Developing Your Own Course Inquiry—ECE Workshop

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RSVP for the “Developing Your Own Inquiry” Workshop on March 11, from 4:00-5:00 p.m.

The ability to develop your own inquiry is one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate in an academic setting. Moving away from a model that focus on content mastery, an inquiry is a question-driven course is one that encourages students to generate new knowledge, develop their critical thinking, and make original contributions to their field of study. This process allows students to move beyond simply absorbing information and toward actively contributing to ongoing conversations within their disciplines.

In inquiry-based learning, the focus become active problem-solving. It encourages students to ask the right questions, explore different perspectives, and discover insights for themselves. Rather than simply memorizing facts, students investigate a topic from various angles. This approach fosters a deeper understanding of the subject matter and nurtures intellectual curiosity.

ECE English courses are designed to help students develop the skills necessary to pursue their own inquiries. Through the Habits of Practice, students are guided through the research and academic inquiry process. These habits provide a scaffolded approach, helping students build upon their prior knowledge and gradually develop their inquiry practices. Writing moves help students form a clear research question, gather relevant sources, analyze data, and articulate their findings in a coherent and structured way.

ECE English is hosting a “Developing Your Own Inquiry” online workshop on Tuesday, March 11 from 4:00–5:00 p.m. You can RSVP here.

Read more on inquiries in this post from UConn’s First-Year Writing Director, Lisa Blansett, and Assistant Director, Marie Nour Nakhle: Inquiries for Dissensus.

Fieldwork: ECE Workshop

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On Tuesday, February 18 at 4:00 pm, we are holding a virtual workshop on a vital component of First Year Writing, “Fieldwork”: students conducting primary research and investigation outside of the classroom. 

This hands-on, inquiry driven activity provides an opportunity for students to identify the connections between their work in the classroom and materials outside it. As they uncover these connections during fieldwork, students can come to recognize the many ways their writing is relevant to, embedded in, and impactful on the experiences of other individuals and communities. Ahead of the workshop, we thought it would prove valuable to spend some time dissecting and discussing the concept of fieldwork, its role in the FYW curriculum, and explore the possible ways ECE students can conduct fieldwork. 

Fieldwork, by definition, entails students’ movement outside the traditional classroom environment. By interacting with spaces, objects, and people outside the classroom, fieldwork invites students to explore questions beyond the walls that (often literally) frame their writing and the content they encounter. These boundaries may, in the minds of students, divorce the significance of their writing from “real-world” happenings, communities, and materials. Fieldwork, therefore, asks students to forge the link between classroom inquiry and their lives outside of school. Not only does this (hopefully) foster an investment and interest in the work they do in the writing classroom, but it also helps students write with ethos. 

As Rosanne Carlo writes, “Whenever we are discussing the material and place and people’s experiences, whenever we are talking about ourselves in community, these discourses fall under the rhetorical concept of the ethos appeal” (Transforming Ethos 6-7).  Students’ fieldwork efforts bridge the more abstract, wider-scope ideas discussed in the FYW classroom and in their research with the lived experience of students and their communities, particularly in the inquiry driven “reflective narrative and research investigations” that we ask them to compose in First-Year-Writing courses. Fieldwork works to materialize the significance and relevance of their writing, helping them to “communicat[e] lived experience as a form of knowledge” and empowering them to write confidently with ethos (9). Establishing a sense of material and/or personal investment helps students recognize the concrete stakes of their writing, enabling them to realize the purpose of their writing and in turn write with purpose. 

Fieldwork is a versatile course component, connecting to the habits of practice in a myriad of ways. It could be the act of collecting, curating, and circulating, or going out into the field to observe these habits of practice in action. Fieldwork may serve as a springboard for later work: establishing an anecdotal understanding of issues that drives further contextualizing research, critical engagement, and public contributions with their writing. Or this broader research may be the framework through which students conduct their fieldwork research. They can examine the way issues or topics they’ve researched and read about are relevant to their own daily lives, communities, and other individuals. In all cases, fieldwork serves as a specific, concrete foundation for composing works that make meaningful contributions to a specific audience. It helps solidify the connection in the mind of the student that the discourse communities they are participating in are just that, communities. They are comprised of real people, places, and objects impacted by the larger issues or topics discussed in class and in their writing. Students’ material awareness of their topics and audience facilitates the composition of meaningful responses to texts and issues, writing alongside other texts rather than about them. 

