Praxis 14.1 Access and Equity in Graduate Writing Support

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14.1: ACCESS AND EQUITY IN GRADUATE WRITING SUPPORT Guest edited by Shannon Madden and Michele Eodice

VOL 14, NO 1 (2016): ACCESS AND EQUITY IN GRADUATE WRITING SUPPORT Guest edited by Shannon Madden and Michele Eodice Praxis managing editors James Garner and Casey Sloan

TABLE OF CONTENTS About the Authors Introduction: Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing Shannon Madden Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars: Narratives from a Cross-Institutional Writing Collective Nancy Alvarez, Francia Brito, Cristina Salazar, Karina Aguilar Writing While Black: The Black Tax on African American Graduate Writers Cedric Burrows Productive Chaos: Disability, Advising, and the Writing Process Griffin Keedy and Amy Vidali Writing Across Communities and the Writing Center as Cultural Ecotone: Language Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Graduate Student Leadership Michelle Hall Kells Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D. Student’s Experience Charmaine Campbell-Smith and Steven Littles Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table: Balancing Home and Academic Communities Candace Epps-Robertson Creating a Community of Learners: Affinity Groups and Informal Graduate Writing Support Katrina Bell and Jennifer Hewerdine Alejandra Writes a Book: A Critical Race Counterstory about Writing, Identity, and Being Chicanx in the Academy Aja Martinez “We Don’t Do That Here”: Calling Out Deficit Discourses in the Writing Center to Reframe Multilingual Graduate Support Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, Celeste Del Russo, Elizabeth Leahy The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S. Green: A Close Look at the Damaging Effects of “A Standard Approach,” the Benefits of Code-Meshing, and the Role Allies Play in this Work Neisha-Anne S. Green Equity Before “Equity”: Catalytic Mentoring and Professional Development for an Openly Gay Writing Center Tutor Joseph Janangelo “I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study to Illustrate the Intersection of Writing Support, Scholarship, and Academic Socialization Amy Whitcomb Afterword: Narratives that Determine Writers and Social Justice Writing Center Work Asao B. Inoue

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Karina Aguilar is a public health advisor for the Office of Population Affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Karina is a doctor of public health candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at New York Medical College. Karina’s research focuses on farm worker access and utilization patterns of migrant seasonal head start programs for child care.

Nancy Alvarez is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at St. John's University. Her dissertation is a qualitative study of the experiences of Latinas tutoring in writing centers housed within Hispanic Serving Institutions across the United States. Nancy’s research interests include writing center studies, writing pedagogy, digital literacies, language rights, and issues of access and equity for Latina/os in higher education.

Katrina Bell is currently the associate director of the Ruth Barton Writing Center at Colorado College, where she also teaching courses in reading, writing, and rhetoric. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, with a dissertation focusing on the perceived effects of graduate work in writing centers. Her alter ego plays roller derby and does subversive cross-stitching to procrastinate most efficiently.

Francia N. Brito serves as an occupational therapist and maternal, child and adolescent Health practitioner who works with populations positioned at multiple axes of inequalities. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Health and Behavior Studies Department at Teachers College Columbia University. Through her research, Francia intends to generate evidence that will inform policy and practice to address structural and socially-patterned inequities in health, particularly among women, children and adolescents.

Cedric D. Burrows is an assistant professor in English at Marquette University. His research interests include cultural rhetorics, African American rhetoric, and the construction of race in textbooks. His is currently working on a book project that examines how whiteness constructs the Black rhetorical presence.

Erica Cirillo-McCarthy currently serves as the assistant director of the Hume Center for Writing & Speaking at Stanford University, where she also teaches in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

Celeste Del Russo is an assistant professor of writing arts at Rowan University. She directs the Rowan Writing Center where she collaborates with tutors, students, and faculty across the disciplines.

Candace Epps-Robertson is an assistant professor of writing studies at Old Dominion University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric and writing. She has published articles and reviews in Rhetoric Review, Literacy in Composition Studies Journal, and Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning. As one who benefited from mentorship throughout her time as a student, she is passionate and committed to providing mentorship for students throughout their educational journeys.

Neisha-Anne S. Green is associate director of the Writing Center at American University. She has presented at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, the North East Writing Center Association Conference and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She is a multidialectal orator and author proud of her roots in Barbados and Yonkers, NY. She is an ally always interrogating and exploring the use of everyone’s language as a resource who is getting better at speaking up for herself and others. This essay is partly based on work she did for her M.A thesis which she titled “This Sh*t Was Written for You!: Real Truths about Linguistic Favoritism, Racism & ‘Unfair-ism.”

Jennifer Hewerdine is a professor of English and the writing program administrator at Arizona Western College. She is in the final stretch of writing her dissertation about administrative collaboration in writing centers.

Asao B. Inoue is the assistant chair-elect of CCCC, and an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he is also the Director of University Writing and the Writing Center. His research focuses on writing assessment, antiracism, and political economy. He is the author of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future. With Mya Poe he coedited Race and Writing Assessment, which won the 2014 CCCC Outstanding Book of the Year in the Edited Collection category. Recently, he received CWPA’s 2014 Outstanding Scholarship Award for “Theorizing Failure in U.S. Writing Assessments.” His research has appeared in Assessing Writing, The Journal of Writing Assessment, Research in the Teaching of English, and Composition Studies, among other places.

Joseph Janangelo is associate professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and a Past President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. His book, A Critical Look at Institutional Mission: A Guide for Writing Program Administrators was published by Parlor Press in 2016.

Michelle Hall Kells is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico where she teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in 20th Century Civil Rights Rhetoric, Contemporary and Classical Rhetoric, Writing and Cultural Studies, and Discourse Studies. She has served as Special Assistant to the Dean of the College of Arts and Science 2012–2014 and Program Chair of the Writing Across Communities (WAC) initiative at UNM 2004–2014. Her work is featured in the journals JAC, Written Communication, Journal of Reflections, and the Journal of Community Literacy, and her current book project is Vicente Ximenes and LBJ’s “Great Society”: Twentieth-Century Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017).

Griffin Keedy is an instructor for the University of Colorado Denver. Her recently completed thesis and research center on hyperactive rhetorics and the rhetorics of learning disabilities. She is currently completing a visiting professorship and continuing this research in Beijing.

Elizabeth Leahy is a Ph.D. candidate in rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English at the University of Arizona. In January 2017 she will join the faculty at University of Tennessee Chattanooga as Interim Director of the Writing and Communication Center.

Steven Littles began teaching in 1999. He started his career as a high school English teacher and currently teaches fifth grade at Eastside Elementary School in the Metro-Atlanta area. Prior to joining Eastside, he taught at schools in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Steven holds a Doctor of Philosophy in curriculum and instruction from Mercer University.

Shannon Madden is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Rhode Island, where she teaches courses in technical writing and grant writing. Her work has been published in The Writing Center Journal Blog, Kairos Praxis Wiki, and Computers and Composition. She is currently mentoring a multilingual dissertation writer at her institution and working to develop writing groups for junior faculty.

Aja Y. Martinez is an assistant professor of writing Studies, rhetoric, and composition at Syracuse University. Her scholarship, published both nationally and internationally, focuses on the rhetorics of racism and its effects on marginalized peoples in institutional spaces. Her efforts as a teacher-scholar strive towards increasing access, retention, and participation of diverse groups in higher education.

Cristina Salazar is a doctoral candidate in the Communication and Education Program in Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation focuses on the multimodal engagement of immigrant students and how their literacy practices impact their schooling trajectories. Cristina has also developed digital learning platforms for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Mexico, and is interested in the disruption of educational inequity through contextually grounded instructional design.

Charmaine J. Smith-Campbell is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the area of curriculum and instruction at the Tift School of Education at Mercer University in Atlanta. A retired New York City high school history teacher, Charmaine graduated from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, with a B.A. in history and went on to obtain a M.A. in history from Queens College, CUNY in Flushing, and a M.A. in applied psychology from Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. While at New York University, she studied and researched in the area of local and community history, focusing on the community of Lefferts Manor in Brooklyn. Her current area of research interest is on Paulo Freire’s concept of pedagogical love and its implications for transformative education at the middle and high school levels, as an educational gapsclosing strategy. Charmaine is widowed and the mother of three children, Damali, Jelani, and Leah.

Amy Vidali is an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research focuses on the rhetorical politics of disability in university texts, student writing, and writing programs, as well as theories of metaphor and gastrointestinal rhetorics. She teaches classes on rhetorical theory, multimedia writing, disability studies, and the teaching of composition. Her work has appeared in College English, Rhetoric Review, The Journal of Medical Humanities, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ), and elsewhere.

Amy Whitcomb holds a Masters in Science and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Idaho. She has served in writing centers as a peer tutor and professional staff. Her writing on writing and pedagogy has appeared in Writing Lab Newsletter and Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. She recently left her post described in this article after a change in management and has since transitioned to freelance editing and communications work.

PRAXIS 14.1 EDITORIAL BOARD Thanks to the editorial board for their hard work reviewing and commenting on the articles in this issue.

Steven Alvarez Daniel Bommarito Ron Brooks Al Harahap Asao B. Inoue Sohui Lee Jonathan Rylander Sarah Summers Tara K. Wood

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 14, No 1 (2016)

INTRODUCTION: ACCESS AS PRAXIS FOR GRADUATE WRITING Shannon Madden University of Rhode Island shannonmadden@uri.edu This special issue, Access and Equity in Graduate Writing Support, comes at what my co-editor Michele Eodice and I feel is a time of both significant challenge and tremendous opportunity for writing centers and the discipline of writing studies more broadly. On one hand, changing student demographics in graduate programs across the U.S. present a challenge to traditional conceptions of the need for writing support at the graduate level and a challenge to existing ways of doing graduate education. Enrollments of international and multilingual students have been on the rise for a number of years, and scholars have used these growing enrollments as exigence for re-examining the important role that writing support plays in graduate professionalization (see for instance Caplan and Cox; Curry; Mallett, Haan, and Habib; Phillips; Simpson).

Equally important, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) recently reported that in fall 2015, underrepresented minority (URM) students constituted almost 25% of all enrollments by first time graduate students (Kent). Although students from URM groups are still drastically outnumbered by majority/white students among graduate enrollments overall, these changes suggest that universities are making muchneeded efforts to recruit a more diverse graduate student cohort.

Despite these positive trends in enrollment, statistics on attrition and completion rates show that there is still much work to be done to ensure that our graduate programs are accessible and inclusive. As has been well-documented, prolonged time to degree and high rates of attrition are problems that impact graduate students in all disciplines, and reports coming out of the Council of Graduate Schools indicate that attrition rates have been hovering around 50–60% for decades (Council of Graduate Schools; Bowen and Rudenstein; Casanave; Golde). Significantly, although many universities are working to increase the diversity of their student demographic and are making a more concerted effort to recruit students from underserved groups, in general these schools are still not graduating URM students at proportional rates (Council of Graduate Schools; Bell; National Center for Education Statistics; Sowell, Allum, and Okahana). Moreover, attrition for URM graduate students typically happens during the dissertation- or thesis-writing phase (Bell;

Sowell, Allum, and Okahana). This reality points both to the urgent need for considering more carefully the role that writing support plays in retention and completion and for identifying the structural factors that disadvantage students from underserved groups and erect barriers to educational access.

In many places, it is little wonder that the practices of graduate education fail to support access and inclusivity. As has been noted, faculty often bear the incorrect assumption that students are already socialized as expert communicators for their disciplines by the time they enter their graduate programs (see Coffin et al; Curry; Starke-Meyerring; Thaiss and Zawacki). Underlying such assumptions is the tacit belief that being admitted to graduate school is the end of the learning process and not the beginning, that having read books and articles in their disciplines should have prepared students sufficiently to write books and articles of their own. Indeed, assumptions about graduate students’ writing competencies are institutionalized and made material in course offerings and writing support mechanisms (or lack thereof).

When graduate programs fail to offer writing instruction of any kind or when they offer graduatelevel writing classes for international students only, they position writing as equivalent to language learning, as a remedial skill that is separate from—rather than constitutive of—disciplinary content knowledge. Yet learning to write is a complex, iterative process that unfolds in unpredictable ways and at a variety of stages during students’ scholarly and intellectual development (Adler-Kassner and Wardle). By failing to offer explicit instruction in disciplinary writing practices or structures by which graduate students can develop expertise as communicators for their disciplines, universities offload the costs of acquiring facility in writing practices onto the students themselves (Madden and Stinnett).

In spite of or as a result of these challenges, the current moment is also a time of tremendous opportunity for writing centers, the discipline of writing studies, and those in a variety of disciplines who are working on supporting graduate students as communicators. Budding conversations within and at the intersection of composition and rhetoric, TESOL, writing center studies, and applied linguistics are

Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 2 beginning to draw much-needed attention to the needs that graduate students have as writers, and the Consortium on Graduate Communication has recently been established as a national organization in which scholars can come together to share resources and develop best practices for graduate writing support.

The Council of Graduate Schools likewise has been calling for additional focus on writing support for a number of years (Council of Graduate Schools; Sowell, Allum, and Okahana). At the core of this issue lies the tension between the need for professionalizing graduate students as communicators on the one hand, and the failure to teach writing explicitly on the other (Madden and Stinnett). In this way, the need for graduate writing support presents us with an exigent moment both for articulating the integral role that writing plays in scholarship of all kinds and for considering more critically the ways in which institutions are failing to address the needs of their students. In other words, graduate students encountering and struggling to write new genres help writing centers and writing studies experts articulate what it is that we do. Writing support is not remediation; rather, specialized communication practices are essential to scholarly activity in all disciplines and at all levels—including for advanced graduate students and faculty writers (Geller and Eodice). Institutional structures in which graduate writing support and writing instruction are absent provide an opportunity for writing centers to increase our footprint on campus and for writing studies to continue building disciplinary efficacy.

This special issue developed out of a research project motivated by the urgent need to support graduate writers. Like many schools across the U.S., at the University of Oklahoma we recognized that some of the factors that disenfranchise students of color, students with disabilities, queer students, and firstgeneration students are structural, ingrained, and pervasive. If the issues weren’t structural, the stark patterns in retention and completion rates for underrepresented students reported by the CGS nationally—and parallel forms of oppression facing faculty—wouldn’t exist.1 These structural issues manifest anecdotally; many graduate students have come to both Michele and myself eager for someone to engage with their writing in a sustained and meaningful way. We have heard faculty colleagues lament the state of their graduate students’ writing—some of them asking for support in teaching their students the discourse conventions of their own disciplines. And we have spent many hours trying to help faculty understand the process of graduate student writing

development, a process the faculty themselves may or may not have experienced with awareness.

In response to these conversations, Michele and I began a research project several years ago on the lived experience of graduate writers. Together with our team—which included the associate director of the OU Writing Center, Moira Ozias (ABD/Ph.D. education), Ivan Ozbolt (Ph.D. anthropology), and Alicia Burris (Ph.D. education)—we developed a survey to investigate students’ perceptions of their ability, development, and needs as writers in relation to their access to writing resources, mentorship, and feedback.

The survey allows us to see relationships across student identity, interactions with peers, interactions with advisors, and other mentoring opportunities. The data from that study are helping us to see the acute need for addressing access and equity in our conversations about graduate writers. Preliminary findings are showing that students who receive strong mentorship on their writing and who have access to communities of writers are significantly more likely to publish before graduation and to have a strong sense of writerly selfefficacy. Conversely, students who report a strong sense of isolation and who report not feeling integrated into a student cohort that offers peer feedback on writing are more likely to take longer to finish their graduate degrees and to lack confidence as writers. In this way, our survey results are suggesting that community signals a kind of accessibility. Students who have a strong sense of integration into communities are more likely to succeed. Anecdotally, it is likely that many in the Praxis audience already believe that those who have strong writing mentorship and access to writing centers will be more likely to succeed as graduate writers. Yet in order to make the case for writing support to administrators and others outside of our disciplines, strong correlations proven through data are needed.

At the time of writing, we are validating the survey and preparing to offer it nationally so that other institutions can both gather data on their own students and contexts and contribute to a multi-institutional database through which emerging patterns can be further investigated. Making broad-scale connections will counter the narrative that writing support concerns only a few struggling individuals and will be crucial to demonstrating the need for systemic writing support.

In the years since our team began this project, we have been heartened by the increasing attention to graduate writers, and several new and forthcoming collections are beginning to address the gap in knowledge by offering program models and pedagogical best practices to support early career scholars as they learn to navigate the specialized and

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 3 high-stakes genres that are central to their disciplinary knowledge-making (see Brooks-Gillies, Garcia, Kim, Manthey, & Smith; Badenhorst & Guerin; Simpson, Caplan, Cox, & Phillips; Lawrence & Zawacki). The models, strategies, and insights offered in these volumes are essential if universities are to support all of their students and maintain their own viability as places where disciplinary knowledge is made.

Excited as we have been by this sudden burst of attention, we felt it would be remiss to wait any longer to make access and equity a requisite part of the conversation about graduate writers. Up to this point, attention to the needs of graduate students from underserved groups has been almost nonexistent.

Although a great deal of research addresses multilingual writers, U.S.-born students of color are nearly absent from the emerging discourse on graduate writers.2 Students with disabilities likewise have been the focus of a great deal of important research involving undergraduate writers, and yet there is little mention of the particular challenges writers with disabilities face at the graduate level. Now that graduate and faculty writers are gaining recognition as an understudied group that deserves our attention, it is crucial that we resist normalizing discourses which cover over identity differences and thus obscure the barriers to access that exist for students with disabilities, students of color, and students who don’t occupy the assumed subject-position as privileged, white, and able-bodied.

This collection asserts that as a field, we don’t yet know enough about the lived experience of writing for graduate students. We therefore don’t know yet what questions we should be asking in order to design programs, courses, and support services that meet all graduate students’ needs, including those from underprivileged groups. Given the structural inequities that exist in graduate programs, we need to make access our praxis for graduate writing—access should be the ethic, the principle, and the theoretical commitment that guides our practice. Writing centers have a long history of positioning themselves as safe spaces (Boquet), feminist spaces (McKinney), and queer spaces (Denny) within which academic success can be achieved through challenge, community, and collaboration. And these must also be antiracist spaces (Diab, Godbee, Ferrell, and Simpkins; Geller et al; Greenfield and Rowan; Villanueva). Yet writing center space is always and already constrained by a number of institutional realities and local circumstances and positioned in institutions which are undeniably racist.

As Asao B. Inoue puts it in the afterword to this volume:

Writing centers are often places where students and tutors create success in both quiet, cooperative ways and contentious, tense ways, despite the institutional structures around them that determine students’ learning and languaging and tutors reading and judging practices, all of which set limits on their languaging and pressure people to succeed in particular ways.

As a field that has historically been concerned with how structures of domination function through literacy education, writing studies has much to contribute to the conversation on access and equity for graduate writers. Writing centers, likewise, are sites of productive interaction among peers working in nonevaluative relationships, and often fill the institutional gaps that exist in writing feedback, mentorship, and support. Writing centers are where the structural, institutional barriers to access materialize in one-withone interactions, and accessible writing center work thus hinges on recognizing and valuing individual experiences.

In order to learn more about graduate students’ lived experience of writing, we invited articles, reflections, and narratives that addressed the following questions: •

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Where and how are graduate students from underserved populations receiving writing support on our campuses, and how can writing centers and writing faculty offer more support for their writing?

What kinds of support do graduate student writers from underserved populations need and want, and how does it compare to the kinds of support students are currently getting?

What is the lived experience around graduate writing, especially for students from underserved populations?

What are the particular circumstances that contribute to graduate writing success (and, by extension, to degree completion) for any of the following: o U.S.-born graduate students of color? o Graduate students with disabilities? o First generation college students who are undertaking graduate work? o International graduate students? o Multilingual graduate students? o Students at the intersections of these identities?

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 4 •

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How are graduate students building community as writers, and how can writing centers and writing faculty support and foster those communities?

How can writing centers foster more collaborative writing and peer engagement among graduate students from underserved populations?

How do or how can graduate students develop informal networks of writing support, and how might writing centers do more to sponsor such informal communities?

How can writing centers and others who support writing on campus help students create informal structures of support that bolster students’ self-efficacy as writers as well as the completion of their advanced graduate writing projects?

To address these questions, the articles within Access and Equity in Graduate Writing Support variously discuss the forms of oppression faced by graduate writers from marginalized groups, considerations for improving our approaches to graduate writing support, and formal and informal mentorship methods that challenge racism and ableism as they are institutionalized in graduate education in the U.S. Although re-visioned, antiracist, anti-ableist models are needed, this collection does not offer an explicit how-to guide for building graduate programs. Instead, this special issue is about listening to experiences. Only by understanding experiences can we begin to understand the issues which impact student writers from underprivileged groups and from there, begin to design solutions.

Importantly, those individuals from marginalized groups comprise the voices in this collection. Rather than speaking for underserved students, this special issue is written by scholars of color, scholars with disabilities, queer scholars, and graduate students, in addition to writing center specialists whose mission it is to promote inclusive, accessible structures of graduate writing support. We hope that these articles will lead Praxis readers to consider more carefully “the normative underpinnings of so many conversations around graduate writing,” as one member of our editorial board put it.

In the lead article, “Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars: Narratives from a Cross-Institutional Writing Collective,” Nancy Alvarez, Francia N. Brito, Cristina Salazar, and Karina Aguilar offer their experiences as “multi-marginalized” Latina women undertaking graduate work. In particular, the authors describe how they created for

themselves an informal community through which they could enact writing support and emotional support across institutions, and be in solidarity with one another throughout graduate school and beyond. By forming this collective, the authors were able to counteract feelings of loneliness, imposter syndrome, and the misperception that women of color don’t belong in the academy. Importantly, the collective also created space for them to “engage in decolonizing dialogue that sanctions the production of diverse knowledge and epistemology.”

Cedric D. Burrows describes the affective and psychological toll paid by graduate students of color to enter and participate in white spaces in “Writing While Black: The Black Tax on African American Graduate Writers.” Burrows notes that students of color, and particularly African American students, are pressured to perform in ways that are not expected of their majority peers, even as African American students are viewed by the university not as individuals but as multiple instances of the same narrative or identity.

Burrows argues that institutions which disenfranchise scholars of color also essentialize and “tax” them; they are expected to represent their race, to express gratitude for being allowed to participate in white (and racist) institutions, to perform certain subjectivities, and to recognize as well that they don’t belong.

Burrows recommends that universities create spaces where students of similar cultural backgrounds, especially those of shared racial identifications, can collaborate.

In “Productive Chaos: Disability, Advising, and the Writing Process,” Griffin Keedy and Amy Vidali present an edited dialogue from a mentoring session during their collaborations as thesis advisor and graduate student. Both authors self-identify as individuals with disabilities and were working together on a disability studies research project for Keedy’s master’s thesis. Their reflective discussion considers the ways in which writing mentorship for graduate students is normative inasmuch as institutional contexts refuse or reshape atypical ways of knowing, writing, and doing. Their piece presents a powerful challenge to those who mentor graduate writers to consider more carefully the ways in which “normative assumptions of the writing process” shape how we teach writing and interact with writers, and thus “mak[e] normative notions of the writing process prevalent for students.”

Michelle Hall Kells offers a framework for professionalizing graduate students who will go on to become leaders of writing centers, writing programs, and graduate mentors in ways that privilege ethnolinguistic diversity in her article, “Writing Across

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 5 Communities and the Writing Center as Cultural Ecotone: Language Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Graduate Student Leadership.” Kells proposes the “ecotone,” a transactional site between biological communities, as a theoretical frame for conceptualizing writing center work. By conceiving graduate student professionalization in this way, Kells argues, we can do more to “promote approaches to knowledge-making, strategies for community activism, and opportunities for writers at the intersections of composition studies, including second language writing and community literacy education” and thus engage the language resources and cultural resources of ethnoliguistically diverse writers.

In their article, “Freire's Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D. Student's Experience,” Charmaine SmithCampbell and Steven Littles reinterpret Freire’s theory of pedagogy of love to offer a new model for working with graduate writers. By blending a Ph.D. student’s experiences of a writing center and writing mentorship with a theoretical discussion of Freire’s work, SmithCampbell and Littles argue for reconceptualizing pedagogy as a mechanism for justice. In this way, the authors argue, we can “enhanc[e] equity and possibilities for educational success for all students, especially those who are at risk of attrition.”

Candace Epps-Robertson reflects on her experiences as a dissertation writer researching the history of her community in “Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table: Balancing Home and Academic Communities.” As a student encountering graduate school, Epps-Robertson felt isolated by its culture. In her words: I’d entered a world that felt so different to me, a Black woman from the South, a wife, and mother. At that moment, I didn’t see how I’d ever feel comfortable as a scholar in the ivory tower because my ways of knowing, of problem solving, and of doing, seemed incompatible with academia.

Writing her dissertation about resistance to integration in the Jim Crow south became a process of bridging the distance between the university and home, and her reflection speaks to the need for connecting academic and home epistemologies as well as the power of mentorship in supporting that work.

In “Creating a Community of Learners: Affinity Groups and Informal Graduate Writing Support,” Katrina Bell and Jennifer Hewerdine describe a writing partnership that they created for themselves, one which functioned as an affinity group through which they were able to support one another and supplement the mentorship they received in other areas. Whereas a community of practice describes a group of people

who share a common profession or practice (Lave and Wenger), individuals in an affinity group are bound together by their investment in a common goal. For this reason, affinity groups offer more opportunity for recognizing and honoring individual experiences. Bell and Hewerdine’s partnership provides a way for students to create their own networks for writing support, a model which may be particularly useful for students who are under-supported by faculty or who lack strong peer cohorts.

Aja Y. Martinez offers a critical narrative about being Latinx in the academy in her work, “Alejandra Writes a Book: A Critical Race Counterstory about Writing, Identity, and Being Chicanx in the Academy.”

This narrative contends both that “marginalized students are the experts of their own experiences and should be the purveyors of their narratives,” and that universities and writing centers “can best serve marginalized students when administrators and staff are trained to listen to, learn from, make space for, and perhaps even assist students in the rebuilding of a writerly identity.” Martinez traces the literate life of Alejandra, a Chicana woman who grew up loving words yet faced language-based oppression throughout her career as a student. Martinez’s counterstory forces educators to consider the extent to which their practices and false assumptions contribute to the continued marginalization and attrition of Latinx students.

Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, Celeste Del Russo, and Elizabeth Leahy consider the ways in which writing center mission statements position the needs of graduate multilingual writers as remedial in their article, “‘We Don't Do That Here’: Calling Out Deficit Discourses in the Writing Center to Reframe Multilingual Graduate Support.” When writing centers fail to offer grammar-based support for writers, the authors claim, they enact a new deficit discourse that “may limit our ability to be open to and to serve the multi-layered needs” of graduate multilingual writers.

Instead, the authors offer strategies for rewriting writing center mission statements to honor the linguistic resources of multilingual students and thus move “towards real action in practicing the values of linguistic diversity in our centers.”

In her article, “The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S. Green: A Close Look at the Damaging Effects of ‘a Standard Approach,’ the Benefits of Code-meshing, and the Role Allies Play in this Work,” Neisha-Anne S. Green examines the normalizing role that Standard American English (SAE) can play for multilingual and multidialectical writers. Green points to the tension between the disciplinary mandate to help students access discourses of power within the university on

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 6 one hand and the need to honor students’ linguistic codes on the other. As she puts it, “Hybridity is sometimes a choice and sometimes a nonchoice, when it just comes pouring out and I see it as my job to foster learning and to help guide students so that they make educated choices that are suitable for them the way my village made it possible for me.” Through her analysis, Green offers a model for working with students as ally-accomplices and being there for students as they explore the connections between language and identity without forcing them to enact “standard” or “conventional” discourses.

Joseph Janangelo reflects on his time as an openly gay graduate student and Writing Center tutor in the early 1980s in “Equity before ‘Equity’: Catalytic Mentoring and Professional Development for an Openly Gay Writing Center Tutor.” In the face of micro-aggressions committed by faculty, Janangelo found an ally in the writing center director, Lil Brannon, who shaped his career by valuing his perspective and professionalizing him as a tutor.

Janangelo’s reflection reminds us that mentorship can make the difference between a student’s capacity to continue and their decision to leave the academy.

Amy Whitcomb offers a memoir about her sustained interactions with an English-languagelearning graduate student of the writing center over the course of several months in “‘I Cannot Find Words’: A Case Study to Illustrate the Intersection of Writing Support, Scholarship, and Academic Socialization.” By offering letters between herself, the student, and the student’s thesis advisor as well as analysis of the student’s requests for targeted feedback, Whitcomb demonstrates the affective dimension of graduate writing support and academic socialization in the context of a writing center.

Finally, Asao B. Inoue closes the issue with an afterword that attests to the need for taking up the work of antiracism in a concerted and emphatic way.

Inoue challenges writing center specialists and the discipline of writing studies more broadly to recognize “how whiteness and whitely ways of being determine much of what happens in writing centers.” After all, Inoue reminds us, “white supremacy determines the entire system—is the system—and structures the limits and pressures of all writing center work, whether it is with or by graduates or undergraduates, faculty or staff.” Social justice work is thus contingent on dismantling the ways in which systemic injustices materialize in writing center work and graduate writing pedagogy.

Taken together, these articles attest to the ways in which the issues that materialize to some extent for all graduate student writers, such as imposter syndrome

and feelings of isolation, can be compounded for students from underrepresented groups who are told both explicitly and implicitly that the spaces of higher education are spaces that are not designed for them, are spaces in which they don’t belong. Yet they also attest to the ways in which strong mentors, writing centers, and supportive peer communities can themselves be productive sites for the work of inclusion, equity, antiracism, and anti-ableism. The authors implore us all to take a hard look at ourselves, at our pedagogies, and at our explicit agendas and to ask whether we are truly making space for writing practices that challenge the status quo, for diverse ways of knowing and doing, and that are designed so that those students who have historically been denied access to education to flourish and succeed on their own terms.

Acknowledgements Thanks, as always, to Michele Eodice. I have grown so much throughout our years of collaborations and continue to learn so much from you. Thanks to my coresearchers on the Doctoral Student Writing Study, Ivan Ozbolt, Moira Ozias, and Alicia Burris, as well as Michele. Thanks to Noro Andriamanalina and Jasmine Kar Tang for having conversations with Michele and me early in our research process regarding access and equity issues for graduate students from underrepresented groups. Thanks to the Consortium on Graduate Communication for their support, especially Nigel Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Steve Simpson, and special thanks to Steve for sharing his work from the CGC collection in advance of its publication. I’d also like to thank Sandra Tarabochia; many of the ideas presented here on the parallels between graduate and faculty writers Sandy and I worked out in conference and grant proposals. Finally, many thanks to James Garner, Casey Sloan, Thomas Spitzer-Hanks, and the Praxis editorial team for hosting Michele and me for this special issue!

Notes 1. Significantly, the struggles reported by underprivileged graduate students parallel the oppression documented by women, faculty of color, queer faculty, and faculty with disabilities on the tenure track (see Grollman; Gutierrez y Muhs et al; Kerschbaum et al; Matthew; National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity; Stapleton).

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 7 2. I credit Noro Andriamanalina and Jasmine Kar Tang for making this point to me during our discussions about graduate writers in 2014.

Works Cited Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle. “Naming What We Know: The Project of This Book.” Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2015. 1–11. Print.

Badenhorst, Cecile, and Cally Guerin, Eds. Research Literacies and Writing Pedagogies for Masters and Doctoral Writers. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2016. Print.

Bell, Nathan E. Data Sources: Graduate Students with Disabilities. Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools, 2011. Web. Boquet, Elizabeth H. Noise from the Writing Center. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2002. Print.

Bowen, William, and Neil Rudenstein. In Pursuit of the Ph.D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. Print.

Brooks-Gillies, Marilee, Elena G. Garcia, Soo Hyon Kim, Katie Manthey, and Trixie G. Smith, Eds. Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines, special issue of Across the Disciplines, volume 12, 2015. Web. Caplan, Nigel A., and Michelle Cox. “The State of Graduate Communication Support: Results of an International Survey.” Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design. Ed. Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016.

22–51. Print.

Casanave, Christine Pearson. “What Advisors Need to Know about the Invisible ‘Real-Life’ Struggles of Doctoral Dissertation Writers.” Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design.

Ed. Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016.

97–116. Print.

Coffin, Caroline, Mary Jane Curry, Sharon Goodman, Ann Hewings, Theresa M. Lillis, and Joan Swann. Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Council of Graduate Schools. Ph.D. Completion Project.

Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools, 2008.

Web. Curry, Mary Jane. “More Than Language: Graduate Student Writing as ‘Disciplinary Becoming’.” Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design. Ed. Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016. 78–96. Print.

Denny, Harry. “Queering the Writing Center.” Writing Center Journal 25.2 (2005): 39–62. Print.

Diab, Rasha, Thomas Ferrel, Beth Godbee, and Neil Simpkins. “A Multi-Dimensional Pedagogy for Racial Justice in Writing Centers.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal 10.1 (2012). Web. Geller, Anne Ellen, and Michele Eodice, Eds. Working with Faculty Writers. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2013.

Print.

Geller, Anne Ellen, Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet. The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2007. Print.

Golde, Chris. “The Role of the Department and Discipline in Doctoral Student Attrition: Lessons from Four Departments.” Journal of Higher Education 76:6 (2005): 669–700. Print.

Greenfield, Laura, and Karen Rowan, Eds. Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2011.

Print.

Grollman, Eric Anthony. “Invisible Labor: Exploitation of Scholars of Color in Academia.” Conditionally Accepted: A Space for Scholars on the Margins of Academia. Blog.

Inside Higher Ed. 15 December 2015. Web. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, Eds. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2012.

Print.

Kent, Julia. Graduate Schools Report Strong Growth in First-Time Enrollment of Underrepresented Minorities. Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools, 2016. Web. Kerschbaum, Stephanie L., Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Sushil K. Oswal, Amy Vidali, Susan Ghiaciuc, Margaret Price, Jay Dolmage, Craig A. Meyer, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Ellen Samuels. “Faculty Members, Accommodation, and Access in Higher Education.”

MLA Profession Commons. 2013. Web. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.

Lawrence, Susan, and Terry Myers Zawacki, Eds. Re/writing the Center: Pedagogies, Practices, Partnerships to Support Graduate Students in the Writing Center. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, forthcoming. Print.

Madden, Shannon, and Jerry Stinnett. “Empowering Graduate Student Writers and Rejecting Outsourced Mentorship, I-III.” Writing Center Journal Blog. 2016.

Web. Mallett, Karyn E., Jennifer Haan, and Anna Sophia Habib.

“Graduate Pathway Programs as Sites for Strategic, Language-Supported Internationalization: Four Pedagogical Innovations.” Supporting Graduate Student

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Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing • 8 Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design. Ed. Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016.

118–138. Print.

Matthew, Patricia A., Ed. Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2016. Print.

McKinney, Jackie Grutsch. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2013. Print.

National Center for Education Statistics. The Condition of Education 2012 (NCES 2012-045), Indicator 47. 2012.

Web. National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity.

Facultydiversity.org. Accessed 10 August 2016. Web. Phillips, Talinn. “Tutor Training and Services for Multilingual Graduate Writers: A Reconsideration.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal 10.1 (2013). Web. Simpson, Steve. “New Frontiers in Graduate Writing Support and Program Design.” Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design.

Ed. Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016. 1– 20. Print.

Simpson, Steve, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips, Eds. Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016. Print.

Sowell, Robert, Jeff Allum, and Hironao Okahana. Doctoral Initiative on Minority Attrition and Completion. Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools, 2015. Web. Stapleton, Lissa. “The Disabled Academy: The Experiences of Deaf Faculty at Predominantly Hearing Institutions.” Thought and Action 31.2 (2015): 55–69.

Web. Starke-Meyerring, Doreen. “The Paradox of Writing in Doctoral Education: Student Experiences.” Doctoral Education: Research-Based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors, and Administrators. Ed. Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl Amundsen. London: Springer, 2011. 75–95.

Print.

Thaiss, Chris, and Terry Myers Zawacki. Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann/Boynton Cook, 2006.

Print.

Villanueva, Victor. “Blind: Talking about the New Racism.” Writing Center Journal 26.1 (2006): 3–19. Print.

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AGENCY, LIBERATION, AND INTERSECTIONALITY AMONG LATINA SCHOLARS: NARRATIVES FROM A CROSS-INSTITUTIONAL WRITING COLLECTIVE Nancy Alvarez St. John’s University nancy.r.alvarez@gmail.com Cristina Salazar Teachers College, Columbia University cps2127@tc.edu

Introduction Among United States residents, the number of doctoral degrees conferred to Latinx students represents a small percentage compared to other groups. For example, from 2009–2010, the percentage of degrees conferred to Latinx students was 5 percent compared to 74 percent for White students, 11 percent for Asian/Pacific Islanders, 7 percent for African Americans, and 0.7 percent for Indian/Alaska Natives. During the same period, the proportion of doctoral degrees conferred to females was 55 percent for Latinas compared to 65 percent for African American students, 56 percent for Asian/Pacific students, 54 percent for American Indian/Alaska Native students, and 51 percent for White female students (National Center for Education Statistics).

Historically, underrepresented minority (URM) students encounter a plethora of issues that influence their educational experiences, yet there is a scarcity of scholarship that elucidates the quality of experience of women of color (WOC) pursuing doctorate degrees (Aryan and Guzman). As multi-marginalized, firstgeneration college students, we continuously struggle to find a place within higher education. Our educational pathways to becoming doctoral recipients have occurred primarily within the context of alienation, significantly influencing our need to connect with other WOC who have also felt isolated and disconnected. Consequently, we needed to find each other because knowing that there were other Latinas in doctoral programs, and actually getting to know them, validated our existence within academia.

In this paper, we are using storytelling as a method of sharing our experiences as members of our writing collective. As WOC, we are used to offering counterstories, which Daniel Solórzano and Tara Yosso define as “a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the

Francia N. Brito Teachers College, Columbia University francianbrito@gmail.com Karina Aguilar New York Medical College karina.aguilar.moreno@gmail.com

majoritarian stories of racial privilege,” (32) but for this piece, we decided to share our narratives without feeling a need to directly respond to how “others” create and foster their own writing groups. In order to tell our stories in a way that feels authentic and true, we are sharing excerpts of multiple written works that we’ve collected, such as text from an original Facebook post, an email, and parts of our own narratives broken apart and rewoven into this paper.

Formation of a Cross-Institutional Collective The formation of a cross-institutional writing group that supports women at the intersection of socially located identities and various stages of doctoral programs was influenced by the dominant discourses and ways of being that it attempts to challenge and transform. By recognizing the barriers that women of color encounter as scholars (Martinez et al), this informal space allowed for us to deliberately deconstruct the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, culture, and gender that impact the educational experiences of WOC in doctoral programs. The pathway to a doctoral degree can present multiple difficulties for the students who, lacking an understanding of the process, can find themselves struggling throughout their trajectories with both personal and professional challenges (Golde and Dore). The challenges that our intersectional identities embody are also compounded by larger issues, such as a lack of representation and institutional support.

With all of this in mind, Francia formed our group by posting in a Facebook group for Latinas in doctoral programs in August of 2015. Her post was straightforward and friendly: Amigas! Though we are all at different phases of our journey, this group has served as an

Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars • 10 unbelievable source of encouragement, motivation, and strength to keep pushing through! I would love to generalize that into some face-to-face time! Are any of you residing in NYC interested in getting together for some writing time or anything in-between?

The writers of this piece, as well as several other doctoral students, quickly reached out to Francia. We were all eager to belong to a group that would embrace our identities fully as Latinas, because we realized that was exactly what had been missing throughout our doctoral journeys. The private Facebook group was already serving its purpose as a place for support and motivation, but the idea of belonging to a local writing group felt like we were finally going to work with people who would respect our languages, cultures, backgrounds, homes, families, experiences, and academic interests in pursuing matters affecting Latinx communities. We knew that we were in need of a supportive graduate network, but we didn’t understand how much we could benefit from such a group until we met for dinner two weeks later. There was no awkwardness in the way we all hugged each other upon first meeting. The conversation flowed naturally, in both English and Spanish, as if we were all old friends. We set up some parameters for the weeks ahead and then walked out of the restaurant together, excited about the possible friendships that would bloom from the group and the certain dissertations that would soon be written.

Following our meet-and-greet dinner, Francia emailed the group the following: I also thought to reserve the room an extra 3 hours so that we can use it as a collaborative forum to • Engender Trans and/or Interdisciplinary thinking/discussion about our work/dissertations (we are all at different stages) • Prep for upcoming presentations/proposal hearings/dissertation defenses.

• Use each other as sounding boards to work through any ideas or approaches to “the work” that you may have • Work through any “messiness” that we may encounter.

• Share our work.

• Generate/modify research questions and or other methodology.

• And, anything else or even nothing at all, as determined by the needs of the group.

!

Would it be okay with everyone, that if they bring something to eat for themselves to bring something to share with one extra person? We do this to further create a sense of community, so that we have some extra food or snacks to share and without creating a sense of burden on one person.

Our first meeting occurred on a sunny Sunday morning in September in the library at Teachers College, and Francia made sure to reserve a room at the library every Sunday thereafter. We each arrived with coffee and snacks, excited about the work that lied ahead. We had already agreed that we did not have to share our writing with each other and left that as an option. We briefly discussed what we hoped to gain from our weekly gatherings, and also set some writing goals for the day ahead.

Karina: I had spent too many months trying to figure out what I was going to write my dissertation on. The process felt long, drawn out, and lonely. I did not have anyone with whom to discuss my ideas in a scholarly manner.

