This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Sona Srivastava, a 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a writer and translator as well as a writing tutor at Ashoka University in Sonepat, India. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” By Sona Srivastava    I turned to the art of divining in general, and the tarot specifically, in the unsurest of times. The pandemic had mastered its grip across the world, and we had been reminded of the precarity of our lives. Because life was meant to go on - and did - we resorted to ways of keeping ourselves productively occupied.  I had a lot to keep myself occupied with - I had just enrolled in an MPhil programme, and had begun working as an education specialist at an educational start-up. My professional role warranted that I necessarily churn out content for English language learners every day. The role was tiring, and very soon, wilted my curiosity. Moreover, the tense times unfurled into a disconnect that was too immense to fathom. I needed, what was in vogue on the internet at that point, “grounding” - to reconnect with my creative self, to make sense of the confusion, to channel curiosity again.  The “practice” was simple - a host of online tutorials aided in demystifying the process, and with a flourish or two of the cards from the deck, I had come around to reading them. However, this process of reading tarot cards differs from the traditional practice of reading. As the “it” phenomenon associated with it suggests, it is meant to be more grounded, more zoomed into one’s emotions, thereby prompting one to be more attentive - not only to the surroundings but also to one’s own being. This attentiveness reaches its peak as curiosity - the highest form of attention.  Each day would begin with a pull from the deck, and I would tune in, making a mental note, observing and noticing patterns as my choral routine inched towards the daily close. I was able to shake off inertia, and amble my way through my commitments.  In an introductory book on tarot, Erin Regulski writes that “the Tarot is most useful at helping us see more clearly where we are right now” (9). They depart from the understanding that Tarot helps one to “predict” the future. Rather, the emphasis is on seeing “where we might be headed if we don’t make a change”, and on considering the deck as our non-judgemental friend, one who “always accepts you exactly as you are” (9). Regulski’s words influenced my understanding, and by the time I transitioned to my current role as a writing instructor, I had adopted this mystical practice as an active pedagogy in my class - with the caveat that this was to be understood as a strictly creative exercise with no aspirations of hoping to foretell the future (I am critical of any pseudo-religious or pseudo-science claims attached to tarot). How does one “read” a class through tarot? While tarot helped me “read” and re-orient myself creatively, I was, initially, a modicum unsure of adapting the practice in class. These were a bunch of fresh first-year students, and I did not impress upon them an art that risked funding the pseudo-science currency. To this end, I built upon the triad of “Do-Delve-Reflect” - a method introduced by Maggie Vlietstra and Nadia Kalman from Words Without Borders. The malleable triad intertwined with the tarot reading proved to be a useful methodology in gaining the students’ attention.  Since tarot was relatively new, especially to be used in a formal class setting, it inaugurated an easy flow of conversations fuelled by curiosity as well as skepticism. A question from one of the students that stands out in particular related to the role of reading their body through the emotions - and one that I found extremely relevant considering that my teaching would not attain its goal if the students were feeling out of their bodies. But did that mean we cancel classes? No! We began our classes with a tarot exercise. After a preliminary introduction to tarot, I would ask my students to think of scholarly alternatives to the images on the card.  For a week, we worked on illustrating our collective deck, listening to our emotions and sitting with them through the class - we worked through the triangulated paradigm - “do-delve-reflect”, delving into our emotions, and reflecting on them through the class - assessing our lessons by being and aligning with our bodies. As a sampler, here are two examples of tarot cards from my class: Sona Srivastava Changed Sword to Pen;  The Suit of Swords Tarot card meanings are associated with action, change, force, power, oppression, ambition, courage, and conflict. Action can be constructive and/or destructive. The negative aspects of the Suit of Swords include anger, guilt, harsh judgement, a lack of compassion, and verbal and mental abuse. We changed the sword for a pen. Through this change, we reflected on the power of the pen - the pen as a sword for a scholar, capable not only of external changes but also changes within. This card proved particularly useful when students seemed a bit hesitant in expressing their thoughts through writing. Working as a prompt, the students got around to embracing free-writing with much more ease.  Sona Srivastava Changed the Woman with the Lion to a Table of Books The Strength card in tarot is usually associated with nonviolence, self-compassion, healing, patience, gentleness, sensitivity, acceptance, responsibility, and safety. It signifies the ability to overcome challenges and usually indicates an inward, introspective turn to locate power within.  By tweaking the image to a table of books, the students were encouraged to think of reading certain books as a challenge or the hurdles they overcame to access education or inconveniences encountered in class. This, again, emerged as an interesting exercise for students to introspect and reflect on their own journeys - one that continues to fuel their thirst for knowledge.  Tarot, thus, emerged as a useful pedagogical tool to spark curiosity and thinking in students. With a fair caveat, such alternative tools of pedagogy work wonders in classrooms where the students may initially seem indifferent or hesitant. It only takes a card to get the conversation going!   References Regulski, Erin. Find Your Power: Tarot. Godsfield, 2023.    The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.   ... View more

This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   By Jenn Fishman   I leave each WIS feeling epically epideictic. I want to sing—and dance and shout—my gratitude to all who come together annually to make the symposia  happen, to make each one such a memorable happening.    The WIS is what it is—a heady combination of writing, innovation, and symposing—thanks first to WIS attendees. Our registration list always includes a substantial showing of first-timers. Every year, for example, we welcome en masse new GTAs taking writing pedagogy across town at UW-Milwaukee. Other new WIStians find us through word of mouth and our online CFP, which circulates starting in late August or early September. Many first-time WIS attendees arrive in small groups and pairs, and some attend solo, which may be the ultimate act of professional bravery and hope.    Symposium registrants also include returning WISers. Some colleagues in this category join us every couple few years; others attend even more regularly, logging onto Zoom or braving the weather and the vagaries of the early quarter or semester to convene in Milwaukee. I think of Lansing Community College colleagues Barb Clauer and Melissa Kaplan, who have over the years helped shape WIS themes. I think of co-presenters like Megan Mericle and Natalie Taylor, whose WIS attendance spans their graduate and early post-graduate years. I think of Abigayle Farrier, who has withstood ice storms and institutional precarity to travel from Texas to participate. I also think of Marcia Buell driving up from Northeastern Illinois University with her undergraduate and graduate students. Then, there is the crew from Western Michigan University—Kyle Battle, Tristan Heibel, Emilie Helmbold, Sophia Khan, Morgan Shiver, and David Yarnall—and the group that comes to us from CUNY: an intrepid, merry band led by Mark McBeth that over the years has included Jessica Yood as well as Tuka Al-Sahlani, Dev Harris, Zach Muhlbauer, and Rani Srinivasan.   We gather for WIS in specific spaces. Along with Zoom boxes, we inhabit the Beaumier Suites Conference Center in Raynor Library on the Marquette University campus, and we return each year to a local restaurant, Braise. These spaces and others—The Ambassador Hotel and the Gin Rickey Bar, Bollywood Grill, the Haggerty Art Museum on campus, the Milwaukee Art Museum downtown—are part of the fabric of the symposium, and my epic gratitude extends to the people who steward and maintain them. In particular, the WIS benefits from the radical hospitality of Tara Baillargeon, Dean of Raynor Library, and her colleagues, including Denise Hyland, Kerry Oliveti, Elaine Knaus, and Darwin Sanders, whose job title, “IT Support Associate,” does not begin to tell the story of his talents, his generosity, or his shaping impact on the WIS. Likewise, the WIS is richer and more dynamic for our relationship to Macmillan Learning through colleagues like Joy Fisher Williams, Laura Davidson, Simi Dutt, and Mackenzie Denofio. They afford us both analog and digital spaces to gather and share ideas, first in real-time conversation and then via the Bits blogs.   If there is a sine qua non of the WIS, it is the Steering Committee (SC). A cross-institutional volunteer operation, the WIS ‘25 SC includes the inestimable Darci Thoune, Gitte Frandsen, Grant Gosizk, Jenna Green, Jessie Wirkus Haynes, Kaia Simon, Kelsey Otero, Lilly Campbell, Maxwell Gray, Nora Boxer, and Patrick Thomas. I find it hard to describe or characterize the full extent of their contributions. Maybe the WIS is like sourdough. As Ashley Beardlsey asked us to consider at her pre-WIS presentation, the process of kneading dough by hand means each loaf as well as the persisting starter literally embodies some of its maker. So, too, does each WIS incorporate the time, energy, and attention as well as the savvy, smarts, and care of Steering Committee members, individually and together.   My enduring gratitude is as much for the process of making each WIS as it is for the 2-day event itself.I am grateful for the experience of our work together as well as the phenomenon of our ongoing collaboration. May everyone who reads this post have an opportunity to be part of a WIS, whether it’s our Writing Innovation Symposium or an analogue, whatever form and format that might take.    The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.   ... View more

