#i drew a timeline with my friend during our class and it was amazing

[evature]

I hope everyone has a lovely day today mwah

[apparently-artless]

The Other Way Around - 1st Chapter

A Daiya no Ace Fanfic

Warning: Not Beta Read, English Grammar Nazi be warned! ( `ε´ )

Summary:

Just as how the whole baseball team is protective of one Sawamura Eijun. The southpaw pitcher is also protective of his teammates – his second family away from home.

Note: Different settings and timelines for each character. Check out source below for AO3 version.

Characters: Sawamura Eijun, Okumura Koushuu, Seto Takuma, Asada Hirofumi, Okumura's classmates

Chapter 1: Okumura Koushuu

Summer had finally ended and so is Kōshien. Seidou baseball team, the new champion of the said event, is busy preparing for the upcoming Fall Tournament now that the third year had retired. Sawamura Eijun, the new captain, was unanimously selected by their former two vice-captains and captain.

It’s a heavy burden considering he is still the team’s ace but he’s being supported accordingly by Kanemaru and Kominato as vice-captains. Besides, there’s Furuya and it’s not wrong to say that they have two aces in the team right now. After the summer tournament, Furuya and Sawamura had become even closer but the rivalry is still there. Their usual antics can still be heard from the bullpen and dugout. Needless to say, Sawamura is mostly the one doing the talking. But this time, Furuya is sharing the ace burden with Sawamura when he sees that Sawamura is trying to fulfill his responsibilities as the captain. He even requested Coach Kataoka to let him be the one in charge of the pitching team. Of course, Sawamura complained at first but eventually agreed upon seeing the determination in his rival’s eyes.

Summer ending also means classes resuming. During lunch break, Sawamura was on his way to the classroom of Seidou’s new main catcher, Okumura Koushuu. As soon as Sawamura arrived at 1-A room, he loudly announced himself as he looked for the catcher.

“I’m Sawamura Eijun of the baseball team! I would like to request the presence of our new main catcher, Okumura Koushuu! May I know where he is?” The southpaw declared while rotating his head from left to right.

There were several murmurs across the room as gazes traverse from the loud southpaw pitcher.

That’s Sawamura-senpai. The ace of the baseball team.

Wow! To think that someone as great as him is visiting our classroom.

His pitching is so sick! I saw him during the Kōshien. Maybe I should go ahead and have him sign my baseball?

Eh? So Okumura is the new main catcher now? Even though he’s still a first-year? So cool!

As expected, Okumura-kun belongs to a different dimension.

The whisperings continued but Sawamura couldn’t care less. Fortunately, one of Okumura’s female classmates answered the pitcher’s inquiry.

“If you’re searching for Okumura-kun, he just went out for a bit. He’ll be back in a few minutes,” said the girl in glasses with a smile who appeared to be their class representative.

“Oh! Is that so? If that’s the case, I’ll just be waiting outside. Thank you so much, young lady!”

The girl blushed at being called a young lady. “N-No, it’s fine. You can stay inside. It’s not often that a senpai visits our room. Also, I think some of my classmates would want to talk to you. Would it be possible to indulge them while you wait for Okumura-kun to arrive?”

“I see. So the first years would like to hear the wisdom of this lowly pitcher,” Sawamura responded in a serious tone with his arms crossed and his eyes closed as he pondered on the girl’s request while trying to hide the blush forming on his cheeks. “Then, if that’s the case, feel free to ask me anything and I’ll make sure to respond to the best of my abilities!”

How many pitches do you have?

Were you a member of a senior league before you went to Seidou?

Do you plan to go pro after high school?

The southpaw pitcher was continued to be bombarded with questions that he unwittingly responded to as he scratched his head because the first years seemed to assume that he’s some big-shot when he’s actually not. At least, that’s how the boy perceived himself. After all, he still has a long way to go.

After about five minutes of waiting, Okumura arrived and noticed how half of the space of the room was vacated and most of his classmates were gathered in front. He only needed two seconds to process what’s happening inside as he heard his main battery partner's obnoxious way of laughing.

As he entered the room, most of his male classmates and some of his female classmates were listening attentively to the southpaw pitcher.

“Okumura-kun! You’ve finally arrived. Sawamura-senpai is looking for you. He’s been here for a while now,” said one of the first-year managers who is in the same class as Okumura.

But before Okumura could respond, Sawamura already noticed his arrival.

