VOICES FROM THE VOID: DUAL ENROLLMENT USER EXPERIENCE WITH COMPOSITION By Jerrice Renita Donelson A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Rhetoric and Writing - Doctor of Philosophy 2023 ABSTRACT Voices from The Void is a cross case study analysis/synthesis of a cohort of former Dual Enrollment Post-Secondary Enrollment Option students who share in matriculation at the same 4- year university dual enrollment program. The purpose of this study is to learn of dual enrollment students’ experiences with composition beginning at the site of high school-to- college transition, continuing throughout college, and as professional writers. This study utilizes user experience (UX) as storytelling, as well as cultural rhetorics as methods to center the voices of the former dual enrollment students as users of composition. UX method of storytelling though Journey Mapping is used to create a visual of the journeys Black and BIPOC Dual Enrollment users may encounter interacting in commonplaces which represent composition’s thresholds-- the classrooms, spaces, and places often within predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Autoethnography is used to represent researcher positionality as stories of my own experiences as a user of composition as a Black returning student, Black graduate student, Black writing consultant/tutor, and Black secondary literacy teacher are juxtaposed. Through qualitative staged interviews, and cross-checks over the spring and summer of 2021, I collected stories of former Dual Enrollment Users (DEU), and their interactions while crossing composition’s thresholds. These stories revealed common encounters experienced as we all journeyed across some of the thresholds--racial violence while literacy learning. Based on these findings, Racial Storytelling was used as a method to tell our collective stories to gain a deeper understanding centralizing Black and BIPOC voices who experience this racialization. Copyright by JERRICE RENITA DONELSON 2023 Dedicated to my Donelson/Graves Family: Ruby, Lilly, Wilbur, Robert, Calvin, Doug, John, Sylvia, Deatrice, Jae, Carolyn, Robert, Jr., Phillip, and David, Gladys, and Maude. To my Daddy, Felmon Levander, Jr, who taught me to always ask questions. And, to my Mommie, Patricia Joyce Who never let any of my questions go unanswered. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to take a moment to thank as many people as I possibly can fit into this space as there has been such an outpouring of support, and encouragement during this project and beyond. I have to include how I would not be the multi-hyphenate researcher-teacher-scholar- advocate I am without each and every one of those of you who willed me along this journey. Beginning with Dr. Leslie Thornton, my very first Black professor and mentor who told my family in undergrad, “make sure she goes for her PhD” as my aunts, sissy, and mom in harmony said, “We sure will!” Thank you, Dr. T for lighting the way, and for being an outspoken Black voice in a space void of Black excellence and believing mine would bring the same. I want to acknowledge Dr. Bill DeGenaro, Tija Spitsberg, and Lisa Grimble who collectively took time after a WC meeting to help me understand the benefits of taking this road. Dr. Bill DeGenaro, once again, your contribution in helping me bring this all to fruition is unmeasurable. From the first initial email, to illustrating a plan to apply encouraging me that I had what it takes, and I had a voice needed to be heard in the field. You told me to “keep talking” as many times as I have been told to stay quiet, and for that, I am forever grateful. Thank you for the lengths you have gone to ensure I stayed the course, including all you have done and do for my mom. I am beyond honored to call you colleague, and friend. I want to acknowledge Dr. Deborah Smith-Pollard, and Dr. Liz Rohan who both believed I was doing the right thing even when I was not so sure I was. Liz, thank you for listening and knowing what I had as a study when I didn’t—this is all your fault BTW. I also want to thank Dr. Margaret Willard-Traub, Dr. Mike McDonald, P.F. Potvin, and Alicia Schaeffer for having the patience while cheering me along with smiles and support at every faculty meeting. Margaret, I v have to say you had a bigger role in this journey than you think considering you “strongly” suggested I take the “maize and blue” road instead. Yet, you have been an ear and outspoken voice of guidance ever since not holding my being in Spartanville against me, and for that I thank you. To Melissa Arthurton, you will forever be the greatest part of my origin story here at MSU. Thank you for taking my call, following through, and every single thing you have done thus far. This journey, as long as it has been, is not complete with you in it. Thank you for your encouragement and smiling faces. If I had to choose a cohort to be a part of, I would def pick Howard Fooksman extraordinaire, Dr. Suban Nur Cooley, Dr. Bree Strayer, Dr. Eric Rodriguez, Dr. Cat Jennings, KenLea Pebbles, ABD, and of course my shady boots, Dr. Rachel Renee Robinson- Zetzer. We went through some moments together no other cohort could match, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You all encouraged, supported, cried, and laughed me back and forth to that campus. And, just for that, you get the real shout out. Rachel, I want to thank you personally for the love and support you offered my entire journey. You rooted for me even when I wasn’t around, and that takes a special kind of energy—and special you are. I want to thank Dr. Shewonda Leger, Dr. Wonderful Faison, and Dr. Laura Gonzales for being the first representation of what MSU and WRAC had to offer. You each are a credit to what we do, and I thank you all for being some of the best examples. Laura, I want to thank you for always seeing me and my work, and for all your help along the way—you are truly an awe- inspiring scholar, and just an awesome fuckin person. The next time we are in South America at the same time, I WILL go dancing! I have to acknowledge Dr. Elise Dixon, and Dr. Kate Firestone, for all the laughs and tears, and more laughs, and even more tears, and for all the hang time. vi Thank you for making room for me. To Dr. Diana Baldwin who made the days in WC with the shared love/hate for tech, convos of comics, and writing with the community. I remember telling you of @raed.hennessy literacy journey, and you told me then, “that’s a story needing to be told.” Thank you for this advice. I miss you dearly, and I am sure you miss me in my Michigan gear as well (I am getting State stuff NOW). I want to graciously thank Dr. Anicca Cox for all your scholarly tutelage, and inspiration as an advocate, learned scholar, and most caring human being. Thank you for everything you have done and still do as a mentor, as a woman, and as a friend. I owe very much of my survival to my Sissy, the Min. Barbara Davis Boyd. Thank you for every single breath spent pouring into me at every single barrier, and having the Devine fortitude, Faithful insight, and Holy energy to tell me that I had to keep going--because, rather I like it or not, I have an assignment. You have been one of my greatest inspirations. And, to Glendra L. Lewis, from Cerveny Middle to UM, who has been parallel this path, even at a distance. I thank you for literally grabbing me by the collar and dragging me across this finish line—only you could have done this, and I cannot thank you enough for being strong enough, and willing to. Thank you to my Big Baby Anthony G. Johnson for all those phone calls during my commute, and thinking for me when I couldn’t, cuz I was just “being pretty.” I