The realization of the material relevance of their writing through physical interactions helps students establish a concrete visualization of what they are writing about and who they are writing for. This in turn fosters an understanding of what it means to be rhetorically effective. It can be easier to identify and deftly weigh rhetorical considerations (considerations of language, tone, modality, etc.) when the intended audience, subject, and stakes of their writing materializes. Familiarity with the spaces their writing will circulate in and the audiences with whom their writing will circulate helps students make nuanced and sophisticated rhetorical considerations. It also brings to the fore the importance of writing ethically. When their work is related to and impacts their communities or spheres that they are deeply familiar with the potential ramifications of writing become more clearly visible. 

Bringing this long-winded preface to a close, during our workshop we will discuss prior experiences incorporating fieldwork in the ECE classroom, positive and negative, and share strategies for incorporating fieldwork in your courses—covering potential forms and possible assignments/projects. Finally, we will share some recent scholarship on fieldwork and community-based writing that may help frame or inspire the way you integrate fieldwork into your own syllabus.   

If you’re interested in attending the workshop, please RSVP here for the meeting link. We hope to see many of you there, but for those unable to attend all materials will be made available afterwards on our SharePoint site.  

Should you wish to read more of Rosanne Carlo’s work (which I highly recommend), you can access her whole book, Transforming Ethos: Place and The Material in Rhetoric and Writing, for free here. Simply log in with your UConn Credentials.  

ICYMI: Collaborative Circulation Conference Recap

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Earlier this month, Brandon Hurst and I (your ECE English Graduate Assistants), had the pleasure of witnessing the fruition of the work we did along with our leadership (Scott Campbell and Tom Doran ) and our Advisory Board during our conference: Collaborative Circulation: A Recursive Roadmap.  

Throughout the day, our ECE English instructors delved deeply into the concept of “circulation” in the writing classroom. With a name like that, the conference itself was designed to be an expansive journey, one that would move beyond considering circulation as an endpoint. Our presenters and panels encouraged us to map the dynamic pathways that our ideas and written works follow as they flow through stages of ideation, creation, feedback, revision, and community engagement. 

Each session, led by members of our Advisory Board highlighted how circulation can be seen not only as a process of sharing and re-sharing work but as a collaborative venture that involves early ideation, rhetorical context, and multifaceted feedback. Circulation became more than the final stage of the writing process. Instead, we explored it as a living and recursive part of the writing process, one that shapes our work from the first spark of an idea to its permeation within a community.  

Screenshots from the Opening Remarks presentation showing a graffitti by tagger VEO and poems by Emily DickinsonThroughout various sessions, presenters, educators, and scholars brought forward stimulating examples and approaches to integrate circulation into writing pedagogy. Scott and Tom, in their welcoming remarks engaged with circulation in graffiti tagging and the poems of Emily Dickinson, respectively. Attendees were sent off to their sessions primed for the opportunities that the exploration of the vast uses that centering circulation in our writing process reveals and the growth for students that that engenders. We examined traditional notions of circulation as “publishing” but pushed past that view to consider circulation as a transformative process that writers and students experience in iterative, often unpredictable ways. A recurring theme was the collaborative nature of circulation, with presenters sharing how they encourage students to engage with peers, instructors, and outside communities, making the writing process more transparent and connected. 

The Circulation for Brainstorming and Ideation session looked at circulation in its ideation phase. Throughout the conference, this session became a wellspring of ideas and conversations through Post-It notes as attendees engaged with images and responded to the sessions that came before. The ideas in circulation (on the notes) influenced those participating in the next session. In this way, the participants not only engaged with the materials provided by the workshop leaders, but also the responses that came before them. The session emphasized the recursive and collaborative nature of ideas in an engaging activity. You can see images of the compiled comments here. 

Our Circulation of Feedback session focused on feedback loops within classroom settings, where the presenters emphasized the circulation of feedback as a dialogue and discussed methods for engaging students in a series of reciprocal exchanges that invite them to see their writing as a living piece on which to act upon and respond to. Such discussions underscored the importance of fostering a space where students can experience the full lifecycle of writing—a journey where texts evolve in relation to diverse voices and perspectives. 

Poster board showcasing an example of the Humans of East Lyme ProjectThe Circulation as Rhetorical and Compositional Context session focused on how the rhetorical context in which the writing of students exists can move beyond the classroom. Using the Humans of Education project (renamed to Humans of East Lyme), One presenter shared how her students expand the reach of their writing by creating a new rhetorical context. Another presenter shared some great-looking posters that emerged from a class that had traced the social impacts of a song. The posters led back to a shared playlist of all the songs. Both of these assignments invite students and the community into the reading of these pieces and can be shared through time and space with tools like QR codes.

