Writing as World Making

    Before I introduce the topic of my first post, I wanted to introduce myself and my purpose in mapping #EducatedWorldmaking throughout this semester. As a teacher I am invested in the ways education should go beyond the parameters of the classroom and how education should be an integrated process. Education is impactful when students have agency in creating their own connections to the content instead of being information regurgitating robots. I implement world making as my blog post’s theory/theme to interrogate how deconstructing hegemonic standards of education and living should be deconstructed. 

For this blog I want to look at how world making can be integrated into my classroom. World making is developed through our symbolic activities where individuals can create meanings and collaborate with other student and teacher’s created social meanings. I draw from research conducted by Stornaiulo and Whitney to see how writing can be implemented as a world making tool (2018). As I teach 3010 this semester, I find it important to tap into writing as a world making activity and the implications for it in the classroom. 

As Stornaiulo and Whitney analyze, writing is a world making tool when students use it to write themselves into narratives they are excluded and left out in. I can already see how this can be encouraged in 3010 in two ways. First, encouraging students to use their research proposal to challenge normative practices in academia would be a productive endeavor I would love to help guide them in. When we consider the formalities of academia are sometimes steeped in whitewashed and classist practices, allowing students to engage in writing that challenges these notions can create a world in which academia is accessible to all willing to engage in it. Secondly, when students are crafting proposals, allowing students who experience marginalization to find the gaps in literature that leave them out can help bridge gaps of research, therefore creating a world in which more people are included. Worlds cannot be constructed individually, worlds are always parts of collaboration and multiple people crafting them, therefore a role I have as instructor is to be a collaborator in building these worlds and seeking out other spaces that build these worlds as well. 

While I believe in the power of the flipped power classrooms, I do believe the ‘power’ I hold should take form in introducing my students to multi-cultural information and to disseminate information in ways that highlights marginalized voices, and the ways hegemony has been solidified in place. As I guide my students through their writing process, taking a further step to ensure materials and lectures provided to them are not complacent in hegemonic structures or at the very least highlighting the problematic areas and why they are. 

To conclude, as I teach, I want to ground all discussions in materials in diverse representations while also helping them challenge hegemony. By doing these things, we can implement accurate representation. Once these representations are the expectation, we can help them implement these materials into their writing. Allowing their research and writings to be spaces where normative standards can be challenged and resisted, world making can begin happening in my 3010 classroom.

Stornaiuolo, A., & Whitney, E. H. (2018). Writing as Worldmaking. Language Arts, 95(4), 205-217. https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-                      journals/writing-as-  worldmaking/docview/2010773128/se-2?accountid=7113