gleefully acknowledge my newest friend-family additions who also had pivotal roles in making sure I made it to this point. Thank you to my Boogie down and Jamaica Queens NY booskis, @styleoversize and @kayjaygenus for talking the talk, and reminding me how Blackness, while not experienced as a constant for some, still needs to be acknowledged loudly. Thank you isn’t enough to account for the many, many FaceTime political debates, innanets vii debauchery, shenanigans copping sneakers, and belly laughter, from the hospital, to home, and to the defense. I love yaw’ll IRL. To my committee--I want to acknowledge their contributions--not only believing without a shadow of a doubt I belong here, but for being #TeamJerrice that made sure I’d become Dr. J. To Dr. Trixie Smith, I want to thank you for your caring, nurturing, and sternness at times (yup). I enjoyed every moment working under you, next to you, and learning from you. You also told me to “keep talking” even when you would slide in “Jerrice likes to talk” every so often. I can’t thank you enough for reminding me constantly to be “Jerrice” at every step I wanted to fold into what I believed was expected. I appreciate you showing me the cultural rhetorician in me, and advocate for the voiceless. You pushed me, or better yet, pulled me out of the shadows creatively. I admire you as a scholar, and as a person. Thank you so very much for sharing your family with me, letting me follow you around, and checking in when I wasn’t. I have to acknowledge Dr. Julie Lindquist—not just as a part of my committee, but for being the first person to say, “you must think us MSU folks are kooks!” after the debacle that was my acceptance into the program. I enjoyed every single day in your class. You influenced my researcher identity as the constant epiphanies didn’t stop once class was over. Thank you for being a model of what it means to keep trying. While not a kook, I can’t thank you enough for sticking with me all the way from the beginning to the end. I appreciate your mentorship, and guidance, and your leadership. I have to send a huge thank you all the way to the moon over Miami. Dr. Ben Lauren, who as the former graduate director, brought a level of empathy and diligence to that position, as well as cracking open my mind in XA. I can still remember telling Trixie, “I don’t understand viii XA” yet, after explaining it to her what I didn’t think I knew, she politely said “sounds like you know plenty.” I cannot thank you enough for your caring conversations, your scholarly and researcher guidance, your mentorship, and your willingness to see me to the end of this journey, even after your departure. I can only hope you read this and know how much you’re a part of my development—both scholarly and human—that is unmeasurable. I look forward to the pleasure of working with you in a not-so-distant future. Thank you for representing the love to follow. Now, I am at the part of these acknowledgements where writing is going to be challenging. Not because I don’t have more to say, but because there aren’t enough words in existence to acknowledge and thank, Dr. William Hart-Davidson aka The Notorious [Agent] BHD. Bill, we clicked on first meet in job group where I was baffled at not having met you prior. Now, I see we came together at the precise moment needed. Your mentorship, advice, knowledge, and leadership are something for the academics Hall of Fame, if there ever is one. I can’t even imagine what this last lap would’ve looked like had you not been here with pom-poms in hand, memes, GIFs, and song lyrics to boot, seemingly running right beside me every single time, I needed a lift, a GPS, or lost sight. You go hard in the paint for me without letting up pushing me further and further, and I am elated at the chance to continue to write beside you. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough for all you’ve done. Greatest thanks to my former kiddos, which you will forever be @raed.hennessy, @blkmystique, @lovelittlejean, @sabiyah.denee, @Khaliltay. Without you sharing your stories, this thing wouldn’t be, and I am forever grateful. @raed.hennessy, I can’t thank you enough for all the “writers’ rooms” we had over the years. I am beyond words, and incredibly humbled by ix how much you have developed as a writer and creative, and how you have helped me along the way. You, kiddo, have been my greatest inspirations in ways I am sure you don’t realize. Thank you for being the son in my universe. To my Big Brother, Michael A. Stair, who before you left, always told me I am already a teacher, and now, I believe. And, lastly, to my Heartbeat, Shaun. You’ve carried the load of my journey to Ph.D., all while carrying your own, and at a distance. I wouldn’t have made it all those times I wanted to walk away, had you not blocked the exit. Thank you for showing me what not giving up looks like. I Love You More… x PREFACE Unconscious Evil I never would have believed this research would bring me, daughter of civil-rights activist-Black-militants, to the moment I discovered I am complicit in the racialized violence my former dual enrollment students experienced. I wanted to believe when becoming a teacher, that the work I do will be received, and will make a difference—especially to those who look like me. I want to believe the work I will continue to do, in the name of literacy, that what I will do will not cause harm. I want to believe as a Black literacy scholar, in a field of agents of literacy, that if there are others who see their actions creating barriers where access should be, that we can change. As I completed this research, I realized my complicity—known and unknown--can be evacuated by acknowledging it is a problem--one that does not serve our authentic purposes as a field, or a discipline. I believe I do not have to reinforce the belief that all prose is “standard,” or that it should be—not in 2023. I believe, as a rhetorician, what we want is to hear the stories as the storyteller wants us to hear it. I believe it is an honor to be privy to stories, and believe we, as rhetors have a responsibility to protect, and preserve the storytellers, as well as the stories we have the distinct, and often unearned privilege to hear. And, while I believe these convictions may not sound fundamental to some, I want to believe we all want the same thing for all of the students we serve—equality. xi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: The Situationship………………..………………………………………………………………………………1 Composition’s Non-Consensual Relationship with Dual Enrollment…………..………..………….1 How it Started: Dual Enrollment and Composition’s Engendering………….……………………….3 How it’s Going: Dual Enrollment’s Disruption to Composition’s Supremacy….………...….….5 It’s Complicated: Composition’s Response to DECOMP………………………….….…………………...7 It’s All Relative: Composition’s Relationality with Dual Enrollment…….………………..……….10 Research Ethos………….………………………………………………………………………………….………………12 Chapter Feed……….…………………………………………………….…………………………………………………18 CHAPTER TWO: The Receipts….……………………………………………………………………………….…………….…21 Locating Composition’s Thresholds….……..……………………………………………………………………23 No Cap: The Violence of Traditionalism…………….………………………………………………………….26 They Said What They Said: Composition’s Institutionality……...…………………………………….30 ICYMI: Young Writers Changed the World…….……………………………….....…………………………39 What If…: Radically Imagining Inclusion….……………………………..……….……………………………46 CHAPTER THREE: The Algorithm……………......……………………………………………………………………………52 Clutch: What I Didn’t Know I Had…...................................................................................53 Vibe Check: From Student to Use..