Brandon and I also hosted two hands on (and quite arts and crafty) sessions. In these sessions we used Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and “Joy” by Langston Hughes to offer a new activity for students to engage with texts in multiple circulation phases. During the sessions all participants commented, had conversations through, deconstructed, and reconstructed texts to encapsulate and enact a tactile experience of circulation.  

During our closing session, multiple cross-campus instructors shared with the conference attendees the diverse ways in which they are implementing circulating practices in their classrooms. We heard about audio postcards, civic engagement expos, judging texts already in circulation, the impetus we have to write (both in and out of the classroom), and the impact of circulation on identity construction. 

As a newcomer to the ECE English world, I want to extend my gratitude to the presenters and attendees.  The collaborative spirit among participants was palpable in the conversations that I engaged with and reminded me that, as educators, we can only benefit from sharing our challenges, successes, and strategies to nurture a richer, more meaningful writing experience for our students. 

A special thanks must also go to the Advisory Board: Kevin Barbero, Kyle Candia-Bovi, Michael Ewing, Emily Genser, Siobhan Jurczyk, Alexa Kydd, Ramona Puchalski-Piretti, Kristen Rotherham, Arri Weeks, and Karen Tuthill-Jones. Their dedication to facilitating engaging, collaborative sessions, and ensuring that each participant’s voice was heard created a truly inclusive environment. 

If you missed out on this conference or want to dive even deeper into these ideas, you can visit our Fall 2024 Conference Materials or our larger resource repository in our SharePoint site. I’m excited to share that we will hold our next conference in April in conjunction with the larger UConn FYW Program. Thank you, again, to everyone who made Collaborative Circulation: A Recursive Roadmap a success. I look forward to seeing you all in April! 

 

What Does it Mean to “Circulate” Our Writing?

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Thank you all for staying with me over this three-post tour of Circulation. Today I want to discuss Circulation as it is most commonly conceived and presented in the first-year writing classroom: as the activity of circulating a piece of writing amongst a particular audience and setting. In the process, I hope to explore the many questions that Circulating asks writers to consider as they compose their writing for a specific purpose and set of contexts. 

Circulation as Rhetorical Context 

Circulation as “Rhetorical Context,” as all of you undoubtedly have heard numerous times, is the practice of writing with a specific audience, genre, form, media, accessibility, impact, etc. in mind. For a library, this is maybe the organization of the materials in their collection, the layout of shelves and displays for patron navigation, and which materials are displayed. It also describes the impact this has on how patrons physically circulate through the library, which materials get circulated, and why—taking into consideration:  

  • Who the library’s patrons are,  
  • What they are interested in or need,  
  • Their access to those materials,  
  • The impact these materials have on their patrons as they circulate?  

In the conference, we want to explore what questions we pose to students—and how we pose them—that can help them identify the affordances and constraints of different types or modes of Circulation. At the same time, we want these questions to promote students’ consideration of these pros and cons in connection with their own goals, enabling them to make purposeful rhetorical decisions with their writing. This may include:  

  • Who do they want to share their writing with?  
  • How does that audience conventionally circulate their writing?  
  • Do they want to adopt these principles or make the conscious, rhetorical decision to depart from certain genre conventions?  
  • What media and/or modalities are best suited to conveying and circulating their writing?   
  • How can a composition be effectively accessed and shared by the audience we want to reach?  
  • What tensions arise between voice and genre and how do we navigate them?  
  • How will it be received and is it expressing its ideas ethically and in good faith? 

When we practice Circulation as a rhetorical context, we are asking students to think about why they are writing, then make informed decisions about how to best achieve these writing goals. And during the conference, we hope to address how to best go about fostering this reflective approach to composition. 

Collaborative Circulation: A Recursive Roadmap 

As these different contexts coalesce, it becomes apparent that Circulation is a recurring and collaborative writing practice. We hope that by foregrounding the practice of Circulation in the classroom, we can enable students to be mindful of all the questions Circulation asks them to consider in every phase of the writing process—harnessing Circulation for their own thinking and writing purposes.  

I look forward to exploring the many ways Circulation takes place in the FYW classroom at the upcoming November 1st! 

