Teaching through Writing

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW)
One of the core challenges of teaching writing is the fact that students bring widely varying experiences with culture, education, and language to classrooms. By incorporating strategies to promote transparency (Winkelmes et al. 2016) and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris and Alim 2017), instructors can promote transparency in teaching and learning and be responsive to the diverse range of their students’ needs. Participants in this week-long seminar with the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) program in the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW) will first comprehensively examine their course curriculum and identify the unique needs of their diverse student populations. Using insights from this examination, they will consider how to engage these students and promote their success through writing. By the end of this seminar, participants will have designed or redesigned a sequenced writing assignment for their course.
Learning Outcomes

In completing this endorsement, participants will:

  • Identify and articulate core learning outcomes for a course and at least one assignment to develop or revise
  • Identify “bottlenecks,” or places in a course where students struggle to advance their learning via an assignment and frame learning strategies to model tasks and provide opportunities for students to practice
  • Design an assignment and related activities which promote transparency in learning and teaching as a way of breaking through identified bottlenecks
  • Develop strategies to promote accessible and culturally sustaining learning
  • Construct a plan to assess student learning that promotes transparency, accessibility, and culturally sustaining pedagogies

 

Participation Requirements

Requirements include the following:

Participants must register for and be accepted into the Teaching through Writing endorsement seminar. Seats are limited.

Visit the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing website for more information about the Writing Across the Curriculum seminar. 

  • Participants must attend all sessions of the Seminar
  • Participants meet face-to-face for 15 hours (5 sessions of 3 hours each)
  • Participants must complete drafts of two core documents during the seminar:
    • A prompt for the core assignment that was designed or redesigned
    • An assessment plan for their assignment

 

VERIFICATION OF PARTICIPATION

The final teaching endorsement application will require you to upload a signed completion of criteria document from the Center for the Study of Teaching and Writing.

 

Required Hours
15-20 hours (15 in the seminar, and up to five hours of work on assignment composing outside the sessions)
Timeline for Completion
1 academic term (offered over several weeks during a term, or over a week during break)