I had the pleasure of presenting alongside a number of talented writers and writing educators at this past weekend’s SUNY Council on Writing conference. My presentation on creative thinking’s role in first-year composition classrooms was one of many that attempted to voice the inner intricacies and challenges facing our discipline as teachers of literacy and rhetoric, and though I didn’t get a chance to attend every session that I would have liked, the presentations that I was able to make it to proved every bit as illuminating as I had hoped.

Here’s a link to the notes as well as the visual aid for my presentation at this year’s conference- Cognitive Seeds: The Role of Creative Thinking in First Year Composition.

Lastly, here’s a link to a conversation we had transcribed in Google Docs that was lead by three PhD candidates at Syracuse University Composition and Cultural Rhetorics program. The discussion, which I played a prominent role in, centered mainly around the idea of collaborative pedagogy. As you’ll see if you read the transcription, a colleague of mine at SUNY Cortland and I held a productive and generative argument-discussion that generated some new ideas (and some new questions, a valuable aspect of creative thinking) on this collaborative pedagogy subject.

Are our teaching materials in first year composition our intellectual property? If so, what is its value? How can writing programs, many of which are composed of adjuncts and part-time instructors, institute a materials-sharing system that might improve the program’s instructional offerings?

Thanks to everyone who helped to make the conference such as success. I know I left with both newfound theoretical knowledge on composition’s role in education and the global knowledge economy as well as a number of more practical, hands-on activities related to the craft of writing instruction. It was a great showing from SUNY Cortland, and from SUNY writing institutions all around.