What are the productive connections between high school and college writing teachers?  

 

For all the initiatives aimed at engagement and making students “college ready,” there isn't enough sustainable, inter-institutional communication

between high school and college writing teachers. Perhaps this is only a perception fueled by the frustration of student transition from one learning place

to another. Perhaps this is a symptom of educational gerrymandering that forgets to include all the stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, community, administrators) in discussions of what it means to be college ready and meaningfully pursue that goal. Perhaps we just haven’t figured out ways to talk to each other because of busy lives, outcomes-based pressures, and the short shelf life of top-down requests to work with each other. We get it. It’s complicated.

 

So let’s talk. Let’s figure out how to create productive and meaningful conversations across institutional barriers. Let’s step into each other’s shoes and understand what it means to teach our students how to write, how to adapt, and how to be engaged. Let’s develop a new community of teacher-scholars. And, of course, let’s find ways to keep the conversation going. We hope that crosspol: a journal of transitions can foster all of the above.

 

For the yearly open issue of crosspol, we are looking for projects that investigate and reflect on the ways in which high school and college writing teachers connect or should be connecting. We conceive of “connection” in a broad way: connections might be spaces (physical or virtual), practices, assignments, ideologies, and/or program goals and objectives. And then there are all the potential “connections” that we have not imagined that we want to imagine, through this journal, with you. Some interesting questions to address might be, but certainly aren't limited to, the following:

 

• How can teachers better understand and develop transferable reading and writing strategies for their transitional students?

• How do high school and college writing teachers represent each other's institutions to their students?

• What are important differences between high school and college writing teachers’ perceptions of students and their writing?

• What are specific learning goals that link high school and college writing classes?

• How are writing students and teachers navigating dual enrollment or early college contexts?

• How do high school and college developmental writing programs compare?

• How should the values of writing in an English Language Arts context sync with a First Year College Writing context?

 

We hope this call will generate many submissions and potentials for conversations in the coming years. For each issue, we will be publishing projects by high school English or writing teachers, college writing teachers, projects composed collaboratively by a high school teacher and a college teacher, and original student work. Anyone interested in writing a collaborative piece but unable to find a partner should email us at crosspol.ed@gmail.com, and we will try to facilitate a joint project.

 

We accept project submissions for this issue through March 1, and we respond to submissions by April 1. If we request revisions, you’ll need to resubmit by May 1.

 

crosspol is a peer-reviewed online journal that welcomes both traditional and multimodal projects. You can find more details on the journal, including submission guidelines at www.crosspol-journal.com. Please direct any questions to Andrew and Colin at crosspol.ed@gmail.com.