Final collaborative zine

Full guidelines here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qfZXWRhI1SFmaw5uGkZN8jGugPUzR4oX8xJhDJ5T74E/edit?tab=t.0 Links to an external site. 

Practitioners’  Zine Project: Critical language and literacy pedagogies

For this project, you will work in groups (assigned during the second week of class) to create a public-facing Zine where you unpack what it means to be a critical language practitioner. 

Your zine can  be digital or put together using paper, images, etc. You can find some samples made by my ENGL 370 students here. Links to an external site.You will notice that the genre conventions of a Zine include creativity, collages, a variety of media, modalities, translingual practice, etc. They also include authors’ bios, individual and collaboratively-written articles that draw from personal experience but also from the scholarship. 

The theme of the Zine will be around “critical language and literacy pedagogies”, building on the core principles of our class. We could imagine that your “practitioners' Zine projects” could be featured in the “Translationships Links to an external site.” project website, presented at the WAESOL conference Links to an external site.in the Fall or the Praxis conference Links to an external site. in May. You might also find inspiration from articles in the TESOL Connections Links to an external site. newsletter, the Sandbox Links to an external site., or the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (and this article Links to an external site. in particular). 

Some non-negotiable requirements include: 

1. writing a collaborative introduction where you all frame what “critical language and literacy pedagogies” mean to you, the complicated questions around it, and cover the contents of the Zine,
2.  a table of contents
3. a “meet the authors” page, where you introduce yourselves to the audience;
4.  individual pieces where each one of you write about, for example, translationships/critical language pedagogy  teaching tips or recommendations, a blog-style article about a specific topic that resonated with you this quarter, a teachers’ personal narrative, a teaching philosophy, a call to action, etc. (In each article you should figure out how to best cite your sources). For this part, I encourage you to look at your journals, observation notes, teaching materials and identify a thread, an idea, a response, or  an emotion  that stuck with you and unravel that in your individual contribution. Sarah Ahmed calls these “sticky objects” (2010). 

In class, we will try to follow this timeline with guided in-class activities: 

• Week 8 - we will identify this “sticky” idea, thread, or  an emotion  that stuck with you and plan for how to unravel it.  
• Week 9 - share your “sticky object" and a draft (in progress) of your individual piece  with others in your group.
• Week 10- plan/draft the Zine introduction and other elements 

Of course, you should take advantage of the genre affordances and use a variety of media, language forms, etc. while keeping in mind your audience and the setting. I recommend that you play with the genre and use your creativity. This should be a fun and exciting project, so feel free to innovate and be creative based on your own learning and teaching styles and preferences. 

• For example, if you are interested in oral storytelling, you might want to consider recording or filming your individual piece instead of writing it, and then inserting the multimedia file with a transcript in the digital Zine. 
• Or if you are into textiles, knitting, weaving, etc. perhaps create a small piece with a short tutorial where you talk about this practice and its relationship to language/literacy. 
• Of if you like drawing, create a short comic strip and add a commentary. 
• Or you can compose a narrative, or a more traditional teaching philosophy if that’s more helpful to you. 

I recommend that you have a plan for the introduction, but wait until the individual parts are put together to identify themes, general framing, etc. and then finalize the introduction accordingly.

Once you turn in the zine, you can consider turning that into a presentation for a conference! I’d be happy to give you feedback on your abstract. 

Group 1: Vecksle, Ariana, Magda, Survai

Group 2: Maribeth, Michelle, Brittney, Hong