I've already got a great group of colleagues who are considering putting something together for #4C27, and it is indeed exciting. I'm also hoping to continue working with my panel from #4C26, though, so it may get tricky!
#TYCA26 and Cs gave me tons to think about, most of it practical right now!
This year's #TYCA26 was everything it always is: engaging, welcoming, and fulfilling.
This year's #4C26 was better than some I've attended, but that's partially from building my network. Were teaching awards given this year? I didn't hear them mentioned, which made me feel less welcome as a teacher.
Okay, that is all the #TYCA26 for me, as I now have VERY IMPORTANT MEETINGS and such next. But what a lovely conference, and conversations alongside!
Really digging the discussion here of making rhetorical listening as wayfinding towards equitable institutional policy! Take a look at the materials upthread; seems helpful as a framework.
(Banerjee, #TYCA26)
"Burnout is not a character flaw. It is an institutional product that only institutions can dismantle."
(daaaaaaang)
(Banerjee, #TYCA26)
Excellent comparison between what colleges ask us to do vs. what they actually support us doing. Compassion, so often trumpeted as an institutional value, is often just lip service that offloads labor onto faculty.
(Banerjee, #TYCA26)
Next up, "Trauma-Informed Policies For Faculty Teaching at Open Access Institutions" from Suchismita Banerjee! She smoothly transitions by mentioning how AI is traumatizing us, lol.
drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mo...
(Banerjee, #TYCA26)
I dig Nora's metaphor of how students' brains are muscles that they need to work out and develop, which AI won't let them do.
(Nora, #TYCA26)
Emphasizing student voice does help her grapple with many GenAI issues, bc AI has no voice of its own--it's a melange of stolen voices.
(Nora, #TYCA26)
But Nora also points out how explicitly talking about AI pulls so much time when they could instead be focusing on, y'know, *the students and their writing.*
(Nora, #TYCA26)
Nora's institution is all-in on MLA, which makes using MLA's GenAI policy a natural inclusion to class.
www.mla.org/Publications...
(Nora, #TYCA26)
Next up, "Fostering Student Voices in an Age of Generative AI'" with Krystia Nora!
(Nora, #TYCA26)
They also asked us to indicate what things act as barriers to attendance for students, and my list was looooooong. And then they taped up all our stuff on the walls so we can do a li'l gallery walk!
(Golding & Savaglio, #TYCA26)
Questions they're asking us (by providing fun charts to handsketch infographics): Graphing how attendance has changed over the past decade, emojis to reflect attendance at our institutions, pie charts to reflect how much agency students have over their own attendance.
(Golding & Savaglio, #TYCA26)
A greaaaaat topic, because as the presenters articulate what I have always thought: The issue of passing a class is often because students aren't showing up, not because they aren't getting the material.
(Golding & Savaglio, #TYCA26)
Next up, "Conversations on Attendance: Discussions and Reflections for Student Success" from Ian Golding & Micah Savaglio!
(Golding & Savaglio, #TYCA26)
Someone asked for book recommendations, and I didn't catch all of them, but Natalie Shapiro's "Stay Dead" and this poetry (linked) are the ones I caught.
www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/the-ne...
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
The goal, he says is "have structure but not hierarchy," which means also having the students read his work aloud. (I dig that!)
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
re: another question about how he runs the high school student workshop--he helps them "train" by having them critique something he himself wrote. And encourages them to tell him if they don't like it, and how! Which sounds really validating and equalizing.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
re: a question about disappointment and hope, he notes, "Disappointment is the engine of my opposition," and of his need and focus on deep care. Writing, really, is his desire to build a bridge to other people.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
"I don't have a lot of formal training in writing but I have a lot of training in close listening."
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
"You can afford real diginity to people on the page," if you honor the way they genuinely speak, and "if you honor the way you speak, the work is halfway done for you."
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
I love this phrasing he uses: "The musicality of oral tradition," and how each oral tradition has a different kind of music to it.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
He's really invoking Tori Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston and how much he relies on their influence, which is beautiful. "Write as you speak," he suggests we tell students, because there's a rhythm and cadence of authenticity that people *will* recognize.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
I sort of love a lot of the questions from the audience, one of which was back to his book, "There's Always Next Year," ("How do you...do that?") and also, hey, what advice from you can we take back to our students?
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
"Genre demands to be flexible," so ask people to write from the heart and worry about genre later. "It leads to a wellspring of greatness," where you're not writing "brain-first, but heart-first."
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
We can see the football stadium from this room, and he describes as what kid might have dreamed of as the result of an endless LEGO set. LOL.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
"You are someone in the pursuit of deep feeling," in search of ways to pay attention, and the goal is that they all can work together to pursue those goals.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
Students might not care "that I've published a book, or that I've won a stupid award," because he wants to de-emphasize his own work and, instead, develop a sense that they're all writers in the room, and they all can help *each other* get better.
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
How can we foster this kind of feeling in our own students, who might have received more negative messaging in their lives? How do we help *them* think about doing this kind of work in the future?
(Abdurraqib, #TYCA26)