This was a common theme among us. As the only doctoral students in our families, and sometimes within our social circles, we needed the space to express our concerns about writing dissertation proposals and obtaining IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval with people who understood the struggle and could sympathize without having to justify why such matters required so much venting. A bonus is being able to discuss these issues using the languages that feel most authentic and personal to us— a mixture of Englishes and Spanishes.

Language is a common topic of conversation at our meetings. We are constantly vigilant of our standard academic English skills—both written and oral. There’s freedom in our oral communication with each other, but when we quiet down and face the written word, our confidence dims.

Cristina: My previous personal experience includes participation in different groups for academic writing. I have also taken part in writing boot camps, I have worked individually with writing coaches and consumed books and software applications that provide strategies to improve your academic writing. I have had different degrees of success with those experiences, but none of my previous endeavors helped me with a

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Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars • 11 particular challenge I face: English is my second language, and therefore, an everpresent apprehension has accompanied me throughout my doctoral degree: academic writing always felt like a specific practice that required a skill-set that felt out of my reach.

For all of us, English is our second language. Being able to discuss our apprehension towards academic English has helped quiet some of the negative self-talk that sometimes prevents our ability to perform on paper. Inquiries to each other about how to approach an advisor or if the way that we phrased something makes sense, helps us build confidence. Knowing that there are other doctoral students with similar concerns brings us relief and further strengthens our sense of community.

We soon realized that the group could offer more to us than just a place to talk about writing. What we really needed was validation that our work was important and that we could actually do it; we could actually earn our doctoral degrees! Believing in each other helped us believe in ourselves.

Francia: The summer of 2015 was an extremely difficult one for me. Feelings of isolation, self-doubt and disconnection were further compounded by the intractable nature of looming deadlines. It had been three years since my journey to becoming a doctoral student started. I transversed through the landscape of the academic culture in higher education unsupported as an Afro-Latina, a writer and a scholar—bereft of a sense of belonging. The dominant ways of knowing and knowledge production inherent in higher education settings imprinted in me a false representation of what constitutes a successful writer and scholar—undermining my confidence.

By the following Sunday, we each felt a bit more excited about our work and a bit more like we belonged in that conference room in the library of Teachers College. We soon began to wonder how we could encourage other WOC in doctoral programs to seek community.

Storytelling as a Site for Liberation You were always my mirror, What I mean is, I had to look at you to see me.

—Julio Cortazar, 1984 Building on what Yosso refers to as cultural capital, specifically our linguistic capital, sharing our

various languages united us within the group, but the scars of being multilingual within an academic setting remain fresh. As Yosso notes, “Linguistic capital reflects the idea that Students of Color arrive at school with multiple language and communication skills. In addition, these children most often have been engaged participants in a storytelling tradition, that may include listening to and recounting oral histories, parables, stories (cuentos) and proverbs (dichos)” (78).

Storytelling quickly became a way for us to connect and build trust. We realized that sharing our stories with each other liberated us from the fear we embodied while navigating through predominantly White spaces and academic institutional norms. We were lacking in self-efficacy and agency, and experienced Imposter Syndrome. We were in need of affective support, and community; one that fostered in us the ability to navigate social and institutional structures that were not built with us in mind. It’s easy to dismiss Imposter Syndrome as something that happens to ALL students at some point in their academic journey. Students may experience feelings of inadequacy during several points in their academic career. But our version of Imposter Syndrome ran much deeper. Some of us have wondered if the only reason why we had been admitted into our program was to fulfill a diversity quota. While some of us have experienced indifferent academic environments where members of our cohorts dismiss our concerns or feelings of injustice, prejudice or bias. All of these reasons, and others, have contributed to the silencing of our voices, in both English and Spanish. Therefore, we decided to share our stories with one another and deliberately work on ways to disrupt social and structural barriers that affect our experiences within and across the academy.

Realizing that we could speak on these issues freely, and recognizing our own experiences within each other’s stories, helped us designate our group meetings as a safe space.

Cristina: During our first meeting, I recall a sense of relief and joy: these were all brilliant women of color and they all were sharing their personal and academic challenges. The importance of their openness in that first encounter is perhaps what I would like to emphasize: I do believe that in my case, their willingness to share their trajectory in that informal setting allowed me to feel empowered to talk about my own struggles and to state my interest in the potential writing group.

Francia: Drawing strength from Anzaldúa's

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Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars • 12 words, we unpacked “how hard it is for us to think that we can choose to become writers, much less feel and believe that we can” (166).

This space encourages intellectual development and the ability to think and write critically. To push beyond the boundaries and structural barriers of the academy, is “to commit ourselves to the work of transforming the academy so that it will be a place where cultural diversity informs every aspect of our learning, we must embrace struggle and sacrifice. We cannot easily be discouraged” (hooks 33).

Our collective provided us with a sanctuary where we, as female scholars of color, could be validated, empowered and supported. Forging connections with students who understood our struggles specific to WOC educational pathways proved to be essential in engendering emotional support, building social capital, and reclaiming our ways of being and knowing. We developed a better understanding of intersecting identities by engaging in critical conversations about the challenges that women of color face across race, ethnicity, culture, class and gender, and the ways in which those social processes intersect and influence the female student experience.

Building Agency through Social Networks As a way to increase access to material resources and to build agency and social capital we intentionally developed social networks outside of our home institutions. We created access to formal and informal networks and information sharing that supports academic abilities and competencies. We collectively invited students to be a part of this healing space by reaching out through various social platforms, by personal invitation and/or by sharing an invitation to faculty members to be shared with students that they identify as needing a support group. Having each other as resources, while also sharing material resources from our various universities, has helped strengthen our sense of community while disrupting dominant ways of knowing and knowledge production—and our ability to thrive throughout the academic pipeline.

Francia: Through the intercollegiate structure of this collective we learn how to access resources and information. We share self-care, coping and survival strategies. We cry, we laugh, and we support one another across academic endeavors. Through ongoing critical conversations, we explore the complexity of

our experiences, while integrating our commonalities and differences.

When one of us can’t find a journal article in our university’s library, we ask each other to search within our own library systems. When one of us needs help with software, we can ask our tech expert, Cristina, for advice and a list of resources.

Our individual research also overlaps in interesting ways, so there is always a book recommendation or a link to an article easily dispensed by any of us.

We share information about calls for papers/proposals, conferences held at our home institutions, and even information that we’ve gathered through social media.

Karina: Meeting with this group of women allows me to feel acknowledged and included.

This group provides a safe space as we move through the last sprint of the doctoral program; we have practiced difficult conversations before a one-on-one with our advisors, we have brainstormed ideas that later became presentations and articles. The group has served as a soundboard before job interviews and dissertation proposals. This collaborative provides more to me in this phase of my doctoral formation than what I receive from my program. The exchange I have with the group reminds me that these women are the future of academia.

Cristina: While the support of my advisor has been valuable throughout my doctoral trajectory, there is a different type of support that I have encountered weekly in our writing group: the peer-based mentorship that is informal, spontaneous and tremendously generous has truly allowed me to envision not only my own work, but also envision my potential professional pathway.

Nancy: We are all committed to finishing our degrees and supporting each other until we all finish. Sundays have become sacred! We may not be pumping out chapters every Sunday, but the work that gets done is just as important. Sharing our achievements, struggles, and ideas is crucial in keeping each other motivated and accountable. When you know that others are feeling how you are feeling, it lightens the load just a little bit. It’s easy to get lost in the narrative of “this is so hard for me” and in reality, this is so hard for ‘us.’ When you start thinking about ‘us’

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Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars • 13 instead of just ‘me,’ it makes you want to try harder.

Our advice for other WOC in doctoral programs is that you continue reaching out until you find your people, those who are willing to love you and support you as different academic and personal hurdles appear; and when you do find your people, challenge your own fear, your own complacency, so that you are also present and honest with them. Hold each other accountable and demystify the struggles of writing. Be present, listen, and write.

Conclusion

social milieu—the indispensable essence of our cultures and language, unite us. Engagement in this group has brought to our awareness the salience of the complexity of our heterogeneous and intersectional social locations and experiences within the academy.

We seek to exemplify the possibility of mutuality between doctoral students of color, and/or those who represent nations outside of the United States, to build pathways across difference and identity by co-creating liberating spaces that support their scholarly and academic needs.

Acknowledgments

Since the creation of this group, we have added several new members—Marcelle, Jen, Dawn and Regina—and we now identify as a writing collaborative for women of color. Two of our group members, Marcelle and Jen, have successfully defended their dissertations and we couldn’t be prouder or more inspired by their accomplishments and courage. We plan to continue our Sunday meetings until each one of us becomes a doctor.

Cristina: I occasionally mention to other doctoral students my participation in this group, and there are mixed responses; a frequent question is ‘Why is it centered around women of color?’ And to that I would perhaps just answer that the experience of decentering white patriarchy, and being able to support each other through a decolonized practice is tremendously valuable and transformative. Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us that we must write because bravery is all that is left when we need our words to make sense of the world. I have seen amazing proposals become dissertation projects and pilot studies in my time in the group. Our collective practice of storytelling, of making sense of our doctoral pathway has been, to me, the center of this transformative exercise.

This collective of interdisciplinary peers evolved into a space of resistance and liberation—one that allows us to safely engage in decolonizing dialogue that sanctions the production of diverse knowledge and epistemology. As we each navigate the landscape of institutions of higher learning, this informal space was founded out of a necessity to materialize a system of shared support that engenders agency; counteracts the loneliness of the writing and doctoral process, and allows us to reclaim our individual and collective ways of being and knowing. The voices in this paper are those of Latinas of various national origins, and although we occupy various intellectual, physical,

We would like to thank Dr. Anne Ellen Geller and Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz for their encouragement and invaluable support. We also thank the editors of Praxis and the anonymous reviewer for their feedback and support throughout the publication process. As we all journey through and within the academy, we are especially grateful to Dr. Marcelle Mentor, Dr. Jennifer Johnson, Dawn Goddard-Eckrich, and Regina Duthely for holding space and their willingness to be fully present—walking alongside each of us with compassion, support and without judgment.

Works Cited Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers.” Ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 2nd ed. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color, 1983.

165–174. Print.

Aryan, Bushra, and Fernando Guzman. “Women of Color in the PhD: Experiences in Formal Graduate Support Programs.” Journal of Business Studies Quarterly 1.4 (2010): 69–77. Print. hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Golde, Chris M., and Timothy M. Dore. At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education. Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2001. Print.

Martinez, Melissa A., Danielle J. Alsandor, Laura J. Cortez, Anjale D. Welton, and Aurora Chang.

“We Are Stronger Together: Reflective Testimonios of Female Scholars of Color in a Research and Writing Collective.” Reflective Practice 16.1 (2014): 85–95. Web. 15 May 2016.

Solórzano, Daniel, G., and Tara J. Yosso. “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an

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Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars • 14 Analytical Framework for Education Research.”

Qualitative Inquiry 6.1 (2002): 23–44. Print.

National Center for Education Statistics. The Condition of Education 2012 (NCES 2012-045), Indicator 47.

2012. Print.

Yosso, Tara J. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8.1: 69–91.

Print.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 14, No 1 (2016)

WRITING WHILE BLACK: THE BLACK TAX ON AFRICAN AMERICAN GRADUATE WRITERS Cedric D. Burrows Marquette University cedric.burrows@marquette.edu In Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois states that African American identity contains a “double consciousness” of being both black and American (45).

According to Du Bois, African Americans are constantly aware of their dual identities because their existence is a constant struggle to reconcile those two selves in a society that scorns them. As Du Bois writes, “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face” (46). As a result, African Americans have to see themselves in relation to how white Americans view them, while struggling to encounter a world that they anticipate will eventually—and hopefully—view them without contempt.

Writing these words over a century ago, Du Bois’s ideas still resonate in twenty-first century America.

While African Americans hold positions throughout American society, through the lens of whiteness they are still both black and American. Nowhere is this situation more apparent than in U.S. institutions of higher education. As the recent protests at the University of Missouri, Yale, and other campuses attest (see, e.g., Chessman and Wayt; Jaschik; Wong and Green), African Americans still carry their double consciousness. While Du Bois generally frames double consciousness for American society, I want to examine how double consciousness works in the university for those who are both black and graduate students writing dissertations.

This article examines the double consciousness of being a black graduate student writer through what I term “the black tax,” or the toll paid by African Americans to enter and participate in white institutions. I argue that teachers and scholars should consider how the black tax affects African American dissertation writers (and many graduate writers of color, especially when working within predominantly white universities). First, I offer a definition of the black tax. Then, I provide a narrative illustrating how the black tax can affect the writing practices of African American graduate writers. From there, I offer a reflection of how the black tax works in higher education. Finally, I conclude with a call to action for

universities to provide support for African American graduate writers, who navigate the double consciousness of writing while black.

The Black Tax and Graduate Writing I define the black tax as the societal charges placed on African Americans in order to enter and participate in white spaces. At the heart of the black tax is the notion that if African Americans work hard and rise above their situation without complaining about racism, they will gain privileges that whites already have. One mechanism or institution enforcing the black tax is education. As Kwame Ture [Stokely Carmichael] wrote about his experience as a student at Howard University, education “render[ed] us ‘cultured,’ i.e., polite and sage in the word, thought, deed, and appearance so that ultimately superior white America might in its benevolence, one blessed day, accept ‘the Negro’” (119). Because African Americans have historically been viewed as a problem, the responsibility is placed on African Americans to improve themselves to become adequate to enter white American society. Such a responsibility is grounded in the philosophies of African American thinkers and can be traced back to Booker T. Washington’s urging of African Americans to “‘Cast down your bucket where you are’—cast it down, making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom you are surrounded” and the creation of The Talented Tenth by white northern philanthropists and popularized by W. E. B. Du Bois. Today, discussions of respectability politics (e.g., Higginbotham; Wolcott) show how this philosophy continues, too often unquestioned.

In my own educational experience, I felt the presence of this responsibility: that is, of the black tax.

I understood clearly that, as a student, I would always be read as a black student. It came from my sixth grade teacher telling me, “You’re born black, which is one strike against you, and no one pays attention to average black children.” It came again with an undergraduate professor telling me, “It’s a white man’s world out here, and they’re not going to take just any black person to work in their business. You have to be twice as good. You have to exceed the expectations and be

Writing While Black • 16 the best at everything.” This presence has even been articulated on television with shows like Scandal, where Daddy Pope tells his daughter Olivia, “You have to work twice as hard to get half of what they have.” I heard these words so frequently that this philosophy encouraged me to do more in school. If the paper assignment was 5–7 pages long, I wrote 7 pages; when the graduation requirements were summa, magna, or cum laude, I reached for summa (though received magna); and when my Ph.D. comprehensive exam was graded on honors, pass, or fail, I strove to pass with honors (which I actually did).

Six months after completing my comprehensive exams, I felt the presence of the black tax as I sat for my dissertation proposal review with my committee.

After an hour of being asked questions related to my project—which examined how Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X were incorporated into composition textbooks—I passed my review and received notice that I could begin writing my dissertation. Before leaving the room, the majority of my committee reminded me that “a good dissertation is a done dissertation,” meaning to write it out and not expect the dissertation to be a perfect document. However, after everyone left, one of my committee members, an African American woman, told me privately, “Forget what they said. It’s not enough to have a done dissertation. You can’t be average; you have to exceed everyone’s expectations.” Then, pointing to her skin, “People who look like us have to work twice as hard to be successful in this world.”

Despite years of success, when I began writing my dissertation, I had a hard time writing. I did the research and took all of the necessary notes, but I couldn’t save any of my writing. I would write for an hour, and instead of saving the work, I would erase it.

In these moments, I experienced the double consciousness: on one hand, I had to get the dissertation done, while on the other, I had to be twice as good and make the dissertation worthy of being published. After a few weeks of going back and forth between these two urgencies, I decided I needed help. I made an appointment; went to the campus writing center; and met with the tutor, an undergraduate English education major who would begin studentteaching the next semester.

After about ten minutes of reading my draft, he commented, “You’re a very strong writer. How did you learn to write so well?” Holding back the rising anger in my spirit, I told him that it came from years of writing and teaching others how to write. After reading some more, he commented again: “Your writing is good, but you may want to rephrase some of your ideas so they won’t offend certain groups.”

“What groups?” I asked.

After several attempts, he stated, “You may offend white people with some of your language. You’re stating that a person who is white will not be able to teach a writing by Martin Luther King, and that can be offensive to a white audience.”

“No,” I responded. “My argument is that anyone can teach a speech or writing by King as long as they understand the cultural dimensions of his works.”

“Well,” he responded, “that’s not what someone who’s white may get from this writing.”

After thanking him for his time, I left the center feeling frustrated. Did he not understand what I was writing? Or, did he not even try to understand? I couldn’t tell my committee for fear that they would think I wasn’t strong enough to deal with criticism, and I didn’t want to go back to the writing center after that experience. So, I resolved to try writing some more and hope it would work. But the double consciousness of being black and a dissertation writer kept me from writing more.

While taking a break from writing, I walked around campus and noticed a flyer for a dissertation support group sponsored by the Counseling and Psychological Services. Feeling like I had nothing to lose at this point, I promptly signed up for it. The group met every week, and we discussed our goals and frustrations with writing our dissertations. After several weeks of participating in the group, I felt comfortable mentioning what my committee member said to me, along with my experience in the writing center. After I finished voicing my experiences, one student—an African American man—said, “Sounds like you’ve experienced ‘the black tax.’”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This idea that you have to work twice as hard as whites to succeed.”

“You mean there’s a name for it?” I responded.

“Yeah,” he replied with slight laughter in his voice.

“It comes with the territory of getting your degree.”

After our group meeting, I talked with this student some more, and we began to share our experiences with the black tax. We also began our own writing sessions, where we would share our writing with each other and ask questions if there was anything that needed clarification. This strategy helped us both, and the more we met, the more productive I became in my own writing. Later, as I continued to write my dissertation, pass the defense with honors, graduate, and enter a tenure track position, I met other African Americans who shared similar experiences. They also experienced the black tax and had to pay it to finish their dissertations. Across our shared experiences, common themes emerged that explained how the black

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Writing While Black • 17 tax operates within graduate education. The following are four of the more concrete themes (or defining characteristics) of the black tax: 1. Presenting an acceptable form of blackness to the white world. In its original state, the black presence is seen as a threatening image to white society. It is seen as a threat because the cultural nuances of African Americans are either misunderstood or ignored by white society. Therefore, when the black presence crosses into white society, the African American subject has to tone down cultural dimensions related to African Americans in order to be seen as pleasant and respectable to white Americans. In my interaction with the tutor from the writing center, his suggestion that I alter my paper’s content because he felt that whites would find my writing threatening suggests that either he did not want to engage with the complexities of race that I was offering, or he wanted to shape it in a manner that he would find acceptable on his terms.

The result in either or both cases would be that my voice would be silenced, while his voice would permeate my writing and make me respectable for (that is, respectable to) a white audience. Therefore, I was taxed with the burden of proving that what I had to say would be seen as acceptable/respectable.

2. Appreciating the generosity of white society for being allowed into their institutions. When African Americans are accepted into graduate programs, their presence is understood to be the result of benevolence.

They should exhibit an affect of gratitude and not disrupt institutional practices. For instance, when I was accepted into my graduate program, one professor told me, “Be grateful that you are allowed into the program.

You only have one opportunity to do well. Don’t make it harder on the next ones who come in here.” In this statement, the professor negated my accomplishments that qualified me and necessitated my entrance into the graduate program. Instead, I was seen as an entity that would serve as the gateway for others to enter into the program. If I—the trailblazing African American— succeeded, then my success would open opportunities for other African Americans to enter into the program.

If I was perceived as failing to succeed, then I could just as easily be blamed for blocking opportunities.

Because of this responsibility, I was not allowed to voice any frustrations or concerns, and I had to silently accept all of the microaggressions that I encountered.

Any voicing of concerns was seen as a sign of weakness or being unappreciative of my place in the program. To be clear, the notion here was that I was chartering territory that would make it easier—or harder—for others who enter after me. And that

responsibility fell to me—not to faculty, administrators, or program leaders, who truly had responsibility—because they had already benevolently given me a chance.

3. Representing the race. When the African American pays the tax to enter white society, they will not be seen as a person. Instead, as a representative for the race, they hold the responsibility for speaking about issues that affect African Americans, for behaving in ways that are considered appropriate and nonthreatening, and for being an outstanding student: in essence, they hold all the responsibilities of an ambassador charged with representing a sovereign nation. Therefore, if the African American does something that is considered offensive by white standards, the person will not be judged as an individual, but as a representative of their race.

While serving on a panel about the low number of African American graduate students at my institution, one person remarked, “In my department, we had two African American students enter our program, and neither of them finished. Why should we keep letting them in if they’re not going to finish?” This person’s comments suggested several factors about the black tax. First is the representation of people as racial entities instead of individuals. By flattening the personalities and circumstances of two different people into a narrative about “two African Americans,” the speaker suggested that he saw them as two instances of the same thing—as a collective instead of as individuals. By doing so, the speaker marked these two African American students as representing a single story of failure. He told their story about not finishing as though it was one story (not two) and as though it represented the experience of all African Americans.

At the same time, even though white students also failed to complete their degrees, their stories were not remembered or recounted in this way. The speaker did not choose to investigate the individual reasons as to why either African American student chose to leave the program but created his own narrative. Further, because the two students were seen as being unappreciative of their opportunities, we see how the themes/characteristics of the black tax are inextricable.

The speaker told a story in which the students did not present an acceptable form of blackness (i.e., theme #1) and did not appreciate the generosity of white society (theme #2). As a result, the speaker—and, hence, the program—could readily refuse future African American students. When individuals represent an entire race, the stakes are incredibly high, and each person is levied a similarly high tax.

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Writing While Black • 18 4. Recognizing that the African American subject is an intrusion to white institutions. In talking with several African American colleagues, one of the recurring themes is that we all were taxed with the burden of being allowed to rather than worthy of enrolling in graduate school. The white graduate students felt they were accepted into the graduate program based on their credentials, while the African American graduate students were seen as diversity additions. These different perceptions of worth reverberate throughout graduate programs and mean that African American graduate students are never on the same playing fields as white graduate students. When African American graduate students succeed, their counterparts may see them as successful because of white guilt (i.e., leniency by white faculty or administrators) instead of earned success, significant accomplishments, or unique qualifications. And when African American students’ accomplishments are celebrated within a program, white students may further resent these students for taking away from their own success.

For instance, in the situation with the white writing center tutor, his surprise with my writing shows the underlying assumption that I would be a writer who would need to understand and be taught basic grammar, syntax, or diction. These assumptions are part of the master narrative of African Americans as illeducated students who come from low-performing inner-city schools. Instead of learning to know who I am, the tutor took it upon himself to create an image that fit his expectation of what an African American writer should be. He didn’t show any sign of revising this expectation and expected all revision to be on my part.

His reaction shows how the mere presence of the African American subject serves as an intrusion within predominantly white institutions. For African American graduate students to survive and thrive within such institutions, the black tax must be paid. In considering this metaphor for graduate writers, we might ask: how can African American graduate students’ reserves be filled and refilled so that paying the tax doesn’t deplete all resources?

Black Graduate Writers Matter: Helping Universities and Writing Centers with the Black Tax In his autobiography, Malcolm X recalls his childhood experiences when he encounters white institutions in Mason, Michigan. One of the memories that resonated with him was when whites—in his presence—discussed African Americans through racial epithets and stereotypes. Reflecting on those

experiences, he wrote that he realized that he was never seen as a human by whites. While he was with them, he was not considered one of them: “Even though they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me” (32–33).

Malcolm X’s experiences are the same as African American graduate students. While they are on campus and are seen with other students, the black tax is imposed on them because of their presence. At predominantly white universities, they are not truly part of the university. Double consciousness involves recognizing the black tax and its role in how white institutions (fail to) understand or (de)value the African American presence in society. Therefore, when African American graduate students enter these institutions, they are often seen with suspicion.

For writing center staff, mentors, and others to support African American graduate writers, I offer that we rethink the notion of safe spaces. Some scholarship already attends to the need for rethinking safe spaces (e.g., Pratt, Greenfield and Rowan), and yet we need more work in this area. For instance, when I went to the writing center, the tutor and I were supposedly in a “safe space,” where we were allowed to freely discuss my writing. However, in this space, racial power dynamics were clearly present and obscuring real connection. While the tutor attempted to give feedback, it was through the lens of whiteness without acknowledging how his feedback could affect the perception of myself as an African American graduate writer. In contrast, consider my collaboration with another African American graduate writer. I encountered a person who understood me as a person and who empathized with my difficulty of navigating double consciousness at the university. Together, we were able to share and process our experiences, while exchanging writing feedback that supported our dissertation completion and overall professional development.

In light of these comparisons, I suggest that universities, writing programs, and writing centers create spaces for people of similar backgrounds, especially shared racial identifications, to work together. Such spaces can reflect the needs of the group and allow members to discuss their experiences without the gaze of whiteness haunting their space.

One example would be peer or co-mentoring programs in which graduate students help each other through the dissertation process and bond over shared experiences (e.g., Godbee and Novotny; Patton). Such a mentoring program might involve paired tutoring relationships or small writing groups, which writing centers could provide space for and officially endorse. Another example might involve a peer group coordinating

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Writing While Black • 19 meetings to discuss progress with writing, to share challenges, and to provide suggestions for overcoming those challenges. Such meetings could blend the best of writing groups and professional development seminars, but keep centered and central the experiences of African American graduate writers.

Along with student-centered programs, writing centers and faculty should be aware of what James Weldon Johnson terms as “the double audience” (202).

In his essay, “The Dilemma of the Negro Author,” Johnson notes that the African American writer is always aware that their audience consists of both black and white America, two divided audiences that create “two elements with differing and often opposite and antagonistic points of view” (202). If the African American writer chooses a white audience, he or she will have to encounter “numerous conventions and traditions” that white Americans (whether consciously or unconsciously) have about African Americans, including the belief that African Americans should only speak about topics that “belong to the white world” (205). If the African American writer only focuses on an African American audience, the black tax makes discussing taboo subjects in the black community impossible for fear that it would make the African American community look bad in the eyes of whites and confirm repeated stereotypes upheld by whites.

As with the recent examples of Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance, Jesse Williams’ speech at the BET Awards, and Colin Kaepernick’s decision not to stand during the playing of the national anthem can attest, the African American subject is allowed to discuss or perform only certain subjects and subjectivities. Yet when African Americans move into subject-positions that whiteness deems as unacceptable, African Americans are taxed with the burden of proving that they have the right to talk about a subject. Writing centers and faculty can help African American students navigate through the black tax and double audience by holding training workshops on both the double audience and black tax and how both concepts affect the writing practices of black graduate student writers.

For instance, in their workshops on how to train tutors, writing center administrators can show students examples like Beyoncé, Williams, and Kaepernick to examine the statements that each person made and the reactions to these statements by society. Then, they can compare what these African American subjects have stated and compare it with when someone white has performed or said that same behavior and ask tutors the different reactions based on the audience. Doing so will help tutors become aware of the black tax that African Americans face and also the double audiences that African Americans are aware of when writing.

In creating student-centered programs to support African American students and being aware of the double audience, universities would show these students that they are more than a checked box to fill diversity requirements or a necessary evil to fulfill an accreditation standard. Instead, universities would allow what Du Bois terms as a people “born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight” of the American world to have the space to deal (and heal) with their double consciousness on their own terms (45). Such work allows African American graduate writers to face the world that taxes them, but with fuller and replenished selves ready for the future. In this way, we can affirm: black graduate writers matter.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Beth Godbee for encouraging me to contribute an article to Praxis and for reading multiple drafts, and to Dr. Daryl Lynn Dance for helping me brainstorm ideas. Finally, thanks to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity’s Faculty Success Program, which gave me the space to replenish myself for a future in academia.

Works Cited Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell.

Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Scribner, 2003.

Print.

Chessman, Hollie, and Lindsay Wayt. “What Are Students Demanding?” Higher Education Today, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Signet Classic, 1995. Print.

Godbee, Beth and Julia C. Novotny. “Asserting the Right to Belong: Feminist Co-Mentoring among Graduate Student Women.” Feminist Teacher 23.2 (2013): 177–195. Print.

Greenfield, Laura, and Karen Rowan, eds. Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2011. Print.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880– 1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Print.

Jaschik, Scott. “What the Protests Mean.” Inside Higher Ed, 16 Nov. 2015. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Johnson, James Weldon. “The Dilemma of the Negro Author.” The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson. Ed. Rudolph P. Byrd. New York: Modern Library, 2008. Print.

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Writing While Black • 20 Patton, Lori D. “My Sister’s Keeper: A Qualitative Examination of Mentoring Experiences Among African American Women in Graduate and Professional Schools.” The Journal of Higher Education 80.5 (2009): 510–537. Print.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.”

Profession (1991): 33–40. Print.

Washington, Booker T. “Speech to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition.” 1895.

American RadioWorks. American RadioWorks, n.d.

Web. 27 Mar. 2016.

Wolcott, Victoria W. Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit.

Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2001.

Print.

Wong, Alia, and Adrienne Green. “Campus Politics: A Cheat Sheet.” The Atlantic, 4 Mar. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. Print.

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PRODUCTIVE CHAOS: DISABILITY, ADVISING, AND THE WRITING PROCESS Griffin Keedy University of Colorado Denver griffin.keedy@ucdenver.edu Because many faculty and graduate students pursue disability studies projects in an institutional vacuum (often being the only disability studies person in a department or institution), it’s exciting when faculty and graduate students come together to work on disability studies projects. Such has been the experience of the two authors of this piece: a graduate student who recently completed her Master’s thesis on hyperactive/ADHD rhetorics (Griffin) and her thesis advisor, whose research area is disability studies, rhetoric, and writing (Amy). As we’ve worked together, we’ve excitedly shared research that enriches both our writing projects, and we’ve exchanged teaching ideas to make our classrooms more inclusive. We’ve had the chance to work interdependently, including on this piece, where one of us got the project going and the other supplied the creative spontaneity we needed to finish it. Further, in our case, we’ve had the chance to openly identify as disabled and use crip humor to navigate our work together. Alongside these benefits, there are what we sincerely and euphemistically call generative tensions, which occur when access needs and desires conflict, when power dynamics re-assert themselves, and when attempts at change and adaptation fail.

To parse these benefits and tensions, we write through, around, and about a recorded conversation of one of our mostly weekly thesis meetings at a café, about halfway through the second semester working on Griffin’s thesis. With a full agenda and a spontaneous decision to record this particular meeting for this project, we captured our typical routine, complete with big decisions, mis-starts, and disruptive blenders. While our interaction occurred in the context of graduate thesis advising, our experience speaks more broadly to supporting writing and writers in the contexts of disability. This includes one-on-one support provided in writing courses and writing center interactions where one or both participants are disabled. In these contexts, normative assumptions about how (and why) writing gets done can discourage if not prohibit the atypical but successful ways that some disabled students, writing consultants, and teachers approach the writing process.

In an uncomfortable testament to our relationship, we first listened to the recorded conversation we

Amy Vidali University of Colorado Denver amy.vidali@ucdenver.edu analyze here on a lazy Friday afternoon in Amy’s office. One of us transcribed key moments; then we independently reviewed the partial transcript and met to decide what moments warranted further attention.

In line with our amusement, respect, and critique of how we work together, we eschewed traditional collaborative writing and instead selected clips of the conversation to respond to independently, then traded and responded to those responses. The result is a reflective (written) conversation about a (spoken) conversation. We hope readers will inhabit, clarify, and refute our advising experiences within their own embodied contexts, and consider the ways that our experiences map to other advising contexts, particularly writing classrooms and centers.

Spasmodic Business (#1) Amy: Okay so you don’t have to articulate your whole theory of glitch revision especially if it’s not relevant. But in terms of our actual working process, like how do I? Griffin: Help me revise when I need it.

Amy: Yeah.

Griffin: Definitely need it.

Amy: I didn’t actually feel like what we did for the lit review worked that well. You know what I mean?

Griffin: Yeah, it was also like, torture.

Amy: We weren’t our finest selves. But do I just wait for you to ask me? Also, I have a hard time with your writing, I never know when it’s, when you feel that it’s at the point where I should read it.

Griffin: Yeah, I know. It’s because I draft, it’s crazy. It’s just, I… Amy: OCD Amy wants to be like, can you just finish one of these things.

Griffin: Yeah no kidding.

Amy: Then I can tell you? You saw me, I start to - you probably didn’t get to it - I started giving feedback on something and then I was like, I’m lost, I don’t understand what’s happening.

Griffin: If there’s three dots underneath something it’s not done. I’m done, I’m moving onto the next, cause...

Amy: I forget, I wrote and I was commenting and then I was like, oh, this clearly is not done.

Productive Chaos • 22 Griffin: Sorry, I’ll be more clear about, things.

Whatever. [edit] Griffin: We should have done it a long time ago. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Amy: And then later, that’s why I said ignore my comments at the beginning, I realize you weren’t handing this to me as a final product. Not that there is such a thing as a final product. [laughter] Griffin: Totally, there definitely is not. The spasmodic development thing, literally it’s what I do and it’s way worse than how I describe it, or how I’ve described it so far. It’s even on a more like molecular level, where I’m drafting and I’m like wait, what I said that thing about, and then I go look at it and I end up working on that part for a little bit, and then I go to look up something in one of the things in the articles and then I’m like, ooh, this should go over here and then I work on that a little bit. So then I end up not even with full paragraphs that are in different stages of development. It’s hideous.

Amy: It seems very productive for you though.

Griffin: Well it’s good, because I just keep moving around. Plus, my spasmodic business is, on a project that’s this big, it’s, yeah. It’s more like just like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. It gets pretty out of control. And an hour and a half later I was like, what was I working on when I sat down here?

Amy When I look at this, I can’t separate when we’re talking about our disabilities, when we’re talking about the writing process, and when we’re talking about both.

When Griffin says “it was also torture” and I say “we weren’t our finest selves,” we are mostly referring to the struggles that characterized the previous semester for each of us, including the return of depression, a major break-up, medication difficulties, a loved one’s opioid addiction, and persistent gastrointestinal turmoil. But these issues were stitched into the writing process too - they influenced how I advised and how Griffin wrote.

Another part of the “torture” was the structured way I asked Griffin to work on the literature review for her thesis. While I do not have a diagnosis of OCD (and probably shouldn’t reference as I did), I am widely regarded as “Type A,” and I provided what I thought were logical, carefully scaffolded guidelines and deadlines for Griffin. But in our crip context, my attempts at structure were mostly counter-productive I didn’t (yet) understand that Griffin works best by jumping between parts of her project, rather than

marching along a linear timeline (toward a completed lit review). As I read her thesis’s critique of how normative expectations of the writing process flatten the benefits of hyperactivity, and as she talked about her “spasmodic business” in this advising session, I became aware of how normal and normalizing I am in terms of how I write and advise. I can also see that my normative assumptions of the writing process strongly shape how I train graduate students to teach writing, making normative notions of the writing process prevalent for students at my university.

Ultimately, I’ve succeeded and failed in providing support for Griffin’s writing process. The compromises don’t feel satisfying to me; it works better when we do it my way part of the time and her way part of the time. So sometimes I write long ecomments and demand structure, and sometimes I hand her a small pink notecard with a few suggestions, decorated with dog stickers.

Griffin For me, the hardest thing here is Amy’s summary of the first semester we worked together on the thesis.

It was a very challenging time for both of us. On top of these life events, writing pressures put me in an emotionally unpredictable state that was very unfamiliar since I had never engaged my own lived experience with disability so directly in my work.

Maintaining my usual distance was not sustainable. I was unable to draw on my experiences in other classes, at the writing center at my previous university, or even in my other graduate classes, where I had not claimed my learning disability. The “torture” of these first efforts set a precedent where our disabilities were necessarily incorporated into all levels of advising.

At our next meeting (at the same coffee shop and table), Amy really did surprise me with an entirely new and “glitched” approach. She had challenged herself to provide her feedback all on one pink notecard via brief bullet notes and sassy stickers. As I reflect on this, I wonder what the reverse of this might be. How could I similarly switch a weekly response to embody her approach to writing/revising? Have I truly done so yet?

While less charming, for me this means openness to organization, linearity, and polish. Amy brought these things into our project in a non-intrusive way and I became less averse.

I agree that the most satisfying reconciliations have come when we work completely in her mode or mine, but several (less dramatic) practices represent regular compromise. For example, I often left a meeting with a “triage list” of three areas to focus my efforts in the coming week, making the development less random. I

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Productive Chaos • 23 have also come to accept that rather than listening to an album that embodies something from the thesis on the spot, it is more time-efficient to email her a subject of analysis that we can then discuss at the next meeting. These small compromises work in conjunction with the bigger shifts between doing it her way and doing it my way, and reflect the middle ground that writing advisors might inhabit when working around and with disability in writing classrooms and centers.

Humor Me (#2) Amy: And re-read your monologues.

Griffin: Okay.

Amy: Cause maybe, how many are there? Six? Well you call it six monologues. “Six monologues to avoid while teaching comp 2.”

Griffin: Yeah, there’s definitely not six. I don’t know why I put six. Sometimes I like to just put numbers on there. I did this creative writing project in undergrad it was called The Sound of Me Talking in Five Acts. It was two. It was two acts. But I never changed the title cause I liked it. [laughter] Amy: I’m having such a good time.

Griffin: I have four.

Amy: Four?

Griffin: Yeah.

Amy: Monologues. That’s pretty close. [laughter]

Griffin “Crip humor” has an important place in disability studies, which is a field that can require overwhelmingly personal research when confronting past and present discrimination. Humor is a constant way of dealing for me - I use it to ease my anxieties about my ADHD in social contexts, including when teaching writing and when advising students one-onone in conferences or office hours. For me and I think many of us in disability studies, humor is not the only way we confront disability and difference but it’s an essential way that allows us to connect with one another.

Funny conversations like this one touch on the chaotic state of my drafts, complete with seemingly random number systems, which Amy calls me on but easily accepts with a shrug, revealing the dynamic role of humor. While writing my thesis, I found ways of embedding some of this quirk into my writing, which I then exaggerated and performed for Amy’s and my amusement. This humor sometimes stems from our individual quirks and experiences, and other times, it’s

a way of sharing our frustrations with disability writ large.

Amy Let’s be clear—Griffin is a very funny person! And for me, such humor is welcome because there is often too much distance between what professors/advisors know and what those new to disability studies know (or what either group thinks they know), which can foreclose playfulness and humor. This happens when students meet with me to get additional help with their writing and disclose their disabilities. They are often reticent to ask for what they know they need, and instead position me as the authority, which I often shun through humor, because we are responsible to return authority back to disabled students, even when they hand such authority to us.

Though it worked for us, “crip humor” is not the only or best way to return authority to disabled students. In fact, engaging in such humor as someone outside the disability community isn’t a great idea.

Instead, those who advise writers must create conversations about access that are regular and low stakes, which I didn’t really do with Griffin (or my other advisees). Instead, I have usually mapped my previous experiences with students in my classrooms onto advising relationships, despite the dissimilarity of these (rhetorical) situations. Or, I’ve asked about access at the very beginning, when it may feel risky for students to articulate what they need, much as the beginning of a writing center session may not be the moment that the consultant or student wants to disclose disability. This speaks to the need for longterm writing support relationships, so students and advisors can articulate their access needs.

Normative Chatter (#3) Amy: I mean you could decide to organize things really weirdly too, if you want to.

Griffin: What do you mean?

Amy: I don’t know, like have all theory review stuff in like weird boxes or?

Griffin: Really?

Amy: I figure at this point you may as well like just go for it, right?

Griffin: Okay.

Amy: I mean what better . . .

Griffin: I need a better program than Microsoft Word because I’m already fighting Microsoft Word all the time. I’ve got to switch to something.

Amy: But I also don’t want you to go down that rabbit hole of formatting yet.

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Productive Chaos • 24 Griffin: I know, but I just need somewhere where I can put that stuff in . . .

Amy I don’t like looking at this again, because I see myself encouraging and supporting Griffin, then pulling out the rug. I encourage her to organize her thesis “weirdly” (my idea), then assert that I don’t want her to (also my idea). Because I do this a few times in the transcript, it feels worth digging into though not defending.

Down deep, I want her to “go for it,” to push the bounds of rhetoric in how she formats her thesis, much as she breaks new ground with the content of her writing. But as an advisor, I worry about what happens when all the others – the thesis-formatting person at the graduate school, the other members of her committee, those hiring her to teach and advise writing after she graduates, maybe even me – reject her thesis as too “weird.” Further, if I think that this formatting task will distract her from finishing the thesis, I worry that I am shirking my role as advisor (as motivator, time-keeper, whip-cracker). In this case, the normative chatter gets the best of me, transforming an idea she was excited about into a “rabbit hole.”

But I also pull back because I have no idea what I’m suggesting, though as I hoped, Griffin knew exactly what I meant by “weirdly” and “weird boxes.”

This is where advising in the space of disability and difference gets tricky, because I want(ed) to encourage Griffin to do what she is good at (in part because of her ADHD), while not understanding what that looks like or means (in part because of my structured nature).

I want to say that I always took the risk and ventured into the unknown geography shaped by our disabilities, but I didn’t, partly because of my own discomfort, and partly because what I’m encouraging her to do is risky.

I do wish we’d talked through this issue, instead of me just shutting it down. But my bigger concern is that the safe road and the normative road to “good writing” often seem to be the same, and I hate that.