“Okumura-shounen! Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you,” Sawamura bellowed in the center of the crowd as he raised his left hand while waving enthusiastically at the catcher.

The whole class turned silent as they watched Okumura moved towards the front of the room where the pitcher and some of his classmates were gathered. As if intimidated by the boy’s aura, his classmates dispersed to give way to Okumura which he didn’t notice as he’s focused on the beaming second year.

“What are you doing here, Sawamura-senpai? Do you need something from me?” Okumura asked.

As soon as he spoke, some of his classmates seemed amazed hearing his voice.

So, he does speak.

I see. He’s still using Keigo when speaking to his senpai.

“Now, now! Don’t be so stiff Okumura-shounen! Why don’t we speak outside so I can discuss the details with you? You see, Furuya and I tried to come up with our training menu for the week for our pitchers and catchers. Since you’re the main catcher now, we thought it’d be best to seek your approval too! We’ll start the training this afternoon so I’d like you to check it now. Just check the ones for today then you can check the remaining ones once you have the time.”

Okumura-shounen?

So Sawamura-senpai calls Okumura-kun as Okumura-shounen?

Does he call other first years as ‘shounen’ too?

Okumura-kun doesn’t seem to mind.

Okumura’s classmates remained silent but they were obviously thinking at the back of their heads. They didn’t expect to see this side for both players. This is indeed a rare sight for them – a talking Okumura and a very serious Sawamura. Before Okumura arrived, Sawamura was wearing this idiotic look which made him appeared to be approachable. Had he shown this serious face right at the start, no one would have even tried talking to him.

“I wouldn’t mind doing this now. However,” Okumura paused as he looked at the two megane duo silently peeking at the front door of their classroom. “Taku, Hiro, what are you two doing here?”

“Ha-ha-ha. Koushuu, you found us,” Seto replied as he fake-laughed while Asada just smiled awkwardly.

“You’re not even making an effort to hide,” Okumura commented with his usual monotone.

“We heard Sawamura-senpai is in 1-A room right now so we decided to take a look.”

“Take a look? What are you talking about? You see him all the time in the dorm and during practice.”

We’re here to make sure nothing bad will happen between you two.

Asada and Seto thought to themselves as they immediately went to 1-A room upon hearing someone from their class that Sawamura was in fact visiting one of the first-year classes.

The conversation went on like this:

Boy A from class 1-C: Oi, you’re from 1-A, right?

Boy B from class 1-A who’s speaking to one of his friends in 1-C: Yep. Why do you ask though?

Boy A: Are you sure this is the time for you to be here?

Boy B: Huh?

Boy A: I heard that Sawamura-senpai is visiting your class. Don’t you want to check him out? You won’t even shut up last time after watching Kōshien.

Boy B: Ehh? For real? Dude! Tell me that earlier!

And then the boy ran towards his own classroom. Seto and Asada who were nearby happened to hear the entire conversation. And in 1-A room, they could only think of one person as the main reason for the southpaw’s visit.

Going back to the present –

“Oh! Seto, Asada! You’re here as well! Feel free to join this tiny meeting. It’s good to be exposed to this type of planning. Especially you, Asada, since you’re one of our pitchers too,” Sawamura beamed in response upon seeing the two first years while naturally ignoring Okumura’s comment.

The four of them had forgotten the fact that they were still inside the classroom.

The boy in black glasses called Okumura by his first name.

So he has friends too.

Are they from other dimensions as well?

Sawamura was the first one to notice the weird silence emanating in the room, which is surprising, to be honest. He noticed too, that Okumura’s classmates seemed to be looking at him with curiosity. A realization suddenly dawned at the southpaw as he drew nearer to the boy.

“Oi, Okumura,” whispered Sawamura.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Your classmates are looking weirdly at you. Are you by any chance being bullied? Are you not getting along well with the class?”

“Huh? Just where did that come from?”

Seto and Asada who can hear their conversation just fine were trying their best not to laugh. Since the two were classmates, Seto had already explained to Asada how he worried a lot about Okumura being in a different class because he tends to be misunderstood by some of his classmates. Needless to say, he knows what’s actually going on in the minds of Okumura’s classmates. After all, those were his initial thoughts too when he became Okumura’s classmate for the first time.

“Or maybe it’s that! You’re the one bullying them? That won’t do Okumura-shounen! As one of the members of Seidou baseball team, you must not use your strength to bully the weak,” Sawamura whispered once more, his right arm placed on Okumura’s shoulder and his left arm covering his mouth as he spoke, as if the two of them are on the mound planning some tactics to strike the batter out.

