“All that you touch,
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.”

–Lauren Oya Olamina, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

One of my favorite pieces of literature is Parable of the Sower by the late Octavia E. Butler. This is partially due my status as a self-proclaimed sci-fi geek, but it is also because I think anyone with open eyes, an open mind, and an open heart can learn extensively from its core themes regarding social change and accountability. While Butler does not frame it as such, the text centers on the question of what it means to be of the world, in the present, in a way that inspires change.

Even before I had a notion of making civic responsibility central in composition curriculum and pedagogy, I loved the ideas that Butler encouraged me to ponder about each of our places within the network of human relationships we create. My workshop at the Transitioning to College Writing Symposium situates this idea about responsibility to each other and to our communities within the context of learning about writing in the introductory college-level course. As I have overall theorized it, a first-year writing pedagogy with civic responsibility promotes writing as a civic act. The rhetorical practices valued in academic writing and discourses are used in conjunction with other rhetorical discourses to initiate productive social action.

I first became interested in writing pedagogy evolving around civic responsibility as I thought about potential alternatives to the early college high school (ECHS) model of concurrent enrollment education. Similar to middle colleges, ECHSs are most frequently targeted to urban, low-income, underrepresented, and, sometimes, second-language learner populations. The goal is to increase their access to college and, therefore, all of the social and economic merits that come with a higher education, according to popular social belief. Unlike Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, “Early College Designs are based on the bold idea that academic rigor, combined with the opportunity to save time and money toward a postsecondary credential, are powerful motivators for students to work hard and meet intellectual challenges” (Jobs for the Future). The model is based on access through less money and less time. While a decent attempt at creating equitable resources for all individuals who want it to attain a college education, I agree with Barbara Schneider that the ECHS Initiative “show[s]… subscription to meritocratic beliefs.”[1] A focus on reduced cost and accelerated time loses focus of what keeps many members of the targeted populations not from college access, but from college success.

If, as teachers of writing, we stop our focus on issues of access, we cannot expect the more struggling members of our classroom communities to understand the mechanisms of academic writing. Just as critical, we fail to support them in acquiring any writing practices they must learn as contributory members in professional, academic, and civic spaces.[2] Like the adolescent protagonist in Parable of the Sower demonstrates, writing is a powerful tool of igniting change. And like the protagonist, the members of our classrooms may think they are “not good enough as a writer or poet of whatever it is [they] need to be” in order to “put things down in ways that are as powerful, as simple, and as direct as [they] feel them.”[3]

The use of civic responsibility in composition course pedagogy, as I propose, requires accountability on the part of instructors, students, and the curriculum. ​I see a writing pedagogy civic responsibility as a heuristic. It is a learning aid toward understanding the multiple civic functions of writing and rhetoric. My workshop will interrogate these functions and consider why I think they are central to helping students transition into college writing, as part of an ever-changing ecology of civic acts of writing.

Jamila Kareem, Assistant Director of the Virtual Writing Center, University of Louisville 

[1] Schneider Barbara. “Early College High Schools: Double Time.” College Credit for Writing in High School: The “Taking Care of” Business. Eds. Kristine Hansen and Christine R. Farris. Urbana: NCTE, 2010.

[2] Kells, Michelle Hall. “Writing Across Communities: Diversity, Deliberation, and the Discursive Possibilities of WAC.” Writing and Community Engagement: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Thomas Deans and Barbara Roswell and Adrian J. Wurr. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

[3] Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York: Warner Books, 1993.

Since I’ve begun teaching online, my engagement with my students has been mostly mediated through text.  This primarily textual engagement with other humans, many of whom I will never meet face to face, has given new meaning to our symposium’s theme for me.  Although we do have some videoconferences in real time, most of the listen, think, and respond sequences in my classes are accompanied by significant delays (the lag time involved in responding to email plays a big role here).  This mode of communication has some disadvantages, like the inability to read body language and other non-verbal cues, but one advantage I’ve found is that students recognize quickly the importance of writing as a way of getting what they need.  In addition to writing papers in my classes, students also have to write discussion posts, feedback to other students through peer review, and emails … much of this without seeing their classmates or me.

In the online format, a question can’t come in the form of a lifted eyebrow or a confused look (how many times have you realized based on these cues that a student didn’t understand concepts or instructions?).  Instead, the student must carefully articulate the question in writing.  Some students seem to enter the class already realizing the importance of clarity and specificity in written communication, and they write detailed emails when they have questions, identifying the assignment they’re having trouble with or describing in detail (sometimes with screenshots) the technological issue they’re facing.  But other students start off asking questions as they might in the classroom, sending brief emails containing half-formed thoughts or general statements of confusion, which prompts additional rounds of emails in which I keep asking for clarification and offering to videoconference until I can understand what the student is struggling with.  The delay involved in these exchanges has consequences, and students lose valuable time to work on assignments.  But the delay also teaches an important lesson about clarity in written communication, a lesson that the students can and should carry into their lives beyond the classroom: When words are all you have, you have to make them count.  Successful online students learn quickly to craft emails that ask for exactly what they need to know or see, and I, as an instructor, have learned to craft increasingly clear and detailed responses.  I know that these lessons in writing for life have stuck with me, and I hope that they stick with my students long after they’ve forgotten the essays they wrote for their grades.