This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Raegan Gronseth and Marshall Kopacki, 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellows, are recent graduates of Marquette University and coauthors of a novel-in-progress. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   By Marshall Kopacki and Raegan Gronseth In Part One, we talked your metaphorical ears off about ourselves and our process, but what does that have to do with you? It doesn’t, really – but we can offer you something to take away from all this! We’ve compiled a series of collaborative writing tips with recommendations for how you can implement what we’ve learned through trial and error, specifically for undergrads learning to write together effectively.    Knowing who you’re working with will help with communication. Work together and form partnerships. Anyone can learn to be in sync with anyone else with enough time and effort.    Having a good relationship with your project partner is imperative to having a shot at making an entire shared project work. For the purposes of this kind of writing, having people that are very similar work together will make the entire process much easier. Too much disparity in demeanor or interests can/will result in disengagement with each other, one student doing the majority or all of the work, and/or developing a project neither student particularly cares about. Random partnering will guarantee similar problems.   The key to collaborative writing is essentially being on the same wavelength as your partner to the greatest extent possible. Feeling alienated by the person you’re working with is never fun or effective. Having a pre-established relationship to your project partner is a huge advantage when communication is key. It also cuts out the time required to get comfortable enough with strangers to be productive. However, being paired with a friend isn’t always an option. You may have to get to know someone from scratch. It can be a daunting task, but it also can help you make friends with someone you may not have otherwise talked to. One of the most enriching parts of collaborative writing is developing a working relationship and friendship with your partner. Who knows, it could continue on outside of class. (Ours did.)   When working with a partner you don’t know, try to find common ground as fast as possible. You might be surprised about what kinds of similarities you share. Do you both have pets? The same minor? Are you taking other classes together? You’ve already ended up at the same school, taking the same class, at the same time, so surely there are other things in your life that overlap in some way. Identifying similar interests will help develop project concepts later down the line that you’re equally invested in.    Try not to let your project ideas develop too much before partnerships are formed. When someone gets an idea they’re really excited about in their head, any suggestion from the other party will feel like compromising. Instead, allow room for play. Brainstorming is the most fun part of projects, it’s also the best way to engage with each other’s unique perspectives.    To make this really work as a collaborative project, you have to find something you both want to work on equally. For example, you both like poetry. You think: I want to write a series of poems about nature, and they want to write a series of poems about the human experience. Great, we can work on writing poems together! Now, here’s the problem. You both already have in your head a theme you want to focus on. If you get this far, you’ll probably try to pitch a project where you can just both write separate poems with their respective themes and put them together into the same document and call it a poetry collection. That wouldn’t be wrong, you would complete a writing project you both contributed to, but that really defeats the purpose of collaboration. You would be working independently, with your own creative goals, to put together something less than cohesive. Alternatively, you could work towards a common, driving theme to center the poems around. People don’t love to compromise, and having to piece your concepts together, or come up with something new after the fact, will make you feel forced out of your own ideas, and frustrated with the partnership. You don’t want that.    We know we’ve been drilling the idea of working with people as similar as possible into this, but really, no two people are exactly the same. Having things in common is important for establishing a baseline for connection and potentially a project concept, but embrace each other’s differences, too. Lots of (super interesting!) interdisciplinary projects are the result of people with different interests working together towards a common goal.    Regardless of how alike you are to your working partner, you will both be exposed to new ideas and perspectives. This is where creativity starts to flourish. One of you wants to write about nature, and the other wants to write about the human experience? Now you’re both working on a shared collection about the relationship between humans and the environment with each partner focusing on different perspectives, and taking stylistic inspiration from your personal favorite authors.    An additional note, play time is integral to brainstorming, but also developing a relationship to the partner. Getting off task is beneficial here, within reason. The more you know about each other, the easier productive communication will become.    We outlined what works for us, but that won’t work for everyone. No formulas, procedures, or steps will ever work for everyone. Figure out what works for you. Lots of verbal communication is the only thing we can say for certain makes working together more effective.    Writing methods aren’t something that can be strictly taught so much as are stumbled upon. This is frustrating for everyone, always – writing collaboratively or individually. Processes, tips, and methods can be suggested, but trying to follow specific steps to write successfully and expecting them to work for you and your partner together, is often unrealistic. As everyone’s individual writing process is unique, so is every writing partnership’s process. We swear by our method, and wholeheartedly believe that nothing else could be easier or more effective, but that all has to be taken with a grain of salt.    If you can’t follow a miracle method, you can (and should) find your own groove. Writing collaboratively is impossible to do without excessive thinking out loud and sound boarding. Even at the point where the project is plotted and just needs to be written, having someone physically present to give feedback, read aloud, or discuss direction is significantly more helpful than exchanging paper feedback or emails. And again, the point of co-writing is to co-write. Every step of the process should be based on shared ideas, decisions, and visions. The more comfortable you are with verbalizing your concerns or ideas, the more integrated both you and your partner will be throughout your shared work.    The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Marshall Kopacki and Raegan Gronseth, 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellows, are recent graduates of Marquette University and coauthors of a novel-in-progress. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” By Marshall Kopacki and Raegan Gronseth This January, we had the pleasure of attending our first professional/academic symposium ever. Being undergraduate students, this opportunity was hugely edifying because, well, these kinds of things have a demographic of almost entirely instructors. We often felt like flies on the wall, listening in on panels and flash talks about how to work with and teach students that were functionally us.    Our interest in the way these well-established educators interacted with each other and communicated about their research and pedagogies was borderline anthropological; it felt like a deep dive into a culture completely disparate from our own, with terms and mutual understandings everyone but us seemed to be in on. Apparently, they would eventually be doing anthropological research on us too – a cultural exchange, if you will.   The role of educators as students, and the “cultural exchange”, was most apparent to us when we had the chance to explain why we were there. We were told before the symposium that people would be especially interested in our process as collaborative writers, but we thought it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as we were told it would be. When we started writing collaboratively, it felt like second nature. It didn't occur to us that that would be interesting to anyone. That was quickly proven wrong. It seemed that everyone we talked to wanted to know how we do it, what we did to figure out a sustainable process for creative co-writing, especially as undergrads. It turns out that collaborative writing is something people have been trying to crack for a long time.   How we make it work   The process we've outlined here is what we've found works for us when we're working on the same project together (the same process we used to write this post), but, interestingly, is different in some significant ways from the processes we follow when we each write solo. That's not to say that this process couldn't work for an individual, too, but it's tailored for ease of writing with a partner.   The two most important things to remember are that you must trust in your partner's creative competency, and that you can't take anything personally. Writing with more than one person means more than one mind producing ideas, and not all of those ideas will be the best way forward; make sure you're both ready to express and receive critical feedback! It should be more fun and exciting than stressful or daunting, ideally.   Thorough plotting: All chapters are outlined beat by beat prior to writing. Because we know most of what happens before we start, creative conflicts are avoided during writing.    Before we sit down and attempt to produce any actual prose in a new chapter, we verbally discuss and then bullet point all of the major events that'll happen and what order they'll happen in. We also make notes for specific details or descriptions we want to include, bits of dialogue, minor events, gaps, questions, and other unsure spots. This ensures that we can be fully on the same page when we start the prose.   Bracket system: The outline is broken down into individual brackets for every action. We build the chapter out from the main actions, then fill in the details using the bracketed summaries as a guide.    If writing is like making a Build-a-Bear, the brackets are that first step where you pick out your favorite empty plush bear skin. The stuffing, in this case, is all of that detail and internality. A bracket might say something like [John has a thought about his mother's cooking before telling Andy that he can't make it to dinner]. To get that out of the brackets, you have to fill in all of the internal bits. What prompted John to think about his mother? Does the restaurant Andy wants to go to serve food like John's mother makes? Does John hate his mother's cooking? Love it? What does that thought tell us about his decision to not go to dinner?   If you're using a word processor that offers the ability to leave comments, those can be a helpful tool for working out the tougher brackets. When tackling harder chunks of the story, we often write out several possible draft paragraphs and leave those as comments on the bracket for the other one to read and weigh in on. Having a second mind can really help cut down on time spent waffling between two ways to describe a guy’s eye color.   Verbal dialogue writing: Everything we put on the page we say out loud first.    It's really that simple. One of the most frequent comments we receive on our collaborative work is that our dialogue feels convincing, human, and realistic, even when it's ridiculous. Every time people talk to each other in the story, we're talking to each other out loud, adjusting until it feels like a conversation that two people would actually have. The whole process of writing can be so overwhelmingly messy, but funnily enough, we think that a big roadblock new writers experience with dialogue is trying to keep it too clean; in real life, people do a lot of half-answers and talking past each other. Some characters might communicate in clear, precise terms, and that's a telling trait! But when we're going for a natural conversation flow (or even a purposefully scattered flow), building the dialogue verbally first goes a long way. This is one of the privileges of writing a collaborative work: there's always someone that knows just as much about the story as you do.   