Griffin I would call what Amy does here “qualifying” rather than “pulling out the rug.” The thesis now exists because of Amy’s confidence in my ideas and the risks they require. Disability discrimination is quietly common but I had not been so discouraged by it until I made the decision to write this thesis and was actively discouraged by another faculty member. Still, Amy’s response to this moment in our conversation is somewhat darker than mine, as for me, this exchange represents the evolved state of writing support. I know

that Amy knows that I am likely to hyperfocus on an idea such as the “weird” formatting, allowing it to consume me fully. I consider this hyperfocus to be very useful (as does Amy). It can also be very timeconsuming. While anticipating such issues can be helpful, the way I approach writing challenges tightlytimed, staged notions of advising, whether in thesis advising, writing classrooms, or writing centers.

The large-scale, high-stakes nature of my thesis project also magnified the manifestations of my ADHD and hyperactive writing habits, making me less successful at traditional, linear drafting and meeting deadlines. I needed to be very honest about my differently-organized approach. I repeatedly agreed to deadlines, and to me, the idea of “striving toward” a deadline made perfect sense, though Amy wondered why I wanted to create deadlines I didn’t fully intend to meet. I had some difficulty resolving this for her and probably never fully will. I strove for completion of our “deadlines” while also letting myself work where interest and creativity fell. Amy was not surprised to receive submissions that partially accomplished what was planned along with developments that were not on the itinerary.

Amy once asked, “So is there a stage when you like . . . polish things?” We both laughed. The answer is that there has to be, at least for almost all parts of the thesis. Amy’s systematic (albeit sometimes normalizing) methods made revision and polished writing possible.

This is a primary area of tension for me and my ADHD, but I am comfortable discussing the practical implications of my approach and my disability.

Killing It (#4) Amy: I think it would be cool to throw a section in that’s not revised at all.

Griffin: Really?

Amy: Yeah! [edit] Amy: That methods statement is going to be something. But I really think part of your methods needs to be explaining how we revise. I’m not screwing with you. I don’t fully know how to respond. Because I am both, you know, normal and normalizing in terms of how I write. You know what I mean?

Griffin: I mean so am I.... It’s having, this [thesis] project or this tenet is having a fun effect on my teaching. You know, “Wooh, you know, whatever your process is you go for it. I support that!” [laughter] Yeah, and I know I can’t do it the way you’re doing it, but I love it and just go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing. A couple of questions…

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Productive Chaos • 25 Amy: I’m trying it with my class, the not having a finished project, they just have to commit to having a certain amount done which is negotiable. Makes me very uncomfortable.

Griffin: Yeah…I bet it does. I love it that you’re doing it though. I just liked the end of your Rhetoric and the Body course so much because - well one, because you helped me develop this project but two, because rather than just having a paper and kind of being underwhelmed by it and being done with it. Well, like in [another class] I wrote a paper there - haven’t looked at it since. Have I even read [teacher’s] comments on it? Nooo, because I’m never gonna go back to it because I don’t care about it because I killed it with the final draft!

Griffin As much as Amy reflects tradition in rhetoric and composition, she takes big risks as a professor and as an advisor. Our advising meetings and my thesis explored the normative practices we both use as instructors. Amy quickly began incorporating these ideas into her pedagogy, something I have done only casually and on smaller assignments. I found it empowering to see my ideas implemented in her curriculum, which was possible because of her experience and position, and is not something I could have achieved yet.

I loved that she was doing this! That can’t be overstated. Her experimentation with the aims of my thesis functioned in several ways. I got a glimpse of what my methods look like in practical use, which I was then able to use to inform my writing. I also got a sense of accomplishment that the project might have real effects on writing instruction when it’s published (assuming some will have the same willingness to take risks). Amy sees her teaching style as an uneasy fit for my ideas, but the reality is that my teaching style isn’t always the best fit for them either. I think most writing instructors and writing center consultants rely heavily on the tradition of the writing process metaphor and the steps it prescribes. Disrupting this pattern is not easy for most of us.

Amy In what seemed like a brilliant idea before and after I did it (but not along the way), I decided to try out Griffin’s thesis-based ideas in my own classroom, as she notes. Her thesis smartly articulates the value of inprocess writing and unfinished work as more than a step toward a normative final draft, which I find both engaging and confusing. So in my senior-level argumentation class, I asked the class to work on a

particular project with only suggested goals for the first two, middle two, and last three weeks of the course.

More directly drawing from Griffin’s thesis, I did not require them to finish the project in a traditional sense.

Instead, as we discussed in the first week of class, one week before the project was due, they proposed what they would finish and why.

I typically run a tight ship in terms of class deadlines and polished projects (I kill it, they kill it).

But I tolerated my discomfort and regularly trumpeted how this project encouraged students to take charge of their work, begin a larger project they could finish later, and avoid the need to turn in a complete but crappy final draft. And while I was pretty convinced that the whole idea was going down the tubes at the of time of our thesis meeting (with about five weeks left in the semester), in the end, Griffin’s ideas hit the mark— students were far more enthusiastic about this project than the others. In setting their own goals, students completed better quality work, and much more of it, than I ever would have asked for. With some distance, I can see that my misguided dedication to polished work is much like the idea that writing centers are only for correcting or proofreading student work. We must think more expansively about the ways that expecting perfected writing undoes some of our own goals as writing teachers and consultants.

Without trying out Griffin’s ideas in my classroom, I don’t think I would have ever fully understood her thesis concepts. I certainly wouldn’t have realized how my typical, deadline-driven approach must feel to some of my students (including those with ADHD), assuming it feels something like my discomfort in embracing loose deadlines and unpolished work.

What’s more, talking through the uneasy fit of Griffin’s ideas and my teaching style disturbed the power dynamic between us. In this clip from our conversation, I say, it “makes me very uncomfortable” and she says, “I love that you’re doing it though,” which, at least temporarily, reverses the typical roles assigned to us as advisor and advisee. Embracing how disability shapes writing occurs in the context of generative discomfort.

Productive Activism

Chaos

and

Advising

as

Amy first used the term “productive chaos” to describe Griffin’s writing (non)process, and it now seems a fitting description of working with and through disability in supporting writers and writing.

The term invokes both mess and motion, an intentional juxtaposition pointing to the normative nature of the writing process and embracing the

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Productive Chaos • 26 creative and threatening value of chaos and of disability. Productive chaos means allowing and even anticipating writing not as a formulaic process but as a highly personal and productive, if sometimes painful, creative act. For Griffin, productive chaos was situated in the context of past experiences with academic writing and a lifelong struggle to reconcile her ADHD and educational traditions/institutions. For Amy, productive chaos occurred fairly far into her professional career, and in a depressive context where disorganization felt distinctly threatening. For writing classrooms and writing centers, productive chaos means a re-investment in rhetorical productivities we may not always understand, and an engagement with the sometimes chaotic ways we learn to write.

Advising with disability in mind is an activist act because productive chaos challenges typical rhetorical sensibilities in unfamiliar and exhilarating ways. Access and equity remain elusive for disabled people in higher education, including tenured faculty and graduate students like ourselves, who are socialized into academic communities and often function as effective self-advocates. For even as scholars with disabilities working on a project in disability studies, we found normalizing writing traditions difficult to avoid, and we have found it valuable to look back at our conversation to laugh at some moments and be troubled by others.

We don’t pretend that our advising relationship is a model to follow, as the ways disability might impact writing, writing support, and advising relationships are as diverse as disability itself. But we have found great value in articulating and challenging our own writing/advising processes, using humor to confront normative writing practices, and inhabiting complex ideas by teaching with and through them.

We end this piece with one of six images Griffin offered at her thesis defense. Spreading the images on the table, she challenged committee members to match the images up with the written chapters of her thesis.

The images she provided reflected both her process and the chapters as final products, and tellingly, Amy got a few right and a few wrong. The image below matched with her introduction chapter, and in the context of our collaboration, serves as a metaphor for how disability helps us rethink what it means to support writing and writers. The image is an abstract blot painting, created on old textbook pages. Mustard yellow and bloodish red are splattered on the page, but not onto a black-and white, super-imposed, surreal collage of an artichoke-like flower blooming from an antique pharmacy bottle. This image speaks to ways we might take our existing knowledge of the writing process and repurpose it, increasing access through the recombinatory use of familiar concepts (old textbooks)

and new concepts (blooming flower), in the messy context of disability (splattered paint). Embracing disability in supporting writers and writing is a manylayered intervention that sometimes comes together into an engaging work of art and always challenges our common definitions of the writing process.

“Circles Have Their Convexities” created by @hellochaz.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the anonymous Praxis reviewer who provided feedback on an earlier draft of this essay.

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WRITING ACROSS COMMUNITIES AND THE WRITING CENTER AS CULTURAL ECOTONE: LANGUAGE DIVERSITY, CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, AND GRADUATE STUDENT LEADERSHIP Michelle Hall Kells University of New Mexico mkells@unm.edu The writing center as metaphorical construct and institutional space represents a cultural ecotone, a site that environmentalist Florence Krall describes as the “edges where differences come together” (4). The ecotone as a biological transition zone constitutes a locus of tremendous diversity and transformation.

Extending the metaphor to social spaces, Krall argues, “Cultural ecotones are the pluralistic contexts out of which conflict and change emerge.” My own understanding of the role of writing centers and WAC in the 21st century university poignantly aligns with Krall’s notion of the ecotone and remains grounded in a cultural rhetorical ecology approach to the teaching of writing. The Writing Across Communities model represents a response to the transcultural, translingual, transnational, and transgenre universe in which our students write and live. For the past two decades, my colleague Juan Guerra and I have been re-visioning educational writing practice as ecotones of difference privileging ethnolinguisitically-diverse writers (Kells, 2012, 2013; Guerra, 2015). This concept has informed my work with graduate students as they begin navigating their futures.

At the University of New Mexico (UNM), I have been mentoring graduate students for more than twelve years toward becoming future Writing Center directors, WPAs, and WAC directors, cultivating them in the cultural rhetorical ecologies of language through Writing Across Communities theory and practice.

Taking a holistic ethno-ecological approach, Writing Across Communities foregrounds language diversity in literacy education that extends writing beyond strictly academic spheres. Traditional WAC models that privilege English (SAE) academic writing ultimately fail to engage the linguistic resources of ethnolinguistic writers and unwittingly disregard the discursive alacrity necessary for students to become citizen-scholars writing across academic, civic, and professional spheres. Writing Across Communities, in turn, promotes rhetorical resilience as a principal goal in serving diverse writers migrating across academic, public, and professional contexts. After a visit to meet with Tiffany Rousculp at the Salt Lake City

Community Writing Center in April 2008, my graduate students and I took on the bold challenge of launching a community writing center as a local project here in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Rousculp xxiii). In this article, I offer a brief description of the evolutionary process of developing a Writing Across Communities model for WAC and Writing Centers at the University of New Mexico through graduate student education and leadership.

Reinventing WAC: Diversity and Graduate Student Leadership I’d like to trace the ten-year trajectory of the Writing Across Communities initiative at UNM to map the role of graduate students as the stewards of the story, keeping the conversation alive, robust, relevant, and growing. I served as the founder and program chair for the Writing Across Communities initiative at UNM from 2004 to 2014. The adoption of ethnolinguistic diversity pedagogical principles across subfields of Composition Studies such as Second Language Writing and WAC has become largely institutionalized since the first introduction of Writing Across Communities into the national conversation in 2004 (Zawacki and Cox). My colleague Steve Benz assumed the role of faculty advisor for the WAC Alliance in Spring 2014 when I went on sabbatical to complete a new book project on civil rights rhetoric.

As UNM’s WAC and Writing Center programs continue to evolve and our graduate students move into tenure-stream positions across the nation, the vision of Writing Across Communities still serves as a powerful palimpsest and remains inscribed in cultures of writing both in and beyond our institution (Rose and Paine). Even though our WPA and WAC leadership continues to change, the valuing of ethnolinguistic diversity in literacy education across the curriculum remains indelibly etched at UNM (Writing Across Communities Workshop).

As William Condon and Carol Rutz argue, sustained WAC programs must be both visible and valued within their institutional homes (372). We have maintained visibility and value by keeping our

Writing Communities and the Writing Center as Cultural Ecotone • 28 programs open and accessible and consistently present in the institutional fabric of the university and the larger community. My graduate students and I have been employing research processes alongside invention strategies to support the evolution of Writing Across Communities using inductive, pragmatic, and empirical methods. Our model of program invention has relied on both qualitative and quantitative methods including ethnographic protocols, focus groups, random sampling methods, questionnaires, and oral interviews.

The scope of graduate students’ part in the evolution of Writing Across Communities has grown through self-defined roles as junior WAC leaders-intraining. These leadership opportunities stem from our prioritizing of access and equity and have afforded our graduate students a broad range of experiences in which they experiment with the various genres of the academic knowledge-making system such as drafting project proposals, designing the WAC newsletter, conducting IRB supported research agendas, generating grant writing programs in support of student-managed projects, designing pedagogical materials for their own ENGL 101 and 102 classrooms, and reporting their findings to stakeholders and sponsors. Our WAC graduate student leaders exercise authorship over their own intellectual projects in the classroom, which evolve over time into conference papers, articles, proposals, and reports. The graduate seminar in this kind of learn-by-doing context provides the space for engaging a kind of intellectual co-op, a commonwealth of ideas and visions informed by current scholarship in the fields of Second Language Writing, WAC, Community Literacy, and Writing Center pedagogies that students themselves craft together toward shared-governance leadership strategies. Equally important, the seminar provides a safe space for cultivating a culture of collaboration and critique among graduate students as colleagues.

In turn, our WAC graduate students learn to build partnerships across the institution, vertically and horizontally, presenting their findings and project outcomes in such venues as the Civil Rights Symposia (2007, 2008), Celebration of Student Writing (2009– 2011), Core Curriculum Task Force Student Open Forum (Spring 2010), Working With Writers Colloquium (2011), Writing the World Symposium (Spring 2012). Additionally, our graduate students learn to exercise authority over their own chartered student organization, the WAC Alliance, electing their own leaders, establishing their own constitution and bylaws, and collaborating with other Graduate and Professional Student Organizations across campus.

They manage the Writing Communities website and

the UNM WAC newsletter, Writing Communities. These projects are completely student generated, extending beyond the classroom space as a site of invention into self-defined opportunities for leadership and authorship.

The interconnected role of the graduate seminar and the evolution of WAC-based projects through the Writing Across Communities initiative directly align with the shared governance of our graduate student leaders. Some of the seminar-based projects that have taken on an institutional life beyond the classroom include: the conceptualization of the UNM Writing and Language Center and the ABQ Community Writing Center (from my Fall 2007 ENGL 420/520 Tutoring Writing), the UNM Core Curriculum Task Force (from my Spring 2009 ENGL 640 WPA Seminar) and the Writing Intensive Learning Communities Pilot Project (from my Spring 2012 ENGL 640 Ideologies of Literacy). In all three cases, my students and I forged a bidirectional pedagogical relationship between the graduate classroom and the university as a catalyzing space for engaging language diversity issues at UNM. Strategically, the graduate classroom has been a vital container for cultivating ideas and relationships.

In this way, the graduate seminar represents a “think tank” or, more aptly, a kind of sourdough “starter jar” for shaping new visions into expanding projects. The catalyst for action and implementation happens beyond the classroom through the student governed WAC Alliance. To illustrate, I trace the trajectory of invention to implementation of my proposal for a “Writing Center Without Walls” in my Fall 2007 ENGL 420/520 Tutoring Writing Course. Over the course of four years, this proposal evolved from an imaginative fiction into eventual intra-institutional and extra-institutional implementation. This bidirectional approach to institutionalizing WAC continues to respond to the constraints and the opportunities of UNM’s institutional context, much like the ecotone itself bridges different environments.

A Writing Center Without Walls Nathalie Singh-Corcoran’s insightful essay, “You’re Either a Scholar or an Administrator, Make Your Choice” delineates the paradoxical role of the junior WAC director, Writing Center director or writing program administrator who straddles the institutional divide between scholarship and service. Navigating these challenges under the guidance of a tenured faculty mentor is critical to graduate teaching assistants

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who envision professional lives as not only writers and researchers, but future administrators who wish to be effective and pragmatic leaders.

Ensuring access and equity for them instills this value for their future interactions.

We also try to model the ways that we can make our work sustainable, and in the academy that often takes the form of research. With support from the 2007 International Writing Centers Association research grant, my graduate students and I conducted data collection and analysis in October 2007 in my ENGL 420/520 Tutoring Writing course to identify the ethnolinguistic identities and language and literacy attitudes of our First Year Writing student population. We completed data collection in December 2007. Through an open forum report on our findings to the directors of the UNM tutoring program, the Center for Academic Programs (CAPS), institutional momentum catalyzed over time into the establishment of the UNM Writing and Language Center and the ABQ Community Writing Center. Significantly, Daniel Sanford, a UNM Linguistics doctoral candidate enrolled in my ENGL 420/520 Tutoring Writing, eventually implemented our recommendations over the next six years and established the UNM Writing Center in his capacity as a CAPS administrator (Sanford). Moreover, these findings about the language and literacy practices of our ethnolinguistically diverse student population have since informed the revision of our First Year Writing Program, inspired faculty development programs, sparked the establishment of a language and writing center, seeded the cultivation of community outreach projects such as the ABQ Community Writing Center, and shaped the development of our graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition by cultivating practice-ready junior writing program administrators trained for serving linguistically-diverse learning sites.

Applying an IRB-approved ethnographic model of inquiry combined with a random sampling survey to derive rich descriptions of our students’ communities of belonging, ethnolinguistic identities, and literacy practices, we began mapping the many student identities represented in our ENGL 101 courses. Language identity and language attitude survey instruments

were distributed and data collected from 15 sections of ENGL 101 (approximately 225 first year students). The sample represents 7.5% of the first year ENGL 101 student population. We used a random sampling method with Likert scale survey instruments to identify student demographics and language and writing attitudes for this data sample.

We delivered a presentation of our findings to the Chair of the Department of English, Directors of Rhetoric and Writing Program and Directors of the Center for Academic Programs at the close of our study in an open forum at the UNM Student Union in December 2007. The eight student researchers in this study presented their findings for discussion with recommendations for pedagogy and policy changes impacting ethnolinguistically diverse college writers. Our findings about the self-reported ethnolinguistic heterogeneity of first year writing students helped us to advance the case for the establishment of Writing and Language Center. In brief, our findings revealed: Nearly 50% of the respondents in the data sample identified themselves as Hispanic. Among this population, over 75% of Hispanic students are English monolingual; 25% are English/Spanish bilingual; majority of English/Spanish bilingual respondents identify “Spanglish” as their first language. Less than 15% of English/Spanish bilingual students report being literate in Spanish. Over 80% of respondents are first generation college students. More than 75% English monolingual and English/Spanish bilingual respondents demonstrate strong adherence to language and literacy myths. Over 85% of respondents indicate that writing is critical to their academic and professional success. Fewer than 15% of ethnolinguistically diverse students seek assistance with their college writing assignments at the University Writing Center.

Fewer than 20% of first generation college students (across ethnolinguistic groups) seek guidance with their college writing assignments.

These findings suggested the need for stronger alliances between ENGL 101 courses, Department of English, and the formation of the UNM Language and Writing Center to address the interests and academic concerns of

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ethnolinguistically diverse first generation college students.

Three years later, graduate students Brian Hendrickson, Erin Penner Gallegos, and Genevieve García de Mueller re-examined these findings and recommendations. Over the next eighteen months (2010–2012), they re-visioned the initial proposal for establishing the ABQ Community Writing Center derived from the 2007 ethnolinguistic diversity research project.

Hendrickson, Gallegos, and García de Mueller elected to attend UNM for their graduate degrees (turning down other admission offers) largely because of the opportunities afforded them in working with the WAC Alliance and the possibility of building the foundations of a community writing center in the heart of downtown Albuquerque. All three of these graduate students learned to engage the intellectual life cycle for their Writing Across Communities projects. Over the course of their graduate program, each of them exercised authorial agency by drafting project proposals, generating outcome reports, presenting conference papers, and finally publishing singleauthored journal articles (Gallegos; García de Mueller; Hendrickson “The Hard Work”).

Moreover, they learned to leverage their growing national authority in WAC and writing center leadership to conduct a robust grant writing campaign to secure funding for Writing Across Communities conferences and literacy symposia at UNM. In April 2011, with the support of the WAC Alliance, these three visionary graduate students hosted Tiffany Rousculp, founder of the Salt Lake Community Writing Center, for the UNM Working With Writers Symposium.

Within weeks following the April 2011 Working With Writers Symposium, the ABQ Community Writing opened up shop in the modest setting of the Albuquerque downtown public library, trained in current writing center pedagogies taught through my ENGL 420/520 Tutoring Writing course (About Writing Across Communities). The ABQ Community Writing Center represented an important outreach program of the UNM Writing Across Communities Initiative and the WAC Alliance, serving as a laboratory for literacy education and campus-community partnership development for

both graduate and undergraduate students at UNM. As part of our ongoing partnership with the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Libraries, the ABQ Community Writing Center in the Main Library in downtown Albuquerque opened on a weekly drop-in basis for local citizens supported and administered by our graduate students.1 By April 2014, the ABQ Community Writing Center began forging alliances with the Albuquerque Offcenter Community Arts Project aligning missions in service to underserved citizens and homeless community members.

Intellectual authority, time, vision, and commitment among our graduate students have generated decisive and enduring grassroots support for Writing Across Communities. In the twelve years since we launched Writing Across Communities, our graduate students find themselves managing a constellation of WAC projects reflective of a small non-profit organization.

Consistent with the recommendations of the “Statement of Graduate Student Writing Center Administration” delineated by Julie Eckerle, Karen Rowan, and Shevaun Watson, graduate students set the terms of their service under the guidance a tenured faculty mentor. They define the job descriptions they wish to develop within the WAC Alliance and the ABQ Community Writing Center, using their experiences to inform their research and scholarship. The organization structure of the WAC Alliance is governed by a Head Council (as envisioned by the graduate students themselves) rather than a top-down faculty-dominant hierarchy. The faculty advisor serves as a mentor, guide, and resource, not a supervisor per se.

Faculty have no voting rights in the WAC Alliance as delineated in their charter to protect the sovereignty of this student organization (Cryer).

As Melissa Nicolas argues in (E)Merging Identities: Authority, Identity, and the Place(s) In-Between, “Graduate students, in many ways, are betwixt and between: they are not faculty, yet they may share some of the same duties as faculty; they are not fully credentialed in the field, yet they may be called on to use their knowledge to run, or at least assist with running, a writing program or a writing center” (1). The structures of the Writing Across Communities initiative, the WAC Alliance, and

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ABQ Community Writing Center assure that the graduate students directing these project are not called upon but rather call upon themselves to engage this work and, in turn, rely on their faculty mentors to support them in their vision. At the center of this structure are notions of citizenship, social justice, and community activism. These new leaders recognize that it is not enough to study literacy education, academic access, and ethnolinguistic diversity; they need and want to serve the constituencies they teach and study.

They don’t want to wait until after defending their theses and dissertations to begin doing useful work. They arrive with the desire and commitment. In turn, I believe, the graduate classroom provides the intellectual space and tools to enact new visions—enhanced by the wisdom of our field and guided by the experiences and discoveries of those who came before us.

WAC and graduate education programs, in turn, need to promote approaches to knowledge making, strategies for community activism, and opportunities for writers at the intersections of Composition Studies, including second language writing and community literacy education. Our graduate students say it best. Brian Hendrickson, UNM graduate student and WAC event coordinator, reflects on in his editor’s column for the UNM WAC newsletter, Writing Communities: Indeed, it is my hope that many of our initiatives, including the Albuquerque Community Writing Center, Celebration of Student Writing, and Write On! Workshops, eventually find institutional homes at UNM, thereby ensuring they receive the continued financial and administrative support they deserve.

Nevertheless, it will remain the responsibility of each new cadre of student leaders to ensure that the true spirit of Writing Across Communities lives on in these and other grassroots initiatives still to come. (3) Writing Across Communities represents a paradigm shift in progress. Our institutional writing programs need to move toward a shift-inprogress because our students need literacy models capacious enough for 21st-century global citizenship. Navigating the ecotones of difference

across social and cultural contexts, rich and dynamic transitional zones, provides new opportunities for growth and learning in spaces with very few maps and field guides (“Ecotones”).

Among other valuable outcomes, my ten years of serving as program chair for Writing Across Communities confirms this singular realization.

The experience of enacting pedagogies and leading projects that promote transcultural citizenship during graduate education teaches future WPAs, WAC directors, and Writing Center administrators a broad range of strategies that can help to enhance equity and access across the curriculum through the critical educational conduits of language and literacy. Promoting access and cultivating educational conditions where diversity (linguistic, cultural, ideological, and discursive difference) can thrive demands creating safe spaces for experimentation and offering protection from intellectual colonization.

Recognizing the authorial potential as well as vulnerability within novice writers is as critical for designing efficacious writing opportunities in graduate education as it is for undergraduate education. Ultimately, effective graduate writing education informs effective undergraduate writing education. If we model equity and access practices in our teaching to our graduate students, they will model these practices in their teaching to their own undergraduate students.

Genevieve García de Mueller, former UNM graduate student and new assistant professor at the University of Texas of Rio Grande Valley, observes this as she reflects on learning to help undergraduate students access their own agency as writers in community settings. By designing her own pedagogical applications of Writing Across Communities principles during graduate school, Genevieve discovered ways of having her students: think about what they value about writing; about the kinds of past experiences they bring to their writing that makes them value certain things in a particular way. We also want student to reflect consistently about why they’re thinking the way they’re thinking in terms of writing, in terms of composition. We also think that may help them learn to transfer those skills to other

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Writing Communities and the Writing Center as Cultural Ecotone • 32

areas of their lives. (Quoted in Guerra 162) As our graduate students continue to join the national conversation on citizenship and engagement across the curriculum in the capacity of new assistant professors across the country, there is no better endorsement of Writing Across Communities approaches to graduate education than Marty Townsend’s glowing accolades during her visit to UNM for the 2013 Writing the World Symposium (Legacy). Recalling her dissertation research that involved conducting a case study of UNM’s Ford Foundation-funded WAC initiative launched in 1991 (which ultimately failed more than ten years before the implementation of Writing Across Communities in 2004), Townsend applauded the success of the new iteration of WAC through Writing Across Communities. She called graduate student Genevieve Garcia de Mueller and her fellow junior WPA peers “the most promising diaspora of WAC leaders in the nation” (Townsend).

Acknowledgements A special note of gratitude to Terry Zawacki, Michelle Cox, Marty Townsend, and Roy Andrews for their generous support and helpful guidance throughout the process of writing and revising this article. I am especially indebted to Michele Eodice and Shannon Madden for their thoughtful editorial encouragement. Finally, since my first visit to the Salt Lake City Community Writing Center in April 2008, Tiffany Rousculp’s groundbreaking leadership in community writing centers continues to inspire us at the University of New Mexico. I also need to extend a special thanks to Ben Rafoth and Nathalie SinghCorcoran of the International Writing Center Association for the 2007 Research Grant in support of our Writing Across Communities initiative at UNM. Notes 1. For further information on the ABQ Community Writing Center as developed and administered in 2010 by UNM graduate students Erin Penner Gallegos, Genevieve García de Mueller, Brian Hendrickson, and Deb Paczynski, please, see: http://abqcwc.wordpress.com/

Works Cited “About Writing Across Communities.” University of New Mexico. Web. 30 November 2015. http://www.unm.edu/~wac/old_site/about.htm.

Condon, William and Carol Rutz. “A Taxonomy of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Evolving to Serve Broader Agendas.” College Composition and Communication 64.2 (2012): 357–382.

Print.

Cryer, Dan. “W-Courses at UNM: A New Article for WACommunities.” Writing Communities 2 (Spring 2012): n.p. Web. 30 November 2015. http://www.unm.edu/~wac/.

Eckerle, Julie, Karen Rowan, and Shevaun Watson.

“IWCA Graduate Student Position Statement.”

Writing Center Journal 23.1 (2002): 59–62. Print.

---. “The Tale of a Position Statement: Finding a Voice for the Graduate Student Administrator in Writing Center Discourse.” (E)Merging Identities: Graduate Students in the Writing Center. Ed. Melissa Nicolas.

Southlake: Fountainhead Press, 2008. 39–52. Print.

“Ecotones: Productive Spaces, Converging Conversations.” University of New Mexico 2012 Writing the World Symposium. Web. 30 November 2015. http://www.unm.edu/~wac/2012WtW.htm.

Gallegos, Erin P. "Mapping Student Literacies: Reimagining College Writing Instruction within the Literacy Landscape." Composition Forum 27 (2013): n.p. Web. 30 November 2015. http://compositionforum.com/issue/27/liter acies.php.

García de Mueller, Genevieve and Brian Hendrickson.

“Inviting Students to Determine for Themselves What It Means to Write Across the Disciplines.”

The WAC Journal. (Forthcoming Fall 2016). Print.

Guerra, Juan C. Language, Culture, Identity, and Citizenship in College Classrooms and Communities. Urbana, IL: NCTE-Routledge, 2015. Print.

Hendrickson, Brian. “Letter from the Editor.” Writing Communities 2 (2012): n.p. Web. 30 November 2015. http://www.unm.edu/~wac/.

---. “The Hard Work of Imagining: The Inaugural Summit of the National Consortium of Writing Across Communities by Albuquerque, NM.” Community Literacy Journal 7.2 (2013): 115–118.

Print.

Krall, Florence. Ecotone: Wayfaring on the Margins.

Albany: State U of New York P, 1994. Print.

Kells, Michelle H. “Out of WAC: Democratizing Higher Education and Questions of Scarcity and

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Writing Communities and the Writing Center as Cultural Ecotone • 33 Social Justice.” Texts of Consequence: Composing Social Activism for the Classroom and Community. Eds. Christopher Wilkey and Nicholas Mauriello. New York: Hampton P, 2013. 117–156. Print.

---. “Welcome to Babylon: Junior Writing Program Administrators and Writing Across Communities at the University of New Mexico.” Composition Forum 25 (2012): n.p.

Web. 30 November 2015. http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/.

“Legacy of Writing Across Communities at UNM.” University of New Mexico. Web. 30 November 2015. http://www.unm.edu/~wac/HistoryLegacy/Kells.htm.

Nicolas, Melissa. “Introduction.” (E)Merging Identities: Authority, Identity, and the Place(s) In-Between. Ed. Melissa Nicolas. Southlake: Fountainhead P, 2008.

1–8. Print.

“Offcenter’s Mission” Offcenter Community Arts Project. Web. 25 October 2016. https://offcenterarts.org/ Rose, Shirley and Chuck Paine. “On the Crossroads and at the Heart: A Conversation.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 35.2 (2012): 160–178. Print.

Rousculp, Tiffany. Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2014. Print.

Sanford, Daniel. “The Peer-Interactive Writing Center at the University of New Mexico.” Ecologies of Writing Programs: Program Profiles in Context. Eds. Mary Jo Reiff, Anis Bawarshi, Michelle Ballif, and Christian Weisser. Anderson: Parlor P, 2015. 334– 362. Print.

Singh-Corcoran, Nathalie. “You’re Either a Scholar or an Administrator: Preparing Graduate Students for Writing Administration.” (E)Merging Identities: Graduate Students in the Writing Center. Ed. Melissa Nicolas. Southlake: Fountainhead Press, 2008. 27– 38. Print.

Townsend, Martha A. Instituting Changes in Curriculum and Teaching Style in Liberal Arts Programs: A Study of Nineteen Ford Foundation Projects. 1991. Arizona State U., Ph.D. Dissertation. Print.

“Writing Across Communities Workshop Working Papers Resources.” Writing Across Communities.

Web. 30 November 2015. https://sites.google.com/site/resourcewac/.

Zawacki, Terry Myers and Michelle Cox (Eds). WAC and Second Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Fort Collins: WAC Clearinghouse, 2014.

Print.

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Freire’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D. Student’s Experience Charmaine J. Smith-Campbell Mercer University charmaine.smith-campbell@live.mercer.edu

Had I been the person that the tutor helped ahead of me— I would have felt disrespected. And that made me really want to just walk away; and I wanted to just leave and go home. I was like, “I’m not going in there to deal with that.

That’s not even fair.” But the deadline was near; my paper wasn’t finished; so I had to go in. It took a lot. I really had to leave my ego at the door and prepare myself for the worst. And sure enough, when I got in there and was with that tutor, he was loud. Everybody in the waiting area could hear what he was saying, and I was totally embarrassed. But I went back to what I learned in the military. I learned how to just be silent. Learned how to remove myself from the abuse until it was over, but at the same time to listen to what was being said that was important enough to keep me from having to go back. I had already made up my mind when he started saying what he was saying, “I’m not coming back here. So let me get what I need so that I don’t have to come back.”

Introduction

—from Steven’s narrative

This article offers an interpretation of Freire’s concept of pedagogical love in a word to world— theory to practice—approach. We offer a definition of the term love; then present coauthor’s Steven’s narrative as an illustration of a real life experience of Freirean pedagogical love. The goal is to begin a conversation about the transformative value of an instructional model rooted in Freire’s pedagogy of emancipatory love; and to seek ways in which this model is applicable to writing centers and other educational settings—not just in colleges, but also K-12 environments.

Pedagogical Love in Freire Paolo Freire speaks about pedagogical love—using the terms related to love more than seventy times in Education for Critical Consciousness and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. However, although he explains pedagogical love within the context of transformative education, Freire did not specifically define the meaning of the term love. The opening epigraph from Steven’s experience as a Ph.D. student visiting the writing center represents the antithesis of Freirean pedagogical love proposed in this paper.

Steven Littles Douglas County School District, Douglasville GA steven.littles@douglas.k12.ga.us While writers such as Antonia Darder and Edward Michael Schoder offer valuable insights into the Freirean concept of pedagogical love, we add to this body of literature by theorizing our own experiences as graduate writers and offering a new perspective on pedagogical love that is rooted in justice, selflessness, and fairness.1 Figure 1 provides a conceptual framework for of our definition of pedagogical love, the ideological and instructional practices we associate with this model, the educational outcomes we anticipate from this model, and the generative nature of this model as it operates in coauthor Steven’s narrative.

Our definition of the term love contains three elements illustrated in Figure I steps 1a and 2a. The first is Lawrence Kohlberg’s concept of justice, the second is derived from Erich Fromm’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s secular maxim conveyed in the command to love thy neighbor as thyself, and the third is the concept of agape, or selfless love. Through this analysis, we propose a definition of pedagogical love that calls on educators to be personally committed to the axiological, ontological, and socio-political principles of justice, as evidenced in Kohlberg’s sixth stage of moral development. In describing our moral obligation toward justice, Kohlberg states that a just approach is characterized by making rational “sociopolitical choices” that are based on what is “morally right” and fair to individuals (Philosophy 182, 193).2 This commitment, we believe, is one of the major defining characteristics in the practice of educators who are capable of successfully implementing instructional practices of Freirean pedagogical love. We argue that this commitment calls on teachers practicing pedagogical love to also be committed to the use of education as a means of sociopolitical empowerment and for creating students who are what Freire described as more fully developed “authentic” human beings.

Fromm’s and Kierkegaard’s secular maxim conveyed in the ontological and axiological command to love thy neighbor as thyself (Figure 1, 1b) is the second element in our definition of pedagogical love. Like Fromm, we believe that educators and their students enter a relationship that is similar to what he described loving one’s neighbor as loving oneself, allows one to

Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 35 “commit oneself without guarantee, to give of oneself completely in the hope that your love will produce love in the loved person” (Fromm 115). Similar sentiments are expressed in Kierkegaard, who declared that, “everyone is one’s neighbor,” that “your neighbor is everyman,” and is your equal (58, 72). When these ethical maxims are applied to education within the context of Freirean pedagogical love, this extends beyond the altruistic act of caring. It becomes an unconditional, selfless, egoless commitment of educators practicing pedagogical love and expecting nothing in return for themselves. Under these conditions, the practice of pedagogical love is politically and socially enriching to a well-developed democracy, and transformative and cognitively uplifting to students, who are trained to be critical thinkers in the traditions of both Socrates and Freire..

The third element in our definition of pedagogical love calls on educators to be practitioners of agape (Figure 1, 1b)—love given without expectations of

reciprocity or personal gain—given only for the love of justice for humanity. When translated into pedagogical love, agape leads to an educational process where educators work with students in a collaborative, respectful, empowering relationship that negates the banking model of instruction.

We believe that educators whose personal epistemological, axiological, ontological, and sociopolitical ideologies align with Freirean pedagogical love and his ideas on education are vital to our proposed model of pedagogical love. Educators in this model serve as guides and helpers to students on their educational journey. In practice, our proposed model of pedagogical love helps educators provide learning opportunities that facilitate graduation for students like Steven, whose narrative of his experiences as a Ph.D. student is presented in this paper. Steven’s narrative offers insights into the educational processes involved in our Freirean pedagogical model. This narrative also indicates the type of student-graduate that can be

Figure I. An illustration of a generative model of Freire’s pedagogical love in action: It contains definitions in boxes 1a and 1b, as well as the illustration of the operation of this system as a transformative and empowering educational concept in boxes 2a through 3.

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 36 created by this approach. Students like Steven, under the guidance of teachers embedded in principles of pedagogical love and who are adequately equipped to practice this instructional approach, will experience educational growth that is not just cognitively productive but also personally uplifting on a sociopolitical level, as Freire argued (see Pedagogy; Education).

We believe that student-graduates from a system of education rooted in Freirean pedagogical love develop over time the tools and qualities that enable them to become a new breed of teachers needed for the adaptable-generative model illustrated in Figure 1, stage 3 and stages 1a–2a. As Freire argued, this generative system is self-procreative and selfrenewable, one that will not become stale, outdated, or irrelevant. This regenerative feature of the Freirean model is an outcome of this system because it is rooted in critical thinking, dialogue, reflection, and a continuous motion of new praxis that is all a part of a creative process. This system is not rigid, but it is flexible with the potential for making adjustments when and where they are required over time and space, as Freire argued (see Pedagogy; Education).

The Word and the World: A Doctoral Student’s Story The educational and instructional processes involved in our interpretation of Freire’s pedagogy of love have five stages (Figure 1, 2a–3). The first four stages involve the active instructional practices of our model of pedagogical love, while the final stage—stage 3—represents the embodiment or tangible student outcomes of the instructional practices of pedagogical love. Because our system rooted in Freire’s ideas is a generative one, it loops back from stage 3 to the start, whereas graduates, students such as Steven, return to the system as teachers who continually replenish and sustain the model we propose.

In a theory-to-practice—or as Freire calls it, a wordto-world—application (“Reading”), excerpts of Steven’s journey through the Ph.D. program are used here to illustrate pedagogical love and the lack of it at work in a real-life situation. The sequencing of these events is represented first in steps 2a to 3, and then 1a to 2a in Figure 1. This sequencing of Steven’s journey is loosely organized around this conceptual framework in Figure 1—since real life events often do not generally adhere to the strict mechanics of theoretical models such as that illustrated in this chart. All names except those of the authors are pseudonyms.

The Educators Steven’s episode of hopelessness rooted in the anti-dialogic silence of a banking model of education in the epigraph of this paper intersected with ones in which he experienced hope on the journey towards graduation. In talking about hope and hopelessness, dialogue and anti-dialogue, oppression and emancipatory transformation in education, Freire stated that all these alignments are possibilities in education (Pedagogy). However, he added, only one option is an ontological, axiological, and historically acceptable one, and that is an education that is liberating, empowering, and aligned with authentic and true democratic principles and goals.

Anti-dialogic and pedagogically loveless education Freire wrote about undemocratic and anti-dialogic love that is “counter-educative . . . predominantly emotional and uncritical . . . and anticommunicative”; he stated that this alignment “involves vertical relationships between persons . . . cannot create a critical attitude, [and] is hopelessly arrogant” (Education 9). According to Freire, anti-dialogic love “does not communicate, but rather issues communiqués” such as that illustrated in the opening epigraph (Education 41).

In describing the incident in the opening epigraph, Steven said: The entire encounter [at the writing lab] felt like abuse to a point where it wasn’t necessary.

I wasn’t an 18-year-old sophomore. I wasn’t a second-year graduate student. I was a father and a husband and a professional teacher for over a decade, and now I’m walking in to you and you think that whatever it is you have to give me is so important that it elevates you above all the things I’ve done in my life. I didn’t think that was right, but I knew that I couldn’t just walk out.

All of us in the class were scrambling. My classmates’ first route was, “Okay, let’s set up meetings with Dr. Maxwel and talk with her.”

I had my brief meeting, and there was no clarification. The meeting was very short. The only thing I was told was that I was not a good technical writer. That’s all I remember. I had no idea what that meant, but I did not know how to say that. I thought she was going to say, “Now this is how you do it.” But it was just the opposite. I guess that was my fault, too, going in there expecting to be led.

I thought about everything that was going on. At first, I felt like I could just figure it out

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 37 myself, what was good about writing—even if it wasn’t that great. The scary part was, I didn’t have a Plan B. All I said was, “I have to find a way to get this done.” That’s why I did not open up to classmates or my dissertation committee members, and I did not let anybody know what was going on. I thought that admitting I had questions about writing was going to spell trouble for me. I did not know whether reaching out would get me more help; I thought reaching out would let everybody know, “Hey, he’s a fraud. We gotta get rid of him.” I used that fear to work harder to figure out how to get the writing done.

Educators rooted in transformative dialogue

pedagogical

love

and

Luckily for Steven on this journey, he met instructors whose personal, instructional, epistemological, axiological, and sociopolitical groundings were rooted in pedagogical love (illustrated in Figure 1, 2a). They met him at the door—before he entered the program, when he was first accepted. Steven reflected on how he received a personal phone call from the department chair at the University he graduated from with his PhD on a Saturday morning, informing him of his acceptance. Steven’s wife answered the phone because he was not at home, and Steven said he knew after this call that “Right there, this just made me know that this was going to be a totally different experience; and it was.”