Sheena Boran, Online Writing Instructor, University of Mississippi 

As I have been brainstorming and preparing for this year’s “Transition to College Writing,” I have been getting really excited, as I will be co-hosting two separate workshops. This will be my first time presenting. I attended the symposium last year (which was also my first year at UM), and I just knew that I wanted to be part of it.

One workshop I am co-hosting with a group of instructors at the University of Mississippi who are piloting something called “New York Times in the First Year” for our WRIT100 sections. This is an ongoing pilot and something us instructors first participated in last Spring. I have loved teaching the course because this sort of writing class that ditches the typical textbook and uses a daily newspaper means students are able to work with the most current events and relevant topics and issues with their projects. I am eager to share the experience with others!

I am also co-hosting a workshop with fellow UM instructor (and former high school teacher) Amber Nichols-Buckley about dealing with sensitive and challenging topics in the classroom. Amber and I hosted a similar workshop during this year’s faculty orientation for the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, and the workshop turned into a forum of incredibly rich and eye-opening discussions with our peers about how we all deal with challenges we face in the college classroom. I am looking forward to continuing this discussion and hopefully hearing about the unique challenges (and triumphs in overcoming those challenges) in the high school classroom at TCW. I would love to hear a range of perspectives during this workshop; I am looking forward to learning from others in this discussion as much as I am looking forward to sharing what I can.

Can’t wait to see you all there!

Jenny Jackson, Writing Instructor, University of Mississippi 

    Image courtesy of Dvortygirl

Lately, I’ve been cleaning: sorting, tossing, clearing out, making room. I’m trying to cut down on the visual noise that surrounds me so I can focus on things that really matter to me, like reading a book that was previously hidden under a pile of junk mail.

As much as I appreciate the technologies my students bring into the classroom, I’m acutely aware of how distracting it can be for students to go online in the middle of class, whether it’s to access an online article or share their own work electronically. It’s a minefield: they can quickly stray from their assigned task to checking social media.

How do you ask students to clear away the junk so they can focus? This seems to be the necessary first step. Before responding, before thinking, even before listening, we’ve got to clear out and make room. We have to prepare ourselves to listen to the voices that are speaking to us, both out of the page and out of the person sitting across from us.

 Image courtesy of Dvortygirl

It saddens me when students say they aren’t creative. It’s like someone’s clipped their wings, and I’m never sure how to give them back the confidence to be creative.

I mean, isn’t that what makes us, well…human? Isn’t our creativity–our ability to use tools, to solve problems, to think about our experiences–necessary to our basic survival?

I never feel like I have a good answer for students, so maybe I’ll try this: creativity is a habit. It’s about listening attentively to the world around you, figuring out a way to respond to it, and being thoughtful in your responses. It’s about working to understand your own limitations and then attempting to move beyond them. It’s a way of living in the world.

Meredith Harper, Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Mississippi

When the Department for Writing and Rhetoric began revisiting and shaping the curriculum for the first-year writing courses in 2010, I was a bit apprehensive. This anxiety was due to the implementation of a new assignment – the multimodal. I distinctly remember a conversation we had in the first WRIT 101 curriculum committee in which a fellow instructor expressed his fear through the following statement: “I’m not qualified to teach and grade such an assignment.” At the time, I could not have agreed more with my colleague’s point. With my background in writing and rhetoric, I felt unqualified to teach and assess multimodal assignments. I was scared.

Six years later, that apprehension has faded. I do still feel less qualified to teach and assess multimodal assignments than I do analysis and argument papers, but I have seen how multimodal assignments affect and influence my students. To put it simply, my students LOVE composing in multiple modes. While I do not agree that multimodality will ever completely eradicate the need to teach basic composition skills in the mode of writing (after all, writing is a vital mode needed to succeed in life), I do recognize that multimodality will be increasingly essential to my students’ professional success. Employers will want students to compose in a variety of modes, and it is vital that we, as composition instructors, show them the parallels between composing in one specific mode, and in many various modes.

This recognition occurs frequently in my classes, when students reflect on their work. Many of my students enjoy the process of composing in multiple modes, and frequently use the word “fun” to describe their experience. What surprises me most is that students tend to think of multimodal assignments as a great way to brainstorm or prewrite for future projects; they are learning that composition can, and will, take many shapes and forms, but the writing process stays the same.

I can think of no better way to prepare and teach my students to write for life than to compose in any mode they want to express their thoughts and arguments in. Not only does it benefit my students in other classes and in the working world, it helps them express themselves for personal enjoyment. For these reasons, I am now convinced that Multimodality is vital to the field of rhetoric and composition. I look forward to teaching and assessing future projects, as well as watching my students make the connection between composing in one mode and composing in a variety of others. As composition instructors, we need to be open to adapting our methods to the changing world, and realize it’s okay to be scared, as long as it does stop us from trying something new.