Conceptualizing Circulation: Brainstorming and Feedback

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Hi all, as promised, here is the first of two follow-ups to last week’s preview of our Conference theme. In this post, I’ll be discussing the role of Circulation in Ideation and Feedback. Later this week another post will cover Circulation as Rhetorical Context with a summary of our tour of Circulation.  

Circulation for Brainstorming and Ideation GraphicCirculation for Brainstorming and Ideation: 

Thinking back to the library, any specific book that gets added to a collection is shaped by and in response to the active ecosystem of texts, social contexts, culture circulating in and around that library. New writings Engage with their conceptual antecedents, adopt (or reject) established genre conventions of form and style, and augment these precedents according to present social discourse, cultural trends, political, and physical environments. Moreover, which texts are accessible is also directly related to the social and political powers/movements governing circulation. This directly influences the writing that can be engaged with, directly influencing the ideation phase of writing and thinking. And as soon as a new book enters into the library, it becomes a part of the circulating texts and contexts that will shape subsequent readings and writings.  

During the conference, we will explore what Circulation as a tool and context for brainstorming and ideation looks like and how it can be emphasized in the FYW classroom. For example, it may prove valuable to consider that in any ECE writing class, when we ask students to Collect perspectives, Engage with difficult texts, and Contextualize their research question/inquiry, the circulating texts they encounter engender ideation and brainstorming.  

The act of reading, and the thoughts and responses in the margins and/or in the mind of the reader, is a product and practice of Circulation. A circulating text stimulates ideation as the reader “talks” back to the text during their reading. Students’ responses to an inquiry and text circulate in the classroom as they share initial thoughts—writing ideas and questions in their infancy. In a collaborative brainstorming session or class discussion, students’ conversations influence each other’s thinking, which in turn promotes self-reflection and a consideration of alternative perspectives that helps them develop these future writing ideas.  

We hope to discuss methods of working with students to help them recognize that participating in the Circulation of ideas in a public ecosystem is not only about “putting our writing out into the world.” It also consists of receiving, responding to, and then interrogating those responses in a way that helps us come up with concepts they can develop in writings that will make meaningful contributions to that ecosystem. We want students to see that they are participating in Circulation in every phase of writing.  

Circulation of Feedback and Suggestions: Circulation of Feedback Graphic

Similarly, the Circulation of feedback and suggestions helps students further develop their writing. When I think of the editing of a book, I am imagining the cinematic portrayals of an author bickering with their editor about what gets included. Or maybe the editor poses a question that prompts a total rewriting or reconsideration of an author’s stance. As feedback discursively circulates between editor and author it cultivates a more thoughtful reflection on the piece of writing, its goals, and its method in a fashion that is ultimately generative. When “editing” a library, staff must first reflect on which materials are being (or not) circulated most by patrons. This then informs the “editing” of their collection—what materials are weeded and what materials are added—to help the library best serve the needs of its patrons, i.e., achieve its purpose. And this does not take place in a vacuum but features a discussion amongst multiple librarians and between staff and patrons as they “revise” and “refine” the library. 

The FYW classroom is a comparable space; students circulate their work as they collaboratively revise and refine their writing to more effectively achieve their compositional goals. Group workshops and peer-review offer a low stakes environment where students can gauge audience reception, find alternative perspectives, receive feedback, and work together to develop their own and others’ compositions. These drafting and revision activities grant them freedom to experiment radically or minutely with their writing. Practicing how to provide and receive feedback—inside and outside the classroom—encourages students to reflect on their writing and its goals and how they might best achieve them. During the conference, we will explore ways to capitalize on the opportunities for growth and learning that Circulation affords during these activities. We also look to share and discuss the various forms, uses, and struggles of giving and receiving feedback. 

Circulating Our Conference Concept

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Ahead of our upcoming Fall 2024 Conference: “Collaborative Circulation: A Recursive Roadmap” I thought it might prove valuable to share how we arrived at this theme and the three session topics.  

When I think of “Circulation” the first thing I imagine are the materials circulating in a library. Any given book (or other material) itself and the ideas it contains and expresses, moves amongst and across discrete spaces (within a library or system of libraries), interacting with individuals as they read, and augments the cultural discourse or zeitgeist. At the same time, these texts are consciously and unconsciously indebted to centuries of literary antecedents and the precedents set before them. They are also shaped by the books already in circulation. They consciously adopt, build upon, or reject conventions of genre; they reiterate on concepts and themes in response to their present social landscape; and as they circulate, these texts shape the present cultural moment that will give rise to and contextualize the writings of others.  