………………………………………………………………………………..56 M-E-T-H-O-D: Questions of Experiences with Composition…………………………………….……..59 Check Tha Technique: Data Collection…………………….......………………………………………………66 Droppin Dimes: What The Data Told Me………………………….………………..………………………...73 Tha Read: Meaning Making…………………………………………………………………………….……………75 Hit Different: User Experience as Racial Storytelling…………………….…………………………….…78 CHAPTER FOUR: The Analytics……………………...………………..……………………………………………………….82 No Filter: Black Students’ Perspectives on Black Body Value………………..…..….……………….83 Entanglements: Self-efficacy as Identity……………………………………………...……………………….88 Big Facts: Stories from the Thresholds…………….…………………...………...………………………….101 @raed.hennessy: Concept #5-Writing is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity……..101 @lovelittlejean: Concept #1-Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Activity……........107 @blkmystique: Concept #3-Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies…………….………………………..……………….…………………………………………113 Keep It Movin: Crossing Boundaries……………………………………………….……….………………….119 CHAPTER FIVE: Relationship Goals………………………………..…………………...………………………………….121 Conversatin: DEUs Ideas for Change………………………………………………….……………………….122 xii Stretchin Our View: Looking Toward Future Research………..………….……....………………….125 There’s Room at The Cross: Recommendations Toward Inclusion..……………...…...…..…..126 Adjusting Our Lens: Looking Back to Look Forward….………………………..……………….………128 Assumptions: How Proscribed Identities Create Barriers to Literacy Learning….129 Assessment: (In)Actions of Authority……………………………...………………………….…..134 Orientation: Positionality Matters…………………………..…..………………………….………140 UX as Racial Storytelling: Transformational Possibilities for DEI and Design Thinking…141 Real Talk: What We CAN Do…………………………………………………………….…………………………146 Final Thoughts……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..147 WORKS CITED………………………………...………………………………………………..………...…………………………151 APPENDIX A IRB Sample Questions…………….....……………………….………….……….…………………………160 APPENDIX B User Experience Sample Questions………….............................................................161 APPENDIX C Consent to Participate in Research………..………………………...………..………………………162 xiii CHAPTER ONE: The Situationship “I believe dual enrollment [and composition] already had a messed-up relationship before we got there…we are just products of it, unknowingly I think.” ~@khaliltay “Dual enrollment wasn’t the problem as much I believe it was what we were told per se.” ~@raed.hennessy “I had an idea of what dual enrollment was going to be, but when I got there it wasn’t.” ~@sabiyah.denee “I had already had dual credit courses so ya know I knew dual enrollment would help me get what I needed for college ya know I knew I would be prepared.” ~@lovelittlejean “I wasn’t so sure like what dual enrollment was going to be like, but I knew like it had to be different than like high school.” ~@blkmystique [Me as Tutor Interlude] “Just teach em’ grammar is the order I was given by the non-teacher administrator who could not be bothered beyond his designer socks to enlighten nor elaborate what exactly these students, high school dual enrollment post-secondary enrollment option students or DEPSEO actually need while taking college courses on a regionally located version of an R1 university campus. All from a nearby, historically depicted as underserved district, and representing four different course subjects, as well as high school standings, I was summoned as the Spector to get em prescriptive ready for the block. Befuddled at the ask, yet looking into the faces who look like my own, the feeling of accountability began to abduct my anxiety as the directive subtext to eat my own was not one I was willing to copy. As someone who had just recently experienced composition at this level and at the very same place, I began to wonder, how can teaching high school students grammar ensure they are equipped with what’s expected in writing in college? Writing holistically and effectively from a rhetorical perspective? Writing from the personal? Identifying, analyzing, and applying rhetoric? Exploring, discovering, and learning of identity, agency, authority? The autonomy of theorizing and naming ways of being? More importantly, where in the hell is composition?” Composition’s Non-Consensual Relationship with Dual Enrollment Dual Enrollment—high school students enrolled in college-level courses—also known as Dual Credit, Concurrent Enrollment, Post-Secondary Enrollment Options, Pathways, etc. as programs of access for high school students to experience and earn college credit, has an asperous relationship with composition. Arguments of concern continue to ignite among secondary and higher education stakeholders with Dual enrollment programming being widely 1 accepted throughout US colleges and universities within 48 states, while disciplines such as composition, is where acceptance becomes thwarted (ECS). Reformists, administrators, policymakers, as well as researchers and practitioners on both “sides” of the institutional divide postulate the impact and implications of dual enrollment programming on the institution while composition depicts a vitriol orientation toward access. Although the collective assumption by higher ed practitioners that most entering freshmen lack some level of experience in higher-level academic tasks and that all high school students would indeed benefit from effective composition curriculum to advance transferable literacy practices for college readiness, composition performance is depicted per individual student, and subsequently, where inexperience is commonly revealed. However, compared to first-year students in the assumption of academic inexperience, dual enrollment students represent a unique, yet ubiquitous set of challenges with dual identities and consciousnesses as high school students concurrently enrolled in both high school and college: also acknowledged as limited, yet assessed using the same academic and institutional standard performance expectations by compositionists and teachers of writing in other disciplines. While education scholar David Conley suggests writing may be the “single academic skill most closely associated with college success (24),” the collective assumption expressed in composition scholarship (Schneider; Hansen; Farris, etc.)argues that dual enrollment students, who in many college and university partnerships represent Black and BIPOC students from underserved districts, demonstrate an “exceptional” lack of experience in college-level composition due to age, lived experience, maturation and apparently class. Taczak and Thelin’s 2009 research observing 14–15-year-old students in a composition classroom suggests “need 2 more maturity” and further cognitive development to effectively understand the criticality of “contemporary composition” due to lack of life experience which differs from high school to college (24). Following research in the field cited this research heavily readministering the same generalized arguments against access due to these same character traits (Conley; Brandt; Schneider; Sullivan & Nadeau; Taczak & Thelin). Such spatial and temporal assumptions by scholars in the field that there is a fixed point in time of entry into college level writing while perspective oriented, is a fallacy of composition and may also be interpreted as habitual redlining or covenants within established purposes as an ongoing effort to preserve the discipline. Yet due to the lack of or limited data to substantially proport these arguments or the field’s generalizations of high school students' writerly agency and authority as an absolute, composition's perspective of the relationship with dual enrollment does not effectively reflect its inception. How it Started: Dual Enrollment and Composition’s Engendering Dual enrollment programs are defined as comprehensive where students usually enroll for one or more years based on state policies. Each participating state, institution, both secondary as well as post-secondary, are governed by state education departments policies regarding compliance along with the National Association of Concurrent Enrollment Partnership Agency or NACEP created 1997—but are still allowed institutional agency to determine course availability, matriculation, program design, program prerequisites and requirements. California is noted as one of the first states in 1976 to mandate dual enrollment with Minnesota following in 1985 as the first legislative policy (Moreland; Moody & Bonesteel). 