Well, we’re just about at the end of the semester. Saturday’s graduation ceremonies will bring the semester to a symbolic close, while the deadline to turn in grades by Tuesday will mark THE END. While these moments tend to send me into a deep reflective space–thinking about all that has happened over the course of the academic year–I find myself looking forward instead.

In many ways this year brought a lot into focus for me about our composition program. I think the success of this year’s Composition Conference for First-Year Student Writers helped frame the incredible work that faculty and students are doing here. It also helped me focus on further developing our program over the next several years. In the fall we will begin a search for our fifth tenure-track composition hire. We also began to circulate a draft of a new concentration in the department: Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (CRLS). I’m just about done with a proposal for a new course called “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy.” It feels like we are turning a corner–what lies around that corner is still a bit of a mystery.

In any case, I’d like to thank all the faculty who teach composition in our department–especially those faculty who participated in our weekly Composition Conversations, (quasi) monthly meetings of the CRG, and who made the fourth Composition Conference such a success. I would also like to put in a special thanks to the faculty who have taught the majority of our composition courses: our non-tenure track (aka “temporary”) faculty. I know I am not alone in noting their tremendous commitment to their students despite sub-par working conditions. I am hoping that the new offices coming on-line over the summer will be a step toward equity and recognition.

Some things to look for:

• Summer I: An on-line survey on teaching composition at KU
• Suggestions for next year’s CRG
• Planning for a “Composition Fair” in August
• Early planning for next year’s Composition Conference (April 3, 2009)
• More blog ramblings from our composition faculty!

Have a great summer!

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

…and then there’s this statement by the National Council of Teachers of English:

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

While falling a little short of the kind of project suggested by the multiliteracies folks, NCTE’s statement does support the kind of hybrid/cyborg approach to CRLS. Interesting.

Cloudy, spitting rain, 69 degrees.