In a First Year Writing (FYW) setting, the “Habit of Practice” of Circulation is most often discussed it in reference to how a writing will be shared, with whom, and the rhetorical decisions this informs (genre, diction, modality, etc.) But from the moment students step into the classroom, ideas, writings, and bodies are circulating. Student’s responses, discussions, collaborative work circulate responses to the course inquiry within the classroom environment. Circulation in an FYW classroom is a social and recursive practice, from the compositional act of marking/annotating their reading, responding to shared texts, group discussions, collaborative workshops, peer & instructor feedback, and the sharing of a piece of writing.   

In attempting to tease out the significant role that circulation plays in various contexts we have divided up the conference to give three Circulation zones individual attention (though they often overlap).  

  • Circulation For Brainstorming and Ideation: The role of circulating materials and ideas in a way that stimulates ideas to write about 
  • Circulation of Feedback and Suggestions: The process of providing, receiving and reflecting on feedback to inform purposeful revisions. 
  • Circulation as Rhetorical Context: Navigating the contexts of why, where, when, how, and with whom writing is being shared with.  

In posts coming early next week, I will explore each of these zones in more detail. But on a broader scale, by exploring the role of circulation in these phases of writing we look to broaden our definition of Circulation as more than just the final stop in writing, the sending out of “finished” compositions. During the November 1st conference, we will discuss some ways Circulation can play a role in the three zones we’ve identified, share strategies for dealing with the challenges of “Circulation,” and discuss its synergy with the other “Habits of Practices.” Ultimately, framing Circulation as a dynamic practice that is ever-present in an FYW classroom allows us to see it as a way into, a part of, and extending beyond the practice of writing. 

ECE English Spring 2024 Conference

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ECE English Presents

Inquiring About Writing: Syllabi and Texts in the ECE English High School Classroom

April 2024 Conference

UConn Hartford

For conference slides, please visit this website:

SharePoint

Teaching first-year writing in the high school classroom is a unique and fun experience that grants us the chance to experiment and play with how we and our students engage with writing. This freedom to pursue a course directed toward our students’ needs is the focus of this conference. How can you revise your syllabus to make it more inquiry-based and student-focused? What does it mean to teach first-year writing over a high school academic year? How can you utilize various types of texts—from books to articles to art to film to contemporary events—in your classroom? These questions and more form the basis of this focus on syllabi and inquiry in the ECE high school classroom.

With the end of another year quickly approaching, this conference brings together ECE English teachers to reflect on how to improve our syllabi, use different texts with our teaching, and implement first-year writing in the high school classroom for the next school year. We gather at the UConn Hartford campus for a differentiated conference experience. Choose from engaging with Hartford’s public museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and talking about identity and writing; an intensive for new(er) teachers to think about teaching a full year of ENGL 1007; workshops on unit arcs and using texts in the classroom; or come ready to do some guided work in our group working room.

April 26, 2024 | 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
UConn Hartford

 

Agenda

“Barbie, Literary Theory, and Art” Course Unit Discussion

Advisory Board Member Kevin Barbero provides an example of a course arc focused around Barbie, literary theory, and art, showcasing his assignments and syllabus architecture for this unit. Teachers will engage in a workshop discussion about course inquiry and teaching units in the ECE English high school classroom with Kevin’s example as the jumping off point. 

Wadsworth Atheneum: Engaging with Inquiry, Identity, and Writing

Join Advisory Board Member Arri Weeks as she takes a group to the Wadsworth Museum in downtown Hartford. The group will think about inquiry, texts, identity, and writing as it relates to an exhibit in the museum.

New(er) Teacher Intensive Workshop

If you are a new or newer teacher who is thinking about the yearlong ENGL 1004 or 1007 classroom in the high school setting, this intensive workshop is for you. Join Advisory Board Members Kyle Candia-Bovi and Alexa Kydd as they show you an example from their syllabi about how to turn the usually semester-long ENGL 1007 into a yearlong course.

Group Working Room

Do you need some time to just think deeply with a group about your syllabi and class and have some quiet time to work on them? Join Advisory Board Members Emily Genser and Ramona Puchalski-Piretti in some an hour-long guided working session.