Writing as the characters: We did a lot of character work before starting our book, and we write using the character’s voice rather than our own.    Another comment, or question, we often get is: "How do you keep it from sounding like you've Frankensteined together two different stories?" (Or something to that effect; I can't say anyone has asked in those terms specifically.) The answer to this comes in two parts.   The first part is character guides. We made cheat sheets for every prospective character in our novel which outline the character's general demeanor, how broad their vocabulary is, how they address the other characters, and how various moods, stressors, or changes throughout the story affect all of those things. This, much like the thorough chapter-by-chapter outlines, keeps us on the same page and makes editing way easier. When we’re working on nonfiction works together, we preemptively discuss tone, casualness, and sometimes structure/format of the writing, which seems to be enough.    Two writers, two editors: We write and edit each other's work. Most paragraphs end up being written about 50/50 because of the heavy editing and re-working.   This is the second part of the answer to that cohesion question. We know that we're not going to get it right every time. We also know that we have different strengths and weaknesses, so we made peace with the fact that we both have to trust the other to edit our writing. It can be hard to relinquish control like that, but it's necessary for the process and always ends up better than it would have if we were working separately.   The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Shannon Hautman, a 2025 Bdford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a writing instructor at the University of Cincinnati. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   By Shannon Hautman A few semesters ago, I began re-tooling my FYW course to create a more generous and specific place-based welcome to university-level writing. I wanted to introduce students to rhetoric and multimodality through research and writing that was low-stakes but high impact, collaborative, and relevant to first-years navigating their way through a new environment: their university.  Spanning five weeks with two 80-minute class meetings per week, “Texts on Campus” is an assignment sequence that invites students, firstly, to physically explore our campus and, next, to contribute what they learn to a shared class Google map. Last, students write a one page essay on the campus text they mapped. Throughout this process, students consider their community as a dynamic, rhetorically rich environment while developing the noticing, noting, and critical analysis skills required for a variety of composing practices.  The assignment sequence begins with students reading Melanie Gagich’s “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing” and working in small groups with a range of texts, learning to notice and analyze the five modes of communication: linguistic, visual, spatial, aural, and gestural. As Gagich’s concepts move from the abstract to concrete, there’s distinct excitement in our conversation: students are noticing the messages in their everyday environment and interrogating meaning.  Next, we physically explore the campus in search of multimodal texts that resonate with the students, perhaps engendering a sense of belonging, driving their curiosity, or challenging worldviews. Once each student has selected a text, we work on noting practices, gathering data for our class map entries through photo, video, and/or audio recording, detailed written description, and GPS coordinates.  Back in the classroom, students self-organize thematic groups that represent the layers or categories on their map, and they make collaborative rhetorical choices to determine the design of their layer. Then, each student is responsible for creating a location-specific pin with the media and written data collected during their fieldwork. In the image below, student Nakinah Ward’s map entry features a photograph and brief description of her multimodal text: a “Vote Cthulhu” flyer found on our campus green. The description details the visual, linguistic, and spatial modes present in the text. Nakinah Ward Under the “Student Life + Wellness” map layer, student Darla Kern used multiple video clips to document the multimodal text “Bearcat Friday,” a school spirit event featuring a performance by the University of Cincinnati’s marching band.  Darla Kern As they compose, peers give each other feedback: what types of information would be helpful for others to know if they use the map to locate each text? Is the map entry clear and accessible to readers with varying levels of familiarity with our campus? Knowing that their chosen texts were created for public audiences, they now have an opportunity to engage in their own public and participatory writing process, developing the digital literacy skills Gagich outlines in our anchor reading. When completed, the map is a collective multimodal work that represents the class’s vision of significant texts on campus.  Using concepts and strategies from “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carroll, students transition into composing a one page narrative essay analyzing their text. Because we are working with place-based texts, I invite them to consider the roles of location and context in their writing. Darla wrote about the rhetorical moves associated with location in her analysis of “Bearcats Friday:” I found the location of Bearcat Fridays to be particularly impactful as the text occurs on one of the most busy areas of campus right in the middle of the day when many classes are scheduled. Which ensures a large audience as there are certainly an abundance of students around. This text poses as a reminder of what fun is to come heading into the next day. Everyone passing by interacts with this text in some way as it is nearly impossible to ignore, with the loud music playing and people dancing right on Mainstreet. I personally have such a positive reaction as the text fills me with excitement and encourages school spirit within our community. Darla also notes that because this text recurs on multiple Fridays throughout the semester, it becomes a prominent, consistent message, increasing the potential resonance with the audience.   Nakinah addresses context in the “Vote Cthulhu” flyer, noting our campus atmosphere surrounding the 2024 presidential election: “Politics is considered a sensitive subject for many so treading carefully is wise. The cheeky, sarcastic humor and absurdity of the poster soften the edge of how nerve-wracking and truly important picking politicians are. With a sense of nihilism, it criticizes an interesting group of people: apolitical Americans.” Nakinah found that humor acts as an approachable entry point “forc[ing] the audience to think about their power and the complexities and intricacies of their morality.”  “Texts on Campus” is a foundational pedagogy in my FYW classes because it provides multiple low stakes (and fun!) opportunities for students to engage with threshold concepts. Most importantly, it invites connection to physical places, to peers, and to writing. At the end of the unit, some students share that their mapped text has become a meaningful place for them. Others most enjoy the process of exploration and documentation. Many point to their gained awareness for message and meaning in the world around them. As a student enthusiastically shared, “Rhetoric is everywhere. Now I know how to look for it and analyze it.”     Many thanks to University of Cincinnati FYW students Nakinah Ward and Darla Kern for permission to use their work.    Works Cited Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 1, edited by Charley Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 45-58.  Gagich, Melanie. “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 3, edited by Dana Driscoll, Mary Stewart, and Matthew Vetter, Parlor Press, 2020, pp. 65-85.   Further Reading Santee, J. “Cartographic Composition Across the Curriculum: Promoting Cartographic Literacy Using Maps As Multimodal Texts”. Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, vol. 6, no. 2, Aug. 2022, doi:10.31719/pjaw.v6i2.95.  Santee, Joy. “‘Maps Are Cool’: Investigating the Potentials for Map-Making in Multimodal Pedagogies.” Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, 21 Feb. 2021, www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2022/02/21/maps-are-cool-investigating-the-potentials-for-map-making-in-multimodal-pedagogies/.    The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

By Jasmine Rodriguez    “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.” —Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop   The email subject line was simple: “Publication Request.” It was from Michael Bell, a Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) UWW graduate from Stateville Correctional Center. What followed in his letter was an invitation that would profoundly shift my understanding of powerful storytelling and community impact: a request to help produce and digitize “Mic Drop,” a 32-page manuscript brimming with the unheard voices of Stateville. As an editor for the Student Media Board (SMB) at NEIU, I had gained hands-on publishing experience, but this project was different. It wasn’t just about technical skills; it was about honoring Michael’s vision to ensure these critical stories were told by the authors themselves. And in that moment, as I held the first issue of “Mic Drop”—filled with handwritten reflections and deeply personal narratives—I knew this was a mirror and a window we absolutely had to share with the world. “Mic Drop” isn't just a collection of writings; it's a testament to the power of self-expression born from Michael’s own initiative, not an academic assignment. It chronicles the experiences within the Rebirth of Sound (ROS) Studio, an accredited music program at Stateville. Let me take you on a tour inside this powerful newsletter, highlighting two pieces that particularly resonated and exemplify the profound insights Macmillan Bits’ readers can gain from these voices. One compelling reflection comes from Yarmale Thomas, a member of ROS's first cohort. He shares his experience creating a song to raise awareness about parole in Illinois, as part of the “Bring It Back” campaign. Thomas recounted witnessing rappers like Chance the Rapper urging lawmakers to reintroduce a parole system. He describes how “R.O.S. has given the opportunity to experience the power of music creation, positive reinforcement, and brotherhood where our voices are heard and captured and shared with the world.” His words powerfully illustrate the transformative impact of music on incarcerated students’ lives and how creative expression can overcome communication barriers, offering valuable lessons on the reach of powerful storytelling. Thomas’s story perfectly encapsulates how community-driven artistic endeavors provide vital opportunities for individuals to voice personal and collective concerns. Another powerful perspective is found in the “At The Roundtable” section, with an article titled “The Round Table” by DeCedrick Walker, a member of ROS's third cohort. Walker describes the roundtable as a regular practice in ROS, where participants check in before and after music-making sessions. He discloses a moment when a member shared their advanced stage of cancer diagnosis. In that moment, they were “collectively angry, empathetic, and attentive” and realized the “need for the roundtable” for moments to connect and support each other. This piece highlights how these spaces foster profound connection and emotional support within a carceral setting, demonstrating the crucial role that community and empathy play in personal growth and resilience. This collective sharing also points to how these engagements create “rhizomatic affective spaces” in prison, allowing participants to find moments of mental escape and positive connection that make the experience more tolerable. Throughout the process of producing “Mic Drop,” the pedagogical takeaways were immense. A key aspect was the unwavering commitment to incorporating student feedback on both content and design choices. Michael Bell provided us with reference newsletters made by incarcerated students in the Illinois Department of Corrections, and we meticulously followed the ROS students’ directions. This meant focusing on the visual appeal of a color-coding system for sections, incorporating high-quality images as storytelling elements, and increasing font size for better readability — all decisions driven by their invaluable input. This facilitator approach ensured the newsletter truly reflected their vision and voices, empowering the writers with agency over their own work – a critical lesson for anyone involved in publishing or education. “Mic Drop” newsletter served a similar function to other contemplative methods used in carceral-university writing partnerships, acting as a tangible artifact of the deep rhetorical listening and reflective writing that occurred within the ROS program. Ultimately, “Mic Drop” is more than just a newsletter; it's a profound demonstration of how self-published works from unexpected places can offer vital insights into the human experience. For those of us in publishing, education, or any field committed to social justice, it serves as a powerful reminder of the immense talent and unique perspectives that exist when we truly commit to amplifying marginalized voices. Supporting projects like “Mic Drop”—whether as readers, advisors, or by seeking out similar publications—allows us to bridge divides, challenge preconceptions, and ensure that these essential “mirrors and windows” are available to everyone. It highlights the importance of community-engaged projects and offers inspiration for opportunities to get involved in ensuring diverse voices find their platform.   This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Jasmine Rodriguez, a 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a Master’s student at Northeastern Illinois University, where she is active on the Student Media Board. Learn more and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.     Work Cited Bishop, Rudine Sims. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1990, https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf. Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra. “Daring to Question: A Philosophical Critique of Community Music.” Philosophy of Music Education Review, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2016, pp. 113–30. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2979/philmusieducrevi.24.2.01. Kougiali, Zetta, et al. “Rhizomatic Affective Spaces and the Therapeutic Potential of Music in Prison: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis.” Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 1–28. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2017.1359710. Moseley, Sarah. “Contemplative Methods for Prison-University Writing Partnerships: Building Sangha Through ‘The Om Exchange.’” Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic  Writing & Service Learning, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2019, pp. 118–33. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=d28d2662-b2b3-31cc-b011-48b7bd2ca501.     ... View more

By Heather Martin   This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Heather Martin, a 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a teaching professor at the University of Denver. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   Each year, the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS) brings teachers, scholars, and writers to Marquette University to share ideas about teaching writing in innovative and inclusive ways. In 2025, the WIS opened with a plenary roundtable, "Food as the First Ingredient," which was a conversation about place, food memories, and community activism. As an attendee, I was struck not just by the panelists’ stories, but by their presence. Moderated by Ashley Beardsley, the conversation between Caitlin Cullen, Gregory León, and Ryan Castelaz wasn’t just about food; it was about survival, mutual responsibility, and the invisible work of community care. Their reflections on the early days of COVID—how they scrambled to keep their restaurants open while feeding their neighbors—offered a moving example of what it means to show up for one another.   The panelists’ insights stayed with me this academic year, especially as I considered how presence fosters connection in my research-writing course, WRIT 1133: Food for Thought—and Writing. A research-writing course at the University of Denver, my sections of WRIT 1133 are both food themed and community engaged. Enrolled students explore food rhetorics through original research and collaboration with local food-justice and food-access organizations. Over the 10-week spring term, my students partnered with organizations including Café 180 (a pay-what-you-can restaurant), Slow Food Denver (which advocates for good, clean, and fair food), and We Don’t Waste (a food recovery and distribution nonprofit), among others. These partnerships grounded student research in real communities and real problems. But more than that, they modeled a way of learning that depends on care, responsiveness, and relational presence.   At Café 180, students worked shifts alongside staff, learning firsthand what it means to create a dignified space for people to eat—regardless of their ability to pay. With Slow Food Denver, they supported afterschool cooking classes that teach kids to prepare and enjoy healthy food, while gaining insight into the challenges of food education and access. Other students supported staff at We Don’t Waste, packing grocery items and accompanying food rescue trucks as they recovered and redistributed food across the city.   Again and again, my students found themselves returning to a central question: How can writing nourish a community?   Our classroom became a kind of test kitchen. As students drafted researcher positionality statements, interview questions, and policy briefs, they learned a kind of intellectual hospitality. They invited community voices into their writing, challenged their own assumptions, and began to see research not as a static product, but as a living conversation. In their final reflections, students reported changed relationships to food—but also to writing, activism, and each other.   This approach aligns with inspiring models of integrative learning I’ve found elsewhere. A compelling example is the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy (sometimes called Slow Food University). There, food is not merely a subject of study but a lens through which to tackle urgent questions of climate change, justice, and sustainability. The curriculum draws on anthropology, ecology, economics, and storytelling, among other disciplines. Students engage in fieldwork with producers and cooks, develop deep knowledge of place, and come to see the table not just as a cultural artifact but as a problem-solving space.   I find this model instructive, especially for community-engaged writing. Like the restaurateurs on the WIS panel, who showed up with care and commitment to their communities, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini reminds us that slow food balances pleasure with responsibility. This balance invites students to show up fully and engage with presence—a practice that shapes how we read, write, and connect.   I’ve come to think of my classroom as a place where students don’t just analyze food systems; they metabolize them. They digest the contradictions, the policy gaps, and the lived experiences of hunger and access. In so doing, they develop a capacity for empathy that is both intellectual and embodied. And, crucially, they begin to understand that writing is not a solitary act but a shared meal—one that sustains, connects, and calls us to action.   In a time when both students and instructors are reckoning with disconnection, burnout, and institutional precarity, we need pedagogies that nourish. Community-engaged writing offers one such path. It requires presence, humility, and a willingness to be changed by what we encounter. Like any good meal, it takes time. But it also feeds something essential.   The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

By: Jenn Fishman and Darci Thoune This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Learn more below from academic aunties—and WIS leadership—Darci Thoune and Jenn Fishman. Also look for posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   The Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS) ‘25 theme, Mise en Place, emerged—as many good ideas do—from a conversation we had not long after the 2023 WIS. As food obsessives and writers, we were drawn to how this concept works as not only a literal approach to getting things in place as we prepare to cook but also as a metaphor for how we get ourselves ready to write. What better way, we asked each other, to pull so many of the things we love into conversation? Also, like past symposium themes, from Connect! to Writing as ________, Mise en Place seemed like the kind of phrase that would bring people together in delicious ways for the 2025 symposium. If we imagine each WIS as a two-day feast, with colleagues from across the country and around the world gathered together at a great table, two of our most beloved dining companions are colleagues from Macmillan, Laura Davidson and Joy Fisher Williams. Thanks to them, we are able to invite 3-6 early career colleagues to join WIS each year. Through our partnership with them, in 2022 we launched the Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows Program, which offers recipients mentorship and need-based financial support to attend the symposium as well as an opportunity to publish here in the Bits Blog. Over 4 years, the program has grown and grown, and in 2025, we welcomed our largest cohort and our first undergraduate B/SM WIS Fellows. The roster includes: Heather Martin, a teaching professor at the University of Denver who shared her WIS flashtalk, “Nourishing Belonging: Using Researcher Positionality Statements to Advance Student Wellbeing.” Holly E. Burgess, a returning fellow and doctoral candidate at Marquette who teaches first-year writing and researches African American literature, hip hop studies, and social movements. Jasmine Rodriguez, a Master's student at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) and Managing Editor and Senior Copy Editor of NEIU’s student newspaper, the Independent, who shared her WIS installation ‘“Mic Drop’ : A Collaborative Newsletter to Empower Incarcerated Students.” Shannon Hautman, an instructor at the University of Cincinnati who shared her WIS flashtalk, “Texts on Campus: Composing with Maps.” Sonakshi Srivastava , a returning fellow and writing tutor at Ashoka University in Sonepat, India, who shared her WIS flashtalk, “Spread the Deck: On Intuitive Writing.” Raegan Gronseth, a recent graduate of Marquette University who studied writing-intensive English as well as anthropology and theology, who is currently co-writing a novel with Marshall Kopacki. Marshall Kopacki, an MFA Fiction student at the University of Colorado at Boulder and recent graduate of Marquette University with a B.A. in Writing-Intensive English and Theology who is currently co-writing a novel with Raegan Gronseth.   