3 Initially created as an emergence program reserved for high-achieving students to experience first-hand exposure to the academic rigor and requirements of college while still in high school, dual enrollment began prior to the professionalization of the field with the earliest recorded program in Connecticut in 1955. The program at University of Connecticut', described as Cooperative Program for Superior Students then later, “early college”, was essentially created to provide an academically challenging alternative to affluent white students whose familial or financial privilege already afforded college access through formal partnerships with “feeder” high schools (Cassidy, Keating & Young; Karp; Moreland). Two-year colleges are stated to be the most frequented institutions to host dual enrollment programming with high school students enrolling in coursework that advances beyond secondary curriculum for exceptional students. Other dual enrollment-type initiatives existed alongside UConn in an effort to access potential exceptional students including Kenyon College in Ohio “Kenyon Plan” in 1955 which involved high school students testing in English and Composition for “advanced standing” to enroll and receive credit. However, this exam process later became the Advanced Placement Program which differs in outcomes from intended initiatives of earlier dual enrollment programming (Moreland 4). Earlier programs were partnered with 4-year colleges and universities including Syracuse University’s Project Advance or SUPA which began in 1972. Concurrent Enrollment, which still remains the most popular mode of delivery, is not the only version showing an increase in enrollment. Post-Secondary Enrollment Options or PSEO programs allow high school students to enroll in college courses for credit within 4-year colleges and universities (Karp; Moreland; NACEP; ECS). Composition, or as it was named “College-level English” was recorded as the first dual 4 credit course offered at UConn’s cooperative Program (Moreland). This assumed version of First- Year Writing—which originated by Harvard officials to facilitate articulation with secondary schools to attract new crops of students—may have been chosen due to “First-Year Composition” now FYW becoming a universal requirement as a response to secondary-post- secondary articulation concerns. Other institutions followed the FYW requirement due to developing accreditation approving this requirement in the effort to mesh curricula between high school and college to improve college preparedness. Accreditation associations adopted FYW as a viable tool for addressing these institutional issues which plagued desired enrollment on a national scale—an initiative placing composition firmly within dual enrollment’s genesis with high school students as the intended user (Skinnell; Moreland). How it’s Going: Dual Enrollment’s Disruption to Composition’s Supremacy Interestingly, composition’s views on the topic of dual enrollment have been reactive mostly, and communally expressed within scholarship such as WPA’s Schwalm and Vivion (1994) initially as an unwanted, and in some instances, an unsolicited intrusion which continues to impact articulated purposes of composition (Schwalm; Schneider; Taczak & Thelin). What has become a porous border between secondary and post-secondary composition territories where the identity of “freshman English” resides still harbors unchanged connotations regarding congruent curricula and who is more qualified to teach. With widespread policy mandates increasing dual enrollment programming, expressed concerns as a copious disturbance to the established purposes of the discipline and to the field at large began to outweigh willing participation. Writing programs were forced to provide infrastructure under perceived duress as WPA’s with earlier experiences suggested complete revocation of dual enrollment while pre- 5 entering college students continued to actively seek college credit for writing in high school—an action indoctrinated since Harvard’s leadership conspired the requirement of FYW (US Dept of Ed; Sullivan; Tinberg & Nadeau; Moreland; Skinnell). While writing programs spoke irrevocably against dual enrollment’s inclusion, current data indicates over two million high school students enrolled in some form of DE programming according to the National Association of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships or NACEP, during 2010-2011 (NACEP). States such as Michigan boast close to 60% of secondary students enrolled in DE initiatives as of 2019-2020 pursuant even during the pandemic. Concurrent enrollment— college courses taught on the high school campus by either high school or college faculty—is listed by the Education Commission of the States as the most popular delivery model with over 50% of colleges and universities offering dual enrollment courses (2019). Education researchers such as Karp and Brewster suggest there is in fact a measurable value in providing high school students access to experience college-level disciplines prior to college, while conversations within the field seem egregiously opposed (Anson; Taczak & Thelin; Tinberg & Nadeau) arguing for resistance with very few, if any exceptions (Denecker; McCrimmon; McWain). Research in higher education suggests dual enrollment can offer high school students an opportunity to experience college before their official first-year experience stating dual enrollment programs in any configuration e.g. college courses taught on the high school campus, or concurrently enrolled in a post-secondary institution facilitate accelerated learning opportunities as a means to encourage college enrollment post-high school providing the motivation and encouragement to continue into post-secondary education. However, recent enrollment data indicates a decrease in post-secondary enrollment since the year prior to the 6 pandemic in 2021, including undergraduate enrollment seeing an additional decline since 2019 (National Student Clearinghouse Res Cntr). Dual enrollment numbers have surprisingly increased annually- over 7% nationally–with more states drafting policies to expand access (NACEP; ECS) prompting discussions within the field of dual enrollment programs mishandling i.e., lack of collaboration or consent to include high school students in composition classrooms, and the misdirection toward “alternate” versions of composition and FYW. Composition’s prolonged anxieties with eroding “the traditional notion of” the discipline through quality and quantity of composition instruction, curriculum alignment, institutional agency over “territory,” and best places for teaching composition, as dual enrollment initiatives continue to increase as a strategy many districts use to promote and maintain the “college going” culture. Arguments