“The Good Place, Literary Theory, and Philosophy” Course Unit Discussion

Advisory Board Member Kristen Rotherham provides an example of a course arc focused around The Good Place, literary theory, and philosophy, showcasing her assignments and syllabus architecture for this unit. Teachers will engage in a workshop discussion about course inquiry and teaching units in the ECE English high school classroom with Kristen’s example as the jumping off point. 

Concluding Session

Join us for concluding remarks about syllabi, text choice, and inquiring about writing in the ECE English high school classroom.

December 2023 Workshop

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A long banner with a growing plant on the bottom and the words "Assignment Guidelines & Project Gallery" written in white.

ECE English Presents

Assignment Guidelines and Project Gallery

December 2023 Workshop

Project Gallery | Workshop Slides | Workshop Recording

Workshop description. This hour-long workshop focalizes the assignment guidelines for first-year writing and asks how our assignments engage with FYW ideas like the essential components and the habits of practice/writing moves. It seeks to present some of the theoretical foundations that scaffold assignments in first-year writing, while also giving a gallery of four different assignments for us to see how and why our fellow teachers are making certain decisions in their assignment creation.

Assignment review. As part of this workshop, we invite you to submit assignment material you’d like to have a second set of eyes on. Using our form below, please let us know a little about what you want support on and upload the materials for us to review. This assignment review will be open until January 31, 2024.*

Helpful links. The following links to more reading about assignment guidelines and more project ideas.

*Of course, we are also always happy to review anything you want us to. This form helps facilitate a post-conversation to the workshop, but if you are wanting feedback or brainstorming help about anything in your course, please send the ECE English email a note and let us know how we can help you.

Joy in the Essential Components

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A yellow background with the words "Joy in the Essential Components" embossed in purple and white.First-year writing courses through the University of Connecticut have six essential components that undergird the entire class: (1) course inquiry; (2) field research; (3) studio pedagogy; (4) multimodal composition; (5) information, digital, and media literacy; and (6) reflective writing. Over the last few blog posts, we’ve been assessing how Gholdy Muhammad’s four aspects of historically responsive literacy can engage in feedback and the habits of practice. For this blog post, we’ll be considering Muhammad’s fifth aspect, joy, developed in her book Unearthing Joy, in relation to each of the essential components and how they might be used to create a joyful experience in the writing classroom.

For Muhammad, joy is not simply happiness or a rush of endorphins; joy is uplifting “beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, [and] wellness,” forming “solutions to the problems of the world,” and finding “personal fulfillment” (Introduction). A fun classroom can be a part of bringing in the aspect of joy, but the real work of joy comes in developing purpose and passion. In the writing classroom, this could mean encouraging students to form a relationship with writing that shows them how it can affect the world around them and their own selves. 

Joy in Inquiry

Course inquiries guide each version of first-year writing, giving enough railing for students to be pointed in the right direction but also enough room for the students to guide their personal inquiries and learning. In the baseline syllabus for the Storrs campus, the collective inquiry is, “What does an education do?” For the semester, readings and discussions are based around education, but each student develops their own questions and lines of inquiry in relation to the class’s guiding question (or questions). “What does an education do?” is broad enough that it can expand to fit each student’s questions.

Students can find joy in inquiry by discovering their own passions and interests. The inquiry is meant to allow a student to follow their own wonder, developing their writing projects as answers to their own questions. With the educational inquiry, for example, a student who is passionate about mental health might lead out in asking questions about mental health in education and how it can be improved, while a student who is passionate about sports and fitness might use their writing and research to uncover ways of integrating fitness more into the classroom. In this way, all the students are learning about education and what it does, but they are pursuing their own inquiries. This solo pursuit supporting a group inquiry creates an atmosphere of finding joy in discovery—whether that discovery is your own answers or someone else’s in the classroom.

Additionally, a collective inquiry for the course allows students to discover alongside each other new voices and projects that are pursuing similar work, if perhaps at a scale larger than the course itself. As students dive into the archive, read up on their chosen inquiry, and learn new things, they find joy in finding out that they can put their voice alongside the voice of those in a chosen scholarly field and those in the classroom around them. Inquiries—both individual and collective—mean that knowledge is growing within the classroom atmosphere and with those in the discipline.

Joy in Field Research

First-year writing is meant to support students developing a wide range of skills that allow them to practice the philosophies and methodologies forwarded in discovering, learning, and researching. It is meant to help students think about how to solve problems and develop their writing on their own. A lot of answers can come from books and articles, but answering questions sometimes requires more than just reading. Sometimes it requires students to do field research.