Seto laughed some more but decided to stop this hilarious conversation seeing that Okumura is now trying his best not to smack the pitcher on the head.

“Senpai, no one’s bullying anyone,” the boy in black-rimmed glasses decided to join in on the ‘secret’ conversation. “Koushuu’s very quiet when he’s in class, you see. I bet some of his classmates are just fascinated to see him talking normally.”

Asada nodded as well.

“Oh! Is that so? Thank God you’re not being bullied, and you’re not the bully as well. Yosh! Let’s clear the misunderstanding right now!” Sawamura proudly declared as he faced Okumura’s classmates.

“Sawamura-senpai, wai – “

But Okumura’s attempt at stopping the pitcher was in vain as Sawamura addressed the entire class.

“Listen up, Class 1-A! Okumura-shounen here is a very passionate baseball player. If you want to know more about him, you may want to start with baseball first! And then everything will follow! These two young megane lads here with me,” announced the pitcher as he walked towards Asada and Seto and placed both his arms on their shoulders. “…assure you that Okumura will not bite people. While I can definitely understand that he seems like a wild wolf, there’s no need for you to be so guarded around him.”

Seto and Asada were once more trying their best not to laugh at this awkward scenario. Okumura, on the other hand, was emitting an ominous aura towards his not-so-adorable senpai.

“Oh, of course! We’ll take note of that! Thank you for your guidance, Sawamura-senpai!” said the girl in glasses.

“No worries! Now, if you’ll excuse us. We still have some things to discuss.”

Okumura was speechless at the moment as he followed the three outside his room. There were various comments from Okumura’s classmates as the four players left.

Sawamura-senpai is a weird one.

Yep! But he’s still cool! At least, he’s looking out for his kouhais.

I wonder if Okumura would be willing to share some strategies when it comes to game-calling? I’m a catcher in our baseball community team.

“Senpai, you’re no longer allowed to go to my classroom. If you want to discuss something, meet me at the library,” Okumura finally spoke as soon as they stepped outside the room.

“Don’t be like that! We’re the main battery now! No need to hold back on me!”

“I am holding myself back, but for a different reason,” Okumura responded, his menacing aura oozing out again.

Seto and Asada initially laughed but tried their best to diffuse the tension between the two by telling them to continue with their meeting.

As stubborn as he is, Sawamura still visited Okumura at least once a week in his classroom. And each time, his class got to see a different side of the catcher. Gradually, Okumura started making conversation with his classmates as they realized that he is a normal student as well. Of course, his catching skills are still extraordinary.

[nasa]

Astronaut Journal Entry - The Last Week

Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Below you will find a real journal entry, written in space, by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle.

To read more entires from this series, visit our Space Blogs on Tumblr.

I can’t believe that Expedition 55 is already over. Today is Sunday, and we will depart the International Space Station (ISS) next Sunday morning (June 3). 

168 days in space. 

There have been many challenging moments, but even more positive highlights of our time on ISS. The new crew from the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft (Oleg Artymyev, Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold) joined Norishige Kanai (Nemo), Anton Shkaplerov and I last March. Since then, we have completed two spacewalks, captured and released the SpaceX Dragon-14 cargo craft, captured the Cygnus OA-9 cargo craft and completed a myriad of maintenance and science activities. 

The team on the ground controlling, monitoring, supporting and planning has been amazing. It is always great to work with them, and especially during the moments where the equipment, tools, procedures or crew need help. It is incredible to see how much a good team can accomplish when methodically placing one foot in front of the other. 

I have been lucky in that the first crew (Mark Vande Hei, Joe Acaba and Alexander Misurkin (Sasha)) and the second crew (Drew, Ricky and Oleg) were all amazing to work with. I do believe the planets aligned for my mission onboard ISS. 

Drew and Ricky have been friends forever, and listening to them nip at each other provided a ton of great humor for the ground and for us. Their one-liners to each other reminded me of several scenes from the movie Space Cowboys. 

This a great example that happened as I was writing this log entry:    

Ricky:  Hey Maker, is this your smoothie?   

Maker:  No.  

Ricky:  It must be Drew’s.

 Drew:  Hey Ricky, don’t drink my smoothie.

Ricky:  What smoothie? This one has my name on it (as he writes his name on it).

