Writing at Moravian Presents —
May Writing Workshops 2021
Open to the Moravian University Community
Wednesday, May 12
Opening Session
Welcome to May Writing Workshops
10:30 - 11:30 AM
The Writing at Moravian program has dedicated 2021 to exploring how faculty can better understand and enact antiracist pedagogies in writing-enriched courses. To that end, our faculty development programming this year highlights equity and justice-oriented ways to build community through the teaching of critical reading, writing, and research. As Frankie Condon (2012) notes, “antiracist epistemology and rhetoric are neither learned nor created under conditions of passivity or inaction. In order to learn—as this kind of learning requires experimentation—we will need to risk speaking aloud about what we are learning even before we know very much of anything with certainty” (p. 33). In this opening session, we contextualize this year’s May Writing Workshops as space for our community to consider these ideas as we develop/revise plans for our 2021-22 courses, especially those courses in which we ask our students to engage often in the act of writing, broadly conceived.
Keynote Lecture with Dr. Asao Inoue
What Does It Mean to Be an Antiracist Teacher In a Writing-Enriched Curriculum?
12:00 - 1:30 PM
This talk engages with the question of what it means to be an antiracist teacher within a writing-enriched postsecondary curriculum, with a special emphasis on the assessment of languages and literacies. Much racism is perpetuated structurally by our classroom assessment and grading ecologies, especially in courses where students are often assessed on their writing. This talk does not focus on people behaving badly or racist, but rather on the historical and structural ways that most teachers judge and read language; teachers’ ways of grading language; disciplines’ logics and ways with words; and most professions’ expectations of language use. It pays particular attention to the standard operating procedures of most writing-intensive and writing-enriched classrooms. Inoue discusses how higher education generally promotes literacy practices through assessment ecologies that are White supremacist, and defines an antiracist orientation toward our teaching and assessing.
Faculty Workshop with Dr. Asao Inoue
Bravely Challenging Our White Language Supremacy in Our Assessments of Student Writing
2:30 - 4:00 PM
This workshop will challenge participants to bravely investigate their own classroom assessment practices, particularly their orientations toward student writing as embodied in their feedback to that writing. The workshop will consider habits of White language that inform assessment practices in our own classrooms as well the White supremacy culture that shapes those same courses. We’ll pause to reflect upon sample feedback on a student paper that participants bring from a past course of theirs. Faculty participants should bring to the workshop one sample paper with their feedback or assessments to the student on it or attached, and any materials or handouts the teacher provided students that explains the assignment. This should demonstrate the typical kind of feedback the teacher provides. This workshop asks participants to be brave in the ways that Arao and Clemens describe “brave spaces” for doing antiracist work, and to be compassionate to themselves and their colleagues. Participants will get a handout of resources.
Zoom Happy Hour — A Debriefing Session
4:10 - 5:00 PM
Grab a snack and a beverage! Anyone interested in continuing the conversation from today’s keynote and workshop is welcome to join Writing at Moravian team members here.
Thursday, May 13
Morning Session for First-Year Writing (FYW) Faculty
9:30 AM - 12:20 PM
Faculty teaching First-Year Writing (LinC 101, 102, Writing 101, 105, and 106) during the 2021-22 academic year should attend this session to learn more about the following:
- Recent updates to the FYW program
- Summer and Fall 2021 FYW timeline
- Working with your writing fellow
- How first-year students will work with our new Career Development Strategist colleagues
- Planning for your library session
- Incoming first-year students’ conceptions of writing
- InFocus summer writing assignment and using The Cancer Journals in your course
Afternoon Sessions for All Faculty
Writing Effective Writing Assignment Prompts
1:00 - 2:00 PM
In this interactive session participants will consider the elements of assignment prompts most critical to designing effective writing projects in courses across the curriculum.
Methods for Responding to and Assessing Writing
2:10 - 3:30 PM
Following our focus on writing assignment design, this process-focused session invites participants to consider a variety of feedback and assessment strategies in writing courses. Moravian faculty will share different approaches they have used.
Asynchronous Sessions
Context is Key: Teaching Students to Understand Rhetorical Situations and Genre Conventions
Research in the field of Writing Studies shows improvement in the transfer of writing knowledge and abilities when students are asked not only to write in different genres for different purposes, audiences, and contexts but also asked to thoughtfully consider and reflect about the differences between genres and rhetorical situations when conveying a similar message to a different audience for a different purpose in a different medium—a process that allows students to begin to articulate their own theories of writing by iteratively reflecting on the question “what is good writing?” in the context of a particular writing project. This session will illustrate different active learning strategies that help students recognize and apply rhetorical and genre knowledge when they read and write.
Accessibility in the Teaching of Writing
Join Laurie Kahn and Michelle Koch for this practice-based session focused on supporting our students in writing-enriched course contexts. In addition to theoretical and philosophical framing of accessibility, this session will highlight the practices Kahn and Koch implement in their own work with students at Moravian.
Teaching Writing with Technology
Speakers share the steps they took to design and implement digital multimodal projects, and participants negotiate ways to integrate technology into their writing classes/classroom writing practices.