This group attended WIS ‘25 both onsite and online, and they made vital contributions as writers, scholars, teachers, and colleagues. Before, during, and after the symposium, they were mentored by members of the 2025 WIS Steering Committee, including Gitte Frandsen, Jenna Green, Jessie Wirkus Haynes, Max Gray, and Nora Boxer. One of our goals with each WIS is to invite as many people as possible to join us at the proverbial table, where conversation flows, and ideas change as they are exchanged, and our goals as writers and writing educators become that much more possible to achieve. The Macmillan-WIS partnership enables us to turn aspirations into realities, as blog posts by this year’s B/SM WIS Fellows show. Bits contributions by Heather Martin, Jasmine Rodriguez, Sonakshi Srivastava, Shannon Hautman, Marshall Kopacki and Raegan Gronseth set the table for conversations that extend from the kitchen and the classroom to the community and beyond. We invite you to follow the tags for WIS and writing innovation, where you’ll find additional insights from past B/SM WIS Fellows and others. Through 10/24, which is the application due date, we invite colleagues to learn about the 2026 fellows opportunity. We also invite readers from near and far to watch the symposium website for information about how to attend WIS ‘26 either online or onsite January 29th and 30th. As in years past, the program simmers with opportunities, and however you are able to join us, we look forward to welcoming you in! The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

By Jenn Fishman and Darci Thoune This is the first post in a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Learn more below from Chief Capacitator Jenn Fishman and WIS heart and soul Darci Thoune. Also look for posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   The 2025 Writing Innovation Symposium was the 7th we’ve hosted since 2018. This time our theme grew out of questions we had for anyone and everyone who writes: How do you get ready? What—if anything—do you do, assemble, or otherwise prepare ahead of time? What shapes your practices? And what makes you break or revise any patterns you follow? We were motivated by more than idle curiosity. The writers and writing educators who attend “the WIS” each year bring keen interest in all things writing. Our group includes undergraduates and graduate students, some new to writing instruction, others serving as assistant directors in writing centers or programs. WISters are also faculty of various ranks, roles, and years of experience at 2- and 4-year colleges and universities. Some WISters work in campus libraries; others direct academic and arts outreach efforts. Close to three-quarters of participants attend onsite at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, and the rest log on from coast to coast in North America and from locations as far flung (so far) as the UK and India. Our questions about prep apply to cooking as well as writing, and that’s no accident. The WIS has always been a food-forward event. We like a little nosh during our Thursday morning write-on-sites, and we relish the hors d'oeuvres served during our Thursday reception and poster session. The coffee and tea flow throughout the symposium; we start Fridays with breakfast sandwiches; and no one leaves that afternoon without a boxed lunch. Too, thanks to the generosity of Macmillan Learning, we treat each cohort of Bedford/St. Martin WIS Fellows to a family-style meal across town at Braise, where (among other things) the mushroom risotto is renowned. Given all of the above, it was just a matter of time until our theme was mise en place. The phrase names the practice of gathering or preparing ingredients and equipment ahead of time, before starting to cook. The great French chef Auguste Escoffier gets credit for coining mise en place and for establishing the protocols that have been associated with it since the late nineteenth century. Of course, there is controversy. While mise en place is a mainstay in professional kitchens, opinion is divided among home cooks. While some like to set up everything just so before turning on the first burner, others prefer to prepare as they go, slicing and dicing in between stirring and popping dishes in and out of the oven. Notably, the WIS is less about taking sides and more about exploring the year’s theme, and WIS ‘25 was no different. To make the most of mise en place, we started with a plenary roundtable led by Ashley Beardsley. She directs the writing center at UMass Dartmouth, and her research spans from food media to sourdough rhetorics. At the WIS, she led everyone in an initial mad libs-style getting-to-know-you exercise, and she facilitated a thought-provoking conversation among three luminaries from the Milwaukee food scene. The roster included 2 James Beard-nominated stalwarts, Ryan Castelaz (Discourse Coffee Workshop, Agency Cocktail Lounge) and Gregory León (Amilinda). Joined by Caitlin Cullin, the true mensch of the group (Tandem, Kinship Community Food Center), they talked about everything from their favorite Wisconsin dishes to the politics of food, the ethics of hospitality as an industry, and the ways culinary workers can be agents of change in their communities. The mainstay at WIS is concurrent sessions, which feature either panels of 5-minute flashtalks or 75-minute workshops. In 2025, the former, flashtalks, included menus for belonging, potluck approaches to curriculum design, and strategies for using stories about meals to spark questions and related research. The latter, workshops, gave participants opportunities to roll up their sleeves and try new approaches to activities such as assessment, visualizing data, writing with AI, and writing personal stories, whether autoethnographies or personal statements. Additionally, Macmillan sponsored a workshop on transnationalizing first-year writing led by Lauren Rosenberg. The author of a custom-published Macmillan textbook, she directs the award-winning first-year composition program at the University of Texas-El Paso. Flashtalks and workshops are not the only WIS genres, however. We now have 2 just for undergraduate writers: 3-minute flares, which we introduced at WIS ‘24, and 30-second sparks, which were new to WIS ‘25. Both are audio or audiovisual compositions, which enable undergrads to pre-record their contributions and participate asynchronously as well as at no charge. An overview of the genres along with the 2026 prompts are available online; submissions are due 11/21. Annually, our reception features posters and interactive displays. In 2025, they addressed topics as varied as picture books and narrative writing, creative data visualization, digital literacy, and new materialist feminist rhetorical praxes, which took the form of #ConferenceCreatures. In addition, in 2025 the WIS boasted not one but two installations. Together, historians Amanda Seligman and Lillian Pachner reanimated successive years of live tweets by students in a UW-Milwaukee course dedicated to recovering and retelling the city’s history. Through their work, events such as the first official weather forecast in the US and the birth of Zero, a legendary polar bear, went live once again. In addition, Jasmine Rodriguez shared the first issue of “Mic Drop,” a newsletter about the transformative power of music, written and illustrated by incarcerated students at Stateville Correctional Center. Her installation showcased how creative work can foster communication across both real and metaphorical barriers. No surprise, no one left WIS ‘25 hungry or empty handed. Instead, WIS ‘25 souvenirs included copies of The WIS Community Cookbook. With 34 recipes from symposium participants 2018-2025, our spiral bound book is the latest published manifestation of the WIS. It includes recipes for cocktails, kombucha, and coffee drinks; campus collaboration, blues harp, and humble pie; deviled eggs, salmon cakes, and anise animal cookies; stir fry tomato eggs, fried gizzards, and besan pinni. From “Chef’s Frosted Flakes Supreme” to “How to Make a COVID-19 Commemorative Quilt” and “Agnes’s ‘Nice’ Dinner,” our book captures both the spirit of the WIS community and some of the many, many ways that writing nourishes and sustains us all. If your curiosity or your appetite is piqued, join us for WIS ‘26. Our theme, artifact, invites prospective participants to think about how writing triangulates with art and facts, and special features will include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals for flashtalks, workshops, posters, displays, and installations as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; recorded sparks and flares are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.   The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026. ... View more

by Jenn Fishman This is a post in an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach held annually in Milwaukee, WI. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” On the 5th anniversary of the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), we held a series of conversations for a 2023 issue of Community Literacy Journal. In one of them, a dialogue about “Takeaways,” WIS Steering Committee member Aleisha Balestri describes the 5-minute flashtalk she gave at WIS ‘22. It was about her efforts to “vex” faculty-only conversations about students’ engagement with writing at the College of DuPage, where she teaches. Her strategy was as direct as it was elegant in its simplicity: she invited students to participate, resulting in “a very powerful conversation.”  Aleisha concludes her remarks by saying: “I would love to see WIS bring students to the forefront,” and all of us on the WIS Steering Committee agreed. Although undergraduate writers participated in the first three symposia (2018-2020), they did not return when WIS came back from a year-long, COVID-compelled hiatus. As a result, undergraduate writers were not part of the first hybrid symposium, “Writing As ______,” in 2022 or “Write it Out” in 2023. Likewise, they did not benefit from the company of the first two cohorts of Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows or the first international WIS attendees.  