It is my distinct pleasure to introduce Issue 19.2 of Xchanges, the second installment of our most recent Graduate Symposium, which continues to explore the current state of graduate teaching experiences.

As my co-managing editor and friend, Dr. Jennifer Burke Reifman, wrote in the Editor’s Note of the first installment of the symposium, our initial idea for the recent symposium (made during an editorial meeting in late 2023) was set against what felt like a particularly tumultuous time for higher education—notwithstanding the reality that colleges and universities have often found themselves at the epicenter of ongoing cultural wars. In the short time since, however, the socio-political attacks on the foundational structures of higher learning have accelerated and intensified, as evidenced by the proliferation of anti-diversity legislation and educational gag orders taking hold across the academic landscape nationwide, among other developments. Perhaps most alarmingly, and even though no one is insulated from these attacks, the brunt of their force seems to be increasingly borne by those most vulnerable and precariously employed by higher education, including graduate student teachers—those same persons who are at the center of Xchanges’s mission.

It is precisely for this reason that I believe it is imperative, now more than ever, to amplify the voices of the authors included in this issue—to listen in earnest and with intent to their experiences. Moreover, it is precisely for this reason that I believe Xchanges serves a vital and uniquely situated role in both understanding the current disciplinary moment and in thinking about how those of us located within higher education might continue to work collectively toward the actualization of a more just future for academia writ large.

This issue extends the conversations that began in the first issue of the symposium (19.1) related to the unique complexities that inform the lived realities of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), including exploring innovative approaches to composition pedagogy. For example, in “It’s Not Just About Convenience: Multimodality and Transmodality in the FYC Classroom,” Tara Salvati explores how GTAs might productively incorporate mutli- and transmodal assignments into their teaching practices as a means to create a more equitable classroom experience for students. At the same time, Salvati remains attuned to the temporal and labor constraints that such a pedagogy necessarily applies to GTAs. Similarly, Kristen Venegas relates her experiences implementing empathy-based pedagogy as part of a first-year writing course in "Empathy for the Instructor." Venegas thoughtfully unpacks the nuances of such a pedagogical approach, both for its ability to enhance student engagement and the challenges it presents to GTAs.

Likewise, Keli Tucker, Kelsey Hawkins, Sasha Poma Mansure, and Sophia Minnillo examine how fellow GTAs can support localized, antiracist pedagogies by supporting students’ languaging practices in “Supporting Students’ Own Languages in the Writing Classroom: Adaptable Writing Assignments for Enacting Linguistic Justice in Local Contexts." The authors demonstrate firsthand how Students’ Right to Their Own Languages is arguably best understood not as a static policy statement, but as a dynamic and ongoing practice in the composition classroom. Lacey Hamilton's "Empowering Voices" serves as a valuable and compelling complement to Tucker, Hawkins, Mansure, and Minnillo. In this practice-minded piece, Hamilton offers a concrete introduction to linguistic justice-oriented pedagogies for GTAs interested in incorporating these instructional approaches into their writing classrooms.

In an act of extreme vulnerability and bravery, Cat Williams-Monardes traces the contours of trauma-informed pedagogy through her own experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, teaching with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In "Teaching With Trauma and PTSD: Navigating the Aftermath of Sexual Assault as a Graduate Student Instructor,” Williams-Monardes explores how the challenges of sexual assault and PTSD shape GTAs' academic lives as well as their uniquely situated relationships with students; in addition, she provides a concrete framework for productively enacting trauma-informed teaching practices.

In “Reclaiming Authority in the FYC Classroom as a Graduate Teaching Assistant: Using Feminist Pedagogies to Empower," Emily King examines feminist-informed pedagogies as an avenue for actualizing authority and embodied agency not only for students but also for GTA instructors. King smartly reads the authorial power of feminist-informed pedagogies against the liminal positionality occupied by many GTAs, thereby offering a rare insight into the student-teacher tension so frequently experienced by those in this position. In a similar vein, Barbara Green examines the fluid institutional identities and complex power dynamics that GTAs must constantly navigate in "Academic Leadership by Day, Student at Night." Green's experiences as a GTA who inhabits multiply-marginalized identities is especially enlightening for unpacking the inherent tension between student and instructor dynamics.

Student agency and authority are also at the center of David William’s thinking in “This Is How We Change Things: Promoting Student Agency Through Service-Learning in First-Year Composition.” In this piece, Williams makes the case for enacting service-learning pedagogies and localized community engagement as instructional vehicles that help empower students to see themselves as agents of social change. While Williams positions agency in student-centric terms, Anselma Prihandita turns to an examination of these same issues but through the lens of international GTAs and marginalized student identities in “Identity Work and Affect in the Fostering of Critical Consciousness: The Case of International Graduate Teaching Assistants.” Prihandita offers a nuanced analysis of one-on-one student interactions, exploring how these moments can be leveraged to foster critical consciousness in positive terms—toward empowerment and repair.

Finally, in a singularly unique piece, Taylor Wyatt provides a rhetorical reading of accommodation letters as a genre of writing and how they do, and don’t, intersect with accessibility in “Critical Imagining of Accommodation Letters for Transformative Access in the First-Year Composition Classroom.” Ultimately, Wyatt calls for viewing accessibility and its attendant tools, such as classroom accommodation letters, as a process rather than a discrete destination. This issue also features a Faculty Retrospective written by Dr. Kristine Acosta, which provides writers with encouragement and concrete advice for successful collaborative writing practices. Acosta's retrospective is a poignant reminder that, in an academic world that often valorizes individual scholarship, there is something profoundly powerful about thinking, working, and writing as a collective.

Reflecting on the collective draws me back to my initial thoughts from the introduction to this issue. Like David Williams (included in this issue), many of my colleagues and I also spend a great deal of time trying to strengthen the "connection between composition and justice, how the former can be used in pursuit of the latter" (1). Writing and rhetoric, as a discipline, have long been held at a strange distance in the academy, a place simultaneously a part of but always seemingly apart from the institution proper—a place not altogether dissimilar from the fringe liminality of graduate student teaching. This issue reminds me that justice infrequently, if ever, manifests itself from the inside the seat of power outward, but rather, that justice emerges from the demands for equity that start on the outside and force their way in. And that struggle, if it is to be fruitful, requires a coming together. The collective voices, therefore, in this issue remind me that hope resides in our shared commitment to meet the demands of the moment.

It’s my sincere hope that every reader enjoys and finds as much insight in reading this issue as I have.

-- manny piña, Ph.D,
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Assistant Professor of English
Writing Studies Program Coordinator

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Contents

Introduction

History

Code Switching

Code-Meshing and Translingualism

Considerations in Feedback

How I Advocate for Linguistic Justice

Your Move

Works Cited

About the Author

Introduction

My professor put on a brave face as I practically interrogated her. The class was composition pedagogy, and the topic was anti-racist pedagogy. To say I had some questions is an understatement; I had a lot of questions about students' right to their own language, which has later been described as linguistic justice. My instructor answered every successive question with patience and fairness while balancing my interrogation with the needs of the other students in our seminar. Even if she and I had been one-on-one for the full 75 minutes, it wouldn’t have been enough. I felt a sense of urgency to understand how this fit into the traditional idea of correctness and preparing students for a world outside the classroom. What does anti-racist pedagogy look like in different classrooms? Was there a middle ground that was both affirming and inclusive while preparing them for less progressive contexts? Every new answer brought another question, and I fell down the linguistic justice rabbit hole. I knew it mattered and wanted to do my part, but I had no idea where to begin, especially as a graduate student instructor (GSI). As a fellow GSI, or potentially a WPA or instructor of GSIs, I know you can relate to the challenge of navigating these complex topics. I sought people’s opinions, watched YouTube videos, read academic articles and chapters, and even resorted to exploring TikTok, trying to see every angle and option. I needed answers, and hallelujah, I found them.

It didn’t take long to discover that linguistic justice has become a central topic in composition pedagogy, and has been for a long time. While conversations about diversity in education existed as far back as the era of slavery, the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that forced desegregation of schools forced educators to face the diversity of language head-on. Over the course of decades, influential bodies like the NCTE have published landmark statements advocating for students’ right to their own language, prompting leaders in the field, such as Suresh Canagarajah, Bruce Horner, April Baker-Bell, and Vershawn Ashanti Young, to name a few, to speak out and advocate for options like code-switching, code-meshing, and translingualism as solutions to language diversity in writing classrooms. However, what is lacking from these key conversations is an accessibility point for new teachers, especially graduate student instructors (GSIs), who don’t have time to do the deep research necessary to understand the nuanced topic, let alone figure out how to decide the best option for them. I have prepared a guide for GSIs on linguistic justice in response to that need. The guide begins with a historical overview of language in academia, specifically tracing the evolution of linguistic justice and antiracist pedagogy in composition studies. Key approaches follow, including code-switching, code-meshing, and translingualism, highlighting their benefits and downfalls and potential actionable steps to take in your classroom. The final section offers practical steps for GSIs, guiding them to align their teaching practices with their values, university goals, and the needs of the students.

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Contents

Introduction

Definitions and Naming Practices

Pedagogy and Accommodations Within the Undergraduate Classroom

Conclusion: Legal Frameworks of Access

Works Cited

About the Author

Introduction

More than thirty years have passed since the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA), and major advances for access have been made. However, access remains an unfinished task, with many communities and individuals laboring to gain access that should be inherent and legally protected. Access is often thought of in terms of physical access, removing a “barrier” that might prevent someone from joining in space, such as the need for curb cuts to ensure a wheelchair user can safely navigate a street. Technical and professional communication scholar Lisa Melonçon defines accessibility more expansively, writing, “the material practice of making social and technical environments and texts as readily available, easy to use, and understandable to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities” (5). Access can be understood as the ability to engage with a space in addition to the material objects found (or absent) in a space.  

Despite idealistic premises of the academy, higher education institutions are often inaccessible. I have experienced what some mentally disabled and Mad people call the diagnosis du jour, or diagnosis of the day (Prendergast 192). The psychiatric system has diagnosed me under a wide range of conditions and disorders in my early adulthood. Changes in diagnostic criteria can have significant impacts upon one’s lived experience – changing prescriptions/prescription dosages, new treatments, and the identity impacts that come with new medical language. As an undergraduate, after a year-long medical leave of absence from school, I met with Utah State University’s Disability Resource Center. The individual I worked with said there was nothing they could do to help me, presumably because of the nature of my diagnoses. Broadly, this project seeks to reduce the harm I encountered as an undergraduate student who was told the university could not help me. My experiences with ineffective academic systems are not unique to me. As Anderson et al. note, a significant number of students are unaware of the accommodation options they have. They write, “according to a 2020 survey (Mental Health America, 2020), 70% of students with mental health disabilities were not registered to obtain accommodations, and 33% stated they were not aware they were eligible” (Anderson et al. 6).

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) and instructor of record for first-year composition (FYC) courses, I have often received accommodation letters on behalf of my students. Often, the accommodation notes something that does not exist in FYC, such as additional time for exams and quizzes. Building upon my own identities as a person and scholar, in this article, I set out to investigate the relationship between accommodation letters and access in FYC classrooms and argue that the accommodation letter is only a starting point for the ongoing enterprise of access.

Despite academic institutions’ legal, moral, and pedagogical responsibility to ensure all students have access to their learning spaces, accommodation at a higher education institution requires student labor before anything can be done. Students need to submit documentation of their Mad identity and/or disability to a designated campus office to obtain formal academic accommodations at a university. This automatically excludes students who are unable (or unaware) to secure a medical diagnosis – a requirement complicated by the uneven barriers to acquiring medical care. The office then sends letters to all applicable instructors on behalf of the student. These letters serve multiple functions beyond simply resolving student access needs; the letters exist to address pedagogical concerns, student access fatigue, and moral concerns about access, but often prioritize legal compliance.

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Contents

Introduction

Conceptualizing Sexual Trauma and PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Challenges of Teaching with Sexual Trauma as a Graduate Student Instructor

Integrating Trauma-Informed Pedagogy, Critical Disability Theory, and Networks of Care

Reframing Shame

Building Community

Evolving Assessment Practices

Concluding Thoughts

References

About the Author

Introduction

Content warning: This article contains explicit discussion of sexual assault, trauma, and related mental health impacts. Please engage with care.

