Hello and Welcome to IRR 2.
(Liking the look?)
SO, on today's agenda we are going to be talking about my input on what we had read for the past couple of weeks.
We had a total of 6 reading with various ideas, with a singular focal point:
HOW ARE WE AS TEACHERS GOING TO CREATE ENVIRORMENTS FOR OUR STUDENTS THAT DON'T FURTHER CIRCULATE THE "STATUS QUO" WAY OF WRITING?
I know that we previously had discussed the importance of what notions like translanguaging, raciolinuigstic-ism, the importance of recognizing historical contexts of the written quo etc... but now we are diving deeper into the HOW. This means understandings pedagogical approaches that can help aide us as teachers to answer this ' all too important question.
One of the first instances that this can be done is through the inclusion of digital technology. I mean we are in the day and age where accomodating a student is at the tips of our fingers, so why wouldn't we utilize all the resources that we have available to us. In the Martin, Hirsu, Gonzalez, Alvarez article "Pedagogies of Digital Composing through a Translingual Approach" the very framework for translingual integration into digital composing is being enacted upon with recommended practices like the use of P-Chat. There is an emphasis on utilizing engaging communication through digital envirorments to fight against the standardized 'norm'. This means enacting things like multimedia creations! Multimodalitiy is one of the many benefits to having such easily accessible reach to technology, it allows a range of different interactive media for students to choose to approach in with their own range of comfortability, whether that comes linguistically or even just creatively!
What I also thought was excellent food for thought, that I probably will be referencing back to on many a occasion, are the individual "stories"/ experiences of the practicality of all that is said and done by real educators mentioned in "Embracing the Perpetual 'But' in Raciolinguistic Justice Work: When Idealism Meets Practice".
For preference this was probably my favorite reading we had done within the two weeks, because as someone who wants to strive for having the answer to everything and is very much the overthinker on all things accomodating, I found it absolutely comforting. This article was essentially testimonials of the reality of what being envirormentally conscious work actually is.
Thus..... I would like to obnoxiously add in the quote that really catapulted my perspectives on all the readings we had done.
" The snapshots we share below offer a window into what this work looks like in small moments wherein we draw from experience and disciplinary expertise, and may still not get it right. This, we offer these stories not as templates for how to respond, but as illustrations of how messy, insufficent, and emotionally laborious this rhetorical work can be."
Gorgeous I know. 
"Messy, Insufficient, and emotionally Laborious..." rhetorical work, pretty much sums up just how tedious it is to want to have a much more diverse and inclusive evirorment to be working with. This goes into striving for more from not only your students, but colleagues, curricula, and even the institution that you are working for. I mean who doesn't want eveyrthing to be so abundantly harmonious! Except.... in practicality it doesn't seem to work that way most of the time... BUT THAT'S OKAY!
ONWARD AND UP!
^^^^^^^^^^This applies to both student and Educator! ^^^^^^^
Aren't all of our pedagogical philosophies built on our own personal experiences? I mean for example, the Lauren Gonzales article that mentions the use of multimodality, where the students were using hand gestures as they spoke to help aide themselves to communicate to their peers. That is not only a source of multimodal implimentation that is already presenting itself organically, but it's also a learned attribute assumably from a learned personal experiences. So much so that it had shown up as a pattern that was capable of being documented by a programming system. This also presents the understanding that we all think differently so therefore allowing for L2 students to grasp their understandings of concepts would naturally find it's way into our pedagogy. (And it did, so much so, there are whole studies on the efficiency of gestures. Below is a video on one of the many ways to enhance public speaking with gestures that I thought was fascinating. Although it is not the same type of gesturing, it excentuates what we are trying to do with multimodality in our lessons!)
Again I would also like to point out that Translanguaging has similar footing. Language-brokering at home with parents who are helping their child with their homework is also a shared experience that pedagogically has found itself making an impact in thinking about how we are teaching. One of the main concepts that comes out of this is collaborative work which can then be implimented into our literacy activities. I personally think that creates a means to explain why groupwork or class discussions are important aspects of how to create an envirorment that produces this engagement. This also creates a gateway into how we are assessing our students and the type of feedback we are ideally wanting to produce.
I'd hate to sound like a broken record player, but personal experiences make all the difference.
Don't believe me?
Well, think of some of the best writing that you've ever done? What was that correlation that made you have that 'oh my god, I can actually write' moment. I know some of my best work is absolutely PERSONAL. We all start our writing with some sort of preconcieved notions that, whether we want it to or not, make it from brain to paper/laptop. It's part of our writer's identity! So creating envirorments that replicate this is absolutely a must!
This feeds into the importance of personal connection to their writing. As someone who is still currently a student and is teetering on the ropes of what it means to be an educator I know that one of my favorite papers that I had ever written was in highschool, with a teacher who allowed collaborative work, was their to aide us with the type of feedback that we had asked for, and assessed us on the content that we produced to her with an added emphaisis on the how and why we made the choices we did. These are all concepts that had been mentioned prior that created their own setting in pedagogy all wrapped into a pretty package.
Taking on the responsibility of answering the HOW, in creating a space that is much more inclusive than it was before is hard. But that's OKAY! You got this!
