Jo-Anne Kerr (English Department, emerita) and Ann Amicucci (CAL alumna and assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs) have published a new resource book to help teachers of first-year college writing help their students develop their identities as writers.
Stories from First-Year Composition: Pedagogies that Foster Student Agency and Writing Identity, an open resource hosted by the WAC Clearinghouse, offers to FYC instructors research-based pedagogies designed to foster students' writerly identities and agency and opportunity to reflect on their roles as advocates for its value in the academy.
Chapters attend to students in traditional, basic writing and online courses, including multilingual students and those who identify as LGBTQ, and are linked by dialogic pedagogy focusing on instructors' relationships with students as they collaborate on the development of writerly identities. Students' voices are featured in each chapter as interview subjects, in reflections, and through examples of writing projects.
To encourage readers to reflect on and critique their pedagogies and roles as FYC instructors, the collection offers prompts for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and multimedia components to deepen and enrich understandings of teaching FYC effectively while advocating for its value and relevance.