From the Start – Joyce Meier
When students come to our classes, what are their expectations? How can we embed, from the start, an anti-racist framework in our teaching? How can we signal to students that the course aims to be inclusive, and way beyond white “majority” culture, with its emphasis on “standard” English? How can we encourage students from dominant cultures (white, U.S., “native” English-speaking) to see from a perspective of the ‘global majority’?
Incorporating your own preferred pronouns and a Land Acknowledgement Statement into your syllabus are other obvious ways to set a tone in your class, to invite discussion, and to make inclusion axiomatic, rather than the exception. The land acknowledgement, for instance, can create an uneasy opportunity to draw student attention to the tensions between MSU’s touted history of being a land grant institution, and the displacement of indigenous tribes that took place, to make room for the college’s first iteration as an agricultural school for the children of European descent.
Several years ago, for example, a colleague (Eve Cuevas) introduced me to a YouTube video in which two deaf men use ASL (American Sign Language) to discuss the complexity of naming LGBTQ+ identities. I have incorporated that video in subsequent classes, and for varying purposes. In the WRA:1004, it serves to help reinforce the complexities of communication across languages and cultures, the slipperiness of identities that cannot always be easily named. In WRA:101, I use it to help introduce the Disciplinary Literacy project, and reinforce the concept that so much communication (in life, in our fields of study and in our work lives) is multi-modal, embodied, and ultimately, non-alphabetic.
Overall, introducing projects and activities by way of cultures and languages that are non-U.S.-majority helps center these perspectives, making them the heart and the starting point, rather than what tends to be pushed to the margins. For instance, I might introduce the Learning Narrative by sharing snippets of a Chinese student’s story of coming to the U.S. and of feeling ostracized and isolated, or the Cultural Object project by way of sharing a Black female student’s paper/video on the pressing comb that she sees so integral to the shared Black traditions of the women in her family. Such sharing also can help establish a welcoming tone for students of multiple backgrounds, experiences, languages, and cultures.
So here are snippets from my WRA:1004 syllabus, aspects of which I put into my WRA:101s as well. Because I am interested in cueing my students to feel that they all belong here, I include a map of the U.S. that highlights the multitude of dialects and languages spoken here; and quotes / examples of the value of multiple languages and cultures. Please use whatever is helpful to you and your course (indeed, I borrowed the U.S. map of languages from a former teacher here).
From my syllabus:
Course Description (for WRA:1004):
This is a course about you, and your writing and learning in the context of languages and cultures. It emphasizes how language and cultural practices shape and are shaped by wider social, cultural, and global contexts. Each of you has moved across cultures and languages: from high school to MSU; from another city or country to East Lansing; from cell-phone texting or tweeting to more academic “language” (and back). While this course will help you write in standard English in preparation for your next-level writing course, it will also look at (and question) what it means to learn a “standard” language, especially in academic settings. At the same time, we will discuss other communicative forms such as body language, visual language, and social media.
Major course goals include:
- an increased awareness of the influence of cultures and languages in our lives;
- an understanding of writing, and in multiple forms, as ways to discover and to learn;
- an awareness of the importance of audience, purpose, revision, and reflection as tools in the writing process;
- an enhanced understanding of the types of genres and cultural practices that you use now and may use in the future.
What if English “ain’t” my first language?
In this course, speaking other languages or having lived in other parts of the country and world will enrich your contributions. Throughout the semester, I will invite you to bring in stories, examples, and “artifacts” from your own communities, cultures, and countries.
If you are from the United States or grew up speaking English, you too bring a unique perspective. You are members of various subcultures and traditions with their own forms of speaking, dress, body language, and dialects (Mid-Western, Southern, Appalachian, African-American Vernacular English, etc.). I invite you to bring these into this class and your writing.
Still another possible visual that signals multiple Englishes from an international perspective would be the ‘language wheel’ that Allison Hitt incorporates in her essay on “Bringing World Englishes into the Composition Classroom”:
While I myself have not yet used this diagram in my WRA:101, I can see its affordances in terms of welcoming non-U.S. and other multilingual students in our classes.
Reflective questions:
- How does my syllabus signal inclusivity to my students, in language, style, and accessibility?
- What might my syllabus– including the same above– be missing (or what more might it do) along these lines?