Steven said: Before coming to this school I had a lot of negative experiences in a former university where I started my Ph.D. and found out that the program was not a good one because it was all about the money. At that school, they did not deliver what they said they offered in the brochures and in the meetings we had before starting the program. It was only after we finished the first year that they changed on us and flipped the script. Once they got us in, they changed gears and try to sell us all sorts of programs that were not officially certified and were useless in the real world.

Steven continued: When I came to this University, it was different. I knew that it wasn’t just about collecting the money. I felt throughout the whole time that the instructors had my interest at heart—and this was even before they knew what kind of human I was. They didn’t even

know me before . . . [and] it was so different that I didn’t even know just how to accept it because it was so very different from what I experienced at that other University.

Pedagogical love (Figure 1, 2a) was evident through to the end of Steven’s Ph.D. experience. Steven described how his teachers predicted his needs both during the program and after graduation, and guided him and assisted him through his postdoctoral needs—even before he was actively aware of what they were. He said: My professors knew it was important for me to understand how to navigate the broader academic arena outside of my elementary school world after I got the Ph.D. [Steven is an elementary school educator]. They knew the end game and were familiar with the terrain. Most important, they knew there was a limited time in which to guide me toward selfsufficiency.

Steven further stated: Each instructor came to the table with particular strengths. They knew what they valued as individual educators. They had their personal understandings of what it took to go through this PhD learning process. They knew what they knew and what they wanted us to know. What impressed me most was the respect each instructor had for his/her craft.

They were always prepared and enthusiastic about the content.

Steven linked his experiences to his own practice as an elementary school educator, saying, “I felt the way I wanted my students to feel about learning. Their love and respect for the knowledge made me want to pursue the same for myself. The love for the subject matter, to me, represented their overall love for humanity. They wanted to share that love with me.”

Dialogue rooted in pedagogical love Freire wrote, “If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue” (Pedagogy 90). As illustrated in Figure 1, 2b–3, pedagogical love is the starting point and touches on every stage of the process through to the transformative outcomes shown in this model. Having found an institution in which pedagogical love existed and transformative dialogue could occur, Steven describes a true Freirean dialogic experience that moved him from

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 38 ABD [all but dissertation] to Ph.D. status. In his words: Throughout my life as a student, I had always felt I was beneath my instructors because of their command of the subject matter. As a result, I did not feel that my input was valid. In fact, I never felt my input was wanted. I thought that all I was supposed to do was listen and learn.

But the professors in my doctoral program were different; they reached out, initiated a conversation that made me feel as if we were equal partners, that I was not lower or inferior to them. These conversations were used as a part of their teaching in the course content as the basis for the flow of information in classes. It really took me a while understand that those professors wanted me to utilize the content beyond regurgitation and superficial discussion. They used their kindness and concern in order to support our learning and to deliver what we needed to learn in a manner I could easily understand.

Now that I know this is what dialogue is about, I guess that’s what it was, but back then I didn’t know that, but it made me feel good as a student and made me feel as if what I had to say was worthwhile and important. They were respectful even when they challenged us and pushed us outside of our comfort zone if you know what I mean. They treated us well.

“So What?” A Transformative Dialogue “Here is one example,” Stephen said. “I had a conversation with one of my professors who was helping me formulate my research focus. When I presented my plan, he looked at me and said, “So what?”—I was stunned. I stumbled through an inadequate explanation, but I thought it made all the sense in the world. So what? Those two words haunted me, but it was one of the most important questions I was asked.”

Stephen continued: At first, I could not answer that question because I never thought about it; I was never asked those types of deep questions that made me think hard. Made me think, and think, and think again in order to come up with an answer. And it took me a long time of going back and forth with him in conversation. That one simple question, “so what?” Why was this important? It backed me into considering what

was the real foundation of that study. When I was finally able to answer that “so what?” question, that's when I was able to find my direction.

From this question—“so what?” I learned one of the greatest lessons about the dissertation writing process—my opinion was meaningless unless I could contribute something new and back it up with solid evidence. That helped me begin to move forward, and from there on, I thought differently as I researched, wrote, and researched some more. That opened new doors and gave me a new way of looking at what I wanted to write about.

Dialogic Education The “so what” conversation in the previous section is vital because it illustrates this process in a real way that is not contrived, in a real life educational situation involving Steven. That “so what” dialogue moved him from inaction to action, from failure to success, and ultimately to transformation achieved by graduating as a Ph.D. Steven said about this transformation: This was an awkward period of the process for me. This was a point where I could see who I was and who I needed to become. They offered assistance that guided me forward and that’s why I graduated—along with my effort also, of course. Again, love surfaced in those relationships with my professors. The beauty of it was that it was all so natural for them—at least that’s the way it seemed to me. It didn’t seem as if they were faking it or making it up.

By the time I presented, for the very first time, I was ready for it—and I was comfortable because of the process and the experiences I had with those professors outside of Mr. Maxwel and the writing lab problem. When it got to this point I really was able to understand the love because of my experiences with them, love that was shown and that I could give back in a manner the instructors could understand, I believe. They expressed appreciation for my efforts, and that meant more than any grade on any assignment, and it worked like a charm.

Critical Consciousness/Awareness and Reflection As illustrated in Figure 1, 2c, the outcome of dialogue rooted in pedagogical love is critical consciousness (also referred to as critical awareness).

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 39 Eventually critical awareness/consciousness leads to critical reflection; then to the next step—praxis—that completes this process that leads to a rebirth, so to speak, that is emancipatory, empowering, democratic, and transformative (Figure 1).

Steven reflected and attempted transformative actions earlier in his journey before effective dialogue such as that represented in the “so what” conversation.

These attempts at reflection did not lead to transformative praxis rooted in critical awareness/consciousness because of the absence of true dialogue and pedagogical love. However, in this new attempt, Steven experienced success because he now had the educational and experiential tools to successfully navigate the next steps in his transformative process (Figure 1, 2c–2d).

Here is what Steven said about this stage that was different because of the “so what” dialogue rooted in pedagogical love: I think this was an important moment when I decided that when I wrote my papers, what I said I was going to do was write my papers for me, and I wasn’t going to just give the professors what I thought they wanted to hear.

I started writing for myself. And that tough because I had never done that before. I had always written papers because of what I thought the professors wanted. Now I had to really think about what was at stake for me in the writing, and I had to make sure that it sounded like me. That took on a life of its own to the point where all of my professors, they responded to what I was writing. There was no class where the professor did not respond to something I put in there that came from me and wasn’t just regurgitation of what we did in class.

Praxis—Sitting-in with a Newer Cohort and Graduating Praxis is the final stage in the Freirean educational model that we offer (illustrated in Figure 1, 2d). In describing this final stage, Steven said: I entered an awkward period in my growth process. Classes were about to end, and I had to focus on writing the dissertation. This was a point where I could see simultaneously who I was and who I needed to become. [Long pause]. After classes ended, Steven continued, I wasn’t ready to write. I did absolutely nothing. One day of inactivity turned into five. Five days turned into two weeks. Before I knew it, four or five months had passed. In

this process, two events—one of them involving a “so what?” conversation with my professor, made the difference between being stuck in a place of inaction or going forward and getting this dissertation done.

The second transformative event took place when my methodology professor invited me to a class she held in the evenings with the cohort two years behind mine. Two of my cohort members and I began going to her class, sitting in the back, and writing our dissertations. Coming to the other cohort’s class was hard because it was embarrassing, but it was a liberating experience. The ironic part is that the three of us in the back of that class started a kind of tradition. Dissertationwriting doctoral students continue to sit in the back of that class and write while the newer cohorts are taught. I’m proud of that, and because of this type of assistance, I eventually graduated with my Ph.D.

Transformed, Empowered, and Giving Back In Freire’s Education for Critical Consciousness and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, education serves a generative role that is the outcome of the dialogic student-asteacher process. In this generative role, students who are mentored in programs and by teachers who use the Freirean model—imbued with qualities illustrated in Figure 1, 1a–2a—are ready to recalibrate and serve as teachers in this model. Steven’s experiences reflected this generative process. After he graduated, Steven became a mentor: “Now, as a mentor to the young men in my school, I am able to understand my role more clearly. I am more than just a male figure for them to emulate. I believe that I am now a conduit for meaningful activities and useful information.”

As a transformed and empowered graduate giving back in a generative model, Steven said: I now use my newly acquired ability as a researcher to develop a better, more targeted program from which the young men could find benefit. My focus used to be preparation for manhood. The focus gradually shifted toward engineering, mathematics, and public presentation. By doing so, I am able to enjoy my role a lot more and find real fulfillment from the practice of mentoring. I was finally able to unearth the cyclical quality of mentorship . . . . They were not supposed to only learn from me, but I was supposed to learn from them as well. My purpose was to transmit the love invested in me.

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 40 In describing his graduation and post-graduation experiences, parallel to the Freirean model illustrated in Figure 1, 1a–3, Steven said: When it was all over, getting the curriculum instruction degree I did could not help me even begin to understand what I was getting into. I went from being a bystander to being the expert in the room. I don't hide behind who I think I am anymore. It is what it is and I just do what I do and let that be it.

I love myself a lot more because I understand my destiny. I don't feel lost. I don't feel like I need to fit anyone’s mold anymore. I can be myself—my authentic self—because everything isn't about school; it is also about what's going on inside of me. It still takes me by surprise when I hear "Doctor So and So” at my school. If people slip and call me Mr. Littles, I don't say anything. It’s still surreal to me when someone calls me Doctor but it doesn’t define who I am. I have said this before in so many ways but I just feel more comfortable about being an educator now, and I am not afraid.

Once I got my Ph.D. something else also happened. I eventually was able to begin a new relationship—with myself. I met me for the first time and was determined to make me successful, but by applying an evolved principle. I became a better mentor for my group of young male mentees, a better supporter for an annual conference for young girls that my wife and I organize, a willing sharer of personally prepared instructional material with colleagues, and a more focused trainer for staff members at my school. Most of all, I became a better man for my family.

Conclusion The narrative of Steven’s experience as a Ph.D. student that we presented includes elements reflected in our Freirean model of pedagogical love illustrated in Figure 1. The effects of what Freire describes as the loveless, arrogant, anti-dialogical, and anticommunicative nature of the banking model were a part of this narrative and experience (Pedagogy; Education). The progression from ABD to Ph.D. status was also present. So too were dialogue, critical awareness, critical reflection, critical action, conscientização, and praxis that resulted in the empowering transformative outcomes described. Also indicated is the generative nature of this model in Steven’s giving back actions as a mentor to young men.

In addition, we found evidence of love—love similar to that rooted in Kierkegaard’s and Fromm’s maxim of neighborly love—that was embedded in Kohlberg’s principle of justice, and that is informed by agape. This Ph.D. graduate is now practicing the pedagogy of love with his own students and mentees as they too seek the benefits that adequate education of good quality can provide.3 Although Steven’s narrative includes all elements of the Freirean model in Figure 1, his life experiences did not tidily follow the 1a to 3 lock-step order indicated in this figure. For example, incidents of critical awareness and critical self-reflection occurred prior to dialogue. These actions, however, did not lead to meaningful outcomes nor completion of the dissertation until after the “so what” dialogue and selfreflection. In attempting to get the dissertation done, it was the “so what” dialogue that actually generated the praxis—that operated as the direct spark in the engine to finally getting it done, and encouraged him on the way toward graduation from the Ph.D. program. This example illustrates the Freirean argument for the necessity of pedagogical love and the transformative nature of dialogue rooted in pedagogical love that are a liberating and empowering educational method. The relativist approach that guides our conversations in this paper signifies our acknowledgment that there are no easy recipes or standardized models available to address all educational needs. However, based on the Ph.D. experience reflected in the narrative, we believe that this model is capable of enhancing equity and possibilities for educational success for all students, especially those who are at risk of attrition.

Our goal in telling this story is to make some small contribution to continued dialogue on the Freirean model as it relates to educational equity and achievement, not just at the ABD to Ph.D. level in doctoral programs, but at all levels of the educational spectrum.4 Other issues that may be relevant to this paper’s discussions include those raised in a previous publication (Smith-Campbell, Littles, and West), such as issues of pedagogical love in K–12 and especially in grades 11–12; pedagogical love and practices of closing equity gaps, and pedagogical love as an axiological approach that replaces violent struggles, rage, and anger on a wider sociopolitical scale in order to create a more just and humanizing world. We hope this conversation continues.

Acknowledgements To the educator who guided this project, we dedicate this quote from Freire: “To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 41 production or construction of knowledge” (Pedagogy of Freedom 30). You are the epitome of the Freirean teacher in every way. I hope that in every way this paper represents to the world the justice you have done for us, your students. Thank you.

Notes 1. Writers such as Darder; FitzSimmons and Uusiautti; Liambas and Kaskaris; Määttä and Uusiautti; Miller, Brown, and Hopson; and Schoder have offered varying interpretations and insights into the Freirean concept of pedagogical love and use of the term love. Others such as Noddings and Soto have examined the theme of pedagogical love by presenting the concept of caring as an ethical pedagogical practice and principle, using interpretations that appear somewhat different in orientation and socio-political goals from that of Freire’s. The tradition of clarifying and offering reinterpretations is an approach that Freire himself indulged in, as Cruz and others pointed out (see also Morrow; Lake & Dagostino; McLaren; Winchell and Kress).

2. Kohlberg’s ideas on justice if applied to Freire’s educational vision can result in a pedagogical approach similar to autonomous student-centered instruction and self-directed learning, in which teachers operate as guides and more knowledgeable others in learners’ zones of proximal development (Vygotsky). In education this can translate to a relationship in which teacher and student join “in a community in which value decisions are made on a shared, respectful, and equitable basis,” and as Freire suggests, the relationship does not result in a banking model where “the teacher transmits that culture and its values to the student” (Pedagogy 20).

3. See Noguera.

4. See discussions in Calleja; Cruz; Dirkx; Giroux; Mayo; Miller, Brown, and Hopson; Noddings. For discussions on achievement gap issues, see DarlingHammond & Rothman; Ferguson; Ladson-Billings; Noguera; Noguera, Pierce, & Ahram.

Works Cited Calleja, Colin. “Jack Mezirow's Conceptualisation of Adult Transformative Learning: A Review.” Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 20.1 (2014): 117– 136. Print.

Cruz, Ana L. “Paulo Freire’s Concept of Conscientização.” Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 169– 180. Print.

Darder, Antonia. Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love. Cambridge, MA: Westview, 2002. Print.

Darling-Hammond, Linda, and Robert Rothman.

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Ferguson, Ronald F. “Elements of a 21st Century Movement for Excellence with Equity.” The Journal of Negro Education 83.2 (2014): 103–120. Print.

FitzSimmons, Robert, and Sata Uusiautt. “Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy Spiced by Pedagogical Love.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 11.3 (2013): 230–243. Print.

Freire, Paolo. “Reading the World and Reading the Word: An Interview with Paulo Freire.” Language Arts 62.1 (1985): 15–21. Print.

--- Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2003. Print.

---. Education for Critical Consciousness. 1974. New York: Seabury, 2011. Print.

Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Harper & Row, 1956. Print.

Giroux, Henry. “Prologue: The Fruit of Freire’s Roots.” Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. ix–xxi. Print.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. 1847. Trans.

Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Print.

Kohlberg, Lawrence. “Implications of Moral Stages for Adult Education.” Religious Education 72.2 (1977): 183–201. Print.

---. The Philosophy of Moral Development, Moral Stages, and the Idea of Justice. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. Print.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. “Through a Glass Darkly: The Persistence of Race in Education Research and Scholarship.” Educational Researcher 41.4 (2012): 115–120. Print.

Lake, Robert, and Vicki Dagostino. “Converging Self/Other Awareness: Erich Fromm and Paulo Freire on Transcending the Fear of Freedom.”

Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 102–126. Print.

Lake, Robert, and Tricia Kress, eds. Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

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Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D Student’s Experience • 42 Liambas, Anastassios, and Ioannis Kaskaris. “‘Dialog’ and ‘Love’ in the Work of Paulo Freire.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 10.1 (2012): 185–196.

Print.

Määttä, Kaarina, & Satu Uusiautti. “Pedagogical Love and Good Teacherhood.” Education Journal 17.2 (2011): 29–41. Print.

Mayo, Peter. Gramsci, Freire, and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action. London: Zed Books, 1999. Print.

McLaren, Peter. “Afterword: Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots.” Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 231–236.

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Miller, Peter M., Tanya Brown, and Rodney Hopson.

“Centering Love, Hope, and Trust in the Community: Transformative Urban Leadership Informed by Paulo Freire.” Urban Education 46.5 (2011): 1078–1099. Print.

Morrow, Raymond. “Rethinking Freire’s ‘Oppressed’: A ‘Southern’ Route to Habermas’s Communicative Turn and Theory of Deliberative Democracy.”

Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 65–87. Print.

Noddings, Nel. “The Caring Relation in Teaching.”

Oxford Review of Education 38.6 (2012): 771–781.

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---. “Freire, Buber, and Care Ethics on Dialogue in Teaching.” Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 89–100.

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---. “The Language of Care Ethics.” Knowledge Quest 40.5 (2012): 52–56. Print.

Noguera, Pedro A. “Racial Isolation, Poverty, and the Limits of Local Control as a Means for Holding Public Schools Accountable.” University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA). 2002. Print.

---. City Schools and the American Dream. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print.

Noguera, Pedro A., Jill C. Pierce, and Roey Ahram.

“Race, Education, and the Pursuit of Equality in the Twenty-first Century.” Race and Social Problems 7.1 (2015): 1–4. Print.

Schoder, Edward Michael. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Love.

2010. Rutgers U., Ph.D. Dissertation. Print.

Smith-Campbell, Charmaine J., Steven Littles, and Jane West. “Transformative Education and Freire's Pedagogy of Love: A PhD Graduate’s Experience.” Journal of Transformative Learning. Proc. of the Transformative Learning Conference,

March 2015. Oklahoma City: University of Central Oklahoma, 2016. Print.

Soto, Nelson E. “Caring and relationships: Developing pedagogy of caring.” Villanova Law Review 50.4 (2005): 1–16. Print.

Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1978. Print.

Winchell, Melissa, and Tricia Kress. “Living with/in the Tensions: Freire’s Praxis in a High-Stakes World.” Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Ed. Robert Lake and Tricia Kress. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 146–168.

Print.

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WRITING WITH YOUR FAMILY AT THE KITCHEN TABLE: BALANCING HOME AND ACADEMIC COMMUNITIES Candace Epps-Robertson Old Dominion University reppsrob@odu.edu

“How I got over, How I got over, My soul look back and wonder, how I got over!”

—Clara Ward, “How I Got Over” (1951) Prince Edward County, Virginia was home to my mother’s family. Her mother was born and raised there and my own mother spent the first five years of her life there, staying with her grandmother while her mother and father worked to set up a home in neighboring Richmond. Prince Edward was the site of family gatherings and the setting for most of the stories my grandmother shared with me. While it certainly represented a great deal of good, there was also pain and hurt behind many of the stories in this space. In 1959, Prince Edward County’s Board of Supervisors voted to close all public schools rather than face integration. The movement to impede Brown vs.

Board of Education was part of a larger strategy throughout the South to resist the Brown ruling at all costs. Massive Resistance, the term coined to reflect this stance, was rampant across the South, but got its start in Virginia.1 Communities took various approaches to circumvent the Brown ruling, but none reacted quite as forcefully as Prince Edward. Public schools would remain closed for five years. While the white community created a private segregation academy to serve its children, the Black community struggled to craft intervention plans that were sustainable. I wrote my dissertation about the temporary one-year school system, the Prince Edward County Free Schools Association, that was established from efforts on the part of Prince Edward’s Black community, its allies, and President John F. Kennedy’s administration. The Free Schools were part of a litany of programs designed for and by the Black community.

Using archival records and interviews with former Free School students, I argued for the Free Schools to be seen as an institutional response to the rhetorics of Massive Resistance.

Many of my family members were affected by these closures. Some would have parents who took work in nearby Richmond or other counties to move their families. Other families were separated and

school-age children sent to live with relatives or paired with strangers through placement programs to allow them to continue their educations. Still others remained in the county without any access to public K–12 education for five years. Those years left an undeniable pain in the lives of many, some of which persist today. I wanted to write about Prince Edward both as a means to connect me to the stories, spaces, and people I loved, but also from a desire to process and understand. My project was a pathway towards understanding rhetorics of race and the possibilities of literacy to speak back to institutional structures that marginalized Black communities. The work was also an opportunity to go back to the stories my grandmother had shared with me, to visit Prince Edward, and listen to elders speak about their experiences. My dissertation could take me home. The story of completing my dissertation is one of navigating and balancing the epistemologies and expectations of home with those of the academy. I believe my experience of writing a dissertation about family spaces holds lessons for both underrepresented graduate students and those who work to support these students during their graduate school years.

To present my story I follow in the steps of scholars of color across multiple disciplines who use Critical Race Theory (CRT) and autoethnography as a means to present their experiences (Collins; Delgado; Edwards; hooks). Personal narratives have often been critiqued for a perceived lack of rigor according to the expectations of traditional academic scholarship. CRT holds that personal stories are a means for underrepresented groups to push against master narratives that often silence the experiences of those who are othered, and views stories and lived experiences as “sources of strength” (Solórzano and Yosso 24). We learn from the stories that are shared with us. While I do not think my story represents the experiences of all graduate students of color, I do believe that my experience of trying to write about home, or write myself home, has implications for those who work with underrepresented graduate students writing theses and dissertations.

Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 44

Starting at Home Base I was fortunate to be raised by a family who loved words. My grandmother loved stories, my father introduced me to rhetoric before I knew it was a discipline, and my grandfather read anything he could get his hands on. It was my grandmother who taught me to read before I attended school, and my mother who made evenings magical with visits to the library that would culminate with us lugging a paper bag full of books back to the car. My earliest memories of home life are almost always connected to reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Many years later, I was fortunate to also be welcomed into a graduate program that respected the knowledge I brought with me, and challenged me to make meaningful connections between what I call the epistemologies of home, and the new discourses and ideas to which I was being introduced. What wasn’t easy was reconciling within myself that I could in fact bring the stories of home into the academy as a way to make myself feel more comfortable.

As a first generation graduate student of color, I spent much of my graduate school career trying to balance doing the work that was asked of me in the midst of a fierce homesickness. I was admitted to Syracuse University’s Composition and Cultural Rhetoric Doctoral Program in the fall of 2007. I came to the program, and the state of New York, from Richmond, Virginia. I received both my Bachelor’s and Master’s at Virginia Commonwealth University, which was less than five miles from home. Part of the reason for this was financial, but also coming from a closeknit family, there was never any expectation or push for anyone to move far away. My relatives lived within twenty minutes of one another and I never thought of leaving the area. There were no immediate models of anyone who had pursued higher education and left.

The imperative to leave only came because of meager job prospects.

My experience of leaving home and joining the academy shares many similarities with those who have written about what it means to occupy the status of what Denise Taliaferro Baszile calls the “ontoepistemological in-between.” Taliaferro Baszile describes this feeling from the standpoint of being a Black woman on the tenure track, but as Kirsten Edwards has suggested, this feeling is shared by many graduate students as well (114). For those of us from underrepresented communities, our mere presence in the academy is often a testimony to the hard work and dedication of our families who made sacrifices for us to pursue educational spaces that they themselves may have been barred from. This awareness—the

knowledge that we carry with us the sacrifices of many to be in institutions of higher education, coupled with the fact that these spaces can be unwelcoming because of institutionalized racism—often results in feelings of despair and isolation. Literature on the experiences of women of color in the academy have consistently documented the harsh reality of what it means for some who climb the rungs of academia.2 With more education often comes more exclusion, both from home and from the very spaces we seek to gain in the academy. How do we reconcile? How do we work through these feelings of isolation and homesickness for spaces and communities where we feel welcomed?

I don’t expect that I can answer all of these questions in the space of this essay, but I do believe that my own experience of quite literally trying to write myself home is a contribution to existing literature about the ways in which we can help graduate students navigate writing about home spaces and communities in the academy.

Honk at the Mason Dixon Line I began my PhD program with excitement and gusto. I loved teaching writing and working with students and other instructors. At the onset, I felt like the PhD would not only offer me an opportunity to secure a job at the end of the program, but a chance to think critically and theoretically about the writing classroom. I thoroughly enjoyed my courses, found my instructors and fellow students to be supportive but rigorous; however, while my new community was thoughtful and supportive, they weren’t home. Despite the distance between Richmond and Syracuse, I held fast to the people and spaces that grounded me and made me feel like a whole person. It was not uncommon for my husband, daughter, and myself to drive home once every six to eight weeks just to have weekend meals with my family. We’d gleefully honk the horn once we crossed the Mason Dixon Line in Maryland, giddy because we knew we were almost there. I frequently visited Virginia in an effort to keep connections with family and friends. Those connections helped not only to lead me to my dissertation project but also sustained me as I worked to understand who I was as an academic. While I had wonderful mentors and examples of what it looked like to be an academic, I was still trying to figure out what this meant for me given my context of home.

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Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 45

The map above shows the geographic distance between Syracuse, New York, Richmond, Virginia, and Prince Edward, Virginia. The image includes the Mason-Dixon Line which demarcates the traditional borders for Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Delaware.

My family life felt like it was worlds away from academia. In academia we are rewarded for work that is often done in isolation. Long hours in an archive, time spent studying one particular site, or mastering a finite problem is rewarded with grant funding, publications, and, hopefully, tenure. This method of work that most often privileges the individual was counter to the ways in which my family often learned and worked together. I was raised with traditional communal principles and practices for problem solving. As a family, if there were big problems to solve or something we were working towards, most often we did so as a family unit. Conversations about said problem or issue would take place in my grandmother’s bedroom. She would sit at her dresser, my mother—her oldest child—would sit in a chair beside the bed, my aunt often stood beside the dresser, and us grandkids would take a seat wherever there was room. Whoever had the problem would begin the conversation, with others contributing to the description of the issue as was appropriate. My grandmother would listen and often begin the problem solving with others contributing where it seemed most appropriate. This wasn’t always as idyllic as I’m remembering, but it proved to be most advantageous for us as family. There were always people to share your burdens with, and you knew that if you couldn’t figure something out on your own, there were others who would help you. It’s not hard to see why leaving

this type of community and learning to adapt to the methods privileged by academic institutions would be difficult.

During my second year in the program I began to feel the pangs of homesickness in a way that I hadn’t before. Coursework was almost over and I knew that would bring a period of isolation as I prepared for comprehensive exams and the dissertation. Suddenly, the community that I had come to value in Syracuse would be more distant as all of my cohort members would no longer be held together by coursework.

While this is certainly not anything particular to my situation, I was worried perhaps more than others about the solitude of exams and dissertation writing.

That worry was remedied a bit when I started thinking beyond exams to my dissertation, and began to conceive that going home, in some form, could be an option.

On a snowy Saturday in November 2008, I was sitting on the floor in my apartment office, which doubled as my two-year-old’s bedroom, with books (and toys) spread around me. I was supposed to be working on a seminar paper about contemporary rhetoric and sites of resistance. I distinctly recall reading Kenneth Burke, I.A. Richards, Michael Calvin McGee and the like, and taking notes like a robot and feeling empty. While these theorists seemed to be interesting people and no doubt had important things to say, I was horrifically homesick. I missed still having warm days in November, hearing people say “soda” instead of “pop,” seeing the lights that framed the billboard for Sauer’s Vanilla, and the taste of food that welcomed me home. Even more than those things, though, I missed the stories of my community. My grandmother passed two years before I began my PhD program and I longed to hear her wisdom, to have her guide me, and to sit on her bed with its cool white comforter, listening as she provided counsel for whatever ailed me. As smart as she was, I was sure she could have made mid-twentieth century rhetorical theorists seem relevant to me. I remember sitting on the floor, looking out the window at the snow piled up past the tires of my car and asking myself: How am I going to find my way? How will I find a path and a place in academia? I’d entered a world that felt so different to me, a Black woman from the South, a wife, and mother. At that moment, I didn’t see how I’d ever feel comfortable as a scholar in the ivory tower because my ways of knowing, of problem solving, and of doing, seemed incompatible with academia.

In my moment of angst, I called home and my mother acknowledged my hurt and carefully redirected my attention back to my work. “I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way,” she said, “What are you writing

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Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 46 about? Who are you studying?” I told her about my readings. Admittedly she wasn’t that interested in rhetorical theory, but I also told her that I was struggling to bridge my readings with the stories from home. It was in that moment that divine inspiration happened. My mother said to me, “You should write something about Prince Edward.” My dissertation began in that moment, with a conversation shared with my mother, a phone call that was an attempt to help me connect to home.

Ideally, for most graduate students the dissertation is a time to explore a project that is meaningful, create new knowledge, show what you know, chart pathways into the field, and, of course, secure a job. There is no doubt that my dissertation was all of those things, but I found rather quickly that what felt most pressing, what pushed me to write every day, to shrug off the feelings of inadequacy and the moments of doubt, was that I wanted my writing to take me home.

While I was excited about the opportunity, there were challenges. Reflecting back on my experience, with the distance of almost three years, there are three things I can share that may be of use to mentors and faculty working with graduate students from underrepresented groups who seek to write about (or with) their home communities. As the epigraph suggests, there were moments where I questioned how I would finish this project, but I am sharing my testimony of “how I got over,” in hopes that it will be of help to others. I will share my experience as a way to discuss the importance of welding support from multiple communities for underrepresented graduate writers. For some graduate students, especially those who seek to connect both home and academic epistemologies, inviting ourselves (and our communities) into scholarly spaces often requires struggle, negotiation, and reflection.

The Struggle: Standing in the Academy and the Family Kitchen For some graduate students the chance to connect a project between the academy and a community they are part of may be a wonderful endeavor; for others it may not. I was fortunate that for the most part my family was encouraging; however, I realize that for some moving between these spaces may be difficult.

Stories abound about the ways in which the academy can distance you from communities outside. In my own experience, I was fortunate that my family both congratulated me as I left to pursue a Ph.D. and welcomed me with open arms whenever I would return. For those working with graduate writers doing projects with communities that may be suspicious or

untrusting of the academy, it is important to understand the range of feelings that can emerge during this process. Doing research that feels like it has connections with those you directly care about can bring excitement. There can also be a realization that it may be uncomfortable to go back to that space. While overall I was eager to get back to home (both physically because of trips to the archive and interviews) and metaphorically through the stories of my grandmother, there were moments when I struggled.

For example, while numerous family members and friends of our family were affected by the school closures, many would not grant me an interview for the dissertation. They had a great deal of mistrust for institutions and were hurt by the closures. Familial connections did little to provide them solace. Given the pain of their experiences, they were very guarded about how their stories might be shared. I respected their positions, but it was a moment for me to realize that no matter how much I thought I could stand solidly in both spaces—home and the academy— sometimes one wouldn’t allow me to occupy both. My own dissertation chair was extremely helpful in these instances. She didn’t push me, nor did it ever feel as if she was making me choose a space to stand. In this very example, one of the takeaways I gained was to be able to interrogate the silence expressed on the part of family members as meaningful resistance. Their refusal to share their own stories spoke volumes about the gravity of the situation they experienced. Rather than try to encourage them to share, or convince them that I wasn’t part of the institution they didn’t trust, because I certainly inhabited both spaces, I chose to speak of this silence as their own very powerful rhetorical act.

The Negotiation: Balancing Academic and Community Audiences Most graduate students are acutely aware of the audiences the dissertation serves: committee members, job search committees, and perhaps journal or acquisition editors for articles or manuscripts. For those writing about their community, there is the additional audience of home. I often described my own process of writing as writing with my family at the kitchen table. This was an accurate description because I often wrote at the kitchen table with family around.

This also described the process I hoped my writing would take because I wanted to write in such a way that my nonacademic community would understand as well.

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Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 47 The initial work of finding family and community members to talk with me gave me some practice with learning to negotiate the expectations of both communities. I had to describe my project in a way that was understood by both those in the discipline of writing studies, and my own community. It was the stories my grandmother told me that gave me some of the initial inquiries into the topic, and whenever I would talk with prospective interviewees, I would often share those stories first. These stories gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how the project originated from home and made me recognizable to the community. For most of my interview participants my degrees and academic genealogy meant very little compared to my family’s history.

I wanted very much to use interviews and oral histories as a way to present a holistic picture of the Free Schools year. I was inspired by feminist research methodologies that support researchers’ efforts to include participants in the process and encourage researchers to recognize their stance throughout the process.3 While these practices served me well, at times it was difficult to write in a way that would both please the academy and also make me feel responsible to my home community.

Part of this was because the dissertation, for most graduate students, has a particular set of genre expectations: literature reviews and methods sections aren’t always easily navigable for nonacademic audiences. To remedy this, I followed traditional expectations, but worked hard in the chapters where I examined archival materials to put my own analysis and voice in conversation with those of my interview participants. This wasn’t easy, but I felt like this move allowed for two very important actions to occur. First, it allowed my analysis to be in conversation with those who had directly experienced the Free Schools year.

Second, it helped those core chapters to become about their stories. This wasn’t always an easy task because in a dissertation you are performing and showing that you have command over a subject. I was also trying to negotiate and share the space with my research participants, an action that was further complicated because the community had been silenced for so long.4 I didn’t want anyone to think I was just another researcher coming in to take their stories and leave. I wanted them to feel that we were collaborating, as much as is possible in a dissertation.

Integrating the voices of those who directly experienced the Free School posed an interesting dilemma that required constant negotiation on my part.

For example, when I read the archival documents, I saw the central documents (mission statement and curriculum guide) espousing a commitment to

developing students to become active citizens. I spent time sharing the archival documents with my interview participants, and talking to them about my own understanding, but I was also aware of their take based on their own lived experiences. During interviews, however, former students didn’t feel that the citizenship component was a big part of their experience. Most of the students were surprised by what was shared in the archive because while it wasn’t in direct opposition to their experiences, it wasn’t something they readily recollected. It was an interesting moment for me to have their voices in conversation with the archival documents and my own analysis. This moment proved challenging at first, but the encouragement I received from my dissertation chair helped me to see this as a possibility to engage with these complexities. As a researcher I reconciled with this by writing about it. I had a moment where I worried that the contradictions would detract from my argument, but what I came to realize was that these contradictions were important moments for not only my dissertation, but for myself as a scholar trying to learn what it meant to be accountable in both spaces.

Respect: On Choosing Mentors Some of the earliest conversations I had about my project happened with family members before I even approached mentors and colleagues. Phone calls home provided stories and questions along with contact information for new connections. My family’s interest in the project made me even more interested in it as well, but I do remember being anxious about taking those home conversations into the offices of my faculty mentors. I’d never had any indication that they would steer me away from any particular type of scholarship; however, I was afraid that somehow making home such a central part of my work, especially the very work that would be used to help me get a job, might seem like navel-gazing and less rigorous than the work of others.

My concern about how my work would be perceived because of the close ties I held to the space and people was not unfounded. Critics have argued that those who study or research areas closely related to one’s own life “can essentially invalidate a scholar, calling into question the training, professionalism and the quality of their work” (Ayoub and Rose). Joseph Heath warns that “me” studies are problematic “when people decide to study, not their own lives per se, but rather their own oppression” (par. 7). He believes that for those scholars who study and research their own oppression, their claims won’t be as critical because they lack “the capacity to question one’s own view, and

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Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 48 to correct one’s own biases” (par. 9). Ultimately, Heath’s concern is a perceived lack of rigor for research directly related to one’s identity. I worried less about my own ability to ask critical questions and practice self-reflexivity and more about the way people might perceive me, a Black woman, writing about home. Would audiences assume I wasn’t able to produce rigorous, well-grounded, theoretically supported research?

I found that my conversations with faculty calmed these fears and anxieties. My mentors reassured me that my research had direct implications for conversations in the field of writing studies. What I believe was most meaningful about those conversations was the stance faculty members embodied. Initial conversations with faculty helped me to frame my questions and map out possibilities for answering them, but more often than not, those early meetings with faculty mentors were about listening.

The act of having my mentors actively listen was integral to my developing the confidence needed to carry the project through in this space. When a student wishes to pursue a project that is at once both personal and attached to them, it can feel threatening to be interrogated in the way that we as academics often do.

My mentors demonstrated respect for the local knowledge I had of the area and subject matter, which increased my confidence early in the project. This is not to suggest that mentors or writing center tutors can’t ask questions or make suggestions—this is part of one’s job as a dissertation director or committee member—but what I found most useful in the beginning of the project was that faculty acknowledged my own unique position as both researcher and community member.

This listening and awareness on the part of my dissertation chair and committee members also encouraged me to practice constant self-reflection. I needed to be aware of both my position as a researcher, but also as someone who still wanted to be welcomed and respected by the community that nurtured and raised me.

The further I progressed in my education, my family continued to be there as my support network.

That was especially crucial as I reached advanced degree programs and the numbers of underrepresented peers diminished. My committee also acted in an equally nurturing capacity while maintaining the critical rigor necessary for both the degree and the subject matter. They did not seek to drive the project, but provided critical insight and consistent support. The committee respected my place in the project and that respect was passed to the community members who were gracious enough to share experiences and provide

input. From my experience, respect and understanding go a long way to show underrepresented students that you are not acting as a barrier, but part of a village of support that serves to help us craft and refine work that honors the epistemologies of home.

Acknowledgements I am grateful for the two peer reviewers whose comments helped improve this article. I wish to acknowledge and thank family and friends from my home communities in Richmond and Prince Edward County, Virginia: LaRue DuFay and Iris Epps, David Epps, Alijah Pride Carrington, Mildred Reid, Justin Reid, Armstead Reid, Hunter Robertson, and Lacy Ward. I also thank my mentors who nurtured the dissertation project: Drs. Lois Agnew, Adam Banks, Jessica Enoch, Iswari Pandey, Gwendolyn Pough, Eileen Schell, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and the late James Kinney.

Notes 1. For more on the history of Massive Resistance see George Lewis’s Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement and Epps-Robertson’s “The Race to Erase Brown: The Rhetoric of Massive Resistance.”

2. Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzales and Angela P. Harris’s collection, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, presents accounts of the challenges women faculty of color face.

3. My dissertation was influenced by the work of Jacqueline Jones Royster who describes the complexity involved in writing about and being accountable to a community that one belongs to in her seminal work, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women.

4. The history of Prince Edward’s school closures remained absent from most history books and conversations about the civil rights movement.

Recently, historians have presented stories about the closure periods (Bonastia; Titus). Bonastia suggests that the reason for this silence is because Prince Edward’s story lacks the typical features of a civil right movement story: “Face-to-face confrontations in the streets, sometimes spiked with gruesome violence, lured pens and cameras to the Deep South. Rhetorical clashes in courtrooms, and the quiet suffering of locked-out children in the Upper South, provided little competition” (15).

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Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table • 49 !

Works Cited Ayoub, Phillip and Deondra Rose. “The Scholarly Importance of Studying Issues Related to One’s Own identity.” Inside Higher Ed. 14 April 2016.

Web. Retrieved 1 Aug. 2016.

Bonastia, Christopher. Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. Print.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. U of Minnesota P, 1998. Print.

Delgado, Richard. “Storytelling for Oppositionist and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2411–2441. Print.

Edwards, Kirsten T. “Incidents in the Life of Kirsten T. Edwards: A Personal Examination of the Academic In-between Space.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 26.1 (2010): 113–128. Web. Retrieved 1 Aug. 2016.

Epps-Robertson, Candace. “The Race to Erase Brown v. Board of Education: The Virginia Way and the Rhetoric of Massive Resistance.” Rhetoric Review 35.2 (2016): 108–120. Print.

Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzales and Angela P. Harris. (Eds.) Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2012. Print.

Heath, Joseph. “The Problem of “Me” Studies.” In Due Course: A Canadian Public Affairs Blog. 30 May 2015.

Web. Retrieved 1 Aug. 2016.

Lewis, George. Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement. London: Bloomsbury Academic P, 2006. Print.

Solórzano, Daniel G. and Tara J. Yosso. “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8.1 (2002): 23–44. Print.

Taliaferro Baszile, Denise. “In this Place Where I Don’t Quite Belong: Claiming the Ontoepistemological In-between.” From Oppression to Grace: Woman of Color and their Dilemmas within the Academy. Ed. Theodorea Regina Berry and Nathalie Mizelle. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2006. 195– 208. Print.

Titus, Jill Ogline. Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregation, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2011. Print.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women.

Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2000. Print.

Ward, Clara. “How I Got Over.” 1951. Print.

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CREATING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS: AFFINITY GROUPS AND INFORMAL GRADUATE WRITING SUPPORT Katrina Bell Colorado College katrina.bell@coloradocollege.edu Graduate school, especially for students like us who are pursuing Ph.D.s, can be a tough and lonely place made more difficult by criticism and self-doubt.

Without an adequate community or supportive network, graduate students attempting to access the realms of academia, especially those who constitute the first generation and are pursuing advanced degrees, may be at greater risk of failure and attrition. Failure to complete the dissertation, and the program itself, can be damaging for both the individual and the institution, particularly for those students who are capable of completing extended and involved research projects but need guidance through the terrain of higher education. Graduate students may lack understanding of institutional expectations, which can compound inequities in terms of access to resources, mentoring, or support. According to David Litalien and Frédéric Guay’s study of dropout intentions among doctoral students, those who don’t finish their degree risk a lack of employment opportunities and decreased selfesteem, largely because their efforts could have been redirected in other ways. Additionally, “doctoral attrition reduces resources and at the same time incurs costs for faculty members who have invested considerable time in research projects that will never be completed” (Litalien and Guay 218). Affinity groups and writing support networks like the one we formed (and which we discuss in this essay) may help to not only decrease attrition rates, but foster collaboration and professionalism well beyond the dissertation.

