But that is okay. Although an often-quoted self-help book encourages aspiring successful people to “begin with the end in mind,” our work on the collaboration contract helped provide a set of expectations for moving forward. We know how we will arrive at the end, even if we do not know yet what the end result of our research will be. While I felt alone during my first weeks of class in English 102, I did not have that feeling in English 713. Here, I am surrounded by a group committed to shared expectations and professional goals. We have a purpose to gather data to support a conclusion about the diverse languages, dialects, composition practices, and resources that UW-Milwaukee students use in their daily lives as they move across campus spaces. And, the results of our research has the potential to shape our own, and our campus’ view of student language and writing, from a deficit, to an understanding of linguistic diversity and complex communication navigation skills. ​

We have fourteen weeks of theory resting between our ears. Throughout the semester, we’ve interrogated how language, culture, and race are theorized in the field of composition and rhetoric. Importantly, our understanding of these theories has not been developed in isolation. We did not read tucked away in the library or at our desks over our lunch breaks, only to sit and ponder these ideas in isolation. Each Thursday evening, we convened in a small simple room to talk, to question, to criticize, and to understand. We engaged in rhetoric to convey ideas and relied on literacies to understand our texts and each other. Through our linguistic repertoires, we engaged in a collaborative social process to develop our ideas. We navigated meanings, and hopefully, developed an attuned orientation towards the interaction of race, culture, and the practice of language.  

This is where we are, shortly after our penultimate class meeting, in the moment that I sit down to converse with you about our experience. Our professor challenged us before our discussion, “What is theory?”, and an underlying question rose to the surface, “How do we apply theory in practice?”. These questions seemed to shape the conversation during the first half of our weekly gathering.  

Echoing and enforcing our ongoing semester-long dialogue, we dug into the theory and practice of translingual approaches to literacy and writing. Drawing upon the words of Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur, one classmate oriented us towards a recurring theme from not only this week’s readings, but also from across the semester. We were reminded that stances of openness towards language and literacy practice require us to view “language differences and fluidities as resources to be preserved, developed and utilized” (Horner et al., 2011, p. 304). This flexible view of language, taking a position that language is an inherently dynamic process rather than a static perfection, allows the space to ponder Horner et al.’s recognition that “we are all language learners” (p. 304). In class there was an acknowledgement that, for some, this is a profound perceptual change to the nature of language. What are the implications of this reoriented perspective, of engaging in what A. Suresh Canagarajah terms “linguistic pluralism”?  

No longer is language a thing to be tamed, taught, and tested. Rather, it assumes mutable organic qualities we often associate with living beings; growing, changing, responding, and evolving. The translingual approach pushes this concept a bit further. Language cannot be wrangled into a singular truth--because core to its nature is difference. According to Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner, “difference is the norm” (2013, p. 585). In class we pushed this theory towards practice by recognizing that there is not a singular way of speaking or writing. Linguistic practices are not monolithic, and we ought to keep this orientation at front of mind when we work with students. We must create environments where students can draw upon their personal linguistic repertoires not only to navigate, but also to co-create the contextual language practice in our learning spaces. An act Lu and Horner have cited as language sedimentation.   

After discussing Jerry Won Lee’s Beyond Translingual Writing we intentionally moved the conversation towards the practical application of translingual approaches. How can we make these ideas work for us and our students? Linguistic agency, the ability of language users to recognize and control their own practice and experience with language, can inform the way we understand our student’s language practices. We can assess linguistic agency by incorporating reflective writing into our curricula, and in conjunction, committing to engaging in dialogue with our students regarding their language production.  

Even though we engaged in a rich and rigorous discussion, I still wonder about Won Lee’s linguistic social justice, something we only briefly touched on. Or, what about the relationship between language practices and power dynamics? These might be theoretical questions for the next class to tackle.    

It is imperative to note that there is no set of practices, no how-to guide, no tricks of the trade. The translingual approach, is an orientation, not a dogma. Therefore, it serves as a guide that ought to be thoughtfully and lovingly applied in our specific contexts. The embodiment of this orientation in our practice might create a space where students--each in possession of a unique linguistic finger print--can freely engage in the social nature of language, collaboratively constructing the norms of practice. 

ben t.