 Drew:  Okay, Grandpa Underpants, hands off my smoothie.

Ricky:  Okay, Feustelnaut – we have rules around here, so this is my smoothie now!

All:  Much laughing. (To quote my kids: “LOL!”)

One the hardest things to do in space is to maintain positive control of individual items such as tools, spare parts, fasteners, etc. We try very hard not to lose things, but even with all of the attention and positive control, items can still float away and disappear. 

We generally hold items in a crew transfer bag (CTB). Inside the CTB are many items for the system that it supports. When the CTB is opened, the items are free floating inside the bag and tend to escape. It is very difficult to maintain control of the items – especially if they are small, do not have Velcro, or when the daily schedule is so tight that we are rushing to stay on time. We always try to close the CTB’s and Ziploc bags after removing or replacing each item to maintain positive control, but this takes much more time to do for individual items, and if the timeline is tight, we absorb more risk by rushing. 

The same applies for tools, which we usually keep in a Ziploc bag while working on individual systems and tasks. Last month, I was installing a new low temperature cooling loop pump that had failed a month or two earlier. I gathered the needed tools into my modified (with Velcro) Ziploc bag as I always do and floated over to the work area. When I got there, one of the tools that I had gathered was missing. I looked for 30 minutes, and could not find it. Lost items are very hard to find because the items that escape are usually barely moving and blend in with the environment very quickly. A lost item could be right in front of us and we would never see it. 

Our crew, after learning these lessons, decided that when anyone loses something, we would tell the other crew members what we had lost with a general location. This has had a huge impact on finding items. If a different crew member can help within the first minutes of losing an item, the new crew member has an excellent chance of finding the item. We have proven this technique several times during the expedition – and Nemo was the very best at quickly finding lost items. But, in my case, we still could not find the missing tool. Our amazing ground team understood and vectored me to a replacement tool and I finished the job. I spent the next 3 weeks watching, looking and never forgetting about the lost tool. Then, one day last week, Oleg came to the lab and handed us a tool he had found in his Soyuz spacecraft, way on the aft side of the ISS. Amazing. We finally found the tool and I was happy again. This was a lucky ending. ISS has many corners, crevices and hard-to-see areas where missing items could hide and never be found.

We captured a Cygnus cargo craft last Thursday. I was very impressed with the entire team. Our specialists and training professionals in Mission Control did a great job preparing the necessary procedures and making sure we were proficient and ready to conduct operations. The robotic arm is a wonderful system that we could not operate ISS without. Being in space, however, it has some very unique handling qualities. If you think about a spring-mass-damper system just as you did during physics or control theory class, and then remove the damper, you will see a system that is very subject to slow rate oscillations. 

In test pilot terms, damping ratio is very low and the latency is well over a half of a second. Also in test pilot terms – this is a pilot-induced oscillations (PIO) generator. These characteristics require crew to “fly” the robotic arm using open-loop techniques, which requires a huge amount of patience. Test pilots are sometimes not very patient, but understanding the system and practicing with the incredible simulators that our ground team built and maintain help keep our proficiency as high as possible. The capture went flawlessly, and I was very impressed with the professionalism across the board – crew, flight controllers and training professionals – what a great job!

Drew, Ricky and I got to play guitar a few times while on ISS. This was fun! Drew connected pickups to the acoustic guitars and then connected the pickups to our tablets for amplification. I’ve never heard an acoustic guitar sound like an electric guitar amped up for heavy metal before. We had a great jam on the song “Gloria”, and a couple others. Rock on!

Last night we had our last movie night. The entire crew gathered in Node 2 and watched Avengers Infinity Wars on the big screen. We enjoy each other’s company, as we did during Expedition 54, and this was a welcome break from the daily grind of trying to complete the required stowage, maintenance and science activities while preparing for departure.

Our last full weekend here on ISS. I gave myself a haircut. We usually clean our spaces each weekend to make sure we can maintain a decent level of organization, efficiency and morale. This weekend is no different, and it is time for me to vacuum out all of our filters and vents. You’d be amazed at what we find!

The top 5 things I will miss when I am no longer in space:

The incredible team that supports ISS operations from our control centers

The camaraderie onboard ISS

The breathtaking view of the Earth, Moon, Sun and Stars

Floating/flying from location to location with very little effort

Operations in the extreme environment of space

Find more ‘Captain’s Log’ entries HERE.

Follow NASA astronaut Scott Tingle on Instagram and Twitter.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

[hub-pub-bub]

Language is a source of power that makes things happen in the world, and that is an important and challenging lesson to teach in college writing courses. Once students recognize the profound implications of our work with language, many of the skills instructors value — argumentation, organization, revision, editing, proofreading — become much easier to teach. In addition, given that many of us work with students for merely one semester, when we want or need at least two, teaching students how and why language matters in the world helps ensure that they will continue to work on their writing once they leave our classrooms.

During my career as a graduate student, I became increasingly aware of the power of language as I began to publish my writing online (mainly through blogs on HASTAC) and in academic journals. People would quote my work, share it with others, and contact me to discuss their ideas. They would tell me how my writing about pedagogy prompted them to do something different in their classrooms. As someone who thinks deeply about feminist and antiracist politics of citation, publishing for a wide audience made me even more meticulous about citing those whose labor and ideas have enabled my own thinking. In addition, working as an editor for the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy helped connect my work with undergraduate writers to the process of shepherding academic articles through from initial submissions to polished final products. As both an editor and instructor giving feedback on student writing, I came to understand how the process of editing is itself pedagogical and can further empower authors and spark greater creativity.

In fall 2016, I decided to take what I had learned as a graduate student gradually becoming a writer and develop an assignment that would help undergraduates better understand the power of language through the experience of writing for publication. Instead of writing a traditional final paper that would be read solely by students’ peers and their instructor, the students in my basic writing course at Queens College used what they had learned over the course of a semester to collaboratively author submissions to a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. After spending a semester immersed in debates about active learning, critical pedagogy, the role of technology in education, standardized testing, education funding, and segregated schooling, they attempted to enter an actual, ongoing scholarly conversation occurring among the Hybrid Pedagogy community. I anticipated that this assignment would help students further develop their reading, writing, and revising skills; practice writing for a specific audience; and learn the power of their own voices and stories.

The final research projects in my classes are always creative, collaborative, and published online, and I am continually impressed by the way these assignments increase engagement and learning at the end of the semester. These group projects are grounded in a social epistemology of knowledge production: the idea that knowledge and skills are widely distributed and that together we can produce something better than we can individually, provided we equitably and effectively structure the collaboration process. There is a lot of theory and research that supports this idea (highlighted in the next paragraph), but the truth is that none of this theory would have caught my attention if I hadn’t first experienced the benefits of collaboration as an undergraduate. Like most undergraduates, I hated group projects, which consistently left me doing all the work while others received credit. It wasn’t until a professor assigned a research project that required collective thinking — and actually showed us how much better our work could be with multiple minds put to a task — that I became convinced that collaboration is a fundamental and teachable humanities skill. I share this anecdote with students, who regularly tell me that I am the only professor to ever acknowledge their collective hatred of collective work. By contrast, my assignments begin from the premise that we don’t actually know how to equitably distribute work — that, if anything, our educations have taught us to compete, rather than collaborate, with the students sitting next to us. And yet the ability to work with others towards a goal is essential for success in any endeavor, whether that’s organizing the next Women’s March or Black Lives Matter protest, or succeeding in medical school.

This collaborative approach to writing for real audiences is supported by the engaged pedagogies of Paulo Freire and bell hooks; the collaborative learning analyzed by Kenneth M. Bruffee, Rebecca Moore Howard, and Elizabeth F. Barkley et al.; and contemporary advocates of public writing in the undergraduate classroom such as Lisa Ede, Angela Lunsford, and Cathy N. Davidson. In The New Education, Davidson summarizes the findings of the Stanford Study of Writing: “students do not do particularly well in writing papers just for the sake of writing papers. Rather, students value writing that ‘makes something happen in the world’” (93). My writing through publication assignment drew heavily from my experience as the graduate assistant in Davidson’s “American Literature, American Learning” graduate seminar in which students didn’t write traditional seminar papers, but instead co-authored chapters that were later edited by their undergraduate students and published in Structuring Equality, a handbook of student-centered teaching and learning. My assignment was also informed by Howard’s notion that the best collaborative assignments are tasks that can better be achieved by a group, not just an individual. And finally, it was inspired by my dissertation research on the feminist and antiracist pedagogies of authors Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom believed that publishing student writing was a mode of collective empowerment amidst a dominant culture that actively silences huge swaths of the U.S. population.