As we looked towards both writing center and other theory in our research, we began implementing collaborative learning structures, unknowingly forming an affinity group. Affinity groups are described as “collegial association[s] of peers that meet[] on a regular basis to share information, capture opportunities, and solve problems that affect the group” (Van Aken, Monetta, and Sink 41). Within a business model, affinity groups consist of members with similar positions that meet regularly and frequently to self-manage their processes and output (Van Aken, Monetta, and Sink 41). Eileen M. Van Aken, Dominic Monetta, and D. Scott Sink point out that, unlike a community of practice where members interact with one another through their daily work,

Jennifer Hewerdine Arizona Western College jenniferhewerdine@gmail.com affinity group members may not cross paths aside from affinity group interactions, and this lack of regular interaction means that each member can contribute different knowledge and experiences (42). While we originally began as part of the same communities of practice—those of the classroom and writing center— we eventually moved from those communities but still worked in similar capacities and with the same goals, namely to complete our doctoral degrees. To help conquer the seemingly insurmountable tasks that comprise writing a dissertation, we formed a peer writing group which met off campus, outside of class or work hours, and was open to anyone working on a project in either of the graduate programs offered by our institution. While we come from different backgrounds, we found kinship and community in our graduate program, and like Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede, “our research on collaborative writing [ . . . ] grew out of our experiences as friends and co-authors” (“Why” 324). Our experiences as classmates and coworkers eventually led to us becoming coauthors, focusing on graduate work in writing centers and writing program administration. Through friendly collaboration in a self-directed and informal writing group, we fostered professionalism, persistence in our degree programs, and, unknowingly, careers in writing center and writing program administration.

While our stories of forming peer writing groups are personal, they speak to the larger institutional issues graduate students face when they accept the invitation to become a scholar. Margaret King’s report on the Ph.D. Completion Project presents a study of ten-year completion rates supported by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), and estimates that the attrition rate for humanities is around 48%, with only 52% of women completing Ph.D.s in those fields (2). The study also acknowledges that for around 20% of students, completion of the Ph.D. does not happen until after year seven (2). More recent data by Susan Gardner shows that there is a 57% attrition rate for doctoral students in the United States, with rates as high as 67% for the humanities (97). In even the most generous programs, funding rarely persists beyond year five, leaving those who don’t finish within that window balancing employment with the demands of the

Creating a Community of Learners • 51 dissertation, including cost and time, while potentially removed geographically from their committee members. But why are students leaving programs?

Leonard Cassuto asserts in The Chronicle of Higher Education that there are two categories of students who fail to complete the degree. First there are “[t]hose who can’t get it done” due to a lack of individual motivation or ability to work independently, or even because they don’t have the intellectual fortitude to meet the demands of a doctoral program. Then, there are “[t]hose who have the ability to finish but choose not to. [ . . . ] We may reasonably expect that in these straitened times, a certain number of people who initially aspire to become academics may choose other courses in life” (Cassuto). Golde’s well-known research on the relationship between doctoral student attrition rates and the role of the department illuminates more specific reasons for leaving a program than Cassuto does. Golde, while recognizing that there are mismatches between student and department, field, and graduate school and that some students feel and may be unprepared for academia as a career, also addresses the issues of isolation within a graduate program, which affinity groups may help to counter (681–692). Yet, Rebecca Shuman, a former doctoral student, proposes that there are a few other reasons, addressing the issue of non-supportive advisers who “run the gamut between absentee, excoriating, and micromanagerial [ . . . ] advisers who retire, leave, or even die,” and the overall lack of preparation for extended research like the dissertation project. Some of these issues may stem from increasing workloads and decreasing budgets that faculty may face in light of state defunding measures, but that doesn’t make them any less frustrating for the doctoral students who are still learning how to navigate academia without the insider knowledge that faculty possess and are still struggling to access the scholarly world where they have less agency. But beyond the issues of advisers and prerequisite studies, “there are the inner hindrances, the ones that cause procrastination, and then shame, and then paralysis,” including over-researching and insisting on perfection before submitting any writing (Shuman). Because they are developing their ethos as academics, graduate students may lack a solid sense of their place within academia as a whole. Beth Burmester, although engaged with the topic of policy and writing center directing, asserts, “Agency comes from having a strong sense of self and self-determined identity” (33). Graduate students transitioning to becoming scholars may lack a strong sense of self or their identities as scholars, creating challenges to writing impacted by shifting agency in a liminal place in academia.

Despite an overall lack of scholarship on attrition and graduate students, there is some research on how graduate programs can help students through some of the challenges that contribute to attrition. The CGS outlines “Four Conditions for Optimal Doctoral Completion,” the first two being related to the right people applying and being admitted to a doctoral program. Assuming those two conditions are met for individual programs, graduate program faculty and students must focus on the second two, which deal with what happens once a student is admitted. The CGS proposes that first, faculty and doctoral students must establish productive working relationships that are both respectful and task-oriented, and that second, students need support from their peers, so that they “recognize themselves as members of a community of learners facing common challenges and opportunities” (Grasso, Berry, and Valentine). Similarly, in their research on doctoral students’ development of identity, Karie Coffman, Paul Putman, Anthony Adkisson, Bridget Kriner, and Catherine Monaghan suggest that the process of becoming a scholar and researcher is transformative, but that achieving that identity in the liminal space of graduate school can be made easier through utilizing a community of practice model (30).

Some graduate schools use a cohort model to increase a sense of community, using “the power of the interpersonal relationships to enhance the learning process and provide additional support to the cohort members as they move toward program completion,” but those models may not be feasible for some programs, or as members reach the dissertation stage (Rausch and Crawford 79). Emma M. Flores-Scott and Maresi Nerad’s research supports the use of peer pedagogies, including those that are formal (cohort programs, dissertation writing groups, and peer mentoring), as well as informal in nature (common spaces, labs, and using peer reviewers), emphasizing the benefits of reciprocity within peer relationships in graduate programs. Within their article, they cite Boud and Lee, who “note that peers learn from one another in a reciprocal manner and that peers can teach each other what it means to be a student, a researcher, and an academic” (Flores-Scott and Nerad 77). However, the sentiment of cohort learning, where members create a learning community in which individuals are held accountable for their progress, functions as an institutionalized version of an affinity group or voluntary community of practice. A combination of formal and informal groups may help students to find the community of writers that works best to move them towards completion.

In their article on undergraduate research groups, Ann Gates, Patricia Teller, Andrew Bernat, Nelly

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Creating a Community of Learners • 52 Delgado, and Connie Kubo Della-Piana claim that students not only increased their understanding of research, but students working in groups felt better able to “resolve conflict, give constructive criticism, brainstorm problem solutions, ask questions, and communicate with team members” (413). Although Gates and coauthors propose research groups for undergraduate students, it is possible that peer mentoring models may be one way to achieve graduate students’ need to develop as scholars with a community of support and mirror the values of writing center peer tutoring.

Kat I’ve spent years collaborating with other teachers to create curriculum and with students to help them survive both high school and undergraduate programs, yet felt powerless to take on my own looming dissertation as a doctoral student. As I entered the Ph.D. program without having completed an MA thesis, imposter syndrome, driven by the perceived lack of competence discussed by Litalien and Guay, hit me hard as I attempted to understand the process and negotiate the spoken and unspoken practices and expectations of becoming a scholar and a professional in the field. Like the students who fall into Cassuto’s second category, I am capable of finishing, but frequently question if finishing is worth the time, anxiety, and isolation that has plagued my journey thus far, if I’ll join the CGS statistics, or if I’ll become another embittered, debt-laden, struggling teacher. As a first-generation immigrant from a working class family, these fears are often compounded by a lack of understanding of my career and education choices in my family and peer groups. According to Marissa Lopez, while the transition to graduate scholarship is challenging for everyone, “students of color and those from poor or working class backgrounds often face additional pressures as they seek to articulate the value (conceptual and monetary) of their work to themselves, their families, and their home communities, especially in the humanities where the use value is not necessarily self-evident” (par. 9). Working in an affinity group with Jenni consistently helps me come to terms with my choices and articulate them to my family and peer groups, which reinforces my ability to write the dissertation, complete the program, and transition into my identity as a scholar. Where I would react with shame and self-loathing to some of the feedback offered by faculty advisors on my writing, with Jenni, I could better process those comments and move past my own self-doubt and lack of confidence in my competence. Litalien and Guay have found that

“perceiving higher support by advisors helped currently enrolled PhD students feel more effective in their studies, both directly and indirectly by reducing the amount of motivation driven by external rewards or internal impetuses such as guilt or shame. By enhancing feelings of competence, this specific support also reduces the likelihood that students develop the intention to quit their program” (229). While the authors are primarily discussing the roles of faculty advisers, for me, peer-to-peer advising helped me to access the support offered both inside and outside of my program, particularly in making my competence seem relevant through social interactions and collaborative writing.

Jenni As someone who tutored in a variety of disciplines for years, I knew that working with others provided social motivation and writing accountability. While completing my master's thesis, I applied this understanding and belief in peer feedback to completing my thesis. I called upon other graduate students who were working on similar projects to meet each Saturday afternoon at a local café, and two of those students regularly attended, with other graduate students occasionally dropping by. The objective of these meetings was to sit and work on our writing, stopping to ask for feedback, assistance, thoughts, or just to chat. Though others’ interest wavered and at times I sat alone in the cafe each Saturday, the commitment to showing up paid off and I completed my thesis on schedule and with what seemed like minimal work because it was spread out over a long period of time. More importantly, I learned that my writing motivation and, it seemed, the writing itself improved when there was time dedicated to the process. However, the peer feedback proved invaluable and, as Michele Eodice writes, I found myself looking for a collaborator, someone to hear me out and act as a sounding board (114). My experience as a writing tutor taught me that conversation with another person was invaluable to developing ideas and writing, and when I sat alone, though I was productive, that developmental aspect of my writing and thinking was lacking. In an interview, Lunsford and Ede say of having a writing partner: “There are things you can do together that you might not be able to do alone, and often that allows you to have a kind of scope and significance that you’re simply unable to have by yourself” (Interview 43). While some may say that collaborative writing and collaboration itself is subversive to the structure of academia, I believe, and my experiences indicate, that it

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Creating a Community of Learners • 53 is necessary for academic success and progress (Calderonello, Nelson, and Simmons 49).

Community of Practice to Affinity Group In The Everyday Writing Center, Anne E. Geller, Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet establish the writing center as a community of practice in which each person is engaged with one another through their daily work in the same space (5–6). Our collaboration extended from overlapping communities of practice, that of writing center practice and the work of graduate student coursework, to that of an affinity group, albeit a small one. We worked with one another in the writing center and took courses with one another, engaged in the same communities of practice, but over time we began working in separate spheres; Kat was moved institutionally to work with a program for students with learning difficulties, and Jenni remained located within the English Department and the Writing Center.

At that time, we were no longer taking courses together but instead found a time to meet with one another once a week. Throughout the week, we emailed and texted to discuss projects and ideas.

Despite moving to different states, we continued to work together by meeting up through video conferencing, texting, and phone calls for the purposes of better understanding the work we were doing, both in the sense of our teaching practice and in the sense of our graduate work. We still operated as members of the same communities of practice, but we began learning and working with one another of our own volition toward common goals that extended beyond work and school dictates, providing feedback, cowriting, presenting, and researching together. James Paul Gee defines this as an affinity group: a space where people interact whether in person or otherwise for the purpose of achieving a common goal (98).

Affinity groups “afford members opportunities to share information, provide feedback on strategic initiatives from different perspectives, solve problems and capture emerging opportunities” (McGrath and Sparks 47). This commitment to writing partnerships through our affinity group moved us beyond the work we had done as newly admitted graduate students and colleagues and helped us to focus on strategies to address our specific and individual needs in a program serving more than one hundred graduate students, countering the anonymity and isolation that can occur in large programs without formal cohorts. Though only in the business of trying to work our way through academia, we experienced all of the features Roger McGrath and William Sparks cite, such as sharing

information, providing feedback, solving problems, and capturing emerging opportunities, plus we found our collaboration led to each of us bringing things to the conversation that the other person may not have experienced or may have missed. Since we approach academia from different perspectives, Jenni as a first generation college student and Kat as a first-generation immigrant and both with distinctive educational and career backgrounds, the difference in experience and the unique lens each of us brought to our study sessions was appreciated. According to Gee, the exchange of different experiences that occurs in collaborative groups is necessary to success in the era of new capitalism where information is fast-changing (97).

Recommendations for Building Graduate Student Communities It’s no secret that many colleges and universities are facing budget crises, and our school has not been immune to this. For many years, budget deficits have impacted students through increased tuition and reduced services. In a time of defunding and heavier workloads, adding services for graduate students may not be feasible. Regardless of whether writing services are available, graduate programs and writing centers can encourage students to form collaborative relationships with peers both within and outside of their fields.

Writing center scholarship demonstrates the value of peer writing relationships, yet the writing center may not be the ideal place to meet the intensive writing needs of graduate students, in that “traditional tutoring can’t provide the long-term extensive support that graduate writers need as they spend years working on theses and dissertations” (Phillips). The use of affinity groups as a supplement to writing center practice can offer students an additional form of the long-term support they need as they work through theses and dissertations. To promote informal collaborative pedagogies, writing centers can offer space and model peer interaction for affinity groups to form, or can offer regular writing groups led by faculty, writing center directors, or even other graduate students, adapted for any size institution or budget. Writing centers can work to encourage collaboration outside of the writing center itself so that graduate students can come to experience collaboration in their daily practice.

One possible route to encouragement includes offering faculty and program workshops on peer collaboration and writing groups that can be incorporated in departments and classrooms. However, the beauty of affinity groups lies partly in the autonomy such groups

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Creating a Community of Learners • 54 can provide; graduate students need not wait for those groups to be formally sanctioned by departments.

Rather, they can simply begin to meet at coffee shops, in between courses, or within graduate student offices.

Across graduate programs, administrators and professors can build in collaborative time and assignments as well as peer tutoring into the curriculum as a means of modeling what the peer writing and support groups. Phillips asserts that these groups, this collaboration, can lead to “an alleviation of members’ isolation and an increase in their rhetorical awareness and competence” (par. 3). This rhetorical awareness and increased competence leads to the formation of a community of practice, working to “shape their members from students operating on the periphery into established scholars,” and contributing to the chances of graduate degree completion (Phillips par. 3). Martin and Ko, reflecting on their experiences with a graduate writing group, suggest several ways to establish and maintain a peer working group (PWG), a concept analogous to a community of practice, and which are found to be most successful when composed of discipline-based affinity groups. Martin and Ko recommend the following guidelines for developing a PWG: 1.

Establish a purpose and guidelines for the PWG 2. Engage in constructive review and critique of materials 3. Hone writing 4 Encourage career development 5. Set personal goals, timelines, and accountability 6. Navigate relationships and networking 7. Develop ownership and expertise 8. Share knowledge 9. Offer moral and emotional encouragement to members of the group.

Though we were unaware of Martin and Ko’s research at the time we began our group, we found ourselves following these guidelines. Our purpose was simple: get through the dissertation and job market by supporting each other at our Monday meetings. We focused our commentary on what each of us were learning on our own, sharing sources and providing each other with theoretical constructs that helped us develop our prospectuses, drafts, and research tools, and we provided constructive feedback based on our individual experiences and what we knew the other person was trying to achieve based on their goals and timeline. We were able to talk through some of the

nuances of writing in rhetoric and composition, not only in terms of the dissertation drafts, but also in terms of the necessary documents for the job market.

We critiqued each other’s job packets, emailed job opportunities, and prepped each other for interviews, all while collaborating on conference presentations.

More than anything, we provided motivation to encourage one another toward a particular goal, chapter, source, or job interview. We shared our networks as much as we shared our resources, chatting frequently about the ways “to best work with committee members and mentors” and seeking out others with similar interests at conferences (Martin and Ko 14). Together, we were able to transition into being professional graduate student peers, discussing the balance of graduate work, to full-time professorial positions.

Despite distant locations, we continue to work together, problem-solving difficulties and discussing successes. We regularly share our knowledge of teaching, writing, researching, writing centers, and writing program administration, providing encouragement through those interactions, and reducing the loneliness of academia by introducing one another to other professionals in the field and establishing a network of other graduate students or recently graduated scholars. This practice of forming a community has helped us move toward the completion of our degree and helped us to establish similar affinity groups in our new locations. More importantly it has established our identities as scholars within our institutions and the larger field.

Works Cited Burmester, Beth. “On the State of the Future of Writing Center Policy: A Manifesto for Change.”

Southern Discourse in the Center: A Journal of Multiliteracy and Innovation 20.1 (2015): 31–66. PDF. Cassuto, Leonard. “Ph.D. Attrition: How Much Is Too Much?” Chronicle of Higher Education. 1 July 2013.

Web. 28 July 2016. Web. 27 July 2016.

Coffman, Karie A., Paul G. Putman, Anthony C. Adkisson, Bridget A. Kriner, and Catherine H. Monaghan. “Waiting for the Expert to Arrive: Using a Community of Practice to Develop the Scholarly Identity of Doctoral Students.”

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 28.1 (2016): 30–37. PDF. Ede, Lisa. “Methods, Methodologies, and the Politics of Knowledge: Reflections and Speculations.”

Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. Eds. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Carbondale,

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Creating a Community of Learners • 55 IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. 314– 329. Print.

Eodice, Michele. “Breathing Lessons, or ‘Collaboration Is . . . ’” The Center Will Hold. Eds. Michael Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003. 114–129. Print.

Flores-Scott, Emma M. and Maresi Nerad. “Peers in Doctoral Education: Unrecognized Learning Partners.” New Directions for Higher Education (2012): 73–83. PDF. Gardner, Susan. “Student and Faculty Attributions of Attrition in High and Low-Completing Doctoral Programs in the United States.” Higher Education (2009): 97–112. PDF. Gates, Ann Q., Patricia J. Teller, Andrew Bernat, Nelly Delgado, and Connie K Della-Piana. “Expanding Participation in Undergraduate Research Using the Affinity Group Model.” Journal of Engineering Education 88.4 (October 1999): 409–414. PDF. Gee, James Paul. Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

Geller, Anne E., Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet. The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice.

Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2007.

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Golde, Chris. “The Role of the Department and Discipline in Doctoral Student Attrition: Lessons from Four Departments.” Journal of Higher Education 76:6 (2005): 669–700. PDF. Grasso, Maureen, Melissa Berry, and Thomas Valentine. “Chapter 2: Description of Projects.” A Data Driven Approach to Improving Doctoral Completion.

Council of Graduate Schools. Web. 20 July, 2016.

King, Margaret F. Ph.D. Completion and Attrition: Analysis of Baseline Demographic Data from the Ph.D. Completion Project. Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools, 2008. Web. 27 July 2016.

Litalien, David, and Frédéric Guay. “Dropout Intentions In PhD Studies: A Comprehensive Model Based On Interpersonal Relationships And Motivational Resources.” Contemporary Educational Psychology 41 (2015): 218–231. Web. 27 July 2016.

Lopez, Marissa. “On Mentoring First Generation and Graduate Students of Color.” Race and Ethnicity.

Modern Language Association. Web. 27 July 2016.

Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. Interview by Alice H. Calderonello, Donna B. Nelson, and Sue C. Simmons. Writing on the Edge 2.2 (1991): 7–18. Rpt. In Writing Together: Collaboration and Theory in Practice: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 40– 50. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. “Why Write . . .

Together?” Writing Together: Collaboration and Theory in Practice: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 27–33. Print.

Martin, Kathryn Remmes, and Linda Ko. “Thoughts on Being Productive during a Graduate Program: the Process and Benefits of a Peer Working Group.” Health Promotion Practice 12.1 (2011): 12– 17. PDF. McGrath Jr., Roger, and William L. Sparks. “The Importance of Building Social Capital.” Quality Progress 38.2 (February 2005): 45–49.

Phillips, Talinn. “Graduate Writing Groups: Shaping Writing and Writers from Student to Scholar.”

Praxis 10.1 (2012). Web. 27 July 2016.

Schuman, Rebecca. “The Only Thing Worse Than Getting a Ph.D. in Today’s Academic Job Market.”

Slate Magazine. 01 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 July 2016.

Van Aken, Eileen M., Dominic J. Monetta, and D. Scott Sink. “Affinity Groups: The Missing Link in Employee Involvement.” Organizational Dynamics 22.4 (Spring 1994): 38–54. PDF.

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ALEJANDRA WRITES A BOOK: A CRITICAL RACE COUNTERSTORY ABOUT WRITING, IDENTITY, AND BEING CHICANX1 IN THE ACADEMY Aja Y. Martinez Syracuse University amarti28@syr.edu Writing centers can never forget to talk with students. —Victor Villanueva [W]hen we can learn to hear the counter in the narratives our students tell, particularly those students who are marginalized, we are awakened to—made to realize—the discursive and material obstacles they face as they work to find a meaningful and productive place in the academy. —Rebecca L. Jackson This is a counterstory about a student of the Writing Center. I have made assertions in previous scholarship that counterstory, as a method of critical race theory, allows voices from the margins to become central to relating underserved students’ own experiences within the academy (see “Critical Race Theory;” “A Plea”). As asserted through the epigraphs above of Victor Villanueva and Rebecca L. Jackson, these narratives are crucial to understanding statistics beyond resulting master narratives formed about underserved students. Concerning my own scholarship and subjectivity as Chicanx, this counterstory is a response to this special issue’s question: What kinds of support do graduate student writers from underserved populations need and want? The narrative below focuses on statistics specific to Chicanxs2 in the academy and along the Chicano/a Educational Pipeline (Yosso and Solórzano 1). As numerous critical race theorists (Bell, Williams, Delgado, Yosso) and proponents of critical race narrative in rhetoric and composition (Gilyard, Prendergast, Condon, Villanueva) have asserted, marginalized students are the experts of their own experiences and should be the purveyors of their narratives. Gilyard notes, the personal narrative as a primary database serves as “an account that will further illuminate matters for those involved with the education of” minoritized students, such as African-Americans, American Indians, and Chicanx (12–14). I craft the narratives below with the intent that the institution of Writing Centers and, specific to this audience, Writing Center administrators, approach underserved students with ears that will listen for that which they do not intellectually, viscerally, or experientially know (Ratcliffe 29). Ratcliffe’s call for rhetorical listening is furthered by Flores and Rosa’s “raciolinguistic

ideologies” framework that examines “not only the ‘eyes’ of whiteness but also its ‘mouth’ and ‘ears’” (151), all toward the understanding and belief that we as people of color can relay who we are on our own terms and in turn make change collaboratively.

The Pipeline as Narrative Outline For every 100 Chicanx3 students who begin elementary school, 2% earn a Master’s or a professional degree, and 0.2% earn a doctorate (Yosso and Solórzano4). Writing Centers concerned with serving students from underserved backgrounds should consider the journey of graduate students along their educational pipelines as one informed by and resultant of educations not informed by ethnic studies or a critical culturally relevant curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional practice (Romero, Arce, and Cammarota). As a practice, unquestioned EuroWestern-centric curricula, pedagogy, and program administration actively chip and strip away writerly identity from Chicanx students. Yet this facet of the pipeline is rarely examined due to the sheer clamor of the master narrative that explains these dismal numbers away as factors of cultural deficiency on the part of the student rather than cultural deficiency on the part of the institution. Related from a perspective counter to this master narrative, the counterstory below illustrates these data as narrative vignettes—snapshots of a sort—along the pipeline and presents evidence that writerly identities of underserved Chicanx students preexist the Writing Center experience. Writing Centers in turn can best serve marginalized students when administrators and staff are trained to listen to, learn from, make space for, and perhaps even assist students in the rebuilding of a writerly identity.

Engaging Villanueva’s and Jackson’s recommendations of talking to students and centralizing their narratives, we can broaden the conversation about underserved students to instead include underserved students as we together address and refute institutional assumptions about who we are and the potential for our place in the academy.

Alejandra Writes a Book • 57

A Counterstory: Pipeline

Vignettes

along

the

Episode 1: Alejandra the Writer Pipeline Station: Elementary School Chicanx Student Status: 100/100 Alejandra always knew she would be a writer. In Miss Garcia’s first grade state-mandated bilingual class, where English-speaking students were borderlands Chicanxs and Spanish-speaking students had parents who were “across the line” Mexicanos, Alejandra Prieto, a little 3rd generation “Español got stamped out of my parents during their schooling” Chicana (Martinez “A Personal Reflection”), was a lover of words, writing, and books—en inglés. When it came to books, this borderlands Chicanita never stood a chance—after all, her mother read all the baby books and dutifully read to her baby in utero as recommended in Baby Geniuses: It Starts in the Womb! Alejandra’s father sat nightly in front of the TV, eating dinner and watching his favorite quiz game show with his trusty tome of a dictionary at hand—once a new word appeared onscreen, Alejandra’s dad quickly looked it up, pronounced it a few times—silently at first, letting the new letters and syllables swill around in his mouth, then aloud, tossed over his shoulder to his wife and kids at the kitchen table. Alejandra was raised in a house of books and words, research and definitions, so by the time she entered Miss Garcia’s 1st grade statemandated bilingual class, she was reading at a 5th grade level and knew she was a writer.

When it came time for show-and-tell, all of the students were excited to find out their only task was to bring their most treasured possession to class, “something really special,” Miss Garcia explained, “something only you have that only you can explain to us.” Right away, most of the kids started chattering about which toy they would bring. Toys normally weren’t allowed at school because Miss Garcia said they caused too much celos and too many pleitos and she just wasn’t going to put up with it! So everyone was excited to find out toys were in.

Pedro declared during lunch that he couldn’t wait to show everyone his chingon He-Man, and Marisol knew her Barbie with a growing trensa would be a hit with all her amigitas. Miss Garcia even said there would be an extra 15 minutes of free playtime after show-andtell before everything would have to be put back into cubbies so they could go back to learning how to read again. Alejandra, eager for such a fun activity, also wasn’t sure what she would choose for her own presentation. Her parents didn’t have much money, so she knew the few toys she did have would probably

not be very impressive to the others, and she also couldn’t think of a single toy she owned that truly qualified as special and something only she had.

Alejandra went home that afternoon with an expression her mom called a “cara pensativa,” and when Mami got home from work she spotted Alejandra’s quandary all over her face, right away.

“Mija, why the cara pensativa?”

“Miss Garcia said we have ‘show-and-tell’ tomorrow, but I don’t know what to take. She said it has to be special.”

“Well—” Mami said, thinking, “what about the bracelet Abuela bought you for your birthday?”

“I wear that everyday!” Alejandra replied, “no one’s gonna think that’s special.”

“Hmm—” continued Mami, a cara pensativa spreading across her own face now, “Did Miss Garcia say it had to be something you already have, or can it be something you make?”

“But what can I make?” said Alejandra, “I don’t have tools!”

“Pues, of course you have tools, Ale! You have your brain, and your imagination, y tus manitas!”

Alejandra looked down at her small hands and thought for a few moments and then looking up, said, “Well, the other kids are learning how to read…”

“Yes . . . ” said Mami, a look on her face like she already knew what Alejandra was going to say next.

“Well, I think books are special…”

“Yes . . . ” said Mami, a smile now spreading across her face.

“I could write a book and read it to my friends for show-and-tell!” exclaimed Alejandra, light in her eyes.

“Perfecto!” Mami said, with light to match her daughter’s.

Episode 2: Alejandra the Lawyer Pipeline Station: High School Chicanx Student Status: 46/100 “But you’re always writing!” said cousin Chucho, accusation in his voice.

Alejandra and her primo were sitting at their abuela’s kitchen table, a place they spent all of their after-school hours before their parents picked them up after work.

Alejandra could usually be found bent over her homework; Chucho was usually chomping noisily on comida and poking at her when things got too quiet.

“Ugh,” Alejandra sighed in exasperation. “I told you, Chucho, this paper is really important, if I don’t finish it for our mock trial team, I’ll be in deep shit!”

“Aye! Muchacha, tu lengua!” a shout came from the adjacent living room.

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Alejandra Writes a Book • 58 Alejandra and Chucho heard their abuela’s recliner whine the way it did when she sat up abruptly, as the volume of her telenovela was lowered significantly. Now they had her full attention.

“Sorry Abuela,” said Alejandra, a sheepish grin exchanged with cousin Chucho’s smirk.

“Malcriada.” Chucho silently mouthed at Alejandra.

Alejandra rolled her eyes at her primo, but they both remained silent for a few moments more until their abuela turned the volume back up.

“But the game starts in ten minutes!” Chucho continued, a slight whine accenting the “ten.” “Are you really going to miss homecoming to write a stupid paper for a stupid law club?”

“Chucho!” came a yell from the living room again.

“How does she always hear us, even with the novela full blast?!” Chucho hissed in a whisper.

“Déjala!” Abuela continued. “Alejandra needs to write that paper! She’s going to be an abogada, which you’ll need someday if you don’t stop being such a travieso!”

Chucho looked indignantly in the general direction of his abuela’s disembodied voice. He took an angry bite of his quesadilla and vigorously chewed, his nostrils flared.

“Thanks Abuela,” Alejandra trilled sweetly, following it up by sticking her tongue out at her cousin.

He returned the gesture with a choice finger.

Episode 3: Alejandra the ESL Student Pipeline Station: 4-Year College Chicanx Student Status: 8/100 Alejandra couldn’t believe her eyes. A B+++++?

What the hell kind of grade was that? How is a professor even allowed to write that on a paper? And how many of those pluses would she have to earn to make it an A? Or at least an A-. And she had worked so hard on this essay. She employed all the strategies recommended in her freshman year English 101 course. Write a “shitty first draft.” Check, she did that.

Have a peer take a look. Check, both Mami and Papi read it—Papi of course fine tooth-combing it with his trusty dictionary at hand. Write a second draft. Check.

She did it all, exactly as directed, and still resulting in a B+++++. It seemed her only and last option would be to actually attend office hours with Professor Kent, something she had avoided with most professors up to this point in her college career. But she was a junior now; she shouldn’t still be afraid of one-on-one time with professors, even if it was a Shakespeare professor who announced on the first day of class that he was a graduate of Harvard who went to the institution back when they still gave you the option between math and

Latin as a prerequisite—(Dr. Kent opted for Latin, he let the class know, rolling his eyes as if math were a contender in the choice). So this was it, this was Alejandra’s choice: face office hours with this guy or be satisfied with the B+++++.

Alejandra knocked shyly on Dr. Kent’s office door. No answer. She knocked a bit harder, heard a metal chair scrape against the linoleum floor, and was soon sitting face-to-face with her professor.

“How can I help you Ali?” said Dr. Kent.

Alejandra winced internally at the familiarity with which he shortened and Anglicized her name.

“I—I” Alejandra stammered, “I wanted to talk about my paper—the grade you gave—” “The grade you earned!” Dr. Kent interrupted cheerfully. “The grade you earned my dear.”

Alejandra gave a slight nod and swallowed.

“Okay,” she started again, “then about the grade I earned.”

“Do you have the paper in question?” Dr. Kent asked.

“Yes, it’s here,” said Alejandra, retrieving it from her bag and placing it on his desk.

Dr. Kent picked up the paper, surveyed it page by page, then placed it back on the desk and said, “Well this is a great essay, Ali! Very nuanced understanding of the way Shakespeare is using Othello’s character to get audiences to examine their own prejudices, very good work! What is it you wanted to discuss?”

“Well—” Alejandra began in an unsure tone— “Project, my dear! Use your theater voice with this Shakespeare professor, from the diaphragm!” he cheerfully boomed.

“It’s the grade—” Alejandra sputtered, a bit louder and more forceful than she had intended, “It’s the B+++++. I want to know what I’ll need to do to earn an A? What you wrote on my paper says it’s good, and right now you just said it’s good. So I want to know what to do to get an A?” Alejandra finished lamely, a bit out of breath.

Dr. Kent fixed Alejandra with a stare for a moment, just long enough for Alejandra to begin to fidget and look elsewhere in the room. Then he sighed and began, “Well, Ali, I’ve been teaching in this part of the country for a long time now, and with the border to Mexico so close, I’ve become accustomed to my students having varying degrees of proficiency with the English language—” Alejandra, nodded her head, uncertainly, but well aware of borderlands versions of Spanish, English, and everything in-between here in her hometown.

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Alejandra Writes a Book • 59 “So,” Dr. Kent continued, “I’m well aware that not all of my students are equipped to handle the language, and with your own ESL background—” Alejandra blinked and shook her head. Did she hear him correctly? Did he just say she was an ESL student? Did he just say her writing was not at the A level because he assumed English was her second language (Flores and Rosa)? ESL. A status Alejandra could never claim because her own parents had been corporeally punished in their own educations for speaking Spanish. Her parents were punished to the point they never actually taught Alejandra or her siblings the language. Did Dr. Kent know she mourned the loss of this language, and now he informed her English was a tongue she hadn’t mastered as well? Did he understand (Martinez “A Personal Reflection”)?

Episode 4: Alejandra the Bad “Fit” Pipeline Station: Graduate or Professional Degree Chicanx Student Status: 2/100 Alejandra was getting kicked out of her graduate program. They told her to “take the masters and go.”

They told her she wasn’t a “good fit” for their program. They told her she didn’t write on par with the other students. They told her she didn’t know how to use MLA. Her peers struggled to read her writing, because after all, she struggled to write it. It wasn’t her voice, the writing they wanted was foreign, another language, one she was not proficient in, yet no one knew how to translate and help her learn. They knew good writing based on what they said wasn’t good writing. They knew what they didn’t want, and they didn’t want Alejandra. She was a “bad fit” (Martinez “A Plea”).

Episode 5: Alejandra the Writer Pipeline Station: Doctoral Degree Chicanx Student Status: 0.2/100 She first read his work when it was announced he was a candidate for a new position in her program. The title of his research talk and publications were provocative; the titles spoke to her and invited her in.

She wanted to read his work, which surprised her because it was the first time in longer than Alejandra could remember that she was excited again about books and reading. And his writing reignited her interest in writing. Alejandra wanted to write again. She didn’t know if it was acceptable to reach out to a job candidate, but her program chair provided all candidates’ email, and after several years now of stumbling over the cultural speedbumps of the institution, Alejandra was increasingly of the mind to

do first and beg forgiveness later. So Alejandra wrote an email.5 Dear Dr. Fresh-Shores, I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to your campus visit and the prospect of you becoming faculty in this program. You will be the first person of color in my field who I have ever met. In fact, you are the first person of color whose work I’ve ever been assigned in the two years of coursework I’ve completed in this graduate program (no joke), and I cannot say enough about how much your work speaks to me and my experience in this field—in life really. You are an inspiration, in fact, until I read your book I had not felt inspired to write. I really was beginning to believe I couldn’t write, that I had nothing worth saying, and that I wasn’t meant to exist in this space. I am happy to say I wrote a short narrative essay about my experiences as a writer from a young age (first grade in fact!), and how I’ve lost my light and way after being told time and again by professors and peers that I have nothing worth saying. Your narrative approach to writing has helped me recall my own voice, and I’m not sure if this is okay, but I’m attaching the essay here.

I know you’re really busy and probably won’t have time to read it, but I felt brave and inspired enough by your work to throw caution to the wind and just let you see it. Thank you so much for your work and leading the way for students like me who have lost our way. I cannot wait to meet you, and I hope beyond hope that you get the job, you’re truly needed here.

Sincerely, Alejandra And to Alejandra’s happy surprise, he wrote back.

Dear Alejandra, Thank you for such a kind welcome and for the very sweet praise. I am very excited about the prospect of working at your institution, especially if it means I get to work with students like you! You’re right, I am busy, but never too busy for students, so I did get a chance to read your essay, and WOW. You write like Geneva Crenshaw. You have a very similar narrative style, and girl, don’t discount your voice! You have one, and we all need to hear it. Don’t stop writing. You ARE a writer. I’ll look forward to hearing more from you soon.

Best, V. Fresh-Shores

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Alejandra Writes a Book • 60 Upon reading the email, Alejandra thought, “Yes. Who am I, if not a writer?” A dim but visible light was awakening in her eyes.

Thus, Alejandra’s story is one of reclamation. She seeks to reclaim the writerly identity that was stripped from her through an educational process that communicated both implicitly and explicitly that she was not a writer, that her people do not write, that she does not exist. So at the conclusion of this counterstory, the question remains: What can Writing Centers do to open space, provide pathways, and to help in the rebuilding effort for students with stories like Alejandra’s. Further, how can Writing Centers encourage their institutions to follow suit? The challenge is ours.

In closing, Writing Center administrators and professionals should aim to engage the narratives of underserved students not so much as cultural insight, but as an institutional indictment of the “colonizing impulses” (Prendergast 46) that exist within wellintentioned and liberatory missions of Writing Centers.

As Stokely Carmichael reminds us, institutional white supremacy exists within “the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free” (2).

So as a caveat, a Writing Center is best positioned to truly serve the underserved when their conception of liberation is expanded to realize students possess an understanding of who they are as writers and how this relationship has been shaped (for better or worse) by the academy. It is then the responsibility of the Writing Center, not to liberate underserved students, but to recognize its own complicity within the colonial functioning of the academy, to reflect on these colonial tendencies, and to build resistance and space with underserved students through coalitional practices that centralize the narratives of marginalized students as crucial to best serving their needs in this space.

Notes 1. According to Scharrón-del Río and Aja: “The use of the identifier ‘Latinx’ (pronounced “Latin-ex”), [is] born out of a collective aim to move beyond the masculine-centric ‘Latino’ and the gender inclusive but binary embedded ‘Latin@’,” and moves toward “[r]ecognizing the intersectionality of our identities as well as our locations within the various systems of privilege and oppression—on a personal and social level [and] fosters solidarity with all of our Latinx community and is also necessary to engage in liberatory praxis.”

2. Chicanx is used in my work synonymously with Mexican-American. These terms are used in my work to refer to peoples of Mexican descent or heritage who live in the United States. According to Yosso (whose 2006 work uses the a/o identifier), “Chicana/o is a political term, referring to a people whose indigenous roots to North America and Mexico date back centuries” (16). Also see Rudolfo Acuña’s work for more on the history and origins of this term.

3. I am aware that the definition of Chicanx has been extended in some scholarship and social commentary beyond the census informed demographics cited here

by Yosso and Solórzano, to include peoples with more recent migrations from Mexico, as well as all over the Americas. However for the purposes of the character subjectivities as informed by the data, literatures, and personal experience used to craft the narratives, Chicanx here is used with the above definition (endnote 2) in mind.

4. For more on Yosso and Solórzano’s work with the Chicana/o Pipeline, including the pipeline graphic, see: http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/files/LPIB_13March200 6.pdf 5. Condon’s work describes how email can be used as a method for creating counterstories.

Acknowledgments

Works Cited

A special thanks to my writing familia: Ana Patricia Martinez, Jaime Armin Mejía, Victor Villanueva, Casie Moreland, Tom Hong Do, Adam Banks, and the Smitherman/Villanueva Writing Collective. Your thoughtful feedback and support of this work has been invaluable to my process. Also, big thanks to Shannon Madden and Michele Eodice for your careful and considerate work as editors of this necessary special issue.

Acuña, Rodolfo F. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 8th ed. London, UK: Pearson Longman, 2014. Print.

Bell, Derrick. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. Basic Books, 1987. Print.

---. Faces at the Bottom of the Well. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Print.

Carmichael, Stokely. “Black Power Address at UC Berkeley.” 1966.AmericanRhetoric.com. Web. 6 May 2016.

Condon, Frankie. I Hope I Join the Band: Narrative, Affiliation, and Antiracist Rhetoric. Logan: Utah State UP, 2012. Print.

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Alejandra Writes a Book • 61 Delgado, Richard. The Rodrigo Chronicles: Conversations about America and Race. New York: New York UP, 1995. Web. 6 May 2016.

---. “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Michigan Law Review 87.8 (1989): 2411–2441. Print.

Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. “Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education.” Harvard Educational Review 85.2 (2015): 149–171. Print.

Gilyard, Keith. Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 1991.

Print.

Jackson, Rebecca L. “Resisting Institutional Narratives: One Student’s Counterstories of Writing and Learning in the Academy.” Writing Center Journal 28.1 (2008): 23–41. Print.

Martinez, Aja Y. “A Personal Reflection on Chican@ Language and Identity in the US-Mexico Borderlands: The English-Language Hydra as Past and Present Imperialism.” Why English? Confronting the Hydra. Ed. Vaughan Rapatahana, Robert Phillipson, Pauline Bunce, and Ruanni Tupas.

Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2016. 211–219.

Print.

---. “A Plea for Critical Race Theory Counterstory: Stock Story versus Counterstory Dialogues Concerning Alejandra’s ‘Fit’ in the Academy.”

Composition Studies 42.2 (2014): 33–55. Print.

---. “Critical Race Theory: Its Origins, History, and Importance to the Discourses and Rhetorics of Race.” Frame: Journal of Literary Studies 27.2 (2014): 9–27. Print.

Prendergast, Catherine. “Race: The Absent Presence in Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication 50.1 (1998) 36–53. Print.

Romero, Augustine, Sean Arce, and Julio Cammarota.

“A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically Compassionate Intellectualism.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 12.2 (2009): 217–233. Print.