The literature on undergraduate research in writing studies helps explain what happened. In The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies, Sophia Abbot, Hannah Bellowoar, and Eric E. Hall discuss some of the many internal and external challenges that mentors of undergraduate researchers face. The list includes everything from lack of time outside the classroom to lack of material support. Writing instructors and administrators who organize course- or program-related showcases experience similar difficulties, even though the rewards for helping undergraduate writers go public are great. It’s no mistake that undergraduate research is one of the original high impact educational practices, and we’ve all seen students gain not only confidence but also intellectual and proto-professional insight when their writing circulates through publications or presentations delivered beyond the classroom With all of the above in mind, we committed to welcoming undergraduates back to the symposium in 2024. Full credit goes to Max Gray, a digital scholarship librarian at Marquette University and a WIS Steering Committee member, for the lightbulb moment that made it possible. Max suggested going digital and inviting undergrads to share pre-recorded, audio and video compositions, which could be featured both during and after each WIS. Running with that idea, Aleisha, Max, and I dreamt up a new program genre, the 3-minute flare, and the rest is WIS history. In 2024 the WIS theme was “Writing Human/s,” and the flares we received were a testament to how much humanness can be conveyed in 120 seconds of writing. Click through our digital showcase and find a love letter, a villanelle, and other poetry. Listen to ruminations on AI, COVID, and group communication as well as penmanship and writing in nature. Meet students who are haunted by writing and tormented by writer’s block. Their flares burn alongside those by students who are grounded and comforted by writing as “the light [they] turn to in the darkness.” Contributors span first-year students and super seniors. They are majors in everything from English to engineering and psychology, and they identify many ways, including as writers and readers-turned-writers. Together, the first cache of WIS flares confirms there may be no more powerful string of words than the declaration: “I am a writer.” Looking ahead to WIS ‘25, we invite you and your students to contribute. The importance of writing educators—teachers, mentors, and advisors—is legible in the flares we received as well as the shoutouts that authors gave to the teachers and mentors who supported their efforts, including Darcie Thoune at UW-La Crosse, Kat O’Meara and Laurie MacDiarmid at St. Norbert College, and Nila Horner at Michigan Tech.  The WIS ‘25 theme is mise en place, the culinary term for putting everything in place before starting to cook, especially in a professional kitchen. We’ve adopted this phrase as not only a metaphor for getting ready to write but also a pathway to exploring the interrelationships between writing and food. In addition, we have cooked up a second genre for undergraduate writers. To complement 3-minute flares we are also inviting 30-second sparks.  You and yours are cordially invited to join us. The prompts for flares and sparks as well as a proposal guide are available online, and submissions are due 12/13. Proposals for other WIS genres—flashtalks, workshops, posters, artifacts, displays, performances, and installations—are due 10/25. Registration opens in early November.  ... View more

by Darci Thoune, Kelly Blewett, and Kat O’Meara   This post is part of an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach that meets annually online and in Milwaukee, WI, led by Chief Capacitator Jenn Fishman. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”   As others have explored in previous posts about the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), part of its success has always been rooted in our commitment to the small. In many ways, we’re fortunate to be in a field that offers such a spectrum of professional development opportunities (flagship conferences, regional conferences, webinars, publications). And we imagine our small gathering, with its emphasis on writing innovation, community-building, and mentoring, as complementary to this abundance of opportunity in the field. Events like the WIS, because it’s small, can cater to particular needs, interests and whims of writing instructors in our corner of academia. We’re not the only ones doing this work though. Organizations like the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) have been successfully marshaling the small for decades with their regional affiliates program and, more recently, with their decision to hold one-day regional gatherings in summer of 2024 in lieu of holding a national conference. Glimpsing Regional Conferences and Affiliates within CWPA Kelly Blewett, WPA at Indiana University East and current president of CWPA CWPA’s decision to hold regional conferences in 2024 was informed by our commitment to the small. It’s so valuable for WPAs in a particular region to come together officially and under the banner of larger organizations to connect, trade information, and think together about the work we do. We modeled these regional events on a longstanding event hosted by the Carolinas affiliate called “Meeting in the Middle,” which, incredibly, just held its 18th annual gathering last February. Wendy Sharer, a current editor of WPA Journal who is a member of that affiliate, explained what makes that annual event work so well: it is affordable, interactive, has a social component built around ample breaks, shared meals, and people can attend within an easy driving distance. A small ad hoc regional conference committee, which included both Wendy and me, built these components into the call for the CWPA regional events in 2024. From Florida to Maryland to Wisconsin to Illinois to Texas, WPAs gathered, to learn, to connect. Connecting like this doesn’t have to require a lot of work. As Wendy pointed out, sessions built around a prompt like “Share a problem that your program is currently working on” often lead to rich, vibrant discussion that require little advance preparation.t is tremendously valuable to know the people who are WPAing around you, and I think that’s why we currently have 14 affiliates within CWPA. (Applications are always open for more.)  As a WPA myself, I’ve informally met several of my counterparts at local events and while there is some crossover among the Indiana writing programs, I am a firm believer that more crossover would be a good thing for everyone. When I think about the next chapter of my own career, fostering an Indiana affiliate program is on my list of things to do, and I’m grateful that such an affiliate could be endorsed and supported by the CWPA. Small But Mighty—A Regional Collaboration in Wisconsin Kat O’Meara, WPA at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI   Darci and I formally established the Wisconsin Affiliate through CWPA in 2021, but our small but mighty collection of Wisco WPAs did not formally meet until the opportunity arose for regional conferences this summer of 2024. This event was super exciting to plan, and we decided to take a “less is more” approach, considering it was our inaugural session. We had two goals for the day: To establish a foundation for our Wisco Affiliate, and to use this precious time together to collaborate on WPA projects and issues. We coordinated a space at St. Norbert College utilizing our $500 WPA Affiliate start-up grant (offered to all new affiliates!), and we procured catering from a local sandwich shop in De Pere, Wisconsin. And perhaps the most exciting detail (for Darci and me) was the creation of a WI WPA t-shirt for all attendees to take home with them. To our surprise and delight, a solid dozen WPAs from all over Wisconsin heeded the call. We were a vibrant, interesting collection of administrators hailing from four-year public universities, mid-sized private universities, technical colleges, and small liberal arts colleges. The common threads, of course, were our ties to the Dairy State and the college student writers we all serve. After brief introductions, each attendee shared a WPA-specific project (or problem) to see where we could find through-lines and connections, and to offer initial strategies and support. The “projects and problems” brainstorm revealed some common woes: helping all faculty see themselves as writing teachers, rising numbers of students who need more foundational writing and academic support, balancing expertise and power with general austerity across changing institutional landscapes. But what also emerged were hopeful commonalities like our mutual desire for sharing resources (for placement, for teaching research skills) and how we can lean on one another across the state—even if we are each at our own institutions. While we have a long way to go before the Wisco Affiliate is on the level with a longstanding affiliate like Carolinas, the July meeting was an imperative first step toward some authentic statewide collaboration, and I’m so glad we did it. In hindsight, I’m proud of the foundation Darci and I were able to lay in July, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with fellow writing program administrators with the support of the CWPA.   The theme for WIS ‘25 is mise en place, a culinary term for putting things in place before cooking, especially in a professional kitchen. For us, it’s a metaphor for getting ready to write as well as a pathway to exploring the interrelationship between writing and food. Join us online or in Milwaukee, WI, January 30-31, 2025. Proposals are welcome through 10/25 and, for undergraduate writers, through 12/13. Registration opens in early November. ... View more

by Jessie Wirkus Haynes and Jenn Fishman This post is part of an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach organized by a group of cross-institutional colleagues including Jessie and Jenn. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”    It’s no secret that professional conferences can be inaccessible in myriad ways. Too often they cost too much physically as well as financially, and panels of 3 to 5 people reading 15- to 20-minute papers can be difficult—or impossible—to follow without a range of resources that are not always readily available. What so many of us want —and feel we need—are opportunities to connect with colleagues and share ideas. Whether online or onsite, we hunger to have the kinds of back-and-forths that spark on-the-spot aha moments, spur and deepen professional relations, and enable new teaching and research possibilities.    That’s what motivated us to collaborate with campus colleagues Elizabeth Gibes and Kelsey Otero to start the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS) in 2018. At the time, Elizabeth was a digital scholarship and research librarian, and Kelsey helmed Marquette’s Social Innovation Initiative. Through our cross-disciplinary collaboration, we founded an event that features short talks, hands-on workshops, and multiple formal and informal opportunities to interact over the course of two days. For us, it was a recipe that worked, and participants over the years have described WIS as a respite, a space for reflection, a good venue for trying out new things, and a place where participants of all ranks, roles, and career stages can find inspiration as well as space for growth and change.    A key part of the WIS process is the post-symposium debrief, where the Steering Committee meets to discuss the immediate past WIS and look ahead to the next. One of the latest innovations to emerge from these discussions is the WIS satellite. The idea is to share the spirit of WIS beyond the annual 2-day symposium by inviting past participants to lead WIS-related happenings at their home institutions. As a group, we liked the idea of expanding access to WIS through additional events, and we were eager to find out how satellites could be tailored to suit different campuses’ and communities’ interests and needs. In particular, we hoped satellites might encourage interdepartmental and local cross-institutional collaborations around writing and writing education.    