As noted above, prior book-length works on high school-college writing have been limited by geographic focus and the social and professional positions of authors. To address this unfortunate gap in the conversation, we seek teacher-writers who bring a range of identities and teach students from various positionalities to contribute to this collaborative. We seek to value the expertise of contributors from all levels of instruction and stages of career development–including pre-service and veteran teachers, graduate teaching assistants, and administrators–and from a range of geographic and institutional positions, including secondary schools, community colleges, minority-serving institutions, liberal arts colleges, and research universities.
What Do Participants Need to Prepare? [Note: The facilitation team will email all materials and instructions once all participants have been selected]
Participants will be asked to read two brief texts and complete a writing activity (consult pp. 5-6 of the proposal for the prompt). The texts are as follows:
- Gallagher, Chris W., Peter M. Gray, and Shari Stenberg. "Teacher narratives as interruptive: Toward critical colleagueship." symploke 10.1 (2002): 32-51.
- Alsup, Janet, et al. "Seeking connections, articulating commonalities: English education, composition studies, and writing teacher education." College Composition and Communication 62.4 (2011): 668-686.
What Happens After the Conference? After the conference, participants will leave with a clear idea of how to move their chapter forward. Some participants will contact other potential collaborators. Once all participants have completed chapters, the group (and additional collaborators) will come back together on Zoom to provide feedback via a workshop approach. We anticipate this happening the fall after the conference.
The facilitators regularly attend CCCC and NCTE. If participants are interested, the facilitators will organize a social gathering at each conference.