Scharrón-del Río, María R. and Alan A. Aja. “The Case FOR ‘Latinx’: Why Intersectionality Is Not a Choice.” LatinoRebels.com. 5 Dec. 2015. Web. 6 May 2016.

Villanueva, Victor. “Blind: Talking about the New Racism.” Writing Center Journal 26.1 (2006): 3–19.

Print.

Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1991. Print.

Yosso, Tara J. Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Yosso, Tara J. and Daniel G. Solórzano. “Leaks in the Chicana and Chicano Educational Pipeline.” Latino Policy and Issues Brief 13 (2006): 1–4. Web. 6 May 2016.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 14, No 1 (2016)

“WE DON’T DO THAT HERE”: CALLING OUT DEFICIT DISCOURSES IN THE WRITING CENTER TO REFRAME MULTILINGUAL GRADUATE SUPPORT Erica Cirillo-McCarthy Stanford University ecirillo@stanford.edu

Celeste Del Russo Rowan University delrusso@rowan.edu

Elizabeth Leahy University of Tennessee-Chattanooga elizabeth-leahy@utc.edu Narrative 1: Yifan, a graduate student and multilingual writer, visits the writing center weekly to work on her qualifying paper. For the past year, she and her regular tutor would go through each section, addressing both global and local concerns. One day, she visits the center when her regularly scheduled tutor is not available. When she sits down to begin the session, Yifan asks for assistance on grammar and editing issues in her conclusion. The tutor kindly but firmly states, “I’m sorry, but we don’t do that here.” Feeling embarrassed, Yifan packs up her things and leaves.

Narrative 2: Rayna, a writing center director, is sitting in her office when Marcus, a PhD Candidate in Education (and repeat visitor) comes into her office to announce his progress on his nearly completed dissertation. Last year, his advisor sent him to the writing center to have a tutor help “clean up” his academic English. He worked with several tutors until he found one who would help him with grammar and editing. After working for a year with a tutor, focusing on sentence-level issues and editing, Marcus is preparing his dissertation for submission. “I know the writing center isn’t supposed to do grammar and editing,” he tells Rayna, “and that I shouldn’t advertise this with the rest of the students in our program, but when I meet weekly with my tutor, that’s exactly what we do. We do ‘grammar.’”

Narrative 3: Sam, a writing tutor, has been working with Marina for two semesters on sentence-level issues related to her prospectus. In some sessions, Marina and Sam sit side by side, identifying patterns in her grammar usage, referring to grammar rulebooks, and applying correct usage in the context of Marina’s writing. Lately, as the deadline for the prospectus gets closer, Sam has found herself doing more direct line editing than she normally would. She feels uncomfortable, as though she is not doing her job

appropriately, as if she is misrepresenting the writing center’s philosophies by being overly directive, assuming the role of editor and not tutor.

Over the years, as writing center tutors, graduate assistants, and administrators, we have witnessed the challenges facing multilingual graduate student writers on their quest for academic writing support. We have spent our time researching campus resources only to find that holistic (and whole-istic) approaches to working with the particular needs of graduate multilingual writers (GMLWs) are lacking. One common narrative that we witness repeatedly is concerned with GMLWs: the “we don’t do grammar” frame that many writing centers endorse. In the example from narrative one, which is based on a client with whom Erica has been working, Yifan left embarrassed, as she was made to feel like she had been using the writing center fraudulently. In Erica’s next meeting with Yifan, she explained why writing centers are so resistant to changing this frame for their work.

While her explanation may have mediated Yifan’s embarrassment somewhat, Yifan was still hesitant to work with anyone besides Erica. A similar sense of guilt and embarrassment is felt by Sam, the tutor in narrative three, who focuses on local concerns in longterm, high stakes projects that graduate students typically bring to the center. All three narratives echo what we identify as particular obstacles faced not only by our GMLWs when seeking out resources to improve their communication skills, but also by tutors and administrators who wish to identify best practices in serving multilingual students.

In opening with these narratives, we want to ask, what do writing centers gain by this steadfast commitment to the “we don’t work on grammar” frame or any frame that defines what we “do” in the writing center by what we “don’t do?” We have seen that this unwavering stance, which first manifests in

“We Don’t Do That Here” • 63 mission statements and cascades down to everyday practices, can become an obstacle for advanced GMLWs who have already done the critical thinking necessary to complete their doctoral courses and write theses/dissertations. When GMLWs are turned away from our writing centers, we are not only leaving them to cobble together writing support elsewhere, we are also excluding and isolating them from our mission and praxis.

The increased presence and needs of GMLWs present us with a moment to re-examine current writing center narratives to explore and assess the possibilities and limitations inherent within them.

While writing center scholarship has addressed the writing support needs of multilingual undergraduate students (Matsuda and Cox; Bruce and Rafoth; Denny; Min), and of English-speaking graduate students (Shamoon and Burns; Gillespie; Snively; Mannon), there is a dearth of scholarship concerned with the needs of GMLWs (Phillips). Often the writing support needs of graduate students are ignored because they are already assumed to be “experts” in their fields’ genre and disciplinary conventions (Donnell, Petraglia-Bahri, and Gable). However, writing center and composition scholars have argued that many graduate students do not receive the mentoring and support necessary to gain the disciplinary writing expertise to successfully complete graduate-level writing projects (Leverenz; Micciche and Carr; Simpson). GMLWs further complicate the ‘expert’ graduate student writer narrative because linguistic surface errors in their writing are often perceived as a deficiency (Zamel).

When GMLWs go to the writing center to address these so-called deficiencies, they face another type of deficit discourse from the writing center itself. In this article we grapple with the multiple “deficit discourses” that often shape our missions and in turn materialize in writing center praxis. We see these deficit discourses as a significant barrier to providing the writing support that GMLWs seek out. Ultimately, we offer strategies for reframing writing center mission statements and tutor training as a way to create more accessible programming for GMLWs. We draw from Linda Adler-Kassner’s use of the term “frames” and Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s use of “story vision” to articulate the shift from a deficit discourse model towards a more holistic approach to working with GMLWs in the writing center. While experiences such as those depicted in the opening narratives provide concrete, personal examples of the impact mission statements have on our programming and overall vision of our writing center work, AdlerKassner and McKinney provide us with the ability to understand the histories shaping these experiences. In

Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers, McKinney creates a framework for interrogating “story vision,” a term we borrow for examining both the inclusive and exclusive nature of grand narratives. She writes, “the story, once in motion, excludes other ideas about writing centers that do not fit with the established writing center story.

It is also so absolutely normal, so tacit, that it functions invisibly. It seems not to be a story, a representation, but more a definition, a fact, a truth” (11). Story vision is both a challenge and an asset in our field. Story vision places limitations on our understanding of the scope of writing center work, but it also allows us to interrogate, disrupt, and complicate narratives, searching for untold stories or misrepresented voices buried in grand narratives of writing center missions and praxis. For the purposes of our argument, story vision allows us to complicate narratives that cloak GMLWs’ needs in a language of deficiency. Concepts such as framing and story vision allow writing center practitioners to identify how stories such as the deficit discourse narrative are ingrained in our field’s practices.

Such narratives, we argue, limit our ability or readiness to explore more innovative approaches to working with GMLWs as these approaches might seem controversial when positioned alongside an oft told writing center “story.”

Additionally, Linda Adler-Kassner’s concept of frames in The Activist WPA: Changing Stories About Writing and Writers provides us with an active approach to shifting narratives. We apply her concept of “frames” in writing program administration and situate it within writing center praxis. Adler-Kassner argues that “stories are always set within and reinforce particular boundaries” (4); in other words, the stories we tell ourselves and others about writing center work finds their origins and importance in other stories and frames that “both reflect and perpetuate dominant cultural values and interests” (12). That is not to say frames cannot be resisted. She argues that stakeholders must first understand that “story-changing work incorporates and proceeds from principles” (92).

Writing center staff and administrators must uncover and examine the principles that have informed our stories and be able to articulate these principles if they want to change that story. If writing center practitioners take the opportunity to unpack and question stories often told about writing centers with regard to our work with GMLWs, we can not only eliminate deficit discourses in the writing center but also shift the narrative in favor of GMLWs. Looking back to the three epigraphs, we see how this shift has potential ripple effects for writing center administrators and tutors as well as GMLWs and other students. We first examine how deficit discourses are sometimes

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 64 reproduced by the writing centers’ framing of graduate writing support—that is, we examine how we theorize, talk about, and practice graduate writing support and in particular, multilingual graduate writers. After doing so, we argue that current writing center frames do not serve this particular group of students and ought to be reframed to allow for a more inclusive story vision. We identify the mission statement as a crucial starting point for such reframing because it ultimately influences tutor training, tutor/GMLW interaction, and programming.

“We Don’t Do That Here:” Deficit Discourses in the Writing Center In the field of education, “deficit discourse” is often used to describe the racialized narratives that teachers in urban settings use to explain the achievement gap (Delpit). Scholars in second language writing have also found this term useful in uncovering the negative language educators and administrators use in framing the linguistic differences of multilingual writers. As Shawna Shapiro explains, deficit discourses stem from the misconception that “differences in language, culture, race, and nation of origin are . . . educational obstacles, rather than resources” (387).

Moreover, this type of deficit discourse often frames MLWs’ experiences in the university in negative ways.

Matsuda has argued that instructors and administrators often subscribe to a “myth of linguistic homogeneity” that creates unsustainable and unrealistic assumptions about students’ linguistic abilities (82). These assumptions help create deficit discourses as well as policies and programs of what Matsuda terms “linguistic containment,” which send or quarantine linguistically diverse students elsewhere to fix their perceived deficiencies (85). As we think about creating writing center environments that are more accessible and invitational to GMLWs, we must consider not only the extent to which our policies and practices are influenced by deficit discourse but also how they may be complicit in reproducing deficit discourses. When it comes to our policies about and interactions with GMLWs, these deficit discourses can hinder access to the writing support that GMLWs seek out.

As writing center practitioners, we see these deficit discourses in our everyday interaction with GMLWs. The opening narratives offer composite experiences all three of us have faced. We frequently meet GMLWs who are referred by advisors or professors, and often their surface-level errors are a secondary concern to larger issues with idea development and disciplinary genre expectations. However, graduate advisors sometimes have difficulty providing such explicit

feedback and instead default to the familiar “fix your grammar at the writing center” frame. This frame in turn reinforces for GMLWs that their linguistic reality is in fact a liability or that it is deficient in some way (Matsuda and Cox 5). This scenario is troubling for several reasons. First, framing GMLW’s writing support needs through the language of grammar is limiting in that it reduces complex writing projects such as dissertation chapters and conference papers to surface issues at the exclusion of engaging larger ideas and arguments in the writing. Second, emphasizing grammar and surface feature errors in this way sends the message to GMLWs that their work is not worth reading or engaging with if their written English is accented. Finally, when GMLWs are given explicit instructions to go to the writing center to fix their grammar, this is the charge they are likely to repeat to the staff members with whom they engage. Not only does this grammar frame potentially limit the type of support the student asks for, but it can also result in another type of deficit discourse in the writing center: “we don’t do that.” Meeting a request for writing support with such an emphatic rejection perpetuates the notion of linguistic containment for GMLWs. In other words, by telling a student that we don’t “do” grammar, we are also telling them that their work is too deficient for the writing center.

As we will discuss later in the article, much of the deficit discourse that surfaces in writing centers stems from our field’s move to process-based approaches to tutoring. Therefore, we wish to examine the limitations of the process-based frame and ask if we have gone too far. More specifically, we want to consider how a process-focused narrative of the writing center may limit our ability to be open to and to serve the multilayered needs of GMLWs. Are we ignoring the complex needs of the students who come to the writing center with a draft of a rather large high-stakes product, such as a thesis or dissertation? Some might argue that our critique of process-based framing may unknowingly unravel the decades’ worth of progress writing center practitioners have made in taking control of writing center narratives. But rather than seeing our call for reframing as a step backward, we see it as a continuation of a long tradition: writing centers as reflective places wherein re-examination and reassessment of frames and resulting praxis serves the entirety of the student demographic. In order to better serve all students, we can no longer pretend that traditional writing center narratives, the stories we tell to both ourselves and to our stakeholders, are sufficient to meet multilingual graduate writers’ needs.

Instead, writing centers can reframe how they theorize and practice graduate writing support in general and

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 65 for multilingual graduate writers in particular. We believe the best place to start this reframing is by critically examining our mission statements.

Reproducing Deficit Discourse in Mission Statements Examining the ways writing centers position their practices rhetorically for students and other stakeholders has the potential to make evident the narratives with which writing centers identify; further, there are implications of this examination regarding programming, tutor training, and institutional identity.

As Frankie Condon argues, “Mission statements articulate the purposes served by an institution or institutional site and the principles by which those purposes are to be achieved . . . . [M]ission statements name commitments to quality and service and as such serve as means by which an institution or institutional site can hold itself accountable or be held accountable to the constituencies it seeks to serve” (23). We interpret Condon’s definition of mission statements as actual frames that signal values and resulting writing center praxis to students. Because of this, we identify mission statements as the starting point for our reframing inquiry.

GMLWs’ first encounter with a writing center deficit discourse frame occurs in the mission statement: writing centers do not edit papers. Imagine a GMLW heading to your institution’s writing center webpage where the mission statement is featured on the home page, right next to welcoming pictures of smiling tutors and students. Her eyes scan the mission statement and settle on this: “We don’t fix papers.” Historically, writing centers have reframed their missions in response to institutional frames which position the writing center as a “fix it shop” (North; Boquet; Grimm). Writing centers were considered the place to send broken students, which reinforced a particular culturally-neutral concept of literacy that focuses solely on the individual student rather than the social aspect of writing, ignoring the context in which all writing and writers move (Grimm; Boquet). But in 1984, North pushed back against the fix-it-shop identity and described “the new writing center” as a manifestation of both the process movement and student-centered pedagogy, defining itself “in terms of the writers it serves” (438). North articulated a reframing of writing centers that was occurring across the nation (see for instance Bruffee; Harris; Harris and Silva), specifically moving from a place-based writing center frame (the place to send deficient students) to a process-based frame which is student-based and contextual. Writing center praxis, and thus mission statements, began to

focus on the writer, not the writing. This particular frame of collaboration leading to growth as writers makes sense in the context of traditional institutional narratives about writing centers (Carino).

But what are the limitations inherent in this frame?

As we pointed out previously, graduate students have multiple layers of needs; GMLWs even more so. If we focus on process at the exclusion of product, where does that leave high-stakes products such as the dissertation or thesis? A brief survey of writing center mission statements finds that this deficit discourse abounds. Drawing from our survey, we created a composite of U.S. writing center mission statements that contain what we identify as deficit language: The Writing Center is a teaching and learning workplace (not a “fix-it” shop or an editing service). We are not editors; we are teachers.

As such, our tutors do not edit and do not proofread, since doing so detracts from the goal of encouraging independent writers who are able to self-edit. Tutors are not meant to “perfect” a paper during a tutoring session; rather, they identify areas for improvement and offer suggestions on how enhance the final product. If you wish to focus on grammatical issues, you may want to use our grammar software or attend a group workshop.

While these mission statements work to define the goals of the writing center and more particularly what can and can’t be accomplished in a tutoring session, we argue that such statements reproduce deficit discourse by framing editing and grammar in a negative way, i.e., other people do that but we certainly do not. It is also important to note that mission statements that reproduce deficit discourse do so on a spectrum. Some centers include a brief note indicating what they don’t do, such as: “We are not a drop-off editing or proofreading service.” Other mission statements focus on the idea of “fixing” papers by emphasizing that they are not a fix-it shop, or that their goals do not involve “perfecting” papers. Some centers emphasize the difference between rote editing and interactive grammar instruction by including statements like “We don’t edit or proofread students’ drafts; rather, we teach students to identify and address problems themselves.” Often these statements make no mention of MLWs or even graduate level writers, resulting in a type of erasure before these students even show up.

Other centers sometimes direct MLWs to graduate writing workshop offerings outside of the typical tutoring sessions; sometimes they direct MLWs to resources outside the writing center such as private language consultants or editing services for help with

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 66 grammar. Often the justification for these referrals away from individual tutoring is premised on the thought that MLWs can disproportionately make use of resources, leaving little time for tutors to attend to other students.

The sentiment that MLWs stress an already stretched resource is not new. In 1995, Powers and Nelson conducted a survey of GMLWs in the writing center, and were able to synthesize the growing sense of frustration writing centers had with longer, more complex writing projects such as theses and dissertations. Respondents believed that traditional writing center support needed to be buttressed by “content-area experts” in order to meet their GMLWs’ needs (Powers & Nelson 120). Almost 20 years later, John Hall argued that increasing numbers of MLWs at both the undergraduate and graduate level have a negative impact on writing center practice, in particular by taking up a good portion of the tutoring sessions.

He concludes that multilingual writers would be best served by creating dedicated resources for these students that are separate from the writing center. If these students are able to utilize a resource dedicated to international students, he argues, writing centers may be able to “stick to their traditional emphasis on global writing issues” (5). While scholars in Second Language Writing do agree that sheltered tutoring or teaching (i.e., courses or resources dedicated to multilingual writers) is sometimes beneficial to students, Hall’s call for such resources reiterates the deficit discourse that students often face and reflects the very real financial and pedagogical tensions writing centers face when working with GMLWs. However, to suggest that writing centers need to find a way to contain linguistic differences in order to continue to focus on global issues not only limits the scope of writing center work but also sends the wrong message to our GMLWs, a message that often finds its way into mission statements.

We question who and what is served by mission statements that contain this type of deficit discourse and consider what would happen if mission statements were reframed to focus on meeting the needs of all writers. While GMLWs may not see themselves as writers just yet, they are writing complex, sustained research projects in multiple genres and modes. With that in mind, we encourage writing center administrators and staff to explore their mission statements to uncover phrases, codes, or references that might inadvertently and unnecessarily problematize a consultation between a tutor and a GMLW due to the language of deficit discourse, where value is placed heavily on process and not product.

After identifying components of mission statements that reproduce deficit discourses, the next step involves examining specific ways to articulate the center’s values and missions. Adler-Kassner argues that the way to reclaim frames and use them to the advantage of the writing center is to move from the abstract to the more particular. Further, speaking positively about what writing centers do for students and for the institution is more effective than continually claiming what it is writing centers do not do, for negating a frame reinforces that frame (148). In other words, rather than spend energy on arguing against counter narratives, (e.g., not a fix-it-shop; not an editing service), which we see as reproducing deficit discourse, writing center staff and administrators would do well to explore the intersections between GMLWs’ needs and what writing centers can offer, and this starts with a reframing of the mission statement.

We are heartened by what we see as a growing trend towards more inclusive and positive mission statements, which no doubt have been influenced by writing center scholars who argue for ways writing centers can embody inclusivity in their documents and practice (see for instance Condon; Denny). Some examples include the Boise State Writing Center: Each consultation is geared toward the individual needs of the writer and is a collaborative effort between writer and consultant. We consult with writers in supportive and nonjudgmental ways to facilitate self-discovery and inspire confidence in writers as they learn, grown, and take ownership of their words and ideas. Because we appreciate the courage it takes to share writing, we respect all the identities, cultures, and points of view writers bring to the Center.

From the University of Kansas Writing Center: All writers, with their unique life experiences, worldviews, languages and voices, are respected and welcomed. We provide an environment that is conducive to diverse learning styles and forms of expression, and we respect writers’ use of their home languages and world Englishes.

Positive, inclusive language presents a starting point in mission statements where writing centers can begin including signals to their multiple and diverse practices that more closely suit the needs of all students, including GMLWs.

Collaborative Mission Reframing We envision that these larger changes to how we frame our writing centers have the potential to cascade

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 67 through everyday tutoring practices in a variety of ways. One way writing centers can begin the process of reframing their mission is to collaborate with staff to identify deficit discourses in a reflective process that is multivocal and collaborative. As Sarah Blazer argues, writing center staff training and education is essential if we are to move beyond reframing towards real action in practicing the values of linguistic diversity in our centers. That is, the transformative power of reframing the mission statement, which cascades down to tutor training and pedagogy has perhaps the most direct impact on how our centers can reframe negative perceptions of language difference, particularly in relation to working with multilingual graduate student writers.

In a recent tutor training activity, Celeste and her tutors collaborated to reframe the language in the mission and framing of their services on their center’s website. Though well intentioned, the mission (as articulated on the student website) began with the premise that writing was a “scary” task for most students, a daunting one that could be made less challenging if they came to the writing center and worked with one of our tutors. Tutors identified the ways in which these terms trickled down into tutor practices and interactions with tutees. As one tutor astutely noted, when we approach writing as scary, we tend to remove the excitement of exploring ideas and the generative nature of writing collaboratively. The staff also noted how the “we don’t do that here” statements came to be a tutor mantra, when in fact many tutors had worked with GMLWs to teach editing skills and modeled editing as an important stage of the writing process. This activity allowed for some important, guided group-talk, to identify the problematic language in our mission statement.

In a gesture of reframing, we shifted the tone of our mission to include language that would invite students into our writing center. Being careful to avoid language that was written in the form of what we don’t do, we focused on what we do do. On a new whiteboard, tutors were asked to write down our writing center’s values in one-word answers. On a second board, they identified verbs that best described how they enact those values in their tutoring. The discussion that followed led us to create the following bulleted list of values and actions that demonstrate these values: The Writing Center provides resources and opportunities that enable student writers to discover and develop writing practices that: • Promote collaboration between student writers

Encourage autonomy and confidence in writing • Promote purposeful and passionate writing • Empower students to identify as writers • Inspire students to develop personal style/ voice • Collaborate with students through all stages of the writing process, from brainstorming and drafting, to revision and editing.

Mission statement reframing such as in the example from Celeste’s staff workshop, is only the start for removing deficit discourse and replacing it with more holistic approaches to working with GMLWs. Still, there are immediate outcomes of this activity. First, re-visioning and reframing mission statements asks tutors to call out the language and practice of deficit discourse in the writing center and replace it with a more reflective, inclusive, and multilayered approach for meeting the needs of GMLWs. In mission reframing, writing center leaders model the language of linguistic diversity and thus position writing center staff well for future conversations on enacting tutor pedagogies that embrace that linguistic diversity. When tutors view their work with tutees as a collaborative process in which GMLWs are recognized as experts in their field and on their own learning and language needs, their focus is less on identifying error and more on “promoting purposeful writing” or “empowering students to identify as writers.” Focus is shifted from identifying language difference as a deficit to understanding it as a valuable asset.

A second benefit of this collaborative reframing effort is that the nuances of working with student writers—whether they are multilingual, undergraduate, or graduate students—are unearthed. Collaboratively reframing the mission has made visible the often invisible conversations that tutors have with students in the writing center. For example, this reframing and discussion also exposed the multiple layers of “guilt” resulting from the deficit discourse mission statement, including feelings of guilt that tutors expressed when they found themselves caught between the tensions of GMLWs’ grammar and editing needs and the writing center’s mandate that they not focus on grammar.

Tutors such as Sam in the opening narrative understood that they could be a collaborative tutor and still assist students with their editing and grammar needs. Likewise, the pressure of having to be a “grammar expert” was lessened for tutors who felt as though they had to have all of the correct answers for multilingual writers.

Most importantly, the conversations shifted from what tutors can teach •

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 68 MLWs to what tutors can learn about their tutoring and their own writing from working with MLWs. What we want to note here is that the conversations that emerge during the reframing process can directly impact tutors’ interactions with all student writers, but are especially important for encouraging positive, holistic approaches for working with GMLWs. Calling out deficit discourse in our language and in our everyday interactions with student writers is an important starting point to developing our praxis.

Reframing Our Multilevel Approach

Programming:

A

Revising our mission statements also offers an opportunity to reevaluate, reframe, and reimagine the programming we offer our students. Framing our missions in ways that encourage language diversity and inclusiveness can allow us to consider more holistically GMLWs’ multi-layered needs and whether or not our current programming options support these needs.

One of the perhaps unintended consequences of conflating grammar issues with deficiencies is that this narrative may ignore the more complex writing support GMLWs could benefit from. Writing centers should consider whether their assumptions about the needs of GMLWs stand in the way of opportunities to receive multiple levels of writing support. Recently scholars have explored the benefits that can be derived from dedicated writing groups, thesis or dissertation boot camps, and workshop series focused on graduate-level writing (Simpson, Phillips, Mannon). This type of programming tends to focus more on the writing process and disciplinary genre conventions and can potentially fill a much needed gap in mentoring for students whose home departments do not offer writing support. These services also allow graduate students to be framed as experts in their fields as we help them identify their disciplinary writing conventions and how best to articulate their arguments and develop their ideas within these genre constraints.

In our experiences implementing such support, we have seen how these offerings are beneficial to both multilingual and monolingual students. We encourage writing centers to consider how offering such programming can help graduate students of all linguistic backgrounds. However, many writing centers segregate these offerings with the labels of “international” and “domestic.” This practice of siloing students based on perceived linguistic abilities is problematic for a number of reasons. First, these labels do not adequately capture the linguistic diversity of our students, conflating immigration status with language ability. Many international students are monolingual,

and many domestic students are multilingual. More importantly, these labels fit too neatly within the narratives of deficit discourse by creating an impression that international graduate students need to be remediated, that their writing is not on equal footing with domestic students, and that they need to be contained within a special group to work on these problems. Such narratives can be a barrier to the process-based, collaborative writing support that dissertation writing groups or other graduate-specific support can offer. We agree that programming offerings should be driven by the needs of the campus community, and we also acknowledge that shelterbased programming can be beneficial to many students. However, we urge writing centers to think about how such siloing contributes to narratives of deficit discourse.

We also acknowledge a need for programming that prepares GMLWs for performing precise, academic English that is often used as a gatekeeper to their profession. A multilevel approach to programming includes addressing this second, pressing need for GMLWs in refining their work once they have developed their written projects. As Lu and Horner have argued, multilingual student writers are often caught in the tension between multilingual theories that value language diversity as norm and the pragmatic reality of having to perform (and meet) the demands of an academic audience, including writing in unaccented, standardized academic English. Programming that provides contextual, grammar intensive workshops and editing services at no cost to GMLWs can value language diversity while also recognizing the barriers these students face in progressing through their courses. As Young-Kyoung Min recently argued, writing centers should recognize that for multilingual writers, working on grammar is a part of the language acquisition process and therefore “an integral part of their composing process” (25). Writing centers whose missions are reframed to recognize grammar as a component of the writing process can shift everyday narratives about grammar while creating a space for programming that values this part of the process. Such reframing can help make the writing center a more reflective and invitational place for GMLWs to flourish.

Conclusion Narrative 1, revisioned: Yifan, a graduate student and multilingual writer, visits the writing center weekly to work on her qualifying paper. For the past year, she and her regular tutor would go through each section, addressing both global and local concerns. One day,

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 69 she visits the center when her regularly scheduled tutor is not available. When she sits down to begin the session, Yifan asks for assistance going through the conclusion for grammar and editing issues. The new tutor, empowered by her writing center’s inclusive and responsive mission statement comfortably replies: “Sure thing! It must feel wonderful to be at the end of writing this high stakes document. Why don’t we start with you giving me some examples of common errors in your writing that you and your regular tutor have identified, and then we’ll move forward from there.”

Yifan leaves the session confident in her writing and editing abilities, and turns in her qualifying paper a few days later.

Narrative 2, revisioned: Rayna, a writing center director, is sitting in her office when Marcus, a PhD Candidate in Education (and repeat visitor) comes into her office to announce his progress on his dissertation. Last year the writing center began piloting multi-level programming for graduate students, and Marcus took advantage of these programs. In the earlier stages of his dissertation Marcus participated in a writing group where he gained peer feedback on organizing and clarifying his ideas. As he moved forward with his project, he also worked closely with tutors on sentence-level issues and editing.

“I wanted to thank you for supporting my work as I have developed my dissertation,” he tells Rayna. “I am always telling new graduate students to come here, especially those who are nervous about writing graduate-level papers and articles because they are not used to this type of writing or because they are worried about their English language skills. I’ve told them that no matter what kind of help they need, the writing center has their back!”

Narrative 3, revisioned: Sam, a writing tutor, has been working with Marina for two semesters on sentence level issues related to her prospectus. They sit side by side, identifying patterns in Marina’s grammar usage, referring to grammar rulebooks, and applying correct usage in the context of Marina’s writing. Lately, as the deadline for the dissertation gets closer, Sam has found herself doing more direct line editing. Sam is proud to offer this support to Marina because of the positive discussions in her writing center about mission statements and avoiding deficit discourse. She worked with Marina in the earlier stages of this project as she brainstormed and expanded on her ideas in Russian and later as she was writing them in English. Sam’s training has taught her that editing and revision are significant moments in the writing process, and she understands that being more directive is useful and appropriate when balanced with collaboration and

conversation. She reflects on what she has learned from Marina about the cultural differences between writing for academic audiences, and she recognizes Marina as a specialist not only in her content area, but in her own needs as a multilingual writer.

Overall, we believe the reframing of writing center missions can cascade out and through our daily praxis as our re-visioning of the opening narratives demonstrates. As we demonstrated in our analysis of mission statements, narratives emphasizing the hierarchical structure of higher order concerns, the development of the writer, and developing a writer’s autonomy often drive the exclusion of multilingual graduate student writers from the writing center. A reframed mission creates opportunities to shift the conversations we have with and about GMLWs and helps us create programming options that better meet the needs of these students. We believe this leads to a more holistic approach to working with multilingual writers because it allows us to more fully consider their needs. This reframing also encourages practitioners to acknowledge the language and practices of our writing centers that further isolate and create obstacles for multilingual writers. In our sample narratives, Yifan and Marcus no longer feel they are misusing the writing center’s resources, while Sam no longer feels a tension between her writing center’s mission and her tutees’ diverse needs.

While we pointed to the exponential growth of international students as exigency for our argument, we do not feel that it is simply this growth that has motivated our thinking. Instead, we argue that whether they are part of a growing group or not, writing centers serve all students on campus. In many ways, this is what drew all three of us to writing centers: the inclusivity of their praxis. We see inclusivity as a process that consistently has to be reflected upon and readjusted to shifting contexts to best serve students.

To that end, we wish to amplify Bobbi Olson’s call for writing center practitioners to attend to our “critical responsibility for acknowledging the ethical dimensions of our work, particularly given the historical functions writing centers have been made to serve within institutions of higher education as gatekeepers of access and conservators of particular conceptions of academic Englishes” (2). If we do not attend to our responsibilities which have long been identified as the space to resist an exclusive concept of literacy, then we risk reproducing a particularly limiting view of literacy as a commodity, or a quality that one either possesses or does not.

We emphasize here that these shifts are not easy to make. They require real work in reshaping long-held

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“We Don’t Do That Here” • 70 assumptions about writing center work and its potential. This work means challenging many of the frames and grand narratives that we have been trained in as scholars. Mission statements cannot simply be rewritten. We also need to help shift the grand narratives about multilingual writers, which are often embedded within local and institutional practice. Not only do writing centers have a responsibility to examine how institutional practices impact their local contexts, they must also remain reflective in their framing of these narratives as they engage with their campus. Although we have focused mainly on the potential that our mission reframing might have in shifting writing center programming and praxis, we hope that in shifting these narratives within the center we can cascade these narratives out into the wider campus community.

Acknowledgments We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful comments and suggestions helped us create a stronger article. We also wish to thank the many graduate student writers who have inspired our work in this area.

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THE RE-EDUCATION OF NEISHA-ANNE S GREEN: A CLOSE LOOK AT THE DAMAGING EFFECTS OF “A STANDARD APPROACH,” THE BENEFITS OF CODEMESHING, AND THE ROLE ALLIES PLAY IN THIS WORK Neisha-Anne S. Green American University ngreen@american.edu

Intro The intro of Ms. Lauryn Hill’s 1998 release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill begins: a familiar school bell rings and a teacher asks the students to please respond when he calls their name. “Kevin Childs—Here . . .

Alicia Simmonds—Here… Tameka Marshall—Here.”

He makes it all the way to the end, “Lauryn Hill…

Lauryn Hill…Lauryn Hill!” There is no response. As the intro fades and the teacher begins his lesson the beat drops and “Lost Ones” begins to play.

It’s funny how money change a situation, Miscommunication leads to complication, My emancipation don’t fit your equation…

The music continues, I bob my head, tapping my pencil against my mac as I think, but in the middle of my thoughts Ms. Hill, in a rhythmic and poetic flow mastered only by her, enlightens that, You might win some but you just lost one. You might win some but you just lost one. You might win some but you just lost one.

You might win some but you just lost one…

Ms. Hill borrowed her title from Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book The Mis-education of the Negro for obvious reasons, and I borrowed the title for this piece from them both. You see, I, like so many others, was a lost one and would have continued to be lost had things not aligned based on the choices I made and the people I met and stayed connected with along the way.

There are so many other lost ones floating within and outside of the academy due to some pedagogical choices that are slow to change. If our goal as educators is to connect and educate all of the students with whom we come in contact then we need to pay closer attention to the fold. Like Ms. Hill keeps repeating in the background, “You might win some but you just lost one.” As allies we can strive to reach that one.

This essay is grounded in work from the last section of my graduate thesis entitled “Not Your Average (insert stereotype here): Just Me.” As you can probably tell from the title, in it I was finding clarity, but more importantly I was expressing my frustration, as I was finally able to accurately describe the struggles and limitations that I felt as a writer and international

graduate student of color. There seemed to be no vocabulary that I was aware of within any of the discourse communities that I “belonged” to, especially ours in the writing center, that adequately summed up and fully described what I felt deep within my being.

Because of this, I had not been able to tell anyone that I needed help, or that I was struggling with any one particular thing. No one knew that I fought for years at school to be my best academic self and still maintain a semblance of my identity. It wasn’t until very near to the end of my graduate career that I let my guard down and let my emotions and honest to God feelings and frustrations flow.

Let me stop here for a minute and say that when it comes to exploring code-meshing, and the idea that language really is a resource that can encourage students to be their best selves, we all need help.

What strikes me now as I reflect on my journey as a learner is not only what I’ve learned and how I’ve gained new knowledge and skills, but, most importantly, the relationships and people who were pivotal in my many revolutions, or rather “The Reeducations of Neisha-Anne S Green.” There are three very special people in my life who have helped me release my voice and have nurtured and—when necessary, challenged—my understanding. It is because of them that this essay exists in the form that it now does. What I realize now is that they, unbeknownst to me, helped me figure out how to give myself permission to just be me. They helped me give voice and ink to the words that I assumed I didn't have or that I assumed weren’t good enough. This piece focuses on the road I traveled in my re-education as graduate student/ tutor/ budding professional NeishaAnne. Follow me on this road trip of self-discovery and acceptance.

“Not Your Average (Insert Stereotype Here): Just Me” National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing 2013, my co-presenter Michelle and I walked into a room full of eager onlookers. I was a graduate student

The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 73 and writing center tutor and she was an undergraduate student and writing consultant. We were well read and prepared to speak on The New Racism: Discussions of Culture and Identity in Our Writing Centers. We delivered a well-structured argument for the socio-linguistic term code-meshing that followed the conventions of the ever fluid standard in a way that seemed to bother one of our audience members. We carefully explained that code-meshing provided “an alternative vision of language to teachers, one that offers the ‘disempowered’ a more egalitarian path into Standard English, a route that integrates academic English with their own dialects and that simultaneously seeks to end discrimination” (Young, Other People’s English 56).

Michelle and I figured that if we were to successfully engage the audience we should all start with some common understanding of the keywords we used to build our argument, so we created a handout defining said keywords. Lord knows that if it’s one thing that educators can do is twist and distort the meaning of that which is perfectly fine. I know this now, but as a tutor flying solo for the first time without her Director, entering into this community a bit late, I was not prepared for what happened in the Q&A portion of our presentation. A well meaning writing center director who had been sitting in the audience and agreeing with our argument for code-meshing commented that our definitions were written in a very “standard” way and that there wasn’t much codemeshing going on, to this my response was “not hybrid enough huh?” The audience laughed, but three years later, even though I laughed then, that menacing idea entered my thoughts and has been slow in finding its way out, even to this day. I write this piece because I’m still haunted by the idea of how my language appears to others, and as I argue for code-meshing, I am well aware that what is supposed to be liberating and validating is used to judge others. I’ve realized that the more my recognition of language in all of its translingual varieties as a resource (Horner et al.; Matsuda), and the political and racial paradigms attached to it grows, the more I feel mislabeled by that director who pointed out how “standard” our definitions were. Here’s some quick advice: in our efforts to help, we need to beware of creating new issues or making old ones worse. Is it desperate for educators like that director to try to standardize that which oozes through the seams of standard, that which resists such conformity?

For me hybridity is both a natural and a performative personal choice. Suresh Canagarajah would also argue that it was a rhetorical choice (404) while Vershawn Ashanti Young would also remind me every time I questioned him that it is quite natural to

me. But let’s be honest, hybridity wasn’t always an option that I had, and even after I was made aware I didn’t quite know how I wanted to make use of it. I use the word “wanted” here on purpose.

I can’t help but be repetitive here and restate that code-meshing is a choice that is as natural to me as the hair on my head, and just as versatile. Just as I have a choice in how I wear my hair that doesn’t require permission, so do I have a choice in how I use my codes that too doesn’t require your or anyone else’s permission.

Instead of permission, I needed to figure out for myself how to use this new resource effectively. There were a lot of decisions to be made all at once and no examples to use as references that exactly fit the vision I had in mind.

I had never seen a thesis like the one I wanted to write. I had never written anything academic like what I envisioned.

I had to learn to trust my instincts and draw inspiration from whatever moved me.

I entered this new relationship with code-meshing just as I was beginning to write the most high-stakes piece of writing of my academic career. To me it felt as though this piece would determine whether or not I had spent the last two years of my life in vain. In spite of the possible consequences, I allowed it to become a bold experiment. I wish I had a Fitbit back then cause I burned a lot of calories running from Carmen Hall, where I frequently met with my advisor Jessica, to the Old Gym, where the writing center and my then boss Sarah’s office was. Because this was so new to me I collected advice from them both, carefully analyzing what each of them said, sometimes complaining that I wasn’t being understood, but ultimately fusing bits and pieces together to create my own how-to guide. I had to make the best of what I had.

This is what I had. I had Sarah, my unofficial advisor on paper but very official advisor in real life. I also had Jessica, my official advisor, who was learning about this new tool through me as I was figuring it out.

I had two caucasian women helping to give rise to my dark self.

Learning something new, especially when the results are as high-stakes as the thesis, can be frustrating. What I see now is that the frustration and uncertainty I felt was actually discovery.

Jessica pushed my understanding of this new tool and questioned the way I used it. I shyly admit now that her questioning sometimes confused and upset me. When she said back then that my piece wasn’t hybrid enough I was angry, maybe even defensive but I respected her

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 74 and her guidance enough to let those feelings stay inside where I compartmentalized them with the feelings that I brought back with me from NCPTW that same semester. I was already in my feelings that a stranger at the conference questioned Michelle and my definitions saying that they weren’t hybrid enough— not that they weren’t accurate enough.

I felt as though a part of me was being judged openly and so I made these two events one.

It took years, but today I can keep these two events separated. The director who made the comment during Q&A was forcing Michelle and me to make a choice that we, as the authors and presenters, had already decided wasn’t necessary given our audience and the exact purpose of the handout. Jessica, on the other hand, was pushing me to make what I now call savvy rhetorical choices. I won’t speak for her here, but in my mind even though this new thing that I was doing was also new to her, she understood that the best way to help me was to approach advising me from a rhetorical standpoint. Her job was to get me to the point where I would succeed during my oral defense.

When I wasn’t with Jessica I was spending countless hours in Sarah’s office lamenting and begging for prescriptions to which she often responded with “there are no prescriptions Neish.” Sometimes I could tell that she wished she had more to offer yet she was patient and generous as she offered what she did have anyway. Her patience was only the beginning of what I needed and it became the first prescription of many.

Sarah listened and spent more time than she was paid for with me during my time at her center and long after I left there for new and higher posts. She made sure that I made it to writing center conferences especially the ones where Young was making his rounds.

Dr. Young, who I now call Vay, is the scholar behind the sociolinguistic term code-meshing. At the time of his keynote, his ideas were beginning to send ripples through the writing center world. Any opportunity to hear him explain this new concept and its applications was not to be missed. But I had no money, and the writing center where I was working wasn’t that interested in helping me get there.

People, Sarah drove me there and back in her personal car, and even took me to her family’s house. As if that wasn’t enough, Sarah gave me one metaphorical shove that day that shifted my thinking and boosted my confidence and commitment to this work. You see, on the drive down to New Hampshire as we talked about scholarship and questions we hoped would be answered during the conference, Sarah

encouraged and flat out told me that I was going to talk to Dr. Young. “You have something he needs to hear” she said. To which I replied “No thank you; I’m way too shy for that” I protested in vain because at the end of Dr. Young’s keynote she shoved me in his direction and walked away.

As uncertain as I was about approaching Vay, I knew I had to. As I waited my turn to ask my questions floods of emotions and anxiety greater than myself, or that moment, poured out of my being. When it was finally my turn I asked my questions through tears so big I could hardly contain them. Vay was patient and despite needing to rush on to whatever was next on the conference schedule, he stood there with me at the front of the auditorium as I explained all that was wrong and why I felt hopeless in being able to figure it all out and successfully write the thesis. Jessica’s persistence, Sarah’s encouragement, coupled with Vay’s patience and later his words etched into my signed copy of his book propelled me towards being able to say this: Code-meshing and producing hybrid work is a rhetorical choice that comes naturally to me as a multidialectal orator and author, and despite what you assess or assume about me and my literacy capabilities, you have no idea what I battle as I write.

