Although Chavez focuses more on creative writing in her book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom, she presents an interesting approach to decolonizing the classroom through the act of writing and is an oft-cited resource when it comes to developing an ABAR writing classroom. Written from a feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial perspective, Chapter 2 promotes the teaching of writing from an embodied and experiential point of view, through which she reclaims the act of \u201cmothering\u201d (p. 44) as an alternative to the prevalent model of having students \u201cstruggle on their own\u201d (p. 46). She reframes mothering, not as coddling students (an association she rebukes for its misogyny), but as listening and learning from students (i.e., the reciprocal engagement in meaningful dialogue), and prioritizing communities of care, in order to encourage students to bring their authentic selves to the classroom, and to their writing.<\/p>\n
She speaks out against what Paulo Freire has labelled the \u201cbanking system of education\u201d (p. 46)\u2014which sees instructors as depositors, with information \u201cdeposited\u201d in a top-down fashion into the minds of students (where the latter\u2019s agency is diminished by treating them as passive repositories, whose work it is to simply memorize and mirror knowledge). This approach to education is extremely damaging and works to perpetuate oppressive systems, because it prevents dialogue and \u201cauthentic thinking\u201d from taking place (p. 46). It also serves to continue privileging members already benefiting from the existing status quo. She writes that: A banking system of education inherently disservices students of color, whose centralized racial identity\u2014 a direct influence on voice\u2014 is denied as credible currency. It underserves students of color who do not seem themselves mirrored in positions of power in the academy. To \u201cstruggle on their own\u201d is yet another attempt at erasure. (p. 46)
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\nChavez argues that diversifying the writing classroom is imperative to retaining students of colour. Through her reconceptualization of \u201cmothering\u201d, Chavez champions listening to students, \u201callowing space for them to use their voices\u201d and acknowledging the reciprocity of knowledge-making, thus seeing teachers and students arranged, not in a hierarchical construction, but rather as knowledge partners (p. 47).<\/p>\n
Cordon and Young\u2019s anthology (2016) unpacks anti-racist pedagogy in three sections: \u201cActionable Commitments,\u201d \u201cIdentity Matters,\u201d and \u201cIn the Classroom.\u201d Specifically, In \u201cMaking Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable,\u201d Diab et al. tackle how to transform commitments to antiracism into concrete action, arguing that it begins with a \u201cwillingness to be disturbed\u201d (p. 20). Cautioning that racial justice work is inevitably fraught, Diab et al. chart a process from honest and rigorous self-work to collaborating with others in order to effect larger institutional change. They highlight the entrenched systems of power within institutions that require an interconnected and dialogue-based approach so that change happens at a level beyond just the personal.<\/p>\n
Poe\u2019s essay, \u201cReframing Race in Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum,\u201d meanwhile locates race in the specific classrooms, instructors, and students involved in writing pedagogy. After providing an overview of the ways race is often framed in writing classes (e.g., multicultural frame), Poe instead proposes thinking about race as local and material, starting with the specific students in a given course. From there, she suggests an inventorying of expectations and stereotypes that both students and instructors bring to writing instruction and assessment in order to understand what changes need to be effected. The essay ends by stressing the racialized nature of standard English, and the need to recognize global Englishes versus a decontextualized privileging of one linguistic form.<\/p>\n
In their article, Gere et al. propose \u201cCritical Language Awareness\u201d (CLA) as a \u201cproactive response to standard language ideologies and the negative consequences these ideologies have long authorized: ranking and sorting students in discriminatory ways\u201d (pp. 384-5). CLA does not ask students to simply learn and emulate existing \u201cstandards\u201d (p. 395). It also goes beyond the instructor merely accepting or tolerating alternative modes of expression (p. 393). Instead, it encourages faculty and students to engage in a critical analysis of dominant standards by learning about \u201clanguage change, historical processes of standardization, distinctions between descriptive and prescriptive grammars, and an awareness that terms like \u201cconventions\u201d are grounded in standard language ideologies\u201d (p. 385).<\/p>\n
This approach to language also allows students to think critically about genre, \u201cempowering writers to think about whether they want to meet or challenge the expectations of discourse communities\u201d (p. 399). In a writing course that focuses on introducing students to scholarly genres, this kind of approach might be aided by assigning research articles that demonstrate how those genres are contested or revised. For example, one might look at changing norms around positionality and reflexivity in research writing, which are often particularly visible in disciplines like women\u2019s studies or Indigenous studies that aim to disrupt hegemonic research frameworks. For more on this topic – although not in an explicitly anti-racist context – see Bawarshi and Reiff (2010) on \u201ccritical awareness of genre\u201d (pp. 189-200).<\/p>\n
In his book, Labor-Based Grading Contracts, Inoue argues that grading writing quality by a single, fixed (implicitly white) standard, \u201cdoes make your grading methods and your grading ecology in your classroom racist\u201d (9). In response, he proposes labor-based grading contracts as a strategy for being, not fair exactly, but less unfair in the context of larger unjust structures and institutions (p. 46).