Keith Boran, Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Mississippi

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about…You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

                                                            -Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form

A colleague of mine recently enlightened me on this metaphor by Kenneth Burke.  Discussion is collective form, and every person has a part to play.  So much happens in the brain during a good discussion.  We are forced to engage without always speaking.  To listen first.  Synthesize the information.  Run it through the files of all we’ve ever known and all we’ve ever read.  Consider our stance.  Consider our audience, our appropriate tone of voice.  And then, we put in our oars.  We are no longer observers.  We are participants.  And what we say matters.

In our workshop at this year’s Transitioning to College Writing Symposium, Jenny Jackson and I will share our ideas about the importance of discussion as a tool for academic writing.  We will share materials we’ve used that have proven successful.  And we will facilitate a discussion on how to better engage students, how to encourage them to put their oars in, and how to help them be aware of their responses so that the academic discussion is both inclusive and effective.

Amber Nichols-Buckley, Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Mississippi

During our second day of classes this semester, I made an early attempt to inspire my writing students. I hope to have set a tone about the spirit of writing, the spirit of invention, the potential permanence of both. Through the projector, I displayed the following quote and correlative images:

“If you would not be forgotten,
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worthy reading,
Or do things worth the writing.”

-Benjamin Franklin – Poor Richard’s Almanac. May

After I read this entry aloud, I asked students to write down their interpretations. We next shared. One student said that Franklin was saying the best way to be remembered is by writing something that will last. Another student said when she finds a cure for cancer she’ll be written about for the rest of her life. A third student said a preposition was missing between “worthy reading.” Finally, a student said, “He’s saying that we can survive  death by what we write.” What more could I say?

Whit Hubbard, Instructor, Ole Miss Department of Writing & Rhetoric

As an educator, I’ve always tried to get my students, in both middle school and college alike, to engage fully in the writing process. I let my students choose their own topics whenever possible so that they will be connected to and interested in the process. Incidentally, I still feel a little bad for the parents of one of my former eighth grade students; he used his newfound persuasive writing skills to argue (successfully) for a drum set for Christmas, but at least he was writing for his own life!

My favorite moment, though, had to be when a college student of mine, who had been struggling throughout the semester, latched onto a very specific topic for her argument essay. She was licensed with the state of Tennessee as a beautician, but she had some issues with the licensing exam. Specifically, she worried that some seldom-used techniques were still tested while other health-related issues with manicuring, which occur every day in salons, were not. She interviewed fellow workers, looked up the testing requirements and study guide online, and worked incredibly hard to write her argument essay in the form of a letter to the licensing board. I encouraged her to send it to them because she had made a compelling, logical argument. It was by far her best writing of the semester because she was fully engaged in a topic that connected to her own life. That’s what I think about when I think about our symposium theme—and that’s what I try to recapture in my classroom every day.

Gretchen Bunde, Instructor for the University of Mississippi DWR

This year marks an anniversary for us: this is the 5^th annual Transitioning to College Writing Symposium! In planning for this post, I began by reflecting on past symposia, and the path they have taken toward having a theme and this year, a call for participants. It’s fascinating to consider the journey the symposia have taken since 2011, our inaugural year. Then, our flier proclaimed: “Announcing a Symposium for Writing Teachers” and the emphasis that we now have on student transitions to college writing and fostering student engagement with writing for life was, while included, less noticeable, even though we began that first program with a panel of students who had experienced such transitions. It makes sense, in one way, since that was a new venture for us and we were just becoming acquainted with each other. We invested time in exploring the landscapes of writing instruction in Mississippi and the goals and outcomes we shared, learning about what we had in common and the ways in which we differed, especially regarding resources. Those of us who attended the 2011 symposium left with a sense of having found a supportive, nurturing community, and this remains an enduring – and endearing – feature of past and present symposia.

The 2012 symposium had no particular theme, though our program planners selected the topics featured on the program, just as they do now. 2012 was the year our first blog was posted. The 2013 symposium benefitted from a Mississippi Humanities Council grant, which made it possible to feature writing-across-the-curriculum scholar Dr. Pamela Childers on that year’s program. In 2014, and again this year, we added themes developed and refined by our program planners. This year, we sent out a call for proposals to teachers around the state, and I believe this is our best program yet! Of course, if you read my past blogs, you’ll know I say that each year. But I believe that’s because our symposia continue to develop and mature with each year

The symposia are a community effort shaped by the commitment and enthusiasm of our program planners, who teach in public and private high schools, colleges and universities in and near Mississippi, and sponsors who fund the event. We appreciate support from my home department, Writing & Rhetoric, and UM’s College of Liberal Arts, School of Education, Division of Outreach, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and W.W. Norton and Bedford/St. Martin’s, two major textbook publishers. Such support makes it possible to not only plan and host the annual symposia but to bring visiting scholars to the program, provide travel grants for high school teachers and graduate students, distribute resources, share delicious food, all of which sustain the symposia as an annual event. Our sincere thanks go to all who have provided support for us, past and present!

We have a great lineup of guest bloggers this year: check back often to read posts written by our program contributors – planners and presenters alike. Review the program, learn more about our program planners and presenters by visiting their pages, and most of all – be sure to register! I look forward to welcoming you to Oxford, to our University, and to our 2015 Symposium!

– Alice Johnston Myatt, Department of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Mississippi