I struggled with this and more as a graduate student and writing center tutor: How could I help others work on their writing when I myself was confused about the new concepts I was learning in our tutor education meetings at Lehman College, my graduate classes at the same school, and their implications for my practice both personally and professionally?

More than a mic drop occurred when I first learned about code-meshing and eventually started experimenting with it in my own writing. Here’s why.

I was born in Barbados and moved to New York right before my fifteenth birthday. We moved because my father had been diagnosed with cancer and needed to be here to be close to his doctors. Even at his best, and in remission some 14 years later, my father is always sick because he has Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). GVHD is a complication that may occur in patients who were recipients of bone marrow or stem cell transplants. The name is self-explanatory, but put simply, the new donor cells (graft) that were put into

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 75 the body (host) as part of the cure for cancer attack the transplant recipient’s body.

Imagine what it must be like to be given a cure that turns around and causes you more harm.

GVHD summed up what I felt as a learner, graduate student writer, tutor and budding professional. It continues even to this day. Think of my Bajan dialect, the native dialect of Barbados, as the supposed cancer because people say it is broken English and wrong cause sum times we does talk like dis I go to school and even in Barbados they try to cure it. I’m told that our language should be left outside of the classroom cause I sound uneducated or from the ghetto when I use it. My Bajan teachers try to cure my Bajan dialect or rather appropriate it, as though it worked when their teachers did it to them, by giving me the Queen’s English and heavy doses of grammar drills and such, which act as immune-suppressants suppressing my urge to use my language. Or as Gloria Anzaldúa would say, they tried to tame this wild tongue. What happens instead is that I have good days and bad days; sometimes the immune-suppressants work but many days they don’t. This worsens after the move to NY and I end up in a high school in Yonkers where neither my Bajan dialect nor my British English is up to snuff.

My teachers here in America give me another transplant that is followed by more immunesuppressants but this time in the form of Standard American English (SAE). How many times could I really spell colour wrong?

At this point, my linguistic body is racked with pain and confusion—I need a refuge from all that is going on. It takes some time, but I realize that if I am to survive this I need some friends, some support.

When my dad was in the hospital he had all kinds of therapists and doctors. Me however, all I had were the three AfricanAmerican girls who tried to be my friend even though they also didn’t understand my spoken Bajan dialect. They made fun of me too.

So I tried the one language that I was forced to take to make me better this time at least that’s what my teachers said I try SAE. But this doesn’t fly either.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that SAE didn’t work for me sometimes cause it did. I did well enough in class for Ms. Rubin to call on me every day because she knew that I had something to say. It worked enough cause I scored a 98 on the English Regents test, but it was beyond hard achieving these things in a new

country while rapidly losing my sense of self and my Bajan heritage.

SAE had its limitations outside of the classroom so my new friends started pumping my body with their own immune-suppressants, they gave me Black English Vernacular. Let’s take count Bajan, Her Majesty’s English, Standard American English and Black English Vernacular that’s four. Some of you might be wondering well what’s the big deal? The big deal is that I was continually being forced to switch back and forth from one code to another. In Barbados, I knew when and how to switch back and forth between two codes; I was given no choice. But here in America, this twostep became more difficult every time I was forced to take a new code. Not only was it difficult from an academic standpoint, it was also difficult from a social perspective, as well as a personal one.

You see, each new code demanded a different persona, and it became difficult to be Neisha-Anne.

In his on-going “Argument Against CodeSwitching” Young partly grounds his stance by explaining how W. E. B. Du Bois’s double consciousness and language intersect (“Nah We Straight” 49–52; “Other People’s English” 55–65). Du Bois opined that “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” (9). It’s a “peculiar sensation” he says, “this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois 9). He further adds that “One feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois 9). This is the same thing that Geneva Smitherman refers to as “linguistic push-pull.” I offer their definitions but I also attempt to add another layer of complexity. For me, as a black international student who has completed high school, a B.A. and a M.A. here in America, the idea of double consciousness feels more like a triple consciousness.

The two-ness that Du Bois referred to feels more like a three-ness; three souls, three thoughts, three unreconciled strivings; three warring ideals in my one dark body.

Being at war with one’s selves is not ideal.

I first had to let the peace talks begin to even realize that I was at war with my selves. These peace talks became a coping strategy and a regular part of my

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 76 writing process. These peace talks became possible as a result of my experiences and the influence of those who experienced them with me, but ultimately I had to do the doing. With support and encouragement I chose to go to school and pursue multiple degrees. I chose to work in the writing center. I chose to fight to go to conferences even though there weren’t many people there who looked like me. I chose to surround myself with allies who would push me and encourage me to walk up to scholars like Vay and say “I have a love/ hate relationship with you. I love the stuff that you’re saying, but I hate the fact that I don’t get it all and you ain’t around to explain it to me.” It is only because of these choices that I met Vay, began volunteering in the writing center and kept in touch with Jessica and continued growing my village of likeminded allies, who have guided me even when they themselves weren’t sure. It is only because I built these relationships and kept them going via email, phone call, texts and the frequent chat in an office, and also because I read and read and kept reading all the scholarship that I could find that enabled me to now be capable of describing what keeps me from being torn asunder. What sometimes settles the three-warring ideals in my dark body. I found my strategy! But the story doesn’t end here, what about the “others”—you know, the students who look like me, or weren’t born here like me, or the ones who were born here but hell, for all purposes, coulda been born anywhere cause they ain’t guaranteed much of anything. You know all the students I’m talkin bout, the ones with the marginalized languages who weren’t encouraged to make similar choices to the ones I’ve made and don’t have people in their corners making things happen.

The answer for me came late in my academic career and it came at a time when I was the only graduate student in my program even remotely interested in writing center work. The idea of code-meshing came at a time when I hadn’t yet given myself permission to explore and to be me because I was too busy figuring out what it meant and how to apply it so that when I got to class and was pushed beyond my limits by my professor and told by my classmates, who also spoke marginalized registers of English, that I was promoting ghetto language that I had some chance of waking up from the knock out. That answer is code-meshing, a discovery I was able to reach with help from those who I once saw as mentors, but see clearly now as my allies.

I have worked at, and resigned from positions where I didn’t receive similar encouragement from supervisors who were either too privileged to care or too comfortable with their privilege to be brave

enough to understand me and this movement.

Code-meshing allows me, as Young professes, to be able to self-consciously and un-self-consciously blend my own “accent, dialect, and linguistic patterns as they are influenced by a host of folks, environments, and media, including momma, family, school, community, peer groups, reading material, academic study, whatever” (“Keep Code-meshing” 140). Code meshing says girl ain’t shit wrong wid you.

Like Janelle Monae and Wondaland let me explain what the hell I’m talmbout and why I needed their help. What I’m talmbout is chronic linguistic graft vs host disease. Remember the disease I told you about when I referenced my dad? You remember? The one he got cause of all the cancer treatment? Well all of the immune-suppressants that I was forced to take to cure all of my bad languages have made me sick.

This is me when I don’t code-mesh. Cue the drum corps!

1. V ision changes: These vision changes are characterized by extreme triple consciousness. This causes me to see what I think is myself through my own eyes while simultaneously forcing me to see myself through others’ eyes. But this is where it gets tricky because these vision changes are further complicated because there’s the Bajan girl, the British English girl, the SAE girl turned young professional, and the BEV sista. Ya’ll ain’t never seen a cat fight like this.

It also causes me to wonder who I could be and what I would sound and write like without all of these interferences and cat fights.

These vision changes also include blurry or cloudy vision that sometimes causes a depleted sense of nationalism and pride. You see, I’m not fully accepted here but I’ve been here in America for so long that I’m no longer Bajan enough either.

2. Dry mouth brought on by anxiety: Persons experiencing dry mouth often keep their mouths shut.

I do it sometimes because when I open my mouth I am not always sure which voice or accent will come flying out. Sometimes I can’t trust that the BEV sista and the Bajan girl won’t join forces cause them two are a handful and before I know it all types of sassy ish would be flying out. The “professional” side of me keeps her mouth shut sometimes cause she don’t have tenure and she work in a writing center.

3. Fatigue, muscle weakness, and chronic pain: Brought on because I am always fighting, da fight is real. I battle my codes when I write and my codes battle with me when I interview for your jobs. Would you hire me to work in your writing center if you saw and heard this first hand?

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 77 And then I battle some of you who think you know what’s best of me, and students like me. Please stop trying to protect me cause my momma’s been prepping me for years long. See, I’ve always got one hand up fighting for what I believe to be right and the other hand pushed straight out, stiff arm pose, fighting and pushing back everyone else’s ideas of who they think I should be or how I should act as a young black professional woman who has thrown herself into this debate . . . . . . let me be honest, the debate along with its conflicting views leaves me weak. Other black women tell me to watch my mouth and my actions cause not only am I a woman, I am also a black woman. Like I missed the mirror everyday or the micro-agressions everywhere. Be professional (read white) so that you’ll be taken seriously.

On top uh all that BS, apparently I get jobs not only cause I’m qualified, I get jobs at “diverse” institutions cause I’m black and I can police and herd the other blacks and minorities and I get them at predominantly white institutions because they want to be more diverse and I happen to be good at my job . . . what happened to being inclusive?

I am thinking of adding certified angry black woman/indentured servant experienced in policing and herding others and increasing diversity to my CV. 4. Anxiety: This is a new symptom that I recently developed. Given its nature, its timing, and that way in which is metastasized, it is the one I presently struggle with the most. I’m talm bout employee assistance program used, resignation letter written and submitted only to have my then supervisor further prove how unworthy that place was of my time and talent cause he stopped speaking to me and responding to work emails, I ain’t neva going back cause ain’t nobody got time for that, type of anxiety.

5. Shortness of breath: This occurs as a result of my always having to justify my belief in linguistic respect and the proper use of everyone’s right to their own language. But the struggle is as long as it is hard, so until things change I will never catch my breath.

As I was thinking through this paper I shared the idea of LGVHD with someone who then asked me “so how do you cure this disease?” My response was, well I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet. I haven’t asked Vay about this yet but in response to this I’d bet that he would ask “Neisha, why do you need a cure?” and Sarah would chime in with, “Neish you know this stuff!!” She’s right, I do know this stuff, and Vay would be right too. I don’t need a cure because code-meshing allows me the flexibility to work with what I have and not be wrong cause without code-meshing I’m Drake and I’m stuck on repeat:

I just wanna be, I just wanna be successful.

I just wanna be, I just wanna be successful.

LGVHD is chronic and can’t be cured, there are ways however to cope with it and prevent it.

Because of code-meshing my goals have changed. As a student in Barbados, the two-ness Du Bois referred to ruled and I knew how to perform. My goal as a younger student in Barbados was to suppress my native habits and traits while in the presence of teachers, parents, my friends’ parents and older family members. When I moved to America my goal shifted to suppressing the three-ness; especially “the American Negro” and the “Bajan” and to instead strive to be a better and truer “American” self. My goal now is to continue the peace talks and blend all of my selves into one rhetorically savvy being. No more trippin on a two step ya’ll, I’ve moved on to something that looks more like chi-town steppin...but with more hips and a stronger bass line.

Elbowed Out Peter Elbow argues that the dialect we grow up speaking influences our academic and professional writing. I’d like to take it a step further and stand firmly when I say that there was and will always be more than some influencing going on. Without code-meshing, check-ins with my village, and the peace talks, there is some bullying going on in my academic, professional and social selves that seeps into my speech and writing.

My goal now as a more learned student is to continue merging my selves, even the so-called “bad,” into the best most true self that I can be.

I could have avoided LGVHD. I could have avoided some of these struggles.

But as a younger student everyone kept trying to change me, shape me into a “newer, better” version of myself by policing and limiting my use of my codes and pushing agendas that focused on a standard that we know doesn’t exist in the way that is usually professed.

Differently, in my practice I seek to help students, if they’d like me to, to merge their-selves and languages so that all live and perform together in harmony. To help me do this I have taken the time to get to know the student populations at the schools where I have worked, figuring out ways to relate to them.

When I do this I’m particularly looking for the distinct characteristics of their language varieties focusing on not only the differences, but most importantly the

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 78 similarities. Because I’ve done this I can sometimes recognize the difference between honest grammar errors and savvy rhetoric. If it’s a grammar mistake, we talk about grammar. If it’s rhetoric we talk about rhetorical choices—their possibilities, limitations, and their implications.

Notice that what I don’t do is see difference and think error, I just see difference and think difference (KrallLanoue).

I talk to the student about audience and how some people might view their writing and misjudge their capabilities and label them as dumb or having a “cognitive deficit.” I use the language “as a reader this is what I see” “some readers may interpret this as . . . ” “you as the author have choices.” Then and only then—after I’ve informed the student—do I say “well what do you want to do?” I let them choose. Never once am I forcing any agendas.

Never once do I say that their codes are only useful in the brainstorming portion of an essay and then must be erased for fear of judgment. Never once are their codes and their use seen as a crutch or deficit.

My approach is very ally centered.

Elbow was absolutely right when he said that some students will not be interested in code-meshing.

However, I believe that will only be a temporary infliction for some until they are supported as I was by people who were brave enough to do so without this irrational fear and need that I often hear some educators echo. You’ve heard it too, or perhaps you’ve said that you have to protect minority students. What you don’t know is that our parents have already prepared us for the world’s judgment in ways that most people would never understand well before we are even old enough to wait for the school bus alone. For the students who already chose to be brave, I never tell them what the final product has to look like or what it should sound like. It’s their work, with their ideas and their voices. Hybridity is sometimes a choice and sometimes a nonchoice, when it just comes pouring out and I see it as my job to foster learning and to help guide students so that they make educated choices that are suitable for them the way my village made it possible for me. I am also honest about my own struggles. This honesty creates the space for us all to be vulnerable which in turn produces more authentic writing. I have undoubtedly had a much easier time writing for my allies, and as I write this right now with “conventional readers” in the back of my mind I have no problem getting my thoughts onto the page because I know that regardless of the outcome my allies will support me.

In spite of the anticipated hesitance from some, Elbow also said in his Vernacular Eloquence that “Young and Canagarajah are right to pursue the value and importance of what might be called ‘in your face’ codemeshing, but writers at this very cultural moment will have a much easier time writing for conventional readers . . . if they learn how to ‘fix’ the few features of their vernacular that set off error alarms” (332). As the only African-American female, tenured or otherwise, in the English department at an institution where I worked once said, “I can read context clues,” and so when I read that and I see “cultural moment” I feel racial tension, and when I see “conventional readers” I see gate-keepers and people who aren’t as brown as me. I also see brown people who are too caught up in a fake sense of elitism to realize the harm they are perpetuating.

All that between the lines reading leads me to questions and had I been sitting in a coffee shop chatting it up with Elbow right now, or happened to sit on the same panel with him at C’s in 2015 thanks to Jessica, I’d turn to my left and say “Peter, am I right in my understanding of your argument, that you would rather writers practice ‘invisible’ or ‘under the radar’ code meshing?”

And I’d then resist the urge to let triple-consciousness and schizophrenia take over and follow my question with a finger snap, a head roll, a flick of my imaginary braids and a very rhythmic “Hold tight, hold tight! Let’s back this all the way up”—I’m categorizing this “advice” in my rolodex where I politely and hastily compartmentalize those who are afraid to empower students with strategies and tools for code-meshing, because they want to “protect us” or rather their own privilege, under the category of ain’t nobody got time for that.

I instead offer this clap-back, who exactly would have a much easier time, the marginalized writer or the already privileged, sorry “conventional,” audience? You can’t say that code-meshing is right but you ain’t ready for it yet cause this ain’t the right cultural moment. Sorry, my mom would tell me I’m wrong cause I shouldn’t say that you can’t, my bad. You can say it, but you’d be dead wrong.

When will the right cultural moment for marginalized people be?

When will it not be okay to have lost one?

It wasn’t right back in ’74 when those on the right side of C’s gave us SRTOL cause then NCTE pickled

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 79 it by adding vinegar in an attempt to preserve their own privilege by using words like “deal” implying that dialect is an impediment, it wasn’t right when ya’ll distorted the original meaning of code-switching and instead of blending codes ya’ll made them “equal but separate,” it most certainly wasn’t right back in ’96 down in Oakland, and it still wasn’t right back in ’09 when President Obama said “Nah, we straight.” I already know that many of you out of protection for your own privilege will disagree with me, but I have to be honest; right now in my thinking I need to approach the idea of under the radar code meshing with extreme caution like I would certain situations cause we can’t figure out whose lives matter. But let me quickly check myself and return instead to the panel at C’s in 2015 to what I actually said, Peter, the way I see it, if part of the purpose of code-meshing, as Young puts it, is to present “an alternative vision of language to teachers, one that offers the ‘disempowered’ a more egalitarian path into Standard English, a route that integrates academic English with their own dialects and that simultaneously seeks to end discrimination,” then if we instruct students to use their vernaculars only for free writing or brainstorming aren’t we still upholding that some languages are equal but separate? If I tell them to code-mesh only with some of the words in their vocabulary, the words I know are right but others will see as wrong, am I not upholding linguistic racism still? Aren’t we still saying to them that only some parts of them have merit?—especially if the rationale is that they should do it so other’s don’t think that they’re wrong or so that they aren’t judged? Doing that unfairly places the responsibility that educators should carry directly onto students. I thought the plan was to protect them? What I suggest instead is that students made aware of the warring ideals, the two-ness or three-ness. They have to be made aware that they have linguistic choices and the freedom to make those choices. They might as well be educated so that they can make the best choices for themselves because, what I am positive about is that, regardless of how you try to shield them by pushing for under the radar code meshing they will in fact be judged any damn way and if we keep waiting for the ‘right’ time ya’ll will never be ready.

I was blessed enough to have mentors who knew that the right time was and will always be right now.

I’ve been doing my “meta” work in an effort to make the shift from full time student to full time

student/educator. I realize that with this shift I must also be aware that I am a mentor myself. Those are the responsibilities that I carry with me every time I enter the classroom. As the assistant director of the writing center at a small rural predominantly white liberal arts college, this responsibility was even greater because it is not unusual for me to be the only person of color in the room. I was sometimes blessed to have a student of color in my class and when I did I felt that undeniable pressure to show them what is possible.

Recently I co-taught the tutor-training seminar class with the director of the writing center. In my last semester there, as I stood in front of what was supposed to be the most diverse class to date, I realized that I was still donning the darkest shade of brown. This was the weight that I carried with me to my lesson plan “code-switching? code-meshing? . . . what’s up with that?” to prep the class for a special visit from Vay. As I second guessed my lesson plan I called the same writing center coordinator Sarah and lamented that I wasn’t fond of being the only black woman in the room, but I was even less fond of being the only black woman in the room who then also had to be the one standing in front of the class “preaching” about code-meshing.

I had this vision of somehow involuntarily channeling Fannie Lou Hamer and Bishop T. D. Jakes because I truly was “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and out of breath from being passionate about the word so much so that I was desperate for a change.

Omi Osun Joni Jones, Associate Professor at NYU, offers her reflection on what it means to be an ally. In her reflection she gives “6 rules for Allies.” Rule number 2, “Be loud and crazy so black folks don’t have to be . . . allies step up, they do the work that has left others weary and depleted”. In this very moment I needed an ally but only had a co-teacher. Nonetheless, by the end of my conversation with a true ally I had a plan. Here’s what I did.

I began my lesson by telling my students that never once during the class would I ask them to agree with Vay’s argument. What I asked instead was that they understand it. With that said I moved directly into the first activity for the day. I gave all sixteen of my students a large sheet of paper and a marker and walked them through creating concept-maps. I asked them to draw a circle in them middle of the paper and write the word ‘me’ in it. I then asked them to create branches that stemmed from the middle that represented the discourse communities that they belonged to. Lastly I asked them to create one more set of branches that would explain the significance of their

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 80 discourse communities to who they are as individuals. I modeled this for them on the whiteboard. Mine looked

something like this:

As the students posted their concept maps around the classroom I asked them to take a tour to learn about each other and what made us all unique. This prompted a very spirited discussion as they admired each other. What I did next shocked them, but it was necessary. I walked around the room and randomly started drawing huge Xs on their discourse community branches one by one. In response to their shocked faces, I then asked the students to join in and randomly do the same to someone else’s map. Their reactions were priceless. Shock, confusion and maybe even slight anger. When we came back together as a class I asked “What happened just now? What did I do? What did I ask you to do?” There was some silence but their response was collective. They said, “You crossed out parts of our identities.” My next question was “ . . . and what does that tell us about the connection between language and identity?” We quickly concluded that language and identity are directly connected and rather intertwined.

Now you tell me which one of your codes I can cross out.

In the prelude for the piece I invited you to join me on an exploration of the re-education of NeishaAnne Green. This re-education was made possible in part by three people whose support was crucial during my graduate education. Since graduation each one of my mentors has continued to play a unique role in my life, providing help and encouragement, but also at times a much needed “no.” As each relationship matured, and I along with them, I began to identify my allies’ individual strengths and the roles that they play as part of my village. These relationships all started in different ways, but what is common is that they moved away from the academy-generated roles towards mentor-mentee relationships and ultimately towards the role of ally. These shifts began when our relationships became equally beneficial in an obvious way and I was able to make the shift to being a thinking partner, no longer were they just giving to me, but I found ways to reciprocate the time, patience and energy they had so generously given me. Just as they have committed to helping me I have also committed myself, and learned how to support them in what little way I could. I have become an unofficial RA, auntie to their little ones and friend. I could go on forever but

An Ally’s Promise

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 81 I’d much rather show you how these relationships have evolved.

Sarah—supervisor - tutor - mentor - friend thinking partner and co-presenter - really good friends - ally Jessica—professor - mentor - thesis adviser friend - thinking partner - ally Vay—scholar stranger who answered my questions - thesis adviser - mentor - friend thinking partner - ally These relationships have worked and continued because in their roles as my mentors they first chose to help me and then as our relationships matured I then chose to figure out how to support them as well.

As I strive to be a good ally to my village, my students and the tutors in the writing center, I am reminded of the poem “An Ally’s Promise” by Anthony J. D'Angelo. This poem was originally meant to support and encourage the LGBTQ community in their fight. One of the things that I have learned along the way is that we are better off, despite of our differences, when we are united.

D’ Angelo says it beautifully, so I’ll shut up for now and let him shine.

I Believe I believe success is the freedom to be yourself.

I believe nobody is wrong; they are only different.

I believe your circumstances don't define you, rather they reveal you.

I believe without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community.

I believe our minds are like parachutes; they only work if they are open.

I believe we only live once, but if we live it right, one time is all well need.

I believe we must first get along with ourselves before we can get along with others.

I Will I will seek to understand you.

I will label bottles not people.

I will grow antennas not horns.

I will see the diversity of our commonality.

I will see the commonality of our diversity.

I will get to know who you are rather than what you are.

I will transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness.

I Challenge You I challenge you to honor who you are.

I challenge you to enjoy your life rather than endure it.

I challenge you to create the status quo rather than

merely accept it.

I challenge you to live in your imagination more than your memory.

I challenge you to live your life as a revolution and not just a process of evolution.

I challenge you to ignore other peoples’ ignorance so that you may discover your own wisdom.

I Promise You I promise to do my part.

I promise to stand beside you.

I promise to interrupt the world when its thinking becomes ignorant.

I promise to believe in you, even when you have lost faith in yourself.

I Am Here For You. While looking in-depth at these relationships and writing about the work that I have been able to achieve I pause in my excitement as I realize the work that is yet to be done. We have become allies partly because we are not yet at the end of our journey towards seeing language truly become a resource, but I am confident that until our emancipation fully fits the equation of the academy my allies will be here for me, and “I Am Here For You.” Acknowledgments Thank you to Shannon Madden and Michele Eodice for creating a space where voices such as mine could be heard and encouraged. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers as well as Beth Godbee whose encouragement and insight were invaluable. Thank you Michelle Carl for taking that initial leap of faith with me at NCPTW. I’d also like to give much love and appreciation to Carmen Kynard whose smile and words will always be a source of encouragement.

I’ve already written about how much I’ve appreciated and needed the next three people, but I seriously would not be the thinker I am today without Jessica Yood, Sarah Blazer and Vershawn Ashanti Young.

This piece exists because of them. Thank you Jessica for seeing something in me as far back as your undergrad class on “The Novel”; because you pulled me out of my corner seat in the back and gave me that first push I’ve achieved so much including presenting at C’s on the same panel as Peter Elbow. Thank you Sarah for always being my person. You continue to be the best example of how to do this writing center work. As I go to work everyday I put my “Sarah hat” on and give it my best shot because you taught me that I first was a tutor “because I could figure things out”.

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The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green • 82 Finally, I would like to thank the ever fleek Vay. Vay, you provided the missing piece to my thinking as I was originally working through the ideas for my graduate thesis and have been an important presence ever since.

Thank you for continually being invested in me.

Works Cited Blazer, Sarah. “Twenty-first Century Writing Center Staff Education: Teaching and Learning towards Inclusive and Productive Everyday Practice.”

Writing Center Journal 35.1 (2015): 17–55. Print.

Canagarajah, Suresh. “Codemeshing in Academic Writing: Identifying Teachable Strategies of Translanguaging.” Modern Language Journal 95.3 (2011): 401–417. Print.

D’Angelo, Anthony J. “An Ally’s Promise.” N.p. Web. 12 May. 2016.

Elbow, Peter. Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing. New York: Oxford Press, 2012.

Print.

Green, Neisha-Anne. “This Sh*t Was Written for You!: Real Truths about Linguistic Favoritism, Racism & ‘Unfair-ism.’” Lehman College, CUNY Library, New York. 2014. Masters Thesis.

Hill, Lauryn. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Columbia Records, 1998. Print.

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. “Opinion: Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English 73.3 (2011): 303–321.

Print.

Krall-Lanoue, Aimee. “‘And Yea I’m Venting, but Hey I’m Writing Isn’t I’: A Translingual Approach to Error in a Multilingual Context.” Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms. Ed. Suresh Canagarajah. New York: Routledge, 2013. 228–233. Print.

Kynard, Carmen. “‘New life in this Dormant Creature’: Notes on Social Consciousness, language, and learning in a college classroom." ALT DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy (2002): 31–44.

Print.

Matsuda, Paul Kei. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637–651. Print.

McCrary, Donald.

“Represent, Representin’, Representation: The Efficacy of Hybrid Texts in the Writing Classroom.” Journal of Basic Writing 24.2 (2005): 72–91. Print.

Smitherman, Geneva. “‘Students' Right to Their Own Language’: A Retrospective.” English Journal 84.1 (1995): 21–27. Print.

Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro. New York: BN Publishing, 2008 [1933]. Print.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Keep Code-meshing.”

Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms. Ed. Suresh Canagarajah. New York: Routledge, 2013. 139–140. Print.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “‘Nah, We Straight”: An Argument Against Code Switching." JAC (2009): 49–76. Print.

---. Other People’s English: Code-meshing, Code-switching, and African American Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press, 2013. Print.

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EQUITY BEFORE “EQUITY”: CATALYTIC MENTORING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR AN OPENLY GAY WRITING CENTER TUTOR Joseph Janangelo Loyola University Chicago jjanang@luc.edu This essay is inspired by two of the questions from the editors’ CFP: 1. “What is the lived experience around graduate writing, especially for students from underserved populations?”

2. “What kinds of support do ‘graduate student writers’ from underserved populations need and want?”

I confess to having put the words “graduate student writers” in scare quotes. That’s because I am writing about my own experiences as an openly gay graduate student who was, at times, under- and over-served by the academy.

In this text, I discuss my work and professional identity formation as a writing center consultant at New York University (NYU) from 1986 to 1988. I will discuss how, at that particular urban writing center directed by Professor Lil Brannon, there was equity— “the quality of being fair and impartial” (Dictionary.com)—for this gay, out graduate student before the concept of “equity” was valued and long before it gained the compelling currency it holds in contemporary academe. I hope to show what the experience taught me and how it signified a transformation in my understanding of what it could mean to tutor other students and study student writing.

This essay will be pointillist in approach. It will light on brief narratives of key events and move to a discussion of how these events influenced my work and sense of professional self. The following preamble is intended to offer some context for my early intellectual and professional development, as I experienced it.

Lived Experience Before graduate school, I didn’t especially love my lived experience; at least as I lived it. At an undergraduate college, I was the dutiful, quiet student who racked up dozens of A’s on “papers.” At least at that school, the success script was simple: you read the books, underlined “key” passages, went to class (on time), took notes on the lecture, and answered questions when called upon to do so. At the end of

each semester, you were done. In terms of writing advice, there was none. In terms of pedagogy, I suppose we were somehow taught to perform close readings of literary texts, though that particular goal and strategy went unmentioned.

After graduation, I attended graduate school at NYU to earn a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. My understanding of my scholarly writing and pedagogical purpose changed somewhat there in Greenwich Village. I say “somewhat” because, while the work threshold was higher (with faculty and students repeating the “publish or perish”), the familiar close reading approach was still in play.

Looking back, I remember two changes. I call the first one, “edge.” Faculty were not reticent about aggressively telling students where they and their work fell short. Here is one comment I remember: “Votre tete est un tamis.” My rough translation: “Your head is a sieve.” That was a comment a teacher directed to my peer during class. Here is another comment: “You obviously went to a second-rate school.” That comment was directed at me, by a closeted gay faculty member, during a conference.

I confess to not seeing such comments as all bad because I imagined faculty imagined themselves microaggressing and, to my mind, throwing shade in the service of a) intellectual rigor and b) toughening us up.

There was always a soupçon (trace) of crazy and a side order of amusement along the way. For example, I was amused when a faculty member cheerfully advised us during her class “theory” lecture that, “If you want your children to be well-educated, get them a French governess.” That unabashed elitism rang campy, removed from my life experience, and very straight.

Remember: this was before most gay people were thought to be legally worthy of, much less legally eligible for, parenthood.

Teachers weren’t always cheerful. When one of my peers answered a question wrong, that same faculty member berated him in front of class, saying: “If you haven’t read the book, I don’t know why you bothered to come to class!” Exhortation seemed to be pedagogical tool as she described her grading policy for our seminar papers: “From what you write, I will know if you have read.” Was it too textbook camp of me to

What Do Graduate Students Want from the Writing Center? • 84 have admired the “shade” while acknowledging the threat?

Beyond that, I recall no instruction in writing.

Publishing was something that faculty members did.

My takeaway was that if you could not write publishable seminar papers on your own, there were two reasons. Either you had not paid enough attention in class and/or you were not intellectually suited to succeed in graduate school.

For added value and devaluation, there was the matter of sexuality. From first grade through college, I was marked as gay and that seemed to be everyone’s business, purview, and problem. In fact, my Shakespeare teacher wrote me a letter of recommendation to graduate school in which she praised Joe Janangelo’s “fey devotion to his work.”

According to Urban Dictionary, fey means “fairly gay, as applied to a heterosexual male with homosexual stereotypical traits.” One of Dictionary’s entries notes that “Fey means gay unless it is on your license plate.”

That fey devotion was tested in a graduate class when a faculty member announced why she refused to review a work about the playwright Jean Genet because, “He is a thief and a homosexual.” While I couldn’t aspire to be a playwright, at least I wasn’t a thief. There was another microaggression that I found impactful. At the department holiday party, a drunken faculty member was ranting about the damage Roland Barthes had done to the study of literature. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she intoned.

So there I was, in Greenwich Village, with a teacher who hated gays, thieves, and theorists.

My survival strategy then was, perhaps not unlike other gay people with few healthy role models or advocates, to keep listening and learning. Eventually, I was asked to work as a teaching assistant for a “Literature and Art” class. I was tasked with responding to student writing. The only things I knew at that point were a) the instructor was infuriated by students’ errors, b) I did not know how to to help students improve their writing, and c) shaming student writers while marking them down—a departmental specialty—did not seem not a responsible way to teach.

By happenstance, I saw a flyer on a wall advertising a workshop devoted to “Strategies for Responding to Student Texts.” The event was to be hosted by something called “the writing center,” and I felt called to attend. It, the workshop and ensuing conversations, was catalytic.

POC In business terminology, “point of contact (POC) or single point of contact (SPOC) is a person or a

department serving as the coordinator or focal point of information concerning an activity or program.”

According to that definition, “A POC is used in many cases where information is time-sensitive and accuracy is important.”

The POC to whom I refer was Professor Lil Brannon, the Director of the Writing Center and cofounding editor of The Writing Center Journal. Of course I didn’t know that she co-founded the journal and would not have understood what that meant to the study of writing, at the time. What did dawn on me during the workshop was that Lil, as she asked me to call her, was leading a very different, and new to me, kind of intellectual conversation.

For one thing, Lil discussed “students” with important and challenging work to do. She neither blamed nor shamed students for making grammatical and punctuation errors. While the “Literature and Art” professor (a good person), wanted his students to “stop doing that” (e.g. making errors), Lil offered a calm, learned, and sensitive discussion of why students might be doing “that,” that particular way.

Lil pointed out that most student writers must juggle several intellectual tasks at once to compose an essay. She also mentioned the logic of error, with a nod to a scholar named Muriel Harris. Lil’s respect for students, and the idea that errors had logic and patterns, made so much sense—seemed so grounded in the realities of what writers do—that I wanted to learn more.

At the end of the workshop, Lil mentioned that she would be teaching a course called “History of Rhetorical Theory.” Although I had completed my coursework, I asked her if could audit, and she said yes.

In that class, we read Michael Polyani, Jacques Monod, and Mikhail Bakhtin and applied their ideas to the study and practice of teaching composition. That changed three things for me: 1) there was a faculty member who valued theory, 2) there were more scholarly approaches than close critical reading, and 3) theoretical arguments could and should be applied to the teaching of writing.

At the end of the semester, Lil asked if I would like to work in the writing center, and I said yes, if I could get more training.

Tutor Training as Professional Pedagogical Development

and

The next semester, I enrolled in Lil’s “Individualized Instruction” course. There we read work by writing center and composition scholars. I remember being impressed by Winston Weathers’s “Alternative Grammars of Style” and Sondra Perl’s

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What Do Graduate Students Want from the Writing Center? • 85 concept of experienced writers’ “felt sense” that their texts needed work. Important to me was that those scholars removed the shame traces from student errors. They portrayed “students” as valuable people with vexing projects to write.

In the writing center, we had weekly meetings where people reflected on their sessions and we often recorded ourselves in conferences and typed up two pages of a conference talk to be read and scrutinized with our peers. Those transcripts became “texts” which we interpreted in relation to the scholarship we were reading. To some tutors, they were mini “case studies.” To others, they were excerpts from a theatrical production. In the latter scenario, writers and tutors became characters pursuing a common problem, with moments of understanding and disconnection.

The biggest lesson was in active listening. Tutorials offered windows into assignment design: it was fascinating to see how a student writer made sense of what was asked of them in a writing assignment. At the time there was no online assignment repository, thus we had to listen carefully and pay attention to each student’s narration of what they knew and thought they were supposed to do.

If we paid attention, we learned which aspects of a writing assignment landed and which didn’t for students. I loved to listen to students and hear how they were applying their creativity, self-doubts, and concerns to a given writing task. On occasion, we were also made privy to backstory: that a student writer wasn’t in class the day the assignment was discussed, had not done the reading, had not been to class in “a while,” or hadn’t even read the assignment sheet before writing their draft. That backchannel aspect was interesting to this gay tutor because it showed that there was confidential backstory (comprising a secret or two to be withheld from instructors) all around me.

In retrospect, I noticed the generosity of spirit Lil modeled: she never asked us to wonder if the students were struggling intellectually because their teachers had crafted poor writing assignments.

Ethics as Professional Development Lil Brannon did a marvelous job of mentoring our professional development. For example, she invited a very young alumni named “Joe Harris”—author of A Teaching Subject—to generously discuss his early-career experiences. For another, she explained that our writing center work was a worthy item for inclusion in our curriculum vitae. Lil explained that we should be careful, though: that we may list ourselves as “Assistant to the Director of the Writing Center,” and not as “Assistant Director of the Writing Center.”

Lil’s actions impressed, and still do impress, me as a mentoring lesson in professionalism. She offered a story point to help us build a curriculum vitae and career with modesty and integrity. She offered mentoring in the service of equity by showing us that being precise and honest means ascribing fair attribution to the work that we and others, actual Assistant Directors of the Writing Centers, do. Yet, I might note that some of my peers said they didn’t appreciate that piece of advice because it seemed to diminish their own contributions and might make their CVs less attractive or marketable.

I recall another story point that contested Lil and the writing center’s mentoring. During that semester, a faculty member in the Comparative Literature Department issued a campus-wide memo stating that Rhetoric and Composition courses would not count toward my degree and that no Comparative Literature graduate students would ever receive credit for those courses. While I had never requested any credit or transcript recognition of the course I sat in on, it was a pretty shaming moment. I felt guilty for causing that particular spectacle, and wonder still why some academics need to besmirch their junior colleagues and their work.

Yet that particular aggression, however unexpected, was not especially surprising. It bespoke the low regard in which my graduate program directors held writing instruction. Moreover, that memo was written by the same literature scholar who publicly said she rejected Jean Genet’s work because he was “a thief and a homosexual.” I remember wanting to respond by asking, “What would you have said if he had been a writing center tutor, as well?”

Writing and Publishing Article Number #1 When the semester ended, Lil moved on to a new job. I retrieved my seminar paper and saw that she recommended sending it to The Writing Center Journal for consideration. There the editor, Jeanette Harris, did a wonderful job of shepherding this amateur through the scholarly peer review process. Because Lil was beginning a new job, I did not send her any drafts or the reviewers’ responses. My perspective was that she had done more than enough for me and that one way to thank mentors is to give them some time to continue on their own journey and, if they choose, to direct their attention and energy toward other people.

That brings me to my thoughts about how I experienced writing center mentoring. For sure, Lil was a stellar Point of Contact. She was also much more than that because she modeled a welcoming, rigorous, and drama-free mentoring disposition. She helped me

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What Do Graduate Students Want from the Writing Center? • 86 see that listening actively to help students improve their writing, reading composition, writing center and literary theory, crafting an attractive and ethical curriculum vitae, and writing your first scholarly article is simultaneously very important work and no big deal. In other words, helping people write well and trying to write well ourselves are things we can do without being dramatic or engaging in “a rhetoric of exhortation” (a term Lil used from time to time) or deploying a version of straight privilege that dismisses the work of LGBTI writers and readers.

Conclusion I wish to conclude by returning to the editors’ questions: “What is the lived experience around graduate writing, especially for students from underserved populations?”

Here is what I think I have learned about “lived experience.” For one thing, it can change and evolve.

Yet, as new people and ideas come into your work life, there are still people and forces that would, if they could, hold sway to keep turning the clock and world back. You will need to seek new experiences and scout for mentors throughout your life and career. You may find that your mentors are right there on campus, giving a workshop about a topic that is “new” to you.

I believe that, if you are gay, front that fact so that people know who you are from the start. Straight people do that to an infinite degree. There may be no good reason to write as a “thief.” Yet there may be many good reasons to write as a gay tutor.

“What kinds of support do graduate student writers from underserved populations need and want?”

My understanding of “support” is that it can emanate from a specific and accomplished mentor. It can also have less to do with any one specific interaction or intense conversation, but with a viral, day-in and day-out modeling of intellect and character, in which a mentor proves that everyone’s talents and identities are welcome and valued. Lil Brannon modeled the invaluable, quicksilver quality I call “disposition.” She wanted, even way back then, graduate students to succeed while being true to themselves.

There is also, in my mind, a responsibility on the part of those who are mentored. One is to not become too dependent on your mentor or covetous of their time and attention. Just as the best teachers let their students go forward and grow apart from them, I generally recommend not tethering one’s mentor to one’s career (especially career drama) for years. I am all for individuals letting their mentors go and grow, to

live and focus on their own lives. Mentors need equity and time for themselves and their families, too.1 As mentioned earlier, for this one gay graduate student, working in a writing center was catalytic. I don’t think I ever had a nicer job, but then again memory can sentimentalize experience and embellish it with laurels. Mindful of the adage, 28 years of work experience at one private and one public institution tell me that Lil Brannon and the writing center she designed and stewarded deserve their laurels.

I close with a 1988 writing center flashback.

Another tutor, Anita, was upset with a colleague.

Through her lit cigarette, she whispered “some people are no damn good.” Bereft of a cigarette, I can only whisper that, in remembering Lil’s mentoring, some people and places are so darn good—so humane and equitable—that they remain ever important.

Acknowledgments Thanks to the editors, Shannon Madden and Michele Eodice. Thanks also to Lil Brannon, Yola C. Janangelo, and Farrell J. Webb.

Notes 1. Over the past three years, Michele Eodice and I have worked achieve this balance of equity and responsibility when we co-directed the Council of Writing Program’s Mentor Match Service. At Michele’s astute suggestion, we asked aspiring mentor and mentees to articulate their communicative preferences and deal breakers. Melissa Nicolas now directs the Service, which couldn’t be in better hands.

Works Cited “Equity.” Dictionary.com. 2016. Web. 1 December 2016. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/equity.

“Fey.” Urban Dictionary. 2 February 2009. Web. 1 December 2016. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter m=fey.

“Point of Contact.” Wikipedia. 21 June 2016. Web. 1 December 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_contact.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 14, No 1 (2016)

“I CANNOT FIND WORDS”: A CASE STUDY TO ILLUSTRATE THE INTERSECTION OF WRITING SUPPORT, SCHOLARSHIP, AND ACADEMIC SOCIALIZATION Amy Whitcomb amyawhitcomb@gmail.com

Introduction I was hired at my current institution to build writing support for graduate students. I hold the title Instructional Consultant and work in the campus Writing Center, which is part of Academic Affairs.