English for Academic Purposes (EAP, henceforth) at UW-Milwaukee offers ranges of courses for these students for whom English is not the first/only language/dialect. EAP students come from different language and cultural backgrounds and gather as one community with one purpose—to get better at English. However, #uwm812 exposes us to readings that challenges our long-held beliefs regarding this community, especially with regards to student errors/mistakes. Especially thinking about the early readings, for example Mina Shaughnessy’s Errors & Expectations raised intriguing questions student errors produced by Basic Writers (BW). Also, Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children also highlights the debate surrounding standard vs non-standard English that gets to the very definition of what should be considered standard English. Both Shaughnessy and Delpit discuss student community who has multilingual and multidialectal language background—something Vershawn Ashanti Young and Suresh Canagarajah also underline in their works.

EAP students’ mistakes can be open for interpretation, or better yet, up for debate depending on who is looking at it or from what angle. EAP teachers from a pure linguistic point of view may see a rather non-standard language form as a mistake while a first-year writing instructor may see it from a rather rhetorical vantage point. Just thinking about the word “mistake” itself, the question is who is missing the take (pun intended) on the apparent student error? Suresh Canagarajah’s piece “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued” that we read gives a good example for this complex issue. Canagarajah examines the Chinese student’s “peculiar” use of “can able to” in the same sentence as that makes sense in the student’s first language. However, judging solely from prescriptive grammatical rules of standard English, “can able to” is an error of redundancy since “can” and “be able to” has interchangeable meaning in English.

Now this can be ruled out just as a discreet and individual example. However, my personal experience teaching EAP students at UWM resonates with Canagarajah’s example. During my tenure at UWM EAP, one of my Saudi students pronounced the word “people” as “beoble”. Another student with Arabic language background would pronounce the word usually (with P sound) but write “beoble” when he would write it on paper. Now because of my familiarity with Arabic language, I know Arabic does not really have “p” sound in it. So, these apparent mistakes were rather transfer from their first/other language. Therefore, this community of students who are dynamic in their linguistic repertoire, may produce language forms that is apparently erroneous, but actually stem from their meta-linguistic abilities. Students with more than one language may make apparent mistake that is open for such interpretation. When EAP students make these apparent mistakes, there may be more than just grammatical errors that is happening there.

I am using the word “apparent” here because on face value they may seem like a mistake however, upon deeper reflection, and also possible active negotiation with students these mistakes may come out as another form of language. I am echoing Canagarajah here, “To meet these objectives, rather than focusing on correctness, we should perceive "error" as the learner's active negotiation and exploration of choices and possibilities.” (593). However, does this mean a student never make mistakes or every mistake is some sort of meta-linguistic activity? I do not have a definitive answer to this question.  It is complicated to say the least, and students do make mistakes.           

So, how do we approach this student community in terms of assessing them? One way to go about it, is to talk with the student in person to find out what he/she was thinking while s/he was languaging. Also, important is more coordination between teacher communities too since teachers from different background may look at these mistakes differently. For example, looking from a language instructional perspective, mistakes may seem just like mistakes. However, teachers of rhetoric may look at these mistakes from a rhetorical standpoint. I am not saying one is better/more important than the other, on the contrary one (language instruction/teaching) can complement the other (rhetoric). Therefore, as much as we need to think about student communities, we should also think about teacher communities too. Teaching and learning both are communal.
 

This week’s readings were Rebecca Lorimer Leonard’s “Multilingual Writing as Rhetorical Attunement” and A. Suresh Canagarajah’s “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued .”  Both authors work with ESL / TEOFL and multilingual teaching & writing.  Below are some highlights from both the articles and the class discussion.
 
The class discussion centered on fostering strategies and values to teaching multilingual writing and speaking. The general concerns were basically how to serve students to the best of their ability, and how teachers may want to consider different approaches and what do teachers value when it comes to language learning and composition in the classroom.
 
Pluralism and Space
Canagarajah supports a “pluralizing composition” (p.587) or the co-existence of approaches between multilingualism and monolingual standards.  He explains, “they compel us to think of English as a plural language that embodies many norms and standards” (p.589).  Primarily, what new strategies or approaches can teachers provide which students can use in their writing and speaking now (‘pedagogy of space’ as he puts it) rather than over a period of time as proposed by Elbow’s two-pronged approach (p.598)? 
 
 Key Highlights from the Class Discussion

• World Englishes (WE) – rule-governed or establish norms (p. 588) & Metropolitan English (ME) “native” varieties (p. 588).

 

• Strategies teachers should strive for, 1) treating differences of language as a resource; 2) language shuttling or language negotiation is a positive thing.

 

• Awareness that the value of composition tends is tied to a hierarchy or levels of writing. Thus, academic writing tends to have more weight than other types of writing.