Thanks to Jessie’s initiative and leadership, her campus, Bellin College, hosted the first WIS satellite on March 18th, 2024. Bellin is a private college specializing in healthcare education in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As Jessie recalls:    When the WIS steering committee suggested an expansion into satellite events, I knew that Bellin College was the perfect place for this to happen. Often, in the STEM or healthcare settings, students and faculty can forget the importance of writing. As the lone English faculty member at the institution, I am highly invested in sharing the importance of writing for the healthcare professions to emphasize that writing isn’t just grammar or citation styles like APA; rather, it is an everyday practice, including charting, narrative medicine, professional research, literature reviews, research critiques, scholarly papers (and more). By effectively learning rhetoric and writing, students learn how to communicate successfully with a diverse set of patients, making healthcare more effective, compassionate, and equitable. My desire was both to innovate and to collaborate: I want students and faculty to think about writing as critical thinking, to see the humanities as a necessary part of healthcare, something that creates empathy and the ability to successfully interact with patients, caregivers, co-workers, and organizations.   Bellin College was extremely supportive of this idea, and Dr. Casey Rentmeester, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Academic Success, played a huge role in making this an interdisciplinary event as he spoke of empathy, philosophy, and the importance of the humanities in the healthcare field. In addition, I wanted to bring the satellite back to my WIS roots, so I asked Dr. Lilly Campbell, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University and Director of Foundations Instruction, to speak on her recent research about empathy and working with simulations in healthcare settings. I also encouraged students to share their experiences with writing, focusing on how writing has affected them both as students and as current/future healthcare providers. Most importantly, I wanted the event to end with discussion, thought, and a collaborative sharing of ideas and ways to improve. My goal was to set up an event that focused on writing and the humanities in healthcare as ways to improve empathy, critical thought, and, as a result, healthcare outcomes.   The reactions to our satellite surpassed expectations, thanks, in large part, to the inspiring talks by Dr. Rentmeester and Dr. Campbell as well as the work done by our administrative assistant, Mary Roffers. The satellite allowed us to focus on the specific institutional needs of a college focused on healthcare during a 90 minute session, which could be attended live or virtually. The audience consisted mainly of students with several faculty and staff members, but it was a collaborative and energizing experience that will help change and shape our next generation of providers. Students talked about it for weeks afterwards, and I’ve had many students tell me that they thought they were merely healthcare students, but they realize now that they are also writers. "Blinn College in Bryan, TX IMG 1035" by Billy Hathorn at en.wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The Bellin College WIS satellite is just the beginning. Already, Jessie and her colleagues are planning the next one, and colleagues around the country have been considering how a WIS satellite might help them amplify ongoing efforts or jump-start long-time plans. There are many organizational offshoots that offer parallel opportunities, including National Writing Project sites, Rhetoric Society of America student chapters, and Council of Writing Program Administrators regional affiliates. We encourage Bedford Bits readers to connect with the organizations in your orbit and then dream big through small conferences, symposia, and professional meetings.   The theme for WIS ‘25 is mise en place, a culinary term for putting things in place before cooking, especially in a professional kitchen. For us, it’s a metaphor for getting ready to write as well as a pathway to exploring the interrelationship between writing and food. Join us online or in Milwaukee, WI, January 30-31, 2025. Proposals are welcome through 10/25 and, for undergraduate writers, through 12/13. Registration opens in early November.  ... View more

by Sonakshi Srivastava, Ashoka University This post is part of an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach that takes place annually online and in Milwaukee, WI. In 2024, Sona was a Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellow. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” In July of 2023, I made my debut as a teacher in a classroom. Up until then, I had been comfortable with my position as a writing tutor—looking at students’ scripts, working with them on polishing their drafts, completing their essays and the like but the summer of 2023 warmed me up to a different experience and experiment in my tutor life. My duty as a teacher, then, included teaching English to a cohort of some twenty students as a part of my university’s pedagogical programme, the Academic Bridge Programme (at Ashoka University). As the name suggests, the programme is intended to help students transition smoothly from school to college and places particular emphasis on English writing and speaking skills. With this particular intent in mind, I curated a curriculum that sought to invite the young minds to a world of curiosity and critical thinking. And, as a scholar of reading and attention, I dedicated a whole module to this specific strand with readings taken from the works of Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein) and Sandra Cisneros. In total honesty, I was supremely proud of my curation—the naïve thrill of a first-time curriculum designer was hard to contain, so much so that I had already pictured my students smitten with the select excerpts, awed by the creative spill of words on paper. I was so read-y for this! However, as much as I was prepared to teach, I was also anxious about the reception and to some extent, my fear was founded. I had misread the class. In their seminal pedagogical work How to Read a Book, pivoted around critical reading, Charles Van Doren and Mortimer J. Adler regard the reader as important as the writer. They compare this relational importance through the analogy of a pitch, a ball and the players. They compare the pitcher to the writer, the fielder to the reader, and the ball to the text. In that, the text as the ball is passive, and it is the sum total of the activity between the pitcher and the fielder that gives meaning to the receiving or the missing of the ball. What is implied here then is that the ball may be missed or received – the onus of this acceptance or rejection depends heavily on the reader as the fielder. And this is what the act of reading eventually condenses to. The text is a complex object set forth in action by the writer. It is the task of the reader to “catch” the writer’s intentions. What if Adler and Doren’s intention, set for the reader-writer relationship, were to manifest in a classroom? What if the writer exchanged places with a teacher in this analogy? These ifs found an answer through me. I, the teacher, had the ball rolling by prescribing the readings. My students, the readers, had failed to catch them—and this fault here was mine to claim. It was not them who had misunderstood or misread the texts. It was I, who had failed them and the texts in a classroom by misreading them. I can talk about this failure of mine because my being as a teacher stood challenged that particular day. This challenge is further fuelled by my reflection on Adler and Doren’s analogy which gracefully saves the writers from the act of reading or misreading the text by their readers. What possibilities would emerge if a teacher recognizes their shortcomings in a classroom? What if it is not the fielder’s error but an error by the pitcher? Since time was limited, and the course set, I had to come up with an alternative approach to the text. Over the course of a week, we worked together in different languages—switching between Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Khari, and English. We workshopped Cisneros’ story in our native tongues and connected it to stories that we had grown up listening or reading. Interestingly enough, the idea that the students are less “fluent” in English was also circumvented, prompting me to think if the assumption about their “fluency” was typecasted because of certain attributes (hailing from Tier-2 or Tier-3 cities, educated in state board schools etc.) that they had failed. The students were proficient in English—and where the vernaculars failed, English—no matter how “broken”, how “unpolished” brought our ideas and us together. Everyday, then, was a navigation through translation in that class, and that made all the difference. An initial challenge that channeled into a lesson for me not only as a teacher but also a translator. This was praxis. As I transition in my tutor role, from one ABP cohort to another, I cannot help but reflect how being in and reading with the classroom has influenced my perspective(s) on teaching. I think of it through the triad of the Cs—connect, correspond, and collaborate. To not think less of the students but to think with them and through them. A classroom is the most fertile field where a critical mind may flourish. And to think of it, perhaps this is what the pitcher and the fielder should do with the ball – approach it in the spirit of collaboration—one where we are not playing against one another but with one another. References Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. Simon and Schuster, 2011. The theme for WIS ‘25 is mise en place, a culinary term for putting things in place before cooking, especially in a professional kitchen. For us, it’s a metaphor for getting ready to write as well as a pathway to exploring the interrelationship between writing and food. Join us online or in Milwaukee, WI, January 30-31, 2025. Proposals are welcome through 10/25 and, for undergraduate writers, through 12/13. Registration opens in early November. ... View more

by Saurabh Anand, University of Georgia This post is part of an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach that takes place annually online and in Milwaukee, WI. In 2024, Saurabh was a Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellow. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” "POETRY SOCIETY POSTCARD" by summonedbyfells is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Poetry and the topic of teaching poetry to multilingual writers are both very personal for me. As a poet and a person of color with an immigrant background, I often share my story with my students along with some of the poetry that is important to me. Recently, for example, I enjoyed reading Postcolonial Banter (2019) by British Muslim poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan. I connected in particular with her narratives of white supremacy (in her case, the U.K.). For example, in her poems "This Is Not A Humanising Poem" and "British Values," Manzoor-Khan resists positivist ways of thinking by showcasing the multiplicity of voices, experiences, and truths. The multilingual students in my classes have found her poems especially relevant. I think of one student in particular, Sonam (a pseudonym). After reading Manzoor-Khan's works, including her poem “A Cold Funeral of the Authentic Muslim Woman,” and listening to her TED talk, "I'm Bored of Talking about Muslim Women," Sonam wrote about her own journey. In a resilient reflection, she centered what it is like to be a Brown Muslim woman who wears a Hijab in the U.S. South, explaining her experience is an American truth, too. As Sonam confided to me, Manzoor-Khan's work gave her legitimation and authority to write about her own experiences. I cherish such moments, and the power poetry can have for multilingual students in my writing classes. However, I recognize that inviting poetry into the writing classroom can require strategic thinking. In writing courses I teach, I refer to exercises from Mike Palmquist’s The Bedford Researcher (2021) to introduce poetry as part of brainstorming activities for literacy narratives and other story-based genres. For example, I have assigned poems such as “Dhaka Dust” by Dilruba Ahmed, “Birth” by Fady Joudah, and “The African Burial Ground” by Yusef Komunyakaa. Then, as they develop literacy narratives, I ask students to respond to the following questions about what they read: What/who prompted you to think about in your life or someone you know based on what is happening in the poem? If you have to summarize the poem about the genre we are reading, how might you do that?  