Two and half years ago, when I entered this job, I considered myself well prepared for interacting with graduate students and their writing: I had been a writing tutor for graduate students at two other universities, worked as an editor at two interdisciplinary research journals, and experienced three graduate programs myself, spanning an R1 institution, a natural sciences program and a fine arts program, and both decamping and graduating. Yet the service I provide in my current position is not what I expected to offer; I was not fully prepared to support these graduate students in these kinds of graduate programs. It occurs to me now that there’s perhaps no way I, or any incumbent, could have come ready to resolve the gaps in service and support for graduate student writers at this institution and others like it. This essay aims to illustrate the lived experience at the intersection of writing, student, tutor, professor, and graduate school. With a close description and analysis of one representative student, writing project, and student-tutor relationship, the essay approaches an answer to What kinds of support do graduate student writers from underserved populations need and want, and how does it compare to the kinds of support students are currently getting?

The essay invites further inquiry into how support, scholarship, and academic socialization interrelate for students and academic support staff.

The university where I work is a 25-year-old urban public university affiliated with a large, research-based “mother” campus thirty-five miles north. In 2015, approximately 690 graduate students were enrolled in twelve Master’s programs and one Ph.D. program.

Recall the characteristics of the universities where I had studied and worked, mentioned above. This institution is none of them: It is not R1. It does not offer a graduate degree in any natural or physical science nor in any fine art. More striking is the fact that most graduate students here do not write theses or dissertations. They complete alternatives, named variously across departments as a culminating paper, a capstone paper, a capstone project, or a scholarly

project proposal. After familiarizing myself with this information as a new employee, I wondered: so what makes these “graduate” programs—and the students within them “graduate” students? At a fundamental level, the students are graduate students because they hold Bachelor’s degrees and they seek academic opportunities to progress in their professional lives.

These are the root (the minimum qualifications) of any graduate student; these students happen to have or want professions outside of academia. Traditional notions of scholarship may be wholly incidental to their aspirations. Indeed, my institution is an urbanserving university with a stated mission to promote and enact change in our community. This institution is one of thirty-five members in the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities and countless other institutions of higher education or select programs within them that offer practice- or credential-oriented education in degree tracks. Most of our graduate students pursue Master’s degrees in social work, nursing, urban studies and geographic information systems, cybersecurity, business, education, and computer science.

Nearly twenty-five years into its operation and offering of Master’s degrees, the institution where I work has no centralized graduate student support. To solicit information from or share information with graduate programs, I make individual contacts with the Graduate Advisors Council, the group of programbased academic advisors for graduate students; faculty who teach graduate courses; our student staff of writing tutors, some of whom are graduate students; librarians; administrators in the Graduate School at the main campus; and graduate students themselves.

Needless to say, information among these stakeholders is not shared seamlessly, consistently, quickly, or at all.

I feel for the graduate students who, finding themselves in a conflict or conundrum, know only of their immediate professors and their one academic advisor as go-to support.

I feel for those students, in part, because I encounter a similar void of support network myself among my professional peers. In the Chronicle of Higher Education as well as a dozen of the journals most relevant to my field (e.g., Praxis, WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, Writing Center Journal, College Composition and Communication), and on the ever-

“I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study • 88 expanding and ever-welcoming Consortium on Graduate Communication website (https://gradconsortium.wordpress.com), I find articles about dissertation boot-camps and adapting chapters into publishable articles and negotiating relationships with principal investigators or lab technicians and putting statistics into plain language and any number of other insightful and practical conclusions that leave my university’s kind of graduate students out. Although the area is growing, there is currently very little research that addresses graduate students who do not aspire to academic careers.

Faculty, including those at my university, can hardly offer other perspectives; to secure their positions, they come with doctorates, publications, and patents-based traditional methods of original scholarly research. I’m not saying they are no help to me in building writing support for their students—they are, as the case study I offer in this article will demonstrate—but they often cannot speak to the practitioner’s or professional’s culture shock upon re-entering academia. For a time, I couldn’t either. In consultations with students, my comments couched in explanations of “hypotheses” or “statistical significance,” “replication” or “committees” seemed irrelevant at best, unintelligible to students at worst. If my work is not to help budding scholars develop as scholarly writers, then what is it?

Consultations In the spring of 2015, at the Writing Center, I reviewed the culminating paper of a graduate student in the Masters of Nursing (MN) program. I’ll call her Stacy. Stacy was representative of our graduate students in her status both as a primary speaker of a language other than English (her primary language is Spanish) and a mid-career professional. Parts of her paper described her long history as a practicing nurse, and I came to learn that graduate school was a pragmatic move for her, not something which she previously envisioned herself doing or prepared for with deliberate inquiries, networking, post-bac classes, or other forms of acculturation/socialization. She did not mention any plans to pursue the Doctorate of Nursing Program at our main campus upon graduation.

Stacy was a representative graduate student of ours, and her writing basically representative of our graduate-level English-language-learning professional students. Our sustained interaction through writing consultations is not entirely representative of my interactions with graduate students here. I meet with many graduate students both in person and online (asynchronous eTutoring using Microsoft Word

comments and Track Changes); with Stacy, we used only eTutoring. Many graduate students and I meet two or three times a quarter, but Stacy and I worked together ten times over the ten-week quarter. Some graduate students come with concerns about only one section of their writing project (such as literature review or references page) or concerns about only one aspect of writing (such as grammar or transitions); Stacy hoped for higher and lower concerns to be reviewed and revised by me throughout her paper. Still, Stacy will not be my last student with such needs and provisions, nor is her situation, I believe, unique among her peers in other academic programs or institutions.

Here I offer my record of our correspondence and writing-related comments to chronicle the relationship between graduate student and university staff member working through writing support. To provide perspective and breadth, I offer two conventional data sets and two unconventional qualitative data sets. The data are a list of Stacy’s writing concerns for each draft, as documented in our appointment scheduling system; a count of writing topics that I commented on for each draft; an email between Stacy’s major professor and myself; and a note Stacy delivered to my office at the end of the quarter.

Over the course of six weeks, I read and provided feedback on ten drafts of Stacy’s culminating paper.

According to the nursing program’s website,1 “the culminating paper for the MN coursework option” guidelines are the following: • Describe in detail the two additional courses taken, how these courses enabled the student to meet one or more of the curriculum option learning outcomes and one or more MN program goals • Explain how the coursework reflects scholarly inquiry activity (e.g., what research was conducted? What evidence was acquired? Was a concept analyzed or researched? Were evidence-based best practices identified?)

• Describe how coursework will be integrated with future professional goals Stacy’s first draft with me was approximately 1,500 words. Her tenth draft was approximately 3,000 words.

Each writing consultation occurred asynchronously online and lasted fifty minutes. Stacy uploaded a draft to her online appointment and used the appointment scheduling system to write me a note updating me with her wants and needs for that session. I returned each draft with a headnote describing my overall observations of the writing and up to thirty-six comment bubbles in the document’s margins. I did not

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“I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study • 89 use Track Changes to write directly into her text on any draft. The table below shows our online correspondence through the scheduler system notes, the headnotes, and the comment bubbles. It compares

Stacy’s requests with the number of comments I made to address those requests and other comments to further the writing process and support the writer’s development.

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Draft (Total Tutor Margin Comments)

Focus, Clarity, Structure, Organization

Syntax, Grammar, Punctuation

APA Formatting and Referencing

Mention of Professor

Language from Tutor’s Headnote

Mention of Revision or Progress

1 (20)*

Clarity and focus** (7)***

Sentence structure (13)

N (0)

Y

Focus, detail

N

2 (18)

Follow up/clarity (2)

Sentence structure (16)

N (0)

N

Confusing, singular-plural agreement, verb forms

I did editions based on your recommendation

3 (12)

Structure and organization (0)

Punctuation (11)

Formatting, documentation (1)

N

Comma usage

I am learning a lot, thanks to you I am learning to be a better writer

4 (15)

Final review (0)

N (4)

Document-ation citation, formatting (11)

N

Two grammatical error patterns

N

5 (12)

Focus/clarity, how it flows (9)

N (3)

N (0)

Y

Order, transitions, professor’s comments

I highlighted the corrected sections

6 (36) 21/36 were positive affirmations

Focus/clarity, Make sense (2)

N (12)

N (1)

N

Sentence fragment, verb tense, References page

I was able to restructure my paper based on your previous comments

7 (26)

Focus/clarity (14)

N (12)

N (0)

Y

Detail, simplify, professor’s comments, consistency, plural or possessive

I included feedback from [the professors] in case you have questions why I did change certain things

8 (14)

Structure/ organization, focus/clarity (5)

N (9)

N (0)

Y

Commas, previous comments, Microsoft Word underlines

I incorporated more level of detail

9 (14)

N (0)

N (0)

Citations, reference pages, indent, margins (14)

N

Abbreviations, APA manual as reference

I am still working on corrections from your comments from yesterday

10 (12)

Final review

N

Margins, spacing (12)

Y

Ask professor for more information

N

*total number of tutor’s comments for a draft **student’s requests (student’s words) ***number of tutor’s comments addressing student’s requests

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Not revealed in the table is the fact that each request for help from Stacy included at least one expression of gratitude (usually “thank you” or “thank you again”) and each headnote from me began encouragingly by identifying the revisions and current strengths of Stacy’s writing and mindset. We had friendly conversation and developed a friendly relationship. I’m glad that I offered the positive reinforcements that I did, in headnotes and marginal comments, because I was not privy to any encouraging remarks from her other readers (i.e., professors).

The data in the table demonstrates that Stacy and I were both bouncing around the common writing tutoring hierarchy. Looking back at this work of mine from last year, I’m surprised and ashamed that I addressed subject-verb agreement, for example, in the first draft, for writing mechanics appear far down on the hierarchy. My approach makes sense to me now only within the context of how I phrase my marginal comments. My comments about subject-verb agreement would say something like “It’s unclear to me how many people you’re talking about here because the subject (noun) and corresponding verb don’t ‘agree’ in number. Agree in number means . . . ”—thereby connecting an issue with mechanics to Stacy’s concern about “clarity.” In other words, many of my comments addressing lower-order concerns are couched in language that conveys how important they are (i.e., not lower) in making one’s points accurately and precisely for the readers’ benefit. Still, given my habit of writing marginal comments to include observation from a reader’s perspective as well as explanation and exemplification—and my use of scaffolding and prioritizing error patterns over singular mistakes or typos—my comments seem to have run the gamut.

This demonstrates the vast breadth and depth of support requested by a graduate-level Englishlanguage-learning professional student and the vast knowledge base and time required by the tutor to meet those requests.

Our volleying among concerns exhibits a kind of frenetic energy. Stacy was spurred to use the Writing Center by her professor. I had met the professor in another context and worked with other undergraduate and graduate students of hers for various assignments.

Both Stacy and I understood that grammar and stylistic conventions were important to the professor. Even so, Stacy’s initial request for “final review” and subsequent requests for everything from sentence structure to margin spacing to “does it make sense?” suggest, to me, a lack of vision for and authority over her writing.

I’ve witnessed low confidence in multilingual students writing in their target language—they feel like they just

can’t know enough vocabulary or syntax to sound smart. Stacy displayed low confidence, but she also had challenges understanding the purposes that a culminating paper would serve for her as a graduating Master’s student. She sometimes titled the document “cumulating paper,” which could equally hit the purpose but was not, in fact, the accurate spelling or academic intent. I argue that the bulk of our interaction was rooted not in language use per se but in lack of academic socialization. I was working to explain linguistic concepts, genre conventions, process techniques—and scholarly objectives. What does it mean to do research? In singular, contextualized comments, I was probing Stacy to consider and articulate why and how research is important to her professional trajectory.

Correspondence After five consultations, I contacted Stacy’s major professor with concerns about possibly “overstepping” my role and infringing on their student-professor relationship.! I begin with my email to the professor.

The excerpts show the risk I took in losing the trust of the student and the confidence of the professor to learn what more—what more?—I could do to send a competent and confident writer into the world after her eight quarters of graduate school. I follow up with the professor’s reply. When the professor says, “Stacy is getting the same type of comments from multiple sources,” I interpret that as an acknowledgement that our writing center and our institution believe in the power of communication and could be doing more to make a comprehensive networked or centralized support system for graduate students. When the professor says, “Much of these [suggestions] she has to come to herself,” I interpret that as both honoring and neglecting the process of academic socialization. It honors the developmental, individualized, and autonomous nature of learning. It neglects the directive, instructive nature of learning. In the professor’s email reply, I did not find an advocate for examining the socialization needs of our graduate students. This correspondence shows one promising, yet emotionally trying and labor intensive, way I’ve reached out for more guidance on supporting graduatelevel English-language-learning professional students.

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Tutor’s Email to Professor From: Amy A. Whitcomb Sent: Friday, May 8, 2015 4:39 PM To: [Professor] Subject: TLC consultations with MN student Dear Dr. [Professor], I’m writing to inform you of my regular interactions with one of your MN students, Stacy. I conducted online writing consultations with her four times last quarter on her proposal. I have worked with her five times during this quarter on her culminating paper. Today, I found myself giving her the same feedback on the culminating paper as I’d done in March when I first saw it. This was concerning to me, and I wanted to know if I have just really been missing the mark with my feedback and not actually helping this student with her writing process and writing skills.

I also wondered if I was overstepping my authority with prompts about fulfilling the expectations of the assignment.

In our first session, Stacy wanted feedback on “clarity, focus, and sentence structure” (her words). I provided feedback on those aspects of her writing. I also shared observations on degree of details, transitions and explicit connections, consistency, and this observation: I’m not sure if you satisfied the assignment.

It’s not clear to me whether this paper is supposed to discuss the courses and your learning in general or supposed to dive much deeper and discuss what you did in the classes, what you learned from those activities, and how those lessons learned relate to the curriculum and MN goals in DETAIL. For instance, I found myself asking, “How?” in many parts of your paper. How did she learn that? What action did she perform and how did it lead to that skill or realization?

And I provided margin comments such as: How? What knowledge did you acquire? How does that knowledge translate to “skills”?

What is the underlying knowledge? How did you acquire it?

What did you learn, exactly? Where [sic] there certain kinds of analysis that you learned?

What analytical practices did you use?

In our second session, Stacy wanted feedback on “grammar.” I provided feedback on subject-verb agreement, singular-plural agreement, verb forms, and sentence structure. In our third session, Stacy wanted feedback on “structure, organization, sentence structure, formatting, and punctuation.” I provided comments on commas and APA headings, and I

explained them in terms of conventions and reader expectations. In our fourth session, Stacy wanted feedback on “formatting and citations.” I commented on inconsistencies in those aspects and also on verb forms.

In our fifth session, today, Stacy wanted feedback on “flow”—presumably because she’d added much new content to address your recent comments. My feedback largely centered on interpreting her comments in concrete terms and keeping the focus on her learning experiences, as this excerpt hopefully demonstrates: It seems to me that you may not have addressed Dr. [Professor]’s comments to the fullest extent. I think she’s asking for explanations and examples of how you evaluate knowledge. This is just another way of asking about your critical thinking skills.

Are you someone who takes information at face value or are you someone who thinks when you hear or read something, “Hmm. I don’t know about that. What about this angle or what about that angle?”

Specifically, I think she’s asking in some places about whether these courses prepared you to do scholarship and teaching or actually made you do them in the course. Your wording “prepared to me [sic] achieve” or “prepared me to understand” is a little confusing because it doesn’t give me a straightforward answer about what you learned about in class vs. what you actually performed in class. If you did DO scholarship or teaching (or other kinds of thinking and activities in class), then I think she’s asking you to describe what assignment you did them for, what you personally did for the assignment (your actions), and how those actions demonstrate your critical thinking.

And I provided margin comments such as: What is the underlying knowledge? Are you saying that the underlying knowledge is how to access a website? Are you saying that the underlying knowledge is a person’s health history? Or is the underlying knowledge something else?

Again, it’s not clear to me what you mean by “underlying knowledge.” Can you be more specific about exactly what knowledge or kinds of knowledge serves as the foundation of this topic and how this course made you evaluate that knowledge?

My tutoring approach honors a student’s authority regarding his or her development and attempts to apply what I know about the value of scaffolded,

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“I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study • 92 !

focused feedback. I’m heartened that Stacy continues to reach out for support and be open to revising her text. I told her in my closing comments today that I know the big-picture stuff isn’t what she wanted to hear at this point, but you and I are telling it to her in order to make her the best writer and this the best culminating paper possible for her right now. Please let me know if you see other ways I can help Stacy and your students.

Professor’s Reply to Tutor’s Email Hi Amy, Thanks for the update and information. I could tell from her last draft that she had worked with someone on grammar, sentence structure, etc. as my editing was fairly minimal. But, as you could see from my comments, her responses to the questions were still not hitting the mark. Your comments to her are/were right in line with my own...hopefully, she can see that she is getting the same type of comments from multiple sources. And, no, I just don't have any additional suggestions about ways to help her as much of these she has to come to herself. Let me know if there's any additional information you need. thanks again for all you do for our students!

Dr. [Professor]

Conclusion Lastly, I offer as data the note that Stacy left for me upon the conclusion of our last tutoring appointment together. I returned from a meeting to find a handwritten thank-you card on my desk. Stacy’s message here (“I cannot find words to thank you enough for your invaluable help”) is both heartwarming and heartbreaking to me: we had just shared so, so many words. Yet now not one came to her. For all my leading towards precision and description in the culminating paper, perhaps I’d led her to think that her own unworked words weren’t good enough. Or that language isn’t suitable if it isn’t retooled a dozen times. While that may be true for some documents, it’s certainly not true for all, even in graduate school—for graduate school is about scholarship and friendship, originality and collegiality. I wish Stacy and all students could feel comfortable with whatever their own words are when interacting with writing tutors. I never wished and never will that words would disappear on someone as they stop calling themselves “student” and say “professional” instead.

I have words but, as Stacy graduates and I prepare to leave this position, there’s little chance my words will find her. I hope they reach other graduate students, writing tutors, professors, and university decisionmakers to inform and encourage.

Epilogue: Tutor’s Imagined Reply to Student Dear Stacy, How ironic that the day you came into the Writing Center, I wasn’t present to finally meet you! It’s only fitting, I guess, that we should say goodbye in writing instead of in person.

How can it be goodbye, though, when I have so many questions for you, so many insights still to glean from you? Do you give all your instructors thank-you cards? Did you know, when you first contacted me in the fall, that I was a sort of instructor, not an editor? I tried to explain my role in our early encounters, and we soon settled into a productive dynamic, but I wonder if it would have been helpful to be more explicit at the onset, even at the first mention of the Writing Center by a professor.

I’m often apprehensive when graduate students come to the Writing Center because some professor told them to—in my experience, the referral can make students down on themselves as students or down on their writing as adequate graduate work. You were neither. You were eager to advance the clarity of your document and improve key writing skills. Your eagerness taught me, Stacy, to be open to each student, because it’s not just the professor who wants “better writing” but also the student who—obviously—craves the same. It must feel both disappointing and liberating to be singled out by the professor for work with a writing tutor. Disappointing because it suggests your writing doesn’t meet expectations, but liberating, I’d think, because from it you finally have knowledge of and permission to use help! I bet no professor told you that education is a collaborative pursuit, and that graduate school is too crazy hectic for you to get the most out of it if you’re going it alone. All experts try their hardest, as you did, and use resources and references when they expend themselves. You didn’t

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“I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study • 93 see all the times I reached for the APA manual and grammar guides to be able to give you thorough comments! I think this is what it means to make, and be part of, a scholarly community. Wherever you are and wherever I go, we are still in this community together.

Before we became close, through written words, why did you trust me? Was it desperate, “blind” trust?

Or did I do something particular to show you my ability to guide you through a high-stakes situation? It was helpful to know that you were listening and that I wasn’t wasting time offering comments to closed ears or a closed mind. Your trust challenged me to refine my role, reinforce my boundaries: I didn’t want to write the paper for you; I didn’t want to command your revisions. So I had to remind myself that you trusted me to help you write the paper—to give personalized advice and lead you towards language that felt right for you.

To do this, I practiced turning statements into questions. Not, “This subject and verb don’t agree,” but “How many people are you talking about? Does it make sense to use the plural form?” Sound familiar? So many questions and comments, I know. Wasn’t it difficult for you to read so many notes from me? Did you read the headnote and margin comments with the same consideration? Doing so takes up your precious time and forces you to process in formal English instead of relax into Spanish. I was giving you more work! But hopefully doing so also gave you new terms to use and a few more quiet moments attending to your paper, your voice. In grammar and in analysis, I wanted us to wonder together, and I wanted you to take the last word. You can contribute to the “scholarly conversation” among your peers when you’ve talked yourself to, and through, a big analytical project that exercises your critique, creativity, and conviction.

As you progress as a nurse with a Master’s degree, I hope you find words to probe your statements as if I were around, or inside your head, commenting on your thoughts. I hope you find words to tell other graduate students like yourself what writing tutors can do for their thinking, writing, self-awareness, and self-esteem and how crucial it is to walk the line between a beginner’s mindset, open to advice, and an emerging expert’s opinion, formed by literature and learning. In the meantime, I will tell tutors about what I did and how I came to advocate more strongly and tutor more mindfully from an eager, trusting graduate-level English-language-learning professional student. Thank you.

Best wishes, Amy

Notes 1. To preserve the anonymity of the parties involved, the program website is not provided.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 14, No 1 (2016)

AFTERWORD: NARRATIVES THAT DETERMINE WRITERS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE WRITING CENTER WORK Asao B. Inoue University of Washington Tacoma asao@uw.edu Recently, I took over as my campus’ writing center director. I’ll be honest. I haven’t worked in a writing center since I was a graduate student at Oregon State (that was in the early 90s). I have a lot to learn. While I’ve helped assess and review the writing center at Fresno State and the one I’m currently directing, I haven’t read carefully in the literature for two decades.

This summer has been one of rereading the literature on writing centers, and reading newer scholarship (to me). When I left writing centers and its scholarship in the early 90s, the discussions were about encouraging writers to take control of the consultation, to find ways to have them read and write on their drafts. It was about collaboration, agency-building, and student control. I remember working hard to find ways to be collaborators, not teachers, to have the writer read and mark on her draft. But we never talked about race or racism in writing center practices, never discussed the ways whiteness and whiteliness saturated writing centers and their practices. While in 2007 Geller, Eodice, Condon, Carroll, and Boquet identify the limited ways that writing center training texts address race and racism, the discussions I find in the literature today are ones that at least approach such concerns.

These more recent discussions are ones about multilingual writers, diversity in writing centers, and the complexities around working alongside the growing numbers of international writers in U.S. colleges and universities. Many of these questions were initiated by Nancy Grimm in 1999, with other voices contributing important ideas, such as Victor Villanueva’s on the new racism, Paul Kei Matsuda’s on “the myth of linguistic homogeneity,” Vershawn Ashanti Young’s on “codemeshing,” Ben Rafoth’s on engaging with multilingual writers in writing centers, and of course, Greenfield and Rowan’s important 2011 collection, Writing Centers and the New Racism. But as Geller et al. discuss, there still is much work to be done around identifying white privilege and, I’ll add, white language privilege, in writing center practices.

I am encouraged by this special issue. It continues these discussions, applying them to graduate student writers in writing centers, looking mostly at multilingual graduate students and graduate students of color. But what encourages me most is that there are !

several scholars of color contributing. We need these voices since scholars of color haven’t been a part of writing center discussions much over the years, as far as I can tell. The issues explored fall into roughly two groups for me, which provide a way to construct a possible narrative to guide future work. Several articles narrate graduate student experiences and efforts in which writers succeed despite the system, not because of it. Alvarez, Aguilar, Brito, and Salazar discuss their own community building in response to being marginalized because of their Latina linguistic heritages while writing their dissertations. Similarly, EppsRobertson recounts her frequent trips home to a familiar and safe community, a community shaped by racialized dispositions and languaging that helped her “write herself home” and into her dissertation. Bell and Hewerdine discuss their affinity group of two that provided support for them in their doctoral programs, while Kells’s “cultural ecotone” describes a graduate student designed and operated community writing center in downtown Albuquerque in which graduate students exercise agency and control. These are stories of succeeding despite male-centered, heteronormative, white, middle class educational systems and language norms. We need to understand the variations on this theme in and around local writing centers, so that writing centers—or more crucially, the students in them—can shape institutional pathways for themselves to explore and express in a multitude of ways, in a multitude of Englishes, Englishes that are celebrated and rewarded in the system, not punished by it. This work is surely more than typical writing center work, as Kells’ article suggests it could be. What this theme, to me, suggests is for writing centers to be revolutionary change-agents in the institutions and communities in which they are situated. It means they facilitate structural changes in society, disciplines, and the institution itself. Yes, I think, writing centers are more than centers of writing, but centers for revolutions, for social justice work.

Many of the articles in this issue also discuss ways that the Marxian concept of determination functions in graduate students’ work in writing centers, particularly around how that writing is read and judged. Now, none of the authors use Marxian language, like

Afterword • 95 determination. I’m using it as a convenient way to describe what I’m reading in the articles. Marxian determination, as discussed by Engels, says that people function within systems and processes of history that are determined, meaning there are both pressures in a certain direction and a setting of limits. In the ways Engels (and even Marx) use the term to describe economic and social systems, determination is more nuanced than simply saying that we are predetermined to make certain choices or see things in particular ways.

Raymond Williams explains that “to determine or be determined to do something is an act of will and purpose” (87), so there is agency in Marxian determination. To give an example, consider going to the store to buy something to drink. You have choices, some kind of soda, an array of orange and fruit juices, bottled water, etc. You can buy from a local company or from a national or international one. You are not forced to buy any one drink or kind of drink. You have choice, but your choices are constrained by what is on the shelves at the store, and by information you happened to find important in making a decision about those drinks and companies. For instance, you are pressured to see some drinks as more preferable for a variety of reasons. You refuse to buy any product produced by large, multinational corporations or that contain high fructose corn syrup. Thus you can buy and drink anything you wish, yet you cannot buy and drink just anything (everything possible to drink is not on the shelves). There are pressures and limits. You have choice, but that choice is constrained. Your purchase of the drink you ultimately get is determined in these ways. Our reading and judging of student writing is equally determined by the courses, disciplines, and institutions in which we exercise our agency as readers.

The articles here narrate such determination in writing centers around graduate student work. For instance, Whitcomb experiences pressures and limits when reading a multilingual nursing student who has no plans to be an academic but finds herself writing academic papers. Green shows her own pressures and limits with speaking and writing in and between various languages, comparing it to “Graft Versus Host Disease,” a problem caused by treatments for diseases like cancer. Keedy and Vidali’s concept of “productive chaos” illustrates their own disabled work together that attempts to deflect pressures while staying within limits of writing a dissertation. Burrows’s “Black tax” explains his and other Black graduate student writers’ constraints and pressures that often are ones levied only on Black students. Martinez’s CRT-inspired counterstory reveals both racist assumptions by those who read grad students of color and the “colonial

functioning of the academy,” both of which show more limits in the ways we are pressured to judge academic writing. Meanwhile, Smith-Campbell and Littles’s “pedagogical love” adopted from Freire, offers a kind of corrective to such determination in reading practices, as do the rhetorical frames used in writing centers that dictate our work that Cirillo-McCarthy, Del Russo, and Leahy discuss. This theme is one in which the authors become conscious of the ways their work is determined, the ways their work has limits and pressures. To see the limits and pressures, to see the determination as such, is the first step toward revolution, toward antiracist practices, toward communities that resist the structures of white supremacy that create our educational institutions and world.

These two important themes might govern the rhetorical frames we tell about ourselves that then construct our work and lives in writing centers, as Cirillo-McCarthy, Del Russo, and Leahy remind us. Let me join the two themes together in order to create a Franken-narrative, if you will.

Writing centers are often places where students and tutors create success in both quietly, cooperative ways and contentious, tense ways, despite the institutional structures around them that determine students’ learning and languaging and tutors reading and judging practices, all of which set limits on their languaging and pressure people to succeed in particular ways.

We might read “success” to be about reproducing particular kinds of dominant Englishes expected of grad students in various disciplines, or we might think of it as a set of ideal dispositions toward language and its valuing. Regardless, the frame that I am trying to articulate that encapsulates both themes might be seen as revolutionary work, social justice work, antiracist work, even peace work.

What all the articles in this special issue avoid, however, is an explicit account of how whiteness and whitely ways of being determine much of what happens in writing centers, but this is a crucial part of social justice work in our world today. Detailing whiteness and dismantling white privilege, which includes white language privilege, is a part of what I see trying to happen in these stories and counterstories.

Several articles talk around whiteness and assume white language privilege, perhaps the most obvious accounts are those by Burrows, Martinez, and Epps-Robertson, but none reveal and define it, particularly in our reading practices in consultations with student writers (graduate or undergraduate). To me, this seems key to addressing all the issues of racism and oppression that most of the authors discuss. It’s an accounting of the

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Afterword • 96 white supremacist system that causes all these problems, whether they are located in gendered, disability, racialized, national, or linguistic differences.

Why? Because white supremacy determines the entire system—is the system—and structures the limits and pressures of all writing center work, whether it is with or by graduates or undergraduates, faculty or staff.

I’m not criticizing the good work of these authors, nor am I suggesting that folks refocus their work in writing centers away from critiquing, say, assumptions around disability, or heteronormative practices, or gender issues, or class and economic issues that have bearing on language choices and the valuing of such languages and bodies. What I’m trying to say is that my reading of these authors’ works shows me what needs happening next in my own writing center and likely many others. What these articles show are the symptoms of a white supremacist, heteronormative, ableist, middle class, masculine system that is the problem because this system tends to set up singular linguistic standards that writing centers are then expected to promote—and it’s hard not to fall into this trap when we have a hard time seeing the system and how it determines our own reading and languaging practices. I, like Geller et al., suggest we might begin such intersectional social justice work in writing centers by focusing on racism and white privilege first because they cut across other dimensions of oppression (92).

White language privilege is our common oppression.

Yes, even white people are hurt by white language supremacy, although they are given more advantages, too.

So let’s talk about this problem in concrete ways in order to solve it. How, you ask, might writing centers do this work? Perhaps, Cirillo-McCarthy, Del Russo, and Leahy offer a good start: carefully looking at our mission statements that provide the frames by which we understand what our work is and how we do it. If one is to approach writing center work from an antiracist agenda, we might ask: How might white language privilege and whitely dispositions inform our writing centers’ mission statements, or determine our tutor practices with students? I’d be hypocritical if I didn’t admit that the writing center I direct can stand to work on its own mission statement and practices, which we’ve begun to do in staff meetings over the last few months. These things take time, and not everyone sees things in the same ways. Here’s our most recent articulation of our mission statement: “The UWT writing center (a part of the TLC) endeavors to compassionately celebrate and support the languaging labors and products of our diverse undergraduate and graduate students within a welcoming and safe atmosphere.” I might revise this statement even now,

changing the term “safe” to “brave,” considering the good arguments made by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens on “brave spaces” as spaces where social justice work can be done. The emphasis is on allowing folks to expect a level of discomfort and difficulty, which may feel unsafe to many white people—but being uncomfortable ain’t the same as being safe.

Discomfort is the first step to growth and change.

Being safe is the absence of harm.

Our mission statement is followed by a list of goals that we plan to explore in our practices and assess in order to improve the center’s work. Our goals include: • Cultivate a safe and inclusive space for learning and the exchange of ideas that explicitly addresses the relevant issues of social justice that matter to the lives of students (and faculty) • Encourage faculty and others to talk about the Writing Center as a place for collaborative feedback for all writers, rather than a place of remediation • Help students understand and respond to feedback in useful ways • Help students increase their confidence as communicators • Cultivate and maintain campus partnerships with other units and faculty • Engage in outreach and in-class workshops/class visits in order to increase student participation in the TLC • Engage in practices that celebrate a diverse range of student strengths as communicators • Help students achieve academic and professional success in ways that are selfconscious and critical of themselves as language/symbol users What is absent, or perhaps nascent, in the above mission statement and list of goals is any discussion of the white racial habitus that informs our practices and UWT teachers’ dispositions toward student writing that always forms the context for consultations. This context is no different from all the stories told in this issue. The institutional and disciplinary contexts are always similar in this way. A white racial habitus, however it is defined in a particular place, might be thought of as a dominant set of durable and flexible dispositions to read and write in English, even though it is not static nor unified, but varies by discipline, class, location, and instructor, hence it is flexible. I take this idea from Pierre Bourdieu, who theorized habitus as ways that people are marked and read, while I’ve used it elsewhere to explain linguistic, bodily, and performative aspects of the racialized judging of

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Afterword • 97 language (Inoue 42–51). Investigating the places and practices in which a white racial habitus is enacted is another way to say we are investigating white language privilege in writing centers. And because writing centers promote dominant white languages, dominant Englishes, by default since they exist in and because of white educational institutions, exist because of predominantly white academic disciplinary histories and theories, it seems imperative that all writing centers investigate the white racial habitus existing in their practices and places.

One way to examine practices and places for a white racial habitus is through a heuristic of sorts that has helped me in writing classrooms interrogate white language privilege in our judging and feedback of drafts. I’m only now beginning to use this heuristic in writing center work with tutors and others. Recently, my tutors and I used it to make observations on a mock consultation in our annual fall tutor orientation.

It is only a first step and delicate work. I suggest preparing the discussions and tutors carefully by considering discussions like Arao and Clemens’ article I’ve already mentioned, Helen Fox’s When Race Breaks Out, and Ian Marshall’s chapter, “Encountering Whiteness as Resistance,” in Ryden and Marshall’s Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness.

My heuristic began as a way that my students and I defined the main elements or impulses of a dominant white discourse that operates in all of our judgments on writing, and it is informed by the literature on whiteness.1 I offer it here as a way to think about the primary elements of a white racial habitus in writing centers. This includes ways we read student writing, interact with each other, draft our own documentation and mission statements, and rehearse our narratives that construct who we are, what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. There are four main elements to a white racial habitus: • Hyperindividualism: self-determination and autonomy is most important or most valued; self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and self-control are important. Individual rights and privacy are often most important and construct the common good. The truth is always good to hear, no matter how painful, good, or bad it may be (each individual has the right to know the truth).

• Individualized, Rational, Controlled Self: person is conceived as an individual who is rational, self-conscious, self-controlled, and determined. Conscience guides the individual and sight is the primary way to identify the truth or understanding. Social and cultural

factors are external constraints to the individual. Meaningful issues and questions always lie within the self; individuals have problems and solutions are individually-based; both success and failure are individual in nature; failure is individual and often seen as weakness. Control of self is important, as is work and staying busy, or being industrious and productive; the uncontrollable in selves, society, or nature cannot be valued.

• Rule-Governed, Contractual Relationships: focus is on the individual in a contractual relationship with other individuals; focus is on “informed consent”; model relationships negotiate individual needs. Individual rights are more important and non-political, whereas socially-oriented values and questions are less important and often political (bad) by their nature. There is an importance attached to laws, rules, fairness as sameness, contractual regulations of relationships. Little emphasis is put on connectedness, relatedness, feeling, interconnection with others; individuals keep difficulties and problems to themselves.

• Clarity, Order, and Control: focus is on reason, order, and control; thinking (versus feeling), insight, the rational, order, objective (versus subjective), rigor, clarity, and consistency are all valued highly.

Thinking/Rationality and knowledge are nonpolitical, unraced, and can be objective. Antisensuality is valued while there is a limited value of sensual experiences, considerations of the body, sensations, and feelings. A belief in scientific method, discovery, and knowledge; deductive logics are preferred; usefulness and pragmatism are important measures of value and success. (from Inoue, forthcoming) If any of the above dispositions to language seem preferable to you, seem right—and they should since you are reading this journal, likely participate in writing centers, and have some success with academic discourse—then you embody to some degree a white racial habitus. This doesn’t mean you have white skin privilege, or even that you aren’t oppressed in other ways in school or society. It simply means you’ve taken on these structures of languaging, particularly when reading and judging language. They are not inherently bad or wrong, but by the same token, they are not inherently good or right. These dispositions to language participate in white language supremacy when a reader, teacher, institution, tutor, or writing center uses them as a standard for judging quality in writing,

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Afterword • 98 as ideal texts or ideal language practices. When this happens, students get ranked or hierarchized. This ranking is a racialized ranking because the ideal dispositions used as the standard are white. The ranking is one way white language supremacy is enacted.

Our challenge is that there are good things to be had from a disposition, for example, that focuses on reason and order (as in the last element above), but I’m less convinced that we must hold students to some standard that dictates a certain kind of reasoning, or ordering, or that reason and order are preferable dispositions to promote and reward in the academy.

Instead, I think, writing centers might form practices in which tutors help writers find ways to problematize (in the Freirean sense) these aspects of their own reading and writing practices and products, not to simply change drafts in order to get a better grade, but to understand the choices made in their fullest social and individual implications, to see the white supremacist determination in their writing labors, to see writing as a determined laboring act in which there are limits set and pressures exerted.

In fact, perhaps a student might be determined in more than the Marxian sense. She might also be determined as in persevering to be the kind of writer she wants to be, to be one that grows the discourses of the academy, and not just one that is confined and limited by it. We can have more than one Gloria Anzaldúa—in fact, we already do. We just don’t recognize them as such. For instance, what significance to the individual student or her colleagues in the course who may read her draft does a student’s writing practices have if they primarily favor a rhetorical style that leans mostly on appeals to emotion and an arrangement that resists a linear structure, that is associative or random, that is unordered? And what significance would this student's writing have on the class and herself as a writer if she could label some of her dispositions to write as racialized, that she could articulate her own dispositions in opposition to a set of white racialized ones that have oppressed her in the past when used as a standard against her? What if she were encouraged to do this research, to find out how her own ways of languaging may be determined by larger racialized, gendered, and classed structures in society and in her own history. I think, this would give her more power and agency in the ways that many of the authors in this issue seem to demonstrate about their own growing awareness of themselves as embodied, racialized, gendered, and disabled writers who operate in white, middle class, ableist educational institutions.

But maybe most important, such writing center narratives and practices would be social justice work that helps individuals see their interconnectedness, see that they have a common struggle with many others, and perhaps find ways to revolutionize language practices and make change together in the academy.

Languaging as a practice and as labor has never been a solitary act, so I wonder how writing centers might resist the notion that just because we have individual sessions with singular writers who ask for help on their own drafts, why the only outcomes for such sessions must be applied only to that singular writer? This suggests that the problems individual writers face begin and end with that writer. No. They don’t. They never have. Could we be inadvertently blaming the victim when we don’t point out the ways the individual writer is determined by larger, racialized discursive and educational structures and systems? Why cannot individual writing sessions lead us all toward larger language problems, larger social conditions, structures, and work in our classrooms, institutions, and disciplines that determine us all? It seems to me that if most students come to writing centers for help because of the exigency of judging, because their writing is going to be evaluated by another, then it seems our social justice work should help students navigate the social and racialized structures of judgement that determine them in such assessment ecologies in schools.

Notes 1. The literature used to create this heuristic comes from both whiteness studies and contemplative studies: Barbezat and Bush; Barnett; Brookhiser; Elbow; Fox; Hahn; McGill and Pearce; Myser; O’Reilley; Ratcliffe; Roche; Zajonc. !

Works Cited Arao, Brian, and Kristi Clemens. “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice.” The Art of Effective Facilitation. Ed. Lisa M. Landreman.

Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2013. 135–150. Web. Barbezat, Daniel P., and Mirabai Bush. Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014. Print.

Barnett, Timothy. “Reading ‘Whiteness’ in English Studies.” College English 63.1 (2000): 9–37. Print.

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Afterword • 99 Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of A Theory of Practice. Trans.

Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.

Print.

Brookhiser, Richard. “The Way of the WASP.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Eds. Richard Delgado and J. Stefancic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 16–23. Print.

Chodron, Pema. How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013. Print.

Elbow, Peter. “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment.” College English 55.2 (1993): 187–206. Print.

Fox, Renee C. “The Evolution of American Bioethics.”

Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics. Ed. George Weisz. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. 201–217. Print.

Fox, Helen. “When Race Breaks Out”: Conversations about Race and Racism in College Classrooms. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.

Geller, Anne E., Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet. The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice.

Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2007.

Print.

Greenfield, Laura, and Karen Rowen. Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2011. Print.

Grimm, Nancy Maloney. Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook, 1999. Print.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Being Peace. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1987. Print.

---. Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York: Bantam, 1991. Print.

Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015. Print.

---. “Racism in Writing Programs and the CWPA.” WPA: Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators 40.1 (forthcoming).

Matsuda, Paul Kei. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637–651. Print.

McGill, David W. and John K. Pearce. “American Families with English Ancestors from the Colonial Era: Anglo Americans.” Ethnicity and Family Therapy. Ed. Monica McGoldrick, Joe Giordano, and Nydia Garcia-Preto. New York: Guildford Press, 1982. Print.

Myser, Catherine. “Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the

United States.” American Journal of Bioethics 3.2 (2003): 1–11. Print.

O’Reilley, Mary Rose. Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1998. Print.

Rafoth, Ben. Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers.

Logan: Utah State UP, 2015. Print.

Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, and Whiteness. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Print.

Roche, Michael. “A Pedagogy of Compassion and Hope.” South Dakota Law Review 45.1 (2000): 105– 129. Print.

Ryden, Wendy, and Ian Marshall. Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness. New York, London: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Villanueva, Victor. “Blind: Talking about the New Racism.” Writing Center Journal 26.1 (2006): 3–19.

Print.

Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2007. Print.

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