Writing the Possible
(By Resisting the Probable and Other Immutable Destinies)
A workshop series co-sponsored by CTL and WAC
Organized and led by Bethany Ides
How does a text become an instrument for active, generative, open-ended learning? How might we, as teachers, embolden students to support each other in welcoming uncertainty, difficulty, and complexity, rather than only searching for “the right” answer?
Contemporary college students have been taught that their abilities to read and write “effectively” can be accurately measured according to white-supremacist, patriarchal, colonialist, and ableist standards. They have been told that these are the standards by which their intellects can be judged. As a result, students over-associate language practices with shame, fear, and punishment. It is no wonder that resistance to writing and reading is deeply internalized.
In this series of 3 workshops and 1 reflection session, we will use integrative strategies for liberative, community-centered writing and reading. By practicing a range of collaborative approaches, teachers will experience tactics they might incorporate into their own curricula. And, in the process, everybody will get a chance to reinvigorate your own relationship to text-based thinking!
Who is this for?
This workshop is for anyone teaching full or part-time, across any school or department at Pratt, regardless of your practice or discipline.
Is there any pre-work required?
Participants are invited to bring fragments of pieces you’re currently working on and/or excerpts of pieces you’re curious about (that someone else has written). All reading and writing will be accomplished within the workshop. Together, we’ll activate, constellate, irritate, irrigate, unravel, bend, mend, upend, and continuously reorient our own geometries of attention in response to these texts, observing what the possible proposes.
Do I have to attend all sessions?
These sessions will not be cumulative, but they will be accretive. Faculty participants will definitely get a lot out of attending just 1 of the workshops. Part time faculty who attend all 4 sessions will receive a small ($150) stipend.
How do I sign up?
Feel free to register to one or all of the workshop sessions by using the Zoom links below.
Fridays, 10 am – 12 pm, online
February 11: Text Acts: Transforming Texts Through Reading Games & Rituals: RSVP here
February 25: Writing About Not-Writing: RSVP here
March 11: A Memoir of All the Readers I Might Have (Never) Been: RSVP here
Final integration session: March 25: Integrating Strategies for Community-based Learning: Collaborative Reflection
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