cite the disproportionate imbalance in secondary instruction and post-secondary writing expectations as teachers of writing—English and other subject matter teachers—rhetoric scholars and practitioners, point toward the lack of cohesiveness necessary for students to work on complex writing tasks in the social and intellectual context of college—a shared concern among secondary and post-secondary stakeholders, yet not a shared equity (McCrimmon; Hansen; Calhoon-Dilahunt; Taczak & Thelin). It’s Complicated: Composition’s Response to DECOMP With traditional FYW having market dominance as a standard compared to the competing brands of dual enrollment iterations of composition also known as DECOMP–a version of FYW composition specifically for dual enrollment students–there is debate whether these alternate ways of fulfilling the universal college composition requirement are “equally as good” if not better than composition courses taken at the university (Hansen 12). Following the 7 professionalization of the field–on or around 1963, coupled with increased open-access matriculation, high school students seeking inclusion through college access programming such as dual enrollment were met with a confounded rebuttal. While the AAUP in 2019, as well as field research conducted by Taczak and Thelin in 2009, suggests college-level coursework poses instructional challenges different from those in traditional college instruction to students younger than eighteen, the field’s collective perturbation toward these emerging generic versions of FYW–whose disciplinary aesthetic is placated as a commodity and viewed as utilitarian–continues to plague the field’s disciplinary hubris as well. Grave concerns with factors that influence students’ decisions on how and where to seek composition including when, where, and who teaches composition as alternative forms of writing courses seeking equivalency to FYW emerged in response. However, access and availability of designated DECOMP courses do not ameliorate the standard when placed alongside traditional FYW, as field response has been to reject these versions due to lack of cohesiveness and discipline quality, that are also subject to the same asymmetrical issues of transferability. Presented as generative descriptions of composition marketed to students and parents as a way to “take care of” a college writing requirement to get it out-of-the-way while students are still in high school, suggests students are only interested in composition for credit because that’s how they’ve been acculturated to think about the course recommending students who access DECOMP coursework to be considered pre-college due to lack of curriculum actually being college level. Dual enrollment composition–DE/Comp e.g. High School students taking college-level composition or FYW on a college or university campus, including pilot, summer bridge, hybrid and online; and DECOMP–high school students enrolled in 8 alternative versions of composition or FYW at the high school or college for both high school and college credit is argued within the field as “problematic” suggesting alternative courses of FYW disrupt traditional FYW courses which are meant to strengthen students writing abilities and orientate students to post-secondary literacy practices (Hansen & Farris; Schwalm). In 2012, 80% of dual enrollment students experienced college-level coursework at their home high schools, while less than 20% experienced college-level coursework on an actual college or university campus (NCES). WPA’s were among the first to bemoan inclusion seeing dual enrollment “spreading rapidly” as a threat to the discipline suggesting the incumbent growth should be avoided at all costs protesting vigorously against dual enrollment students’ access to alternative versions of composition (Schwalm 49). Arguments of student readiness citing “habit of mind” not being fully established or developed in dual enrollment students to perform the types of writing expected in college composition or FYW set the tone for following discourse in the field including prompting writing departments as well as the field writ large to “resist dual enrollment arrangements” by disallowing any access or transferability of coursework contending alternate forms are not congruent, equal, or effective (Schwalm 49). Allowing access by way of alternative forms of college writing courses taught in the high school by secondary teachers are described as “not equal to” the same disciplinary eminence as composition and FYW taught on the college campus by discipline professors and instructors further recommending traditional FYW courses be upheld over alternatives. Complaints regarding responsibility of teaching FYW across the divide of secondary and post-secondary depicts dual enrollment and composition’s relationship as situational–an entanglement of simultaneity succession that is not at all harmonious with any sense of linear 9 reciprocity (Hansen; Farris). Few field research such as Taczak and Thelin’s follow-up to the 2009 initial research claims (2014) suggests no “single” position can be taken regarding the viability of alternate versions of FYW compositions expectations. Existing conversations argue efficacy of student and program voicing accelerated learning is overshadowing college-level learning outcomes (Taczak & Thelin 21) suggesting dual enrollment is an extension of other composition alternatives (Hansen; Farris) and displaces college-level composition by "confusing" credit with obtaining knowledge–therefore causing dual enrollment students to lack proficiency in college- level reading and writing (Brewster; Schneider; Farris). Where a divide within the field asks what implications exist if alternatives are embraced, others recommend policies to uphold traditional FYW courses over alternatives including DECOMP, IB, and AP. While there is no present data which lists numbers of high school students enrolled in any version of composition nor numbers of dual enrollment composition e.g “DE/Comp” or DECOMP courses which exist, the onslaught of alternatives to FYW replacing the universally required and university located still continue to preoccupy the silos of composition by offering alternatives of what the field’s orientation does not—access to composition (ECS; Moreland; Skinnell; Sullivan; Tinberg & Nadeau; Schneider; Schwalm; Farris). It’s All Relative: Composition’s Relationality with Dual Enrollment Arguments suggesting writerly agency, authority, and autonomy are age, maturity, and life experience specific, while circumstantial, may only be applicable from a singular positionality—an institutional one. However, if we continue to look through our institutionality– our positionality where disciplinary philosophies, biases, and boundaries reside, along with or beside an institutional point of view–our established purposes for FYW which indicate our 10 intentions and mission for inclusivity will essentially remain an obstacle to those seeking equal access—a clear contradiction of equity. Composition, playing such an imperative role in preparing and sustaining incoming students for the rigor and expectations of college-level literacy practices as well as entrance into disciplinarity, while invests in all other articulating students e.g., returning, transfer, ELLs, reifies the existing schism within the relationship with dual enrollment leaving these particular students constellating in The Void. Composition’s relationship with dual enrollment-while systematically asymmetrical through mandating entrance and exit into composition, also can be viewed through a symmetrical perspective where alternative pathways of competing brands of composition in