 

• There is a tendency to assign value more to race and color than to ability; and we are all novices of each other’s dialects.  Canagarajah’s explains it is “more appropriate to use terms such as expert and novice that don’t invoke the considerations of blood, family, or race to describe proficiency” (p.590).

 

• The practice of language negotiation needs to be explored more.  The need to look at errors from a rhetorical point of view and make a conscious choice by asking the student - “why did you select the words that you used?”

 

• Metalinguistic Awareness, do we negotiate with the student how they want their language assessed?  If the student is a novice, how do we teach rather than assuming how they write and speak? 

 
Rhetorical Attunement & Sensibility
Lorimer Leonard explains “how writing across languages and locations in the world fosters as rhetorical attunement: a literate understanding that assumes multiplicity and invites the negotiation of meaning across difference” (p.228).  She also states, literate repertoires are not static (p.228), and language learning is interactive, engaging and it entails language negotiation.  She further explains, “one way to think about this difference —monolingual writers hear a note; multilingual writers hear a chord” (p.244). 
 
Other Highlights from the Class Discussion

• Language is “messy,” and not fixed. It is fluid and is the embodiment of playing with language (p.233) and must navigating through it.

 

• Breakdown in communication can bring tension.  What does it look like when trying to communicate? It can be frustrating, but you work through it. 

 

• Assessment when working with ESL/TOEFL students involves decisions of 1) what’s vital as to why and what to assess; and 2) regarding writing and translation with the goal to ensure social justice.

 

• Why assessment practices tend to affect people of color negatively? Perhaps, 1) we do not think to ask the question; and 2) hopefully, teachers can start to ask the question and get the answers they need to assess effectiveness and look at assessment as a shared goal.

 
A side note: Although I was a little intimidated in taking this class and since I do not come from an English composition and teaching background, I wanted to give a shout out to the instructor and the classmates for the sharing of their thoughts, and experiences on Rhetoric and Composition.
 
Best wishes to all of you in both your teaching and academic careers.
-MH

  Last week we read Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, edited by Django Paris and H. Samy Alim. Various contributors in the book advocate for pedagogical paradigm shift through chapter-length discussions where shedding light on the diverse experiences—linguistic, cultural and literate of the marginalized people is argued as a way to rethink dominant classroom practices. Such pedagogies, namely culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) may also effectively circumvent erasure of other people’s lived experiences. Personally, culturally sustaining pedagogies and culturally relevant pedagogies (CRP) are new. Some of the distinct threads of discussion that dominated our conversation in class about the book were a) the humane and touching rationale behind these pedagogies, b) the kairotic urgency to incorporate CSP-focused themes and action plans in the form of assignments and curriculum now more than any other times and c) last but not the least, the practical challenges that come along the way.   
  Thematically, Paris and Alim’s book aligns with last week’s read—Eric Pritchard’s Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Pritchard's book also makes a similar urge to focusing our attention to love and compassion to fellow human beings. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies added that incorporating these emotions in pedagogical practices can bring students closer to the authority figures—the teachers. Centering them can narrow the agency gap between the two parties—teacher and students. We also agreed on the role of teachers in opening up to the students as the book identifies that (opening up) as a key step in reaching out to the students. In connection with this theme, chapter 6 in particular, highlights the idea of “sacred truth spaces” where students feel safe “to engage in the often vulnerable act of telling and hearing multiple truths” (103).  Classrooms in this context can be the “space” to foster this sense of safety which enables students and teachers to have “humanizing dialogues”. However, we also stressed on cautions teachers should exercise while opening up to their students, being rhetorical about it—knowing when and to what extent.  Regarding caution, we also added how teachers sometimes can reinforce the existing racism even if they are well-meaning and trying to center marginalized students in the classroom. For example, sometimes a well-meaning teacher’s attempt to discuss indigenous/minority cultures may alienate those students in class as they may not be comfortable discussing those issues publicly. Also, they may not identify strongly with their heritage cultures. Considering the tentative complications associated with this issue, teachers may then be rhetorically strategic in approaching them. For example, talking to them in person about their interests and associations may be one way to go about doing this.   
  The introduction of such pedagogical theories in many cases and incorporation in some may only be a start in the long way that we need to go before we see tangible changes. This led the class conversation to the challenges that lie in incorporating them in the curriculum. One of the challenges teachers face in integrating these pedagogies to their classroom practices is the rigidity of institutional curriculum that hardly leaves any room for diversifying them. Another problem is the standardized tests that students have to take, and teachers need to teach them to. However, we all agreed that we can make individual steps, as small as they are, and insignificant they may seem. Even reading these books are part of the change we desire since they help us shape our own ideas about the desired changes.     

  Towards the end of the class, we talked about how love and compassion centric pedagogies such as CSP can be a way forward. This pedagogical approach does have the potential, for lack of better terms, to make a dent in the status-quo of the turbulent times we live in. The session concluded with positive vibes, hoping for a better (classroom) future. For personal resonance with themes like sacred truth spaces, humanizing classroom spaces this book really hits home with me. The book and subsequent class conversation got me thinking about situating CSP more in the classes that I teach since they are populated increasingly by students with diverse backgrounds.
--AR

Django Paris and H. Samy Alim’s Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Social Justice in a Changing World (2017) presents essays written by Paris and Alim and other educators who work with youth from Xicanx, Latinx, Indigenous, African-American, and im/migrant communities in various programs, courses, and schools. Exploring the question, “what is the purpose of schooling in pluralistic societies?” (p.1), the authors decenter the norms and agendas of White culture and reframe questions about schooling around youth from communities of color.
​
Through the discussions of culturally sustaining pedagogies, a pivotal question in the book is, “what are we sustaining?” Though responses in the essays are complex and multifaceted, three intertwined strands we discussed in class are:

1. The cultural wealth and practices of communities
Though fluid and continually evolving, this cultural wealth is anchored in long-standing ways of knowing, learning, and being in the world and, in turn, sustains communities faced with colonial aggression.

One example several classmates highlighted was Indigenous “Elder pedagogies” which are rooted in the sacred and secular wisdom of the people and embodied by the Elders, and which sustain and situate younger generations in “the relational, intergenerational circle” that “ensure the collective survival, continuance, and transformation” of the people (Holmes and González, p.220).

2. The cultural and linguistic practices of students
Paris and Alim argue educators must “attend to the emerging, intersectional and dynamic ways in which [cultural practices] are lived and used by young people” (p.9). One example we discussed was Hip Hop pedagogies - not merely to superficially engage youth - but to understand, honor, and learn from youth and their cultural expressions while also teaching them to problematize the discourse of exclusion embedded in Hip Hop.

An important point here, which Ladson-Billings’s essay underscores, is the call for teachers to not be the expert, but to be open to learning and being led by the students’ needs as well as their expertise; thus, dismantling the normalized student-teacher relationship, students and teachers co-construct the space, the materials, and the terms of learning.

3. The ability to resist and interrogate the dominant culture
In the context of schooling, through Eurocentric and assimilationist curricula, practices and policies, the dominant culture sets the norms by which youth from non-dominant cultures are evaluated and routinely found deficient.

We discussed youth languaging which is linguistically innovative and often reflects the hybrid, multilingual identities of youth. From the vantage point of “the White gaze”, or the lens of raciolinguistic ideology as Rosa and Flores conceptualize it, “non-standard” language use is seen as inappropriate and a deficit that needs to be corrected. Why? Not because the language is wrong, flawed or in need of fixing; rather, the perception is “anchored in… ideologies that conflate certain racialized persons with linguistic deficiency irrespective of their empirical linguistic practices” (p.177). Deconstructing the ideology, however, teachers and students may adopt a different lens that frames youth languaging as a demonstration of linguistic flexibility, competence, and dexterity. As a teacher of English Language Learners, I realize there is a tendency in the profession and in my own practice to emphasize Dominant American English and “correct deficits” in student writing, so this struck home for me and is a call for critical self-reflection.
 
Vis-à-vis the urgency of a transformative critical consciousness, at the beginning of class and in response to the previous week’s two deadly hate crimes at a Kroger store in Louisville and a synagogue in Pittsburg, Rachel asked us to reflect on a tweet by Django Paris:

​As the tweet painfully reminds us, CSP is not only about pedagogies that affirm and build on youth’s agency; it is literally about survival: survival of communities, cultural knowledge, and language – yes – but also the survival of living bodies subject to state-sanctioned violence in the form of police brutality or to hate crime and terrorism, as the tweet alludes to. Many classmates expressed despair over current events, a despair which I share.
​
However, a prevailing tone throughout all the essays in the book is one of possibility and resiliency. Examples include the survivance of cultures through enslavement, genocide, and other colonialist forms of oppression, but also individual narratives of maintaining hope, desire, love, and joy. Wong and Peña emphasize the necessity of considering “the joy that lives besides pain”, and, integral to CSP, “We need to work toward developing a literacy of joy and pleasure that lives beside a proactive attentiveness to discomfort and pain” (p.133). I want to end on this note because I think such a dual literacy is the essence of sustenance and a catalyst for social transformation. -GPF