Purpose of the Project:
The goal of this project is to make translingual pedagogies accessible to UW instructors across disciplines by providing tangible pedagogical materials on enacting translingual pedagogy. Translingual theory is intimidating because most of the literature that explains it is filled with composition jargon. Such texts render translingualism inaccessible to our colleagues in fields beyond composition. We have tried to make it more concrete and accessible from a theoretical orientation to a pedagogy that can be adapted for any writing-based course that engages with the issue of language difference(s). The intended audience of our project is any writing teachers interested in the aforementioned issues. We are thankful to have received the EWP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Collaboration Grant which is made possible by a seed grant from the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity.
The website currently includes teaching materials that can be practiced as a translingual orientation: syllabi, course readings, assignment prompts, assessment philosophies and practices, and lesson plans/class activities that are contributed by our colleagues from composition, TESOL, English literature, and education.
Facilitators:
Zhenzhen He-Weatherford:
A Ph.D. candidate and writing instructor at the UW English Department, Zhenzhen is professionally invested in pedagogies that foster an inclusive learning environment that honors the diverse linguistic, cultural, experiential, and technological knowledge of students, making it an asset to their educational accessibility and success in college and beyond. Her scholarly interests include critical multiculturalism and pedagogies, multimodal composition, and translingualism. She is currently teaching at the Interdisciplinary Writing Program and also a Mellon Fellow for Reaching New Publics in the Humanities.
Sara Lovett:
Sara is a second-year Ph.D. student studying the teaching of college writing in the UW English department. She currently teaches English 109/110, a sequence of writing courses for first-generation college students. Her teaching and research interests include two-year colleges, basic and developmental writing courses, anti-racist pedagogy, game studies, and public writing. She is on the the Anti-Racist Task Force of the Writing Program Administration Graduation Organization and is the incoming Graduate Representative for the Council for Play and Game Studies.
Sumyat Thu:
Sumyat is a Ph.D. student and writing instructor at the UW English department. She also works as an assistant director of the UW Expository Writing Program/Computer-Integrated Classrooms. As for research interests, she studies the relationships among language, literacy, identity, and language and race (raciolinguistics). She is also pursuing a Public Scholarship certificate program at the Simpson Center for the Humanities and interested to do community engaged research that builds campus–community equitable relationships.
Acknowledgement:
We thank the following writing teachers and colleagues who contributed their teaching materials that are in line with or make a critical conversation with the translingual framework.
List of contributors:
Ahmad Alharthi, Avram Blum, Jacki Fiscus, Sunao Fukunaga, Emily George, Zhenzhen He-Weatherford, Ainsley Kelly, Dino Kladouris, Sara Lovett, Carrie Matthews, Holly Shelton, Alex Smith, Sumyat Thu, TJ Walker