response to lack of access are congruent with the desired outcome for those who travel this trajectory. Yet, in order for our intentions to be equitable, we must be equipped with enough information to make required policy decisions and curricular determinations to not exacerbate or widen the existing gap as accountability over obligations suggest the need for change in order to be more effective as a discipline (Scott-Stewart 113). This research study seeks to understand the relationship composition has with dual enrollment suggesting there are greater possibilities for inclusion if we reorientate and examine perspectives and experiences, including institutional and disciplinary biases, from a multidimensional view. If we look to those who have experienced our relationship at the disciplinary site of dual enrollment, we may find how some of our epistemologies, such as those enacted through assessment, expose the ways our relational [and ethical] accountability is limited to those within our purview. Our relationality, or lack of–where our positionality depicts the contrived relationship with dual enrollment–is vastly disproportionate with its purposes for 11 FYW–purposes which are interconnected to the establishment of FYW–which essentially began with high school students. Examining composition’s relationality with dual enrollment and specifically, its students will provide a perspective view of the influences of compositions usability for DEUs, Black and BIPOC students, and essentially, all students–an understanding which can proport the multiplicity we seek as a discipline and as a field (Villanueva 185). My lived experiences as a dual enrollment tutor, master teacher and dual enrollment program liaison is where I saw first-hand how composition’s lack of relationality impacted how Black and BIPOC dual enrollment students’ experiences were not interdependent, and in efforts of inclusion, lacked effective infrastructure from composition. I spent some time talking with my then students during dual enrollment, and later, as First-Year students continuing through graduation which forged a relationship into the present. These informal conversations throughout their journeys are what inspired the following questions: What could we, as teacher-researcher-scholars, compositionists, and teachers of writing all within these often constellating vantage points learn from dual enrollment students and their experiences with composition? Could a perspective view provide us valuable ontological feedback of access? equity? literacy and identity development? What could we learn about the journey of dual enrollment students provide as users of composition? for the field/discipline? for teaching/pedagogy? for WPAs? For usability? assessment and curriculum? And essentially, for the institution? Research Ethos As a qualitative longitudinal study, Voices from The Void will examine composition’s relationality with dual enrollment to determine if reorientation will broaden our disciplinary view. Through a cross-case study analysis/synthesis of former dual enrollment students described as Dual Enrollment Users (DEU), who as my former students, all have advanced into writing intensive careers, we will learn of ways this particular cohort experienced composition’s 12 various thresholds, and how each reflects and theorizes specific touchpoints. Borrowing from storytelling as theory and methodology (Johnson, Gibbs, Baker-Bell; Mukavetz; Wilson)—the ethos of this research is to illuminate the voices of DEUs—not only as characters within the story but also as the storytellers as Kinloch suggests the need for asking student perspectives to determine their literacies [and languages] effectively (Kareem 38). For this research, framing each chapter will be the voices of former students as Dual Enrollment Users of composition sharing their lived experiences. For the purpose throughout this research, social media rhetoric will be used to signify the collective and collaborative contribution to knowledge-making this practice of digital literacy provides. The featured storytellers will be identified by their social media handles as pseudonyms to denote their relationality to this writing modality, as well as indexically signify their agency in choosing and sharing writerly identities-opposed to any situationally prescribed identities through disciplinary or systemic paradigms such as “high school, marginalized, inexperienced, underage, underserved” or “at-risk.” Borrowing from Kynard, researcher positionality will be situated alongside as cultural and social capital where user experiences described by Kurlinkus in Rhetoric and Experience Architecture (Potts & Salvos) as a space where memorable experiences will collide and conflict (274). This “memorial interactivity” will be performed as interludes within the chapters to share my perspective, as well as my characterization as then undergraduate to graduate student, dual enrollment teacher, writing tutor and mentor, and later, composition teacher to explore potential to encourage critical reflection (275). In tandem with positionality, borrowing from Lamar Johnson, racial storytelling will serve as methodology to tell and retell the stories of DEUs, 13 and my own racial encounters with the violence of composition as we each re-enter embodiment within commonplaces. While there is existing research in composition studies by Black scholars which include Black student voices (Kynard; Kinloch; Delpit, etc.) also at the site of high school to college transition (Kareem 27), as well as dual enrollment research that includes Black and BIPOC dual enrollment students experiences with composition (Scott-Stewart; Bogen), my positionality and my voice are critical to the hearing and retelling of these stories differently than that of non- BIPOC researchers as historically, our stories lack relationality when told of Black and BIPOC people but not by Black or BIPOC people. This positionality also prompts acknowledging the sensitivity this subject-position provides as a Black female researcher-teacher-scholar (Mukavetz; Chawla; Ore; hooks; Delpit; Kynard). The integral braiding and weaving of consciousnesses within the stories of me, and of my former students constellating in The Void—an indexical existence symbolizing a threshold where dual enrollment as Black and BIPOC students—attempt at access which is not only invisible due to institutional, department, or discipline orientation [except in more recent matters of DEI initiatives], but how such access, due to corrosive and dilapidated pathways that essentially become unmitigated barriers. Individually and collectively, our racialized stories—while at times are intentional to create a sense of discomfort—are meant to represent a modest telling of the reality of the many demoralizing moments and moral injury succumbed by those who deliberately and/or inadvertently sustain composition’s thresholds as impermeable. Providing this tautological view of DEUs displacement from the field’s purview is not meant to sensationalize any version of victimhood—it is meant to expose and disrupt the possible ways 14 our complicity as agents of composition, and advocates of literacy—how our praxes and practices may in fact cause irreparable trauma and harm to the identities of Black and BIPOC students—which should make us uncomfortable. Accomplice to hearing DEUs orientations, user experience approach of user-based storytelling, or more specifically, User Experience as Racial Storytelling (UXRS) through mapping will be used providing a first-person view of the journeys. Through journey and empathy maps, touchpoints will provide stories of interactions at the site of