2022 James Gray Memorial
Pre-Convention Day
Sponsored by the California Writing Project
Writing California’s Future: Be the Change
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022
“…I believe that writing is a political act, and in order to honor that offering, we must consciously work against traditions of dominance and control in the creative writing classroom, curating safe spaces for participants to explore race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Don’t worry about being creative, I plead. It’s not about that. It’s about sharing our stories. We must be heard.”
― Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom
Pre-convention registration includes:
Morning Keynote: Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
Three rounds of resource- and strategy-packed workshops led by CWP teacher leaders that focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Growing students’ civic engagement by inviting them to research issues within their community and to propose solutions
- Developing students’ abilities to present arguments and use evidence: in discussion and debate, in print and online, in school and in the community
- Supporting student interaction with challenging texts, perspectives, and issues through strategic use of print, digital, and multimodal sources
- Tapping into digital tools that enrich teaching, writing, and learning
- Connecting student interests and social engagement to academic studies, civic
participation, college preparation, and career opportunity - Assessing writing in ways that inspire student reflection, persistence, and improvement
- Addressing California’s standards—CCSS, ELD, NGSS, History/ Social Science Framework—through varied writing genres, purposes, and contexts, not formulas