Field research develops different approaches to questions and finding answers. While the skills of close reading (or listening) and good note-taking are important to field research, field research also encourages students to think critically in the moment. If, for example, you have a project built on the Humans of Education project, in which students interview people in the field and discover what their opinions are, the students will discover that they have to think quickly in the moment of the interview—especially when the person doesn’t provide a lot of in-depth information that can be collected and curated into the final project. This quick-thinking can bring joy in a student’s work because they’re having to stay engaged in the conversation and not lose any threads of thought while talking. Juggling between the different ideas that must happen when performing field research adds a purpose to the execution of this essential component.

Joyful Studio Pedagogies

Studio pedagogy is meant to be fun! It encourages creativity and messiness and messing up and doing things wrong and failing and also winning and finishing and being proud of making. All of these things can evoke joy in our classroom. By getting messy—from using glue sticks and poster board to remixing work through Canva or Adobe Express—students engage in “active and accessible learning, play, design, and digital literacies.” But even more, they get to see what’s possible and how they can all find different ways of sharing ideas and finding those ideas in what their peers make. Joy in studio pedagogy also comes from engaging in projects as a group, developing talents alongside each other and seeing how other people think.

Joyful Multimodal Compositions

Students participate in multimodality on a daily basis. As they scroll through social media, walk around a grocery store, or watch a television show, they are experiencing multimodal compositions. Multimodal composition reflects how the world around us has changed from one in which we get information from ink and paper to one in which we learn and communicate through small rectangular black boxes that bring video, images, and sound to the palm of our hands. Being able to participate—even make a change through—this method of communication and interaction is an important part of multimodal composition; it’s meant to not only ask students to think outside the box but also to analyze and rhetorically understand outside the box too.

Joy in Information, Digital, and Media Literacy

While information, digital, and media literacy is about learning the skill of navigating the library system, it’s also about learning how to assess and understand what is being presented to us in our information overload society. How does one take time out of their scrolling to answer the age-old question, “Why”? This form of literacy teaches the skills of academic research—diving into library databases, grasping how to read an academic article, and developing an approach to learning more about an article’s research genealogy. It also helps students form a deeper understanding of what they are consuming—from TikTok videos to informational YouTube videos to Instagram posts to news articles—and how to learn more. This exploration can bring joy into the classroom by exciting students about different ideas that are all around them. 

Reflective Writing for Joy

Reflective writing can be used in many parts of the first-year writing classroom—from self-assessment of an assignment to preparing thoughts for a discussion to starting a writing assignment. Self-assessment reflective writing can be a way for students to find joy by discovering a truth about their own writing process. When students engage in reflective writing to help them prepare their thoughts for a classroom discussion, they are untethered from having to have a clear, coherent, and polished presentation and can engage in the joyful process of wondering and exploring ideas. 

HRL in the Writing Classroom: Intellectualism & Criticality

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A fuzzy, colorful background of yellow, blue, and red is overlaid with the words "Historically Responsive Literacy: Intellectualism & Criticality."In the last two posts on Gholdy Muhammad’s historically responsive literacy, I focused on the first two of four aspects she puts forward in Cultivating Genius: identity and skills. I offered possibilities for how those two aspects might be considered in light of our habits of practice. Now we turn to the last two aspects of HRL (intellect/intellectualism and criticality) along with some concluding thoughts on this series of posts.

Intellectualism

Intellectualism, for Muhammad, is about understanding things and knowing how those things affect the world around someone. It is knowledge, and it is knowledge in action. A person with intellect is someone who understands the information they’ve accumulated through an education and does something with that knowledge to better the world around them. 

In many ways, Muhammad’s approach to intellectualism could be brought into conversation with the habit of practice “contextualizing.” To contextualize writing means to put it into relationship with what is happening around it. It is an acknowledgment that writing doesn’t happen away from or without culture but that writing is the very middle of what is happening. 

Muhammad does warn: “I find that intellectualism can be minimized in schools as the focus shifts to skills and test prep” (Ch. 5). Intellect is more than learning how to do something; it’s also about learning why to do something and why we learn how to do it. Muhammad uses the following example to illustrate her point:

“As an example, teachers should teach students on the subject of ‘What does mathematics mean?’ I asked this question once to large group of high school math teachers, and no one knew, but they all saw the importance of learning the ways mathematics is defined. Mathematics (like all content areas or disciplines) has a rich history, and the ways it was conceptualized has changed over time. Teachers ought to teach the history of their discipline . . . as an intellectual endeavor.” (Ch. 5)

We can apply this example to the writing classroom. “What does writing mean?” The answer will be different to each person and their understanding of the history of writing, but there are specific ways writing has been used throughout history—for instruction, for communication, for philosophy, for personal thought and record, for history, for procedure, for propaganda—that Muhammad invites us to bring into our classrooms. 

