Writing Across Communities
Literacy and Diversity at UNM
◊ Civic/Community Literacies: Knowing Our
Students (Spring 2005)
◊ Academic Literacies: Inviting Our Students (Fall
2005)
◊ Professional Literacies: Serving Our Students
(Spring 2006)
Renewing Our Commitment
to Addressing the Needs
of Local Communities
◊ CASA Latina (1994-1996)
◊ Teachers for a New Era
Washington Center for Teaching and Learning
(Co-Director, 2004-Present)
◊ Successful Schools in Action (2004-Present)
◊ Campaña Quetzal (2004-Present)
Compaña Quetzal
Latino Education Summit Resolutions
◊ On Community Empowerment and
Participation
◊ On Parent Leadership and Involvement
◊ On Early Childhood Education
◊ On the Cultural, Linguistic, and Academic
Needs of the Latino Community
Latino Education Summit Resolutions,
continued
◊ On Disproportionality in Discipline
◊ On College Support
◊ On Recruitment of Latino Instructional Staff
◊ On Proyecto Saber
◊ On State and Federal Obligations
Creating Pathways to
Academic Literacy and Beyond
Situating the Personal,
Professional, and Political
Juan C. Guerra
Department of English
University of Washington at Seattle
Expanded WAC/WID programs at most universities
typically consist of four components:
◊ First-year writing (introduction to academic discourse,
topic seminars)
◊ Student support (writing center, course-based
tutoring)
◊ Upper-level courses (writing in the disciplines)
◊ Faculty development (seminars, consultations, course
approval)
(adapted from Parks & Goldblatt, 2000)
Most universities could create a writing across
communities program by adding the following
components:
◊ Service and experiential learning
◊ K-16 connections
◊ Community literacy projects
◊ Literacy research
◊ Technology leadership
◊ Business and professional outreach
(adapted from Parks & Goldblatt, 2000)
Philosophical Principles Informing the Work
of Transforming Cultures of Writing
Across Communities
First Principle:
We must work to dismantle the barriers that separate
the university from local communities.
“From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes
from his [or her] inability to utilize the experiences he [or she] gets outside
of the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while,
on the other hand, he [or she] is unable to apply in daily life what he is
learning at school.”
John Dewey
Dewey in Education, 1899/1998
Second Principle:
Because it occupies a position of power in the larger
community and possesses the necessary resources,
the university must work to address the literacy needs
of the multiple communities that it serves.
“What I’m describing might be called the ‘New American College,’ an institution
that celebrates teaching and selectively supports research, while also taking
special pride in its capacity to connect thought to action, theory to practice. This
New American College would organize cross-disciplinary institutes around pressing
social issues. Undergraduates at the college would participate in field projects,
relating ideas to real life. Classrooms and laboratories would be extended to include
health clinics, youth centers, schools and government offices. Faculty members
would build partnerships with practitioners who would, in turn, come to campus as
lecturers and student advisors.
“The new American College, as a connected institution, would be committed to
improving, in a very intentional way, the human condition.”
Ernest Boyer
“Creating the New American College”
Chronicle of Higher Education, 1994
Third Principle:
Everyone involved in the process of developing a writing
across communities program must engage in a shared
and mutually productive critique of public education.
“A network of people concerned with literacy in a region could develop a
supportive and constructive critique of public education that would make
solutions possible across traditional educational and community boundaries.”
Steve Parks & Eli Goldblatt
“Writing Beyond the Curriculum:
Fostering New Collaboration in Literacy”
College English, 2000
The Rhetorical Practice of Transcultural Repositioning
“Transcultural repositioning is a rhetorical ability that members of
disenfranchised communities often enact intuitively but must learn
to regulate self-consciously, if they hope to move productively
across different languages, registers, and dialects; different social
and economic classes; different cultural and artistic forms; and
different ways of seeing, being in, and thinking about the
increasingly fluid and hybridized world emerging all around us.”
Juan Guerra
“Putting Literacy in its Place:
Nomadic Consciousness and the Practice
Of Transcultural Repositioning”
Rebellious Reading: The Dynamics
of Chicana/o Cultural Literacy, 2004
The Roots of Transculturation
◊ When he first coined the concept of transculturation in 1947 as an
alternative to the concepts of assimilation and acculturation, Fernando
Ortiz posited that “the result of every union of cultures is similar to that
of the reproductive process between individuals: the offspring always
has something of both parents but is always different from each of
them.”
◊ In 1991, Mary Louise Pratt described transcultuation as the processes
“whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and
invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan
culture. [While subordinate peoples] do not usually control what
emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying
extents what gets absorbed into their own and what it gets used for.”
◊ Vivian Zamel argued in 1997 that transculturation “reflects precisely
how languages and cultures develop and change--infused, invigorated,
and challenged by variation and innovation.”
The Roots of Repositioning
◊ According to Min-Zhan Lu (1990), “each student writer has
access to a range of discourses--the discourses used in college
and in other cultural sites, such as home, workplace, high school,
neighborhood, among religious, recreational, peer, or gender
groups.”
◊ Moreover, “conventions and meanings intersect and conflict both
within and between these discourses.”
◊ In negotiating their way through these conflicting terrains, Lu
contends that students have three options: they may 1) choose
to assimilate the academy’s ways of thinking and writing; 2)
choose the path of biculturalism; or 3) see writing “as a process
in which the writer positions, or rather, repositions herself in
relation not to a single, monolithic discourse but to a range of
competing discourses.”
A better understanding of cultural diversity can
enhance our students’ ability:
◊ To write appropriately . . .
with an awareness of discourse conventions
◊ To write productively . . .
by achieving their social and material aims
◊ To write ethically . . .
by becoming attuned to the cultural ecology around them
◊ To write critically . . .
by engaging in inquiry and discovery
◊ To write responsively . . .
by responsibly negotiating the tensions of exercising authority
The Personal
Before we arrive at the university, each of us learns how to
communicate with others in the context of a situated
community whose members share an identity and a set of
linguistic and cultural values. These are then reflected in:
◊ Our participation in local languages and dialects
◊ Our enactment of local literacy practices
◊ Our interactions with members of other discourse
communities
The Professional
The university is one of the many sets of discourse
communities that we engage in the course of our
social and personal development. There, we:
◊ Learn the language of the academy
◊ Are initiated into a discipline and prepare for a
professional career
◊ Acknowledge the likelihood of multiple career
changes
The Political
Besides preparing us for a career, a university education
also prepares us to engage in the civic discourses
of our local, state, and national communities. We initiate
and carry out this process by:
◊ Reconnecting with a local community
◊ Identifying its particular needs
◊ Addressing the community’s needs through a shared
theory of action