composition’s thresholds from DEUs point of view to possibly inform and expand our focus to users' expectations and needs (Grice 41). The maps will serve as a storytelling tool to create a set of user experience heuristics that may aid in revising the ways we communicate, and define equity and inclusion as well as implications to programming, teaching, and learning, the fields positionality, institutionality, and/or relationality with dual enrollment users. Described as Dual Enrollment User Experiences (DEUX): as a backronym, meaning “two,” also describes the duality of mind, and the “hybridity” dual enrollment students experience, also serving two masters of differing expectations navigating across secondary, and post-secondary thresholds. Threshold Concepts from Adler-Kassner and Wardle Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies and (Re)considering What We Know: Learning Thresholds in Writing Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy –will be used to contextualize, and serve as lenses to focus and discuss aspects of DEUXs during critical moments in their journeys as writers: as dual enrollment post-secondary enrollment option students or DEPSEO matriculating on 4-year university campuses (R1, regional, and Ivy); as First-Year students matriculating at 4-year universities; and presently as professional writers in journalism, fiction writing, entrepreneurial, 15 and non-profit. Using (a) Concept 1: Writing is a social and rhetorical activity (17); (b) Concept 3: Writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies (48); (c) Concept 5: Writing is (also always) a cognitive activity (71) [along with applicable accompanying concepts] will provide a view into the ways in which the concepts themselves are malleable while composition’s thresholds are not by examining: (a) the ways we decontextualize access by (re)enforcing thresholds (b) the ways our assessment practices may be inadvertently signaling indifference to Black and BIPOC students; (c) the universal ways we may codify agency, authority, and autonomy in composition (Adler- Kassner & Wardle). The argument Voices from The Void seeks to make through the stories and methodologies asserts we as a field and discipline, take a concerted look at our relationship with dual enrollment and our disciplinarity from a critical perspective—Black and BIPOC students. While initially this research was not envisioned to fill any gap which may be present in current composition scholarship researching dual enrollment, it does examine a particular variation of dual enrollment students or Dual Enrollment Postsecondary Enrollment Option (DEPSEO) experiencing composition while matriculating on multiple 4-year university campuses–a liminal perspective in scholarship. Dual enrollment scholars such as Christine Denecker–whose research site is a 4-year university–and Casey Moreland–whose archival research of UConn provides an updated inception of dual enrollment with composition at 4-year universities–their edited collection of The Dual Enrollment Kaleidoscope: Reconfiguring Perceptions of First-year writing and Composition Studies provides a specific view of DECOMP FYW from varying institutional spaces arguing for the inclusion of DECOMP FYW research in composition studies (Farris xxii). In the foreword, Christine Farris describes this compilation of research as moving beyond “whether 16 the high school version of composition is correspondingly ‘rigorous’--to contend with the intended and unintended consequences of dual enrollment’s rapid growth” (xxii). Voices From The Void seeks to provide a unique view within composition studies through the journeys of former users to examine similar topics within The Dual Enrollment Kaleidoscope such as the purposes for FYW, inequitable access, and implications for dual enrollments future that is investigated within the vexed relationship composition has with dual enrollment (Farris xxii). This examination may be helpful in rethinking and reimagining the role of dual enrollment in composition at 4-year colleges and universities. Voices From The Void, while situated within composition studies, essentially seeks to communicate how rhetoric of users' stories can illuminate “value conflicts that can lead to more democratic design” (Kurlinkus 275). As a result, this project may inform possible ways secondary and post-secondary writing programs can design and/or redesign efforts around dual enrollment students as users through pedagogy and infrastructure. These particular stories may offer the kinds of questions that should be asked, and also used as a possible framework to influence departmental, instructional decisions, and purposes for programming, and partnerships which seek to include diverse student experiences with composition. Looking into the complexities and nuances of composition’s multifaceted and interconnected relationship with dual enrollment–dual enrollment user experiences may provide a much needed and value-added perspective which may reveal the limits or boundaries mislaid or omitted. Through examining the alignment/misalignment of composition’s established purposes which articulate relative access, analyzing students' journeys may broaden the field’s view, and therefore lead to realignment toward usable principles to enhance program and 17 curricular design, formative assessment practices, as well as teacher development and pedagogy. UX—as a newly used method in writing studies, through journey mapping can be a useful pedagogical tool for program and teaching development, and assessment due to mapping capability to visually help plan and preview users’ journeys through our courses indicating interactions with curriculum, scholarship, technology, spaces, and instruction. Learning of students' interactions with the practices, pedagogies, and perspectives in our classrooms can provide the kind of information needed to reorientate, redesign, and realign toward collective equitable and inclusive student and learning outcomes. As we are reminded through recent unrest and upheavals against the lack of acknowledging the lived experiences of the disenfranchised, we know for certain that in order to accomplish the equity and equality we seek, as a field and discipline of rhetors, it is imperative that we not only include the untold stories, but we genuinely take a closer look at the ways our relationality to the students we serve may be intentionally or unintentionally affected by our institutionality. In instances of dual enrollment, who are also Black and BIPOC students, not including these authentic user stories of composition’s usability, assumes as a field and discipline, we already possess a relatively stable knowledge that exists of dual enrollment students' experiences with composition–a presumption which currently renders our purposes for institutional transformation apocryphal (Ben Lauren personal communication). Chapter Feed Chapter one begins with The Situationship which introduces and describes the situational relationship between dual enrollment and composition that includes a brief history highlighting notable moments within the relationship from its inception to the field’s response to dual 18 enrollment as a disruption to composition's purposes. Chapter two The Receipts describes how this situational relationship is perceived by the field and its relationality to dual enrollment. This chapter highlights centralized arguments as critical to the nexus of following composition scholarship discussing dual enrollment and subsequently, later policy development. This chapter also discusses the rationales in scholarship for contesting access to composition due to age of entrance, lack of