Introduction

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our second edition of The WAC Reader, a digest of curated articles and resources focused on writing and reading instruction across the curriculum.

Our theme this semester is Anti-Racist Writing Pedagogy. Anti-racist pedagogy is an ever-evolving practice of teaching in a way that counteracts the impact of racism in students’ lives. Anti-racist pedagogy is “about how one teaches, even in courses where race is not the subject matter” (Kishimoto, 2018, pp. 540). Anti-racist pedagogy involves critical self-reflection about the educator’s social location and how that might affect their interactions with and evaluations of students. It involves the consideration of whose voices are represented in the syllabus, the linguistic diversity of our students, and the power relationships within and beyond the classroom (ibid.).

To be sure, anti-racist teaching has been happening at CUNY for decades, even if we have not always called it that. Still, there are many tensions within anti-racist pedagogy that are difficult to resolve. Faculty at CUNY have long struggled with the tension of honoring students’ backgrounds while also preparing them for a job market that often does not do the same. We hope that some of the resources we have curated can help faculty to begin or further their anti-racist praxis.

In our first section, we highlight a piece by Kyoko Kishimoto. This article introduces the key tenets of anti-racist pedagogy and discusses initial steps for implementing these tenets. In our second section, we spotlight a selection of resources that provide practical strategies and advice for advancing anti-racist values in one’s writing instruction. They focus on:

• Diverse reading materials
• Feedback and assessment
• Linguistic diversity
• Flexible course policies

We’re excited for you to read our second edition of The WAC Reader, and look forward to sharing more of our love for writing and reading pedagogy with you.

Your friends,

Nic Rios and Casandra Murray, Hostos WAC Fellows

An Introduction to Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Anti-racist pedagogy: from faculty's self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom by Kyoko Kishimoto asserts that anti-racist pedagogy is an encompassing commitment to race-conscious teaching as well as organizing and activism on and beyond campus. Kishimoto nicely summarizes three major components to anti-racist pedagogy and emphasizes that they are all founded on instructors’ continuous critical self-reflections on their own race, positionality, practices, and commitments.

Interview with Kristopher Burrell

Dr. Kristopher Burrell, History professor in the Behavioral and Social Sciences department at Hostos, discussed his anti-racist work with WAC Fellow Casandra Murray. Click here to watch a 9-minute edited version of their conversation. If you would like to watch the full 20-minute interview, click here.

Strategies and Resources

Below, we present a selection of readings that suggest practical approaches for furthering an anti-racist pedagogy. This selection only scratches the surface, so we recommend reading even further!

Diverse reading materials: As Kishimoto (2018, above) writes, one of the entry points to anti-racist pedagogy is to diversify your reading materials. How I've implemented an anti-racist approach in my teaching by Alyshia Galvez reflects on her efforts to make her teaching more anti-racist. Of particular interest here are her reflective questions about her courses and her teaching practices. These questions would be a perfect jumping-off point for any professor looking to diversify their syllabi. For additional resources, we recommend checking out the Diversify Your Syllabus: Resources and Readings for Your Syllabus page from the University of Minnesota Library for a roundup of reading lists and disciplinary projects from a wide range of disciplines.

Feedback and assessment: If you dive into theories of anti-racist pedagogy, you will inevitably stumble across Asao Inoue’s work, including his development of anti-racist “assessment ecologies.” His recent article, Classroom Writing Assessment as an Antiracist Practice: Confronting White Supremacy in the Judgments of Language, builds on teaching theories and practices from his 2015 book. Here Inoue argues that anti-racist pedagogy requires a reimagining of the ways that we assess our students. By including examples of dimension-based rubrics that open up conversation and judgment to multiple perspectives, Inoue provides constructive anti-racist teaching resources and reveals the inherent disparities in standard-based assessments that are limited to the expectations of a “white racial habitus.”

Celebrate linguistic diversity: 3 Ways to Speak English by Jamila Lyiscott is a short spoken word essay that interrogates linguistic oppression and celebrates diversity within the English language. Many teachers find that sharing this video with students in preparation for anti-racist writing assignments inspires classroom discussions about voice, audience, and the dynamic nature of language. Kim Brian Lovejoy’s article, From Language Experience to Classroom Practice: Affirming Linguistic Diversity in Writing Pedagogy, is a useful source for instructors interested in exploring opportunities to bring the variety, creativity, and rich expression embedded within students’ home languages into the classroom. Lovejoy includes reflections from multiple instructors on the relationship between their own linguistic experiences and their teaching practices, as well as discussions of instructional methods that broaden student writing activities beyond Standard American English.

Flexible course policies: Duke University’s webpage Creating an Inclusive and Equitable Course includes excellent suggestions for examining your course policies to ensure that they are equitable and student-centered. Among the recommendations are to write your syllabus in a clear and welcoming tone, to be understanding of factors that may affect students’ participation in the course, and to be flexible with students while still having high expectations of them!

Bonus: Assessing English So That People Stop Killing Each Other by Asao Inoue offers few concrete solutions. Rather, this chapter reflects on the ways that writing and language instruction can reproduce white, Eurocentric standards that enact violence on our students. He follows other educators in connecting literacy, communication, love, and violence. He writes that the anti-racist writing classroom “assesses writing so that people might stop killing each other by seeing difference not as a threat or as wrong but as another becoming” (p. 311).

Until Next Time…

We hope you enjoyed our second edition of The WAC Reader. This semester, we plan on organizing a time to discuss some of these issues at Hostos and come up with ideas for resolving them. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this initiative! If you have a moment, please take our quick Google Forms survey linked below.