Similar to the poem, who are some people who play a crucial (positive or negative, you decide) role(s) in interpreting/receiving your experiences? Were there situations/people in the external world who influenced your experiences, and how? Have you read anything (across other languages/cultures) that has had a similar (or entirely different) perspective to the genre we focus on? What perspective do you agree with and why? The results can be powerful. I remember one of my students, Pablo (a pseudonym), with Bengali as his first language. During the outline stage of his literacy narrative, he wrote about how others assumed him to constantly need "English coaching" just because English is not his first language. In his draft, he described how he took a stand for himself as someone who had AP credit for an introductory composition class at the university. Utilizing poetry as a compositional tool empowered Pablo to express his resistance to native English fallacy and allowed me to better understand his challenges and triumphs. At times, at the beginning of a first-year writing or teacher education course, when I explain the overarching theme and the kinds of poetry-based activities and resources I’ll be using, I encounter resistance. I have had students who assume they cannot read or produce poems, and the prospect of doing so can be especially daunting for multilingual writers. To make my case, in such scenarios, I discuss the power of poetry and how reading and writing about it can help develop critical thinking skills. Providing students accessible ways to give poetry a try becomes even more crucial in such scenarios. In general, I have noticed that reading poems such as “March” by Ye Chun and “Poem for When You Want to Remember” by Mia Ayumi Malhotra can do more than enliven class discussion. Such poems can ignite brainstorming about personal storytelling and also influence students’ word choice and attention to details in their own writing. To enhance these effects, I often supplement poetry with the narratives of creative writers who write in a second or other language. Teaching “Embracing Imperfection: On Writing in a Second Language” by Kaori Fujimoto and “Born Again in a Second Language” by Costica Bradatan, I have seen my students' confidence grow along with their motivation to be future agents of the critical world. Sonam’s and Pablo’s stories are just two of the many examples I have collected of the power of poetry in writing classes. Again and again, it helps my students, especially the multilingual college students I teach, bring their own cultures and experiences into their writing. As a result, poetry fosters their sense of belonging in college and in English. It also strengthens their understanding of language and of themselves, including their cultural identities. The latter, in particular, is something I want to ensure I preserve as a multilingual writer and a writing teacher. Teaching Resources I Recommend Chamcharatsri, B., & Iida, A. (Eds.). (2022). International perspectives on creative writing in second language education: Supporting language learners’ proficiency, identity, and creative expression. Taylor & Francis. Link Palmquist, M. (2021). The Bedford Researcher with 2021 MLA Update (4th ed.). Macmillan Higher Education. Link Starkey, D. (2022). Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief: Four Genres in Brief (4th ed.). Macmillan Higher Education. Link For Further Reading Ahmad, D. (2011). Dhaka Dust. In Dhaka Dust. Greywolf Press. Link Ayumi Malhotra, M. A. (2018). Poem for When You Want to Remember. SWWIM. Link Bradatan, C. (August 04, 2013). Born Again in a Second Language. New York Times. Link Chun, Y. (2005). March. The Bitter Oleander Press. Link Fujimoto, K. (January 27, 2021). Embracing Imperfection: On Writing in a Second Language. Literary Hub. Link Garcia, D. (October/November, 1995). Italicized Writings. The Writer’s Chronicle. Link Joudah, F. (2013). Birth. In Alight. Copper Canyon Press. Link Komunyakaa, Y. (March, 2014). The African Burial Ground. Poetry Magazine. Link Manzoor-Khan, S. (2017, November). I'm bored of talking about Muslim Women [Video]. TEDxCoventGardenWomen. Link Manzoor-Khan, S. (2017, October). Suhaiymah Khan performs at TedxYouth@Brum 2017 [Video]. TEDx Talks Link Manzoor-Khan: please add citations for works referenced, including TED talks. Sailer, T. (2021). Why Write in English? Non-Native Speakers and Their Love for a Language. Tinted Journal. Link Smith, S. (January 28, 2019). Writing in a Second Language. Common Thread: Stories from Antioch University. Link Warner, M. (March 13, 2012). English that's good enough. The Guardian. Link The theme for WIS ‘25 is mise en place, a culinary term for putting things in place before cooking, especially in a professional kitchen. For us, it’s a metaphor for getting ready to write as well as a pathway to exploring the interrelationship between writing and food. Join us online or in Milwaukee, WI, January 30-31, 2025. Proposals are welcome through 10/25 and, for undergraduate writers, through 12/13. Registration opens in early November. ... View more

by Christina Davidson, University of Louisville This post is part of an occasional series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach that takes place annually online and in Milwaukee, WI. In 2024, Christina was a Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellow. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.” Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) became widely available in November of 2022. Since that time, students have been exploring their use and are eager to learn more. As a veteran composition teacher and member of a WPA team, I was hopeful to find a way to address student GenAI curiosity in my own classroom. AI and Writing (2023), Sidney I. Dobrin’s classroom-friendly text, was exactly what I needed . In the second half, which focuses on “opportunities and applications,” Dobrin borrows a powerful metaphor from GenAI expert Cath Ellis. He compares approaches to writing to ways of summiting Mt. Everest. For Ellis, writing is akin to climbing just as GenAI is to riding a helicopter to the mountain top (60). Each option leads to the summit or goal, yet they provide contrasting experiences—and very different opportunities to learn. Together, Dobrin’s book and Ellis’s metaphor gave me an idea for getting writers to think about GenAI and the writing process. The 75-minute workshop I designed, “Process, Post-Process, and GenAI,” starts with a focus on writing. In fact, I don’t even mention GenAI until the closing discussion. Instead, I start by asking participants to use materials I provided (i.e., blank paper, markers, colored pencils) to draw any task they perform in which several paths could lead to the same result. Here are a few memorable examples from my first workshop which occurred at the 2024 Writing Innovation Symposium, held at Marquette University. Thoughtful participants drew multiple ways to learn a new language, different methods for preparing rice, and various paths to explore inside an open-world game, just to name a few. Wesley Fryer - EdTechSR Ep 308 Exploring AI in Education After drawing, participants share in small groups to kick off the discussion. This is a great time to “work the room” and see which drawings might be best shared with the entire group. The resulting conversation opens a dialogue in which participants analyze their own writing process and how it might compare to one of the “paths” in the drawing. The conversation is not meant to imply a favoritism for a certain method or path (helicopters are certainly useful machines, as is Duolingo), but to increase the critical way students consider the writing process. It’s the first step toward engaging with the most essential question at the close of the workshop–What might happen if change my writing process to include GenAI? On my campus, most FYC students are familiar with process-oriented pedagogy from prewriting and drafting, to revising, editing, and finally “publishing” or submitting their work. Our students might imagine each of the steps the hiker must complete before the summit is reached, just as they might imagine the work that is placed into completing a final draft. However, we know the hike to the top of a mountain is rarely, if ever, a straight line–and our writing processes aren’t straightforward either. Just as the hiker may need to navigate a blocked trail, so, too, the writer must negotiate struggles in completing a draft. As we close our discussion, I return to one of my favorite examples. At my first workshop, one participant drew the creative choices players make in open world games. He charted several “mini-bosses” and side quests, which we might imagine as rounds of peer revisions, writing center visits, or conducting additional research while writing a large paper. If a GenAI tool could take the gamer straight to the credits, clearly much would be forfeited. Similarly, there’s much to be lost when a writer uses ChatGPT to create a “final” draft. The example also illustrates how a post-process approach to writing is highly contextual and social, two areas where GenAI just isn’t as helpful. The workshop ends with reflective writing concerning our shared discoveries through discussion. I have been encouraged to hear how quickly FYC students identify the critical human element they wish to retain in writing. Most participants agree that LLMs can be useful for some writing tasks, but preserving agency over their personal writing often remains at the center of student concern. Are you interested in fostering conversations about process and GenAI tools in the classroom? I would encourage you to try my exercise in your own classroom and to let students discover for themselves how the most memorable processes are ones that meander and land in unexpected places. I often recall an exasperated FYC student that lamented, “It took forever to write this paper!” I quickly responded, “Lucky you!” because I knew this student had gained so much learning in that work. To follow C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka,” I reminded her of the opening line—“As you set out for Ithaka, hope your journey is a long one.” A writing process full of discovery, invention, and reinvention is one I encourage in my FYC course—and although GenAI can be helpful on a step of that iterative journey toward destinations unknown, the understanding of what “these Ithakas” mean is only known to the writer who writes them. The theme for WIS ‘25 is mise en place, a culinary term for putting things in place before cooking, especially in a professional kitchen. For us, it’s a metaphor for getting ready to write as well as a pathway to exploring the interrelationship between writing and food. Join us online or in Milwaukee, WI, January 30-31, 2025. Proposals are welcome through 10/25 and, for undergraduate writers, through 12/13. Registration opens in early November. ... View more