maturation, and liminal lived experiences of which to draw from to write in “contemporary” college contexts. Revisiting a few of the pivotal arguments while also positioning my personal narrative, is a counter-story to challenge the codifying of age-maturity-lived experience claims demonstrated in my own interactions and assessment by compositionists and teachers of writing as a returning non- traditional student. Chapter three The Algorithm describes the use of user experience and cultural rhetorics as method and methodologies along with racial storytelling to capture, visualize, and retell stories of DEUs experiences interacting at and across composition thresholds. This chapter also introduces UX mapping as a tool for writing studies research where narratives of encounters can be illustrated through journeys. Chapter four The Analytics includes data collection, analysis, and interpretation of responses to questions derived from some of the claims within field scholarship surrounding dual enrollment and composition. The responses are used in different mapping techniques such as synthesis, empathy, and journey maps to visualize the responses as narratives revealing encounters that occurred during interactions. Case studies are highlighted in this chapter as these particular narratives are extraordinary and critical to the discussions. This chapter includes 19 a new method–UX as racial storytelling that was created to illuminate findings that were not represented on other UX maps. Chapter five Relationship Goals discusses implications for including dual enrollment students by reconciling our situationship toward access. The chapter also includes implications for replicating this research, as well as suggestions for programmatic, department, and faculty development toward reorientating our positionality by adjusting our lens. Lastly, this chapter includes suggestions and recommendations for using User Experience as Racial Storytelling (UXRS) as a method toward institutional transformation. 20 CHAPTER TWO: The Receipts “I knew already I was a strong writer, ya know. I was very sure of my voice at a young age, ya know, I knew how I portrayed myself on paper. I knew my voice had a voice, ya know. And, I had my academic voice down pat! I knew my voice had power.” ~@lovelittlejean “I knew I had a voice and like, my writing sounded like me, my feelings and like, I learned that I had to go through like a detachment process to like, make my writing digestible or consumable.” ~@blkmystique “I used to write for the joy of writing per se…like, I would write comics as a kid but no one wanted to read em–not even my mom. So, I just wrote whatever the teacher told me to because what I wanted to write didn’t matter to them…or anyone actually, but, well, now you, and me.” ~ @raed.hennessy “I was planning on becoming a tv broadcaster, so I knew writing was really important and I loved doing it…even though in high school I didn’t feel challenged at all to write anything, ya know like, interesting. It wasn't until I went to the writing class at Harvard the summer after I started dual enrollment that I felt like I could like, write again.” ~@sabiyah.denee “I didn’t really like writin like that because, our high school teacher didn't have us write anything, really, valid, or important, so I didn’t do it until the night before. I had stuff to say about things that matter like, Black people, and Detroit community, and what was happening to students, but these were not the topics at all until dual enrollment..well, the Black people part, not so much about our community” ~@khaliltay [Me as Student Interlude] “Hanging on a pole alone in a desolate plain is exactly my feeling when teachers of composition, seemingly known advocates for agency, become my adversary, evaluating me and my Black life experiences as invalid. As a non-traditional undergrad and later grad, while matriculating at a regional version of a wanna-be-ivy in the Midwest, I experienced interrogation about my lived experiences every time I spoke, wrote, or walked the neutral- washed hallways with any sense of self-actualization. During undergrad, and even during grad school within class discussions, the mere sound of my big Black body incited a constant barrage of doubt–coupled with twisted lips, and response tones of haute derision from white presenting students and teacher-alike at my audacity to be authentic in displaying my authority. Written all over the faces of, and scarce feedback from, the so-called equity-advocates: who do you think you are, really? as each appraised my composition as not compelling or irrefutable based on their prescriptive didactics. Not all professors who retracted my freedom were non-BIPOC. During my undergrad tenure, pursuing Elementary ELA teaching, one professor, who self-identified as West- Indian, triumphantly accused my written analysis utilizing journey mapping as a method to teach geography, as plagiarism. Yet, upon my rightful request for evidence, the accuser elected not to meet my due process, nor dutifully reported my submission, and never recanted. This act of suspicion repeated with other conspiracists as compositionists and teachers of writing henchmen compelled to question my ethos, often with nary a notion of why to be exact. The white ones 21 often wanted a preliminary examination most certainly to check my teeth on whether I was for- real-for-real in my telling—summoning me to their secluded offices to essentially present my case as if I am an imposter, or suspect, to say what I say in the ways I chose to say it and mean it. Just a collective and visceral disbelief that someone, who looked like me, could possibly and effectively execute a sound recitation, or an inexplicable and uncommon argument. However, much to their inquisitor dismay that I am abso-fuckin-lutely who and what I say I am, and I said what I said. These chastening inspections with composition callously interrupted the efficacy of what I believed my Black and other identities afforded my writerly agency–agency which is still haunted by the pathos of some quasi-insurrection. As an undergrad–who at the time had lived 40 years as a Black woman, in a country which continues to remind me my survival is an unintended consequence–that I would have the audacity to willfully take up the liberty to compose veritable experiences in the voice I already knew–my voice, my perspectives, and lived experiences were seemingly inconsequential to composition–until blue checked confirmed. Yet, as I recount these often-sacrosanct instances of adjudication, where these constant incursions–over a dozen to be exact–signal a pattern, that based on my composition, something about me had to be authenticated. No mention of any inordinate sentence level, or egregious technical, or rhetorical failures commonly ascribed to Black Language-First Language speakers, where the errors and expectations are gored in murderous red ink circling and striking run-ons, informal language, awkward grammatical structures, and of course repeated descriptive use of the Black Language shibboleth, to be. No suggestion of what @blkmystique shared as a defining moment of when they began to subdue their voice after a conference with a university composition professor asserting, ‘you need to up your diction’--as yet another universal and prescriptive predilection perceived as non-conforming that needed appropriation or “correction.” Instead of critique, or even constructive feedback to guide revisions, which is an imperative pedagogical tenet, I repeatedly endured derisive questions of my performance with a side of punctuation shaming– which I had no idea of whence they came: ‘where did you come from?; