Author: Editorial Team

The Mindful Freewrite

Editorial Team

by Safia Jama

I walked by my colleague’s desk at 7:40AM last week and decided to interrupt his early morning ritual of quiet work with a loud “Good morning!” After some brief chit-chat and inquiries into how our respective semesters were going, his voice dropped: “Some of my students are just… lost. And I’m not sure what I can do to reach them.”

“That is a topic,” I said, appreciating his honesty while making a mental note to pick up the thread again later when I had more time. Since then, I have pondered my colleague’s concern for his students and our brief exchange has inspired me to share with you an activity that I call “The Mindful Freewrite.”

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Countering Monolingualism: Translingual & Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Editorial Team

Takeaways from the First-Year Writing Spring Symposium

by Harold Ramdass

The Baruch College Writing Program Spring Symposium 2021, Countering Monolingualism: Translingual & Anti-Racist Pedagogy, presents 3 half-hour sessions on cultivating a pedagogically inclusive approach and practice responsive to our diverse students’ unique linguistic strengths that should be recognized and developed to better achieve our goals in first-year composition classes.

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Interview with Kamal Belmihoub, ELL Director

Editorial Team

Challenges and successes in teaching T sections online

ELL (English Language Learner) Director Kamal Belmihoub met with two Writing Across the Curriculum Fellows to discuss his own process of moving online, getting the most out of synchronous sessions, and adapting to the needs of the online experience.

Watch the video or read the transcript below—

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Mapping Our Digital Enclosures

Editorial Team

Multimodal Assignments in the Time of COVID-19

by Thomas Watters

As a composition instructor concerned with how students make meaning across a variety of technologies, I’m seeking to leverage my students’ increasingly enforced engagement with digital platforms during this unusual time to develop a sense of how “composition” can be conceptualized alongside more traditionally, essay-based course assignments. This is why I am invested in implementing a version of the relatively popular (at Baruch) multimodal or multi-media Re/Mix or Remediation assignment in my current 2150 course.

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Accessible Teaching

Editorial Team

Some notes on accommodation and course design

by Agnes Eshak

As I write this, I’ve already missed the submission deadline. This post should have been completed a week ago, primed for the PiP newsletter to land in your mailbox. Missing deadlines isn’t new for me; I’ve missed many before this one, and I’ll probably miss many more (although the stress over it never goes away). But this isn’t just about poor planning, it’s that living with a chronic illness means plans often don’t work out in the first place.  

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Using Writing Groups in First-Year Composition

Editorial Team

Fostering trust in peer-to-peer learning

by Lisa Blankenship

I started using writing groups in my classes in graduate school over ten years ago, at first for peer review, and then beyond just peer review to include almost every aspect of the class. Writing groups form such an important part of my teaching that I can’t imagine not using them now. They represent in tangible form, for me, a student-centered pedagogy, and one that brings me not only a lot of (frankly) joy in teaching, but that also saves me a great deal of time! Putting the onus on students for their own learning helps students learn more and takes the focus off of me, so for me this approach is a win-win on many levels.

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