On January 1, 2020, I was sexually assaulted by a man I’d never met. I emerged from the experience with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), derailing my last semester of doctoral coursework. Now, as a dissertating student in my fourth year of teaching First Year Composition, I navigate those same effects daily. When first teaching, I frequently lost my train of thought. I was easily fatigued. I couldn’t look at my computer screen for more than two hours without igniting a debilitating migraine. I grieved my former mind and body. While I have made extensive progress—both psychologically and physically—I am still working through functional freeze (a phenomenon I shall further explore), which impacts both my teaching and studies. Logically (and bolstered by #MeToo), I know I’m hardly alone in my experiences, yet still I struggle with lingering shame that breeds a sense of isolation from my colleagues. Nevertheless, trauma has shaped who I am as a student and instructor. While I will never conceptualize my rape as beneficial, I do understand more intimately my students’ experiences with trauma.

I recognize the prevalence of mental health struggles, of which trauma is but one source. The year I was raped, in this very journal, Miller (2020) advocated networks of care to support graduate students’ mental health by forging collaborations and strengthening the bonds we students feel towards one another.  Building on Miller’s (2020) ideas, I explore here an understudied facet of that mental health: the challenges of teaching with sexual assault trauma, which over 20% of individuals will at some point experience (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2022), and the PTSD that often proves its companion (Dworkin, 2020). Rhetoric and composition scholarship certainly recognizes the reality of sexual violence. Yet, we have not fully interrogated its connection to graduate student writing instructors, who must cope with the effects of trauma while navigating a complex role within the university (Adams, 2020; Moore, 2021; Sharp, 2022).

My purpose here is to articulate common challenges faced by sexual assault survivors who teach and study writing (namely, retraumatization, increased depression and anxiety, functional freeze, and shame), underscoring how these challenges shape our academic lives and our relationships with students who have undergone similar events. By exploring the impacts of sexual trauma and engaging trauma-informed pedagogy to support graduate student instructors, I seek to validate their experiences and offer evidence-based practices to improve them, focusing especially on classroom assessment strategies designed to accommodate the effects of trauma. With this article, I also endeavor to offer graduate program instructors and administrators insight that will help them support their student instructors.

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Contents

Introduction

Defining Terms

Multimodality and Transmodality in the Classroom

Introducing Multimodality

Remixing and Revising

Providing Feedback

Equity, Time Management, and the Graduate Teaching Assistant

Affordances and Constraints of Multimodality and Transmodality

Personal Examples and Reflections

Conclusion

Works Cited

About the Author

Introduction

We are constantly in the flow of multimodality from what to wear, what and when to Tweet, when to use caps versus lower case letters; there are so many choices when we communicate. Yet, there remains a veil of secrecy around what experts in production, design, and multimodality know and do (Rowsell 1).

Teaching a first-year composition class can be difficult. Most students in the first-year composition classroom are there because it is required for their degree, which can lead to issues with engagement. These students may not see the value in the course or what they will be accomplishing in it. Often, they do not really have much interest in writing; however, engaging students in modes that interest and resonate with them will allow them to connect to the course material more easily.

Utilizing multimodal and/or transmodal texts, activities, and assignments can allow for the practices learned in first-year composition to be used universally in students’ college careers (Rowsell 2). While this paper is not arguing for a fully online, first-year composition course developed by and utilizing Generative AI, it is advocating for a strategic and intentional use of different versions of access to help students walk away from first-year composition better than when they entered it. A machine cannot make these improvements, but the instructors tasked with navigating an ever-evolving field must take the initiative.

It has never been easier for individuals to gain insights, knowledge, and differing opinions than it is now. Because we reside within a society that is dependent on technology, it is vital that these ideas and concepts get transferred into classrooms in an effective and meaningful way. This can be accomplished using multimodality and transmodality in the first-year composition classroom. These ideas are not just about convenience. By providing texts, activities, and lessons that are both multimodal and transmodal, first-year composition instructors can move towards a classroom that is more equitable for all students who enter.