Students identified writing topics before drafting their work

After asking students to choose what story they will tell and how they will tell it, they have amazed me, producing stunning digital timelines on the history of public education; beautiful websites about their journeys to Queens College; original lyric poetry about microaggressions; and challenging lesson plans for teaching literature alongside history (many of these can be viewed in the digital gallery I created to showcase their work). My task as an instructor is helping these projects reach an audience beyond our classroom, and I saw Hybrid Pedagogy as one way of doing that.

While there are many exciting conversations about the purpose of education in today’s society, so rarely are the voices of actual students included in these discussions. (Catherine Prendergast’s students helped me realize the gravity of this omission.) This is, in part, because academic hierarchies dictate that students in basic writing classes have little, if anything, to contribute to knowledge production. However, increasingly, scholarly organizations and digital publishing platforms are making a concerted effort to include student voices in their conversations about teaching and learning. The writing through publishing assignment for my undergraduates would not have been possible without Chris Friend, who, along with a team of dedicated readers willing to work with a quick turnaround time, made my pedagogical dream into a reality. I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank Chris and the Hybrid Pedagogy team, whose efforts to enact (not merely recite) the liberatory pedagogies of Paulo Freire and bell hooks certainly result in hours of unacknowledged labor, such as those spent working with me and my students on this project. In future iterations of this project, I look forward to discovering what other venues might publish student work, though I understand the commitment of Hybrid Pedagogy to empowering marginalized student voices to still be the exception, and not the rule, within academic publishing.

Risks and rewards

In fall 2016, students in College Writing 110 were not only informed that the subject of our semester would be “The Purpose of Education,” but also that they would be reading, writing, and learning all semester in preparation to submit articles to a scholarly, peer-reviewed, open-access journal. At the same time, they learned what a scholarly, peer-reviewed, open access journal is: a conversation among people researching a specific topic, sharing and debating the conclusions of their research in public, with the intent of engaging a larger audience in this conversation. Like all Queens College students, the majority of my students that semester were working class, immigrants, non-native speakers of English, and/or the first in their families to attend college. Few arrived with an interest in education and even fewer came to that required class enthusiastic about a semester devoted to writing. As one might imagine, I spent those first few classes wondering what exactly I had been thinking when I decided we would spend the semester not only reviewing the fundamentals of English grammar and introducing the conventions of college writing (challenging, semester-long endeavors in and of themselves) but also preparing these students to co-author original, meaningful, and well-researched contributions to an academic journal. (For specific details about the process, method, scaffolded assignments, and prompts see my post on HASTAC.)

During those first few weeks of the semester, I had to remind myself of the rewards publishing might yield to students, when all I could seemingly think about were the risks. For many of the students, this course was their first experience using research to make an argument and incorporating different types of evidence to support their claims. While many students were fluent readers and writers in languages other than English, we spent a lot of time going over the basics of English grammar and difficult skills like paragraph organization, which can take years of practice to master. Given this, the greatest risk seemed to be that the publishing assignment would discourage students by reinforcing their own sense that they “aren’t writers,” especially if their work was rejected from the journal.

In working to mitigate this first risk, I stumbled upon another. All semester, I reminded students that accuracy and precision were important because others would be reading their writing and learning from their ideas. At the same time, following Cheryl E. Ball’s “editorial pedagogy,” I told students that a decision of “Revise and resubmit” would be a tremendous success, equivalent to an “A” grade. I knew how busy students were, that this was a required course, and that many students had little interest in academic writing, so it was unlikely that any would opt to continue doing the revisions necessary for publication in the journal. Wanting to make good on my promise that people would be reading their writing while simultaneously acknowledging the time constraints of an academic semester, I became determined to find a way for their voices to reach an audience of educators, even if it wasn’t specifically through Hybrid Pedagogy.

To ensure that students’ writings would still be available online, I developed a revision and publication assignment that gave students various options for implementing the feedback from the Hybrid Pedagogy editors and sharing their work. The assignment gave students three options for proceeding with their project:

revising their articles in preparation to resubmit them to Hybrid Pedagogy (this option was available to the three groups that received the equivalents of “Accept with minor revisions” or “Revise and resubmit”)

revising their articles into blog posts that they would post to the “Scholarly Voices” group for undergraduate writing on HASTAC (this option was available to all groups)

revising their articles and submitting them solely to the instructor (which was available to all groups, but only to be used as a last resort if students had a pressing reason why their writing should not be published online)