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\nIn chapter 4, he provides a practical overview of labor-based contract grading. He begins by negotiating the contract with students and explaining its principles. In doing so, he compares his classroom to a yoga or cooking class in which learning rather than grades is the goal; he explains to students that grades negatively impact learning, and prevent risk-taking (p. 144). Then, he proceeds to grade students exclusively on labor expended toward learning in the course. Students who complete all required activities and attend all classes get a default grade of B. Marks are taken off for each late or missed assignment\/class but otherwise he does not mark homework at all (he does still read everything and provide feedback where possible) (p. 131). Students can achieve an A by taking on a range of additional tasks. In chapter 6, Inoue addresses questions that are often raised about his approach, including: \u201cDon\u2019t some students want or need grades so that they know how well they are doing\u201d and \u201cHow can a teacher maintain high standards while using grading contracts?\u201d<\/p>\n
Those interested in Inoue\u2019s approach may find his blog a helpful resource as well. Inoue\u2019s approach also resonates with the recent movement towards ungrading, championed by Jesse Stommel and others. For more on ungrading, see Blum\u2019s book Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (2020). Notably, Inoue\u2019s approach has also been challenged from a disability studies perspective. For more on that, see The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading by Ellen Carillo (2021).<\/p>\n
As the foremost scholar in antiracist writing assessments, Inoue serves as an important starting point for considering how race functions in standard English as well as in writing textbooks and classrooms. His blog post (2021) unpacks the Habits of White Language (HOWL), basically the norms of standard English that cover over its White assumptions through a pretense of neutrality and objectivity. He asks instructors of writing to make transparent standard language ideology (SLI) to students and to work towards destabilising it.<\/p>\n
The first chapter, \u201cThe Function of Race in Writing Assessments,\u201d of his book Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies (2015) argues for the systemic embeddedness of race and racism within writing classrooms. Inoue makes explicit the link between standard English and a racial hierarchy, providing evidence for the material effects on students of this link. He encourages instructors to consider diverse forms of English beyond the dominant one in order to better reflect the realities of local student populations.<\/p>\n
Tuck and Gaztambide-Fern\u00e1ndez (2013) point to the ways settlers erase and replace Indigenous people through absorbing aspects of Indigenous knowledge that pose a challenge to white supremacy so as to ensure the survival of settler coloniality. Although this article does not speak to writing studies explicitly, it is worth attending to how the project of replacement, which continues to enforce colonization and racism, may be present in \u201cwell-intentioned\u201d efforts to Indigenize our course offerings, as well as engage in \u201cbrowning\u201d curriculum, or address critiques of academic knowledge production advanced through critical race theory and multiculturalism. Tuck and Gaztambide-Fern\u00e1ndez identify problems in curriculum studies that have emerged from these efforts. They present rematriating curriculum and refusing research as two approaches that shut down settler logics of accumulation and elimination.<\/p>\n
Tuck and Yang (2014) describe the ways that research remains a \u201cdirty word\u201d among many Native communities, ghettorized, Orientalized, and other communities of \u201coverstudied Others\u201d as social science research fails to be deeply ethical, meaningful, or useful for the individual or community being researched. They argue that despite developments, such as post-civil rights reforms, and decolonization discourses in academic spaces, social science still often tends to collect stories of pain, humiliation, trauma through damage-centered research. In relation to settler colonial dynamics of conquest, they forward a framework of refusal within research activities as ways to think about humanizing researchers and address \u201cthe often unquestioned limits of research\u201d (224). In so doing, they address forms of knowledge that the academy doesn\u2019t deserve and occasions when research may not be the intervention that is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chavez, F.R. (2021). The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. Haymarket Books. ProQuest: https:\/\/ebookcentral.proquest.com\/lib\/ubc\/detail.action?docID=6184198 Although Chavez focuses more on creative writing in her book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom, she presents an interesting approach to decolonizing the classroom through the act of writing and is an oft-cited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101866,"featured_media":228,"parent":49,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-62","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101866"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions\/286"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/antiracisttoolkit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}