Welcoming Writers, Welcoming Instructors

Abstract

Canadian scholars increasingly recognize the importance of diverse and inclusive writing pedagogies to welcome students of various races, languages, orientations, genders, and abilities. Yet, if instructors do not feel welcomed into using the tools of antiracist and decolonial writing pedagogies, they often will not use them, and many feel very new to the task. Using microlevel language policies (in both direct and indirect ways) can be a helpful way to integrate these pedagogies into writing instruction effectively; they can help instructors to both signal and live out their commitments to inclusive writing pedagogies. In this paper, I will use analytic and reflective methodologies to explore my assignment of an argumentative paragraph and the processes around it to demonstrate some simple, effective ways writing instructors can integrate antiracist and decolonial writing pedagogies into their teaching. Ultimately, I demonstrate that multimodal assignments can encourage linguistic, digital, and textual diversity in student writing and are thus vital to inclusive pedagogy.