Writing an Inclusive Future: ASU-Tempe’s Stretch Writing Program  

Susan Naomi Bernstein, Co-Coordinator

Ian James, Teaching Associate

WRITE WRITE WRITE patches from the "Quilt of Many Colors" created by Stretch Writing Program students and Susan Naomi Bernstein

This session presents  theoretical and practical underpinnings of the Stretch writing program at ASU-Tempe, including cognitive, affective, and logistical triumphs and challenges attended to by Stretch students and faculty. ASU’s Basic Writing Teaching Practicum, first offered in 2014 and the recent Stretch Write-In Halloween Gathering, will be discussed. The Write-In, a project conceived and enacted by Stretch students and faculty, suggests the resilience of Stretch in facing challenges of austerity and precarity (Welch and Scott) that concern all of us involved in the teaching and learning of postsecondary developmental education now and for an inclusive future, and addresses the conference theme “Don’t Stop Believin.”

WORKS CITED

Glau, Gregory R. “Stretch at 10: A Progress Report on Arizona State University’s Stretch Program.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 26, no. 2, 2007, pp. 4–50.

Glau, Gregory R. “The ‘Stretch Progran1II : Arizona State University's New Model of University-Level Basic Writing Instruction.” WPA: Writing Program Administration, vol. 20, no. 1/2, 1996, pp. 79–91.

Mountz, Alison et al. "For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University." ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies [Online], 14.4 (2015): 1235-1259. Web. 25 Jan. 2018.

Welch, Nancy, and Tony Scott. Composition in the Age of Austerity. Utah State University Press, 2016.