We might consider teaching the history of a multimodal project. How, for example, did social media come about, if we’re asking students to make a TikTok video? We could also talk about how social media can be used for data collection, political influence, and social change and ask students to reflect on their experience with social media and their reasons for making certain choices in their project creation. 

One way this pursuit of intellectualism could be brought into feedback is through a modified peer review. Have students partner up with another person creating the same type of multimodal project. The student peer then writes a short response to the peer’s work. What historical contexts or concepts do the students see in their peers’ works? How does their peers’ works engage in a broader conversation around that media? In providing feedback attuned to the context and engagement a multimodal project is doing, students will gain a deeper understanding of how their writing and other people’s writings are in conversation with others—or how they might be able to bring their work into more conversation with others.

Criticality

Criticality encourages people to take an anti-oppressive stance in their activism and writing about the society around them. Because there are various forms of oppression in society—sexism, racism, etc.—criticality encourages rooting them out, interrogating where, how, and why they are, and pursuing a way toward a just future. It creates a “transformative purpose for change and liberation” (Ch. 2), recognizing that in this world, we all face oppression and subjugation. 

When providing feedback, we might use criticality as a way to push our students to apply their writing more to an engagement with the world around them. How, we might ask the student, does this part of the essay or multimodal assignment invest them in helping to improve society? It may not cause a great change or the end of oppression, but it is a small way—within the community they’ve grown up and within the community of the classroom—to oppose oppression.

Criticality could also be used as a way to provide guidance in peer review. Muhammad writes that criticality includes “reading print texts and contexts with an understanding of how power, anti-oppression, and equity operates throughout society. Criticality enables us to question both the world and texts within it to better understand the truth in history, power, and equity” (Ch. 6). Along this vein, we might consider having our students read each other’s work and respond to the following questions:

  • How does this work understand and negotiate power?
  • How does this work oppose oppression and encourage equity?
  • How does this work question the world around us?
  • How does this work improve our understanding of history, power, and equity?

While this might not work with every writing assignment, it could lead to interesting conversations between students about the application of their written and designed work.

Conclusion to Cultivating Genius and HRL

Muhammad’s work in Cultivating Genius has given us four specific aspects to think about and consider in relation to the various concepts used in the first-year writing classroom through the University of Connecticut. These ideas have helped us analyze how we might expand our use of the habits of practice, the essential components of the FYW classroom, and feedback and response to our student writers. 

HRL reminds us to think about how we are encouraging our student’s to use their entire being to develop themselves as thinkers and engagers in the world. How, HRL asks in the first-year writing classroom, might we use this writing project or that multimodal assignment to affect the world around us? This effect might not be grand or large—each writing assignment does not need to change the entire world. But HRL does help us focus on how a writing assignment might affect two or more students in conversation with each other about a topic or assignment. 

By asking ourselves how each writing assignment encourages identity formation, skill acquisition, intellectual engagement, and criticality opposed to oppression, we integrate into our pedagogy a way of making each assignment and lesson applicable.

Questions to Consider About HRL in the Writing Classroom

Muhammad invites us to think about how we might reframe and reassess our lesson plans. Identity, skills, intellect, and criticality are all things we are emphasizing in our teaching of writing, but by using Muhammad’s new vocabulary and historically influenced approach, we might see new ways we can highlight different aspects that can support our students’ writing.

Muhammad offers four questions around the four aspects of historically responsive literacy (qtd. from Ch. 2):

  • Identity: How will my instruction help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others?
  • Skills: How will my instruction build students’ skills for the content area?
  • Intellect: How will my instruction build students’ skills for the content area?
  • Criticality: How will my instruction engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression?

    To end this blog series on Cultivating Genius, I want to leave you with some questions to consider in your writing classroom:

    • How does your feedback to students invite them to expand their own identity?
    • How do your interactions with students engage them in developing their skills?
    • How might a peer review session increase a student’s intellect? How can you point to that in the post-peer review lesson?
    • Are your students thinking critically about their own writing and their peers’ writings? How can you model that for students? How can you invite them to question each other in a way that is inviting and increasing criticality?