Enacting anti‐racist writing workshop pedagogies in an online, drop‐in writing club for youth

Abstract

This article documents the authors' modification and implementation of anti‐racist writing workshop (ARWW) practices in the context of an online, drop‐in writing club, Pens Out. We sought to understand how teens perceive writing practices that are not white‐normed — specifically, centring relationships instead of prizing individuality, embedding choice instead of replicating one authorial view and observing writerly craft instead of errors. As white‐identifying educators and researchers, we engaged in practitioner inquiry to understand how programme participants who live in a predominately white region experience these practices. We asked: How do attendees understand and describe experiences with writing workshop pedagogies that seek to de‐centre whiteness? This question has become increasingly important as politicians in the United States restrict anti‐racist educational practices and content. We used conventional content analysis to observe themes across five participants' semi‐structured interviews. Findings indicated that participants' relationships with each other produced inspiration and reciprocity, writing expectations from inside and outside the club affected choice and risk taking, and observing craft multimodally encouraged sharing and reciprocity. What we discovered can help teachers and leaders of K12 writing workshops implement ARWW practices and increase allyship while discussing and questioning hegemonic ideals in K12 schooling.

More being, different doing: Illuminating examples of culturally relevant literacy teaching

“…The culturally relevant writing approach offers opportunities for student writing choice, situated writing from the heart, the community sharing of student work, and the opportunity to highlight students as the authors of multicultural texts (Díaz et al, 2022;Ladson-Billings, 2023). Silva et al (2023) advance an even more social justice-oriented take on the model, suggesting an anti-racist iteration where authors of texts contextualize their stories with their peer reviewers, thus making meaning relevant and real. This example should give us hope as we consider established teaching models as potential pathways for renovation and socially just practice.…”

“…Silva et al. (2023) advance an even more social justice‐oriented take on the model, suggesting an anti‐racist iteration where authors of texts contextualize their stories with their peer reviewers, thus making meaning relevant and real. This example should give us hope as we consider established teaching models as potential pathways for renovation and socially just practice.…”