Author: amybethwright
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“The Impact of the Writing Classroom Just Before 2025 or, The Teaching of Writing Has Ethical Implications” by Professor Laura Wilder
Laura Wilder, the Chair of the English Department and an associate professor at SUNY Albany, was a keynote speaker at our October 2025 conference at SUNY Adirondack in Queensbury. Conference workshops, panels, and discussions reexamined the space of the writing classroom post-pandemic and in the age of AI, guided by the theme, Now What? What…
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Dented Beauty: An Autoethnography on a COVID-Era First-Year Composition Classroom’s Inclusive, Meaningful Researched Writing Culture
By Dr. Tom Friedrich, Professor of English, Director of First-Year Composition at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, and SUNY Council on Writing Board Member Featured image by Richard Ricciardi. I. March 14, 2020 My last student leaves, and I am alone in my lab classroom at SUNY Plattsburgh. With the Governor’s…
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How Reading Contemporary Short Stories Creates Good and Empathetic Writers
This piece previously appeared in the spring 2020 volume of Expose: The Journal of Expository Writing at Purchase College. By Emily Sausen At the end of each semester, I share a New York Times op-ed titled “Don’t Turn Away From the Art of Life” with my College Writing students. In his plea for all of us to…
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Reimagining Possibilities For Student Support
Following the March shutdown, SUNY Jefferson devised new strategies for offering holistic and transformative support to students. By Amy Beth Wright Our August 13 webinar convened administrators and educators from Jefferson Community College (SUNY Jefferson)—the composition of the panel was representative of the panel’s message: With focused and intentional collaboration between faculty and administration, the…
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Teaching Writing Process in an Age of Distractions, Speed, and Instant Gratification
By John Mitchell Morris This essay first appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Expose: The Journal of Expository Writing. Inevitably each term, after discussing with a student the revisions necessary for an assigned essay in my College Writing class, the student stares at me from across my desk (or, now, computer screen) and says,…
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The Pedagogy of Compassion: Resources From Our August 6 Webinar
By Amy Beth Wright Compassion, and awareness of the cumulative trauma of both structural racism and the dislocation brought on by the global pandemic, were through-lines in the discussion during SUNY Council on Writing’s first webinar in advance of the fall 2020 semester, “Reflecting Back, Preparing within Uncertainty: Fostering Student Agency in Writing Courses.” Joelle…
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Why Teaching Composition Virtually Presents New Possibilities for Rhetorical Exchange
Parts of this interview with Professor Cynthia Haynes, Director of Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design of Clemson University, also appeared within the Stony Brook University’s College of Arts and Sciences Newsletter, here. “There are people that I have met virtually and known ONLY virtually for over 25 years. Yet, I do not feel as if…
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Social Class and the Writing Classroom: Two Ways to Help Your Students
By Katelynn DeLuca This piece first appeared in Writers Who Care in May of 2021. Growing up, social class wasn’t something we spoke about in my family, my high school, or my peer groups. Or maybe that isn’t true–we talked around it. For example, my friends and I knew that if someone lived in a…
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How First Year Writing Courses Can Revitalize Democracy
What follows is a synthesis of conference welcomes written by SUNY Council on Writing President Michael Murphy in the years since the current administration has held office. In this time, the role of the writing educator in nurturing critical thinking, objectivity, and self-reflection has never been more vital to sustaining democracy and defining the identity…
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Our Next Webinar Convenes on September 25, 2020
With the school year now well underway, we invite you to a community conversation to restore and reflect, with strategies and insights from the first month of teaching shared organically within our reflective conversations. Please join us at 4:00 p.m. on Friday September 25 for 90 minutes to connect with peers, share, listen, and learn…
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Fall Conference Update and Upcoming Summer Webinars
The SUNY Council on Writing regrets that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 fall conference will be postponed. This year’s conference would have been held at SUNY Oswego in late October in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Council’s inception. We look forward to meeting again in person in 2021, when we can…
SUNY Council on Writing 