Many students opted to make whatever revisions they could in the remaining time we had together during the semester, rather than continuing on with the editorial feedback loop that would extend far beyond our class. After it became clear that students wanted to post to HASTAC, another risk emerged: that student writing, in need of revisions they simply didn’t have time to make, would be posted with their names attached to it, and could come back to haunt them later on in life. As a class, we discussed how HASTAC’s community of users might benefit and how the students might benefit as well from a piece of published writing that could be sent to employers and included on their resumes as evidence of their research, collaboration, digital publishing, and editing skills. But we also discussed the fact that this piece of writing would be available in search results for years to come. Given the current political climate of anti-immigration, I created the third option to ensure that a student would not be penalized if their group decided they were not comfortable publishing online and wanted to submit their writing solely to the instructor. The safety of my students outweighs any benefits that could be reaped by a piece of published writing, and I wanted there to be zero repercussions for students who felt compromised by digital publishing. Ultimately, I wanted students to understand the potential benefits and consequences of each option, and to guide them in the process of making an informed decision about which option was right for them.

The risks of publishing were mitigated, in part, by the group on HASTAC dedicated to undergraduate writing, “Scholarly Voices,” created by Steven L. Berg, which announces to readers that the posts are authored by undergraduates. Students also found creative ways to mitigate this risk such as publishing posts with a pseudonym, omitting their names altogether, or announcing their subject-positioning as first-year writing students. In the end, all of the groups opted to post their writing to HASTAC, except for one intrepid group of students — Sumedha Madan, Fina Ferrara, and Gavriel Lev — who worked with the journal’s editors for months after our semester ended to revise their article for publication. Their article, “The Ultimate Life Experience: Preparing Students for the World Beyond the Classroom” was published on August 30, 2017.

Anyone can be a writer

To my surprise, in students’ reflections on this assignment, they repeatedly emphasized how transformative the group nature of the project was. As one student, Juliana Moreno, beautifully wrote, “Despite of the fact that my group’s paper wasn’t accepted, that wasn’t our main goal regardless. Our main goal was to successfully work together as one to create a better piece that would otherwise be produced by one of us individually.” My students’ narratives of their final projects are tales of success that emphasize the ways their groups triumphed over the obstacles of collaborative work. When you spend an entire semester discussing all of the ways that grades and standardized testing have taught students to compete with those sitting next to them, the challenge of writing together felt like a more insurmountable obstacle than undermining centuries of elitist ideology that dictate that undergraduate writing isn’t worthy of publication. Unlearning this indoctrination and successfully working together towards a common goal can be as empowering as publishing their writing.

Since I’ve started having students publish their writing for real audiences, I’ve noticed a common refrain throughout my teaching evaluations: “Your course taught me that anyone can be a writer.” Not only does publishing their writing -— whether on HASTAC or in Hybrid Pedagogy -— help students think critically about their audience, the amount of evidence provided to support claims, and the politics of citation, there is something about transmutation, seeing their writing online, sharing it with others, and observing others commenting on and engaging with their ideas, that is empowering. I recognize this, because I felt it as a graduate student writer.

Despite what pundits proclaim about lazy millennials, students in my classes have taught me that today’s college students arrive with a passion for social change. We are lucky because now, perhaps more than ever, we need them for the production of a more just and equal world. Thanks to the generous team of Hybrid Pedagogy editors, this publishing assignment helped students understand that their words matter in the world beyond the classroom. If we can help students better recognize their capacity for action by understanding that they too are writers with important things to say, then having students “write out loud” is well worth the risks.

About the Author

Danica Savonick

Danica Savonick (@danicasavonick) is a doctoral candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught in the English Department at Queens College for four years. Danica recently completed her dissertation, “The Promise of Aesthetic Education: On Pedagogy, Praxis, and Social Justice,” which analyzes the reciprocal relations between feminist aesthetics and pedagogy in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich. Based on archival research on their syllabi, lesson plans, and assignments, and analysis of their creative work, Danica’s research shows how intersectional feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education, and, reciprocally, how initiatives such as open admissions, equal opportunity programs, and affirmative action left an indelible mark on our postwar literary landscape. Publications include articles in American Literature, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities. Danica is also lead author of Gender Bias in Academe: An Annotated Bibliography of Important Recent Studies and a member of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy editorial collective. She blogs about inclusive pedagogy, social justice, and literature at http://danicasavonick.com/