TYCA-PNW FALL CONFERENCE

“CHANGING LANDSCAPES, CHANGING NARRATIVES”

WHATCOM COMMUNITY COLLEGE, BELLINGHAM WASHINGTON

OCTOBER 25 - 26, 2024

conference information | Registration | Hotel information

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If you have questions, please contact Justin Ericksen (jericksen@whatcom.edu) or Jeffrey Klausman (jklausman@whatcom.edu)

If nothing else is clear as we transition into “what’s next” in post-pandemic years, we know for sure that we won’t be returning to the way things were. Our students have come through years of radically different instruction. AI lurked on the fringes before exploding into the mainstream. We instructors have had many new experiences, from teaching fully online to developing new hybrid models. Many of us have encountered and been deeply challenged by antiracist and linguistic justice work. Moreover, views of the purpose of higher education continue to shift all around us, impacting students’ perspectives and expectations.

Through all of this, the stories we tell impact the way we work with and see others, closing the doors on some, opening the doors for others; the kinds of broad-scale assessments we conduct, advantaging some, disadvantaging others; the types of writing assignments we offer and the ways we respond to a student’s writing, overturning or upholding long-held beliefs and the biases they perpetuate; and the range of modalities we prefer, often at the expense of the historically marginalized voices we want to champion.

These stories often are unspoken and even told unaware: they gird the day-to-day “everyday-ness” of our teaching and administering. So, what do the stories we tell say about us and our views of others and the worlds we share? How can we bring visibility to stories that ingrain “othering?” How can we transform “us vs. them" attitudes and commit to shifting power dynamics to create spaces that welcome all stories? What do our stories suggest about the purpose of higher education? Most importantly, how might we challenge those stories and why? What new ways of seeing ourselves, students, learning, and the role of writing instruction might we foster to better serve our students, their needs, and the needs of our communities?