Opening the door to writing relationalities: Moving writing and the teaching of writing

Abstract

As writers are increasingly required to leave their ways of knowing, doing and being at the doors of their classrooms, this article explores what happens when teachers of writers open those doors and mobilize the Writing Realities framework's interrelated principles of writer-identity, critical literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, multiliteracies, translanguaging and intertextuality. With examples from place-writing and place-walking experiences with educators in a Summer Writing Institute, we show the possibilities and potential for multiple and diverse writing realities and relationalities. The article explores how writing relationalities moves outward from those moments to (re)energize teachers to (re)engage in the pressing work of challenging the issues of equity and power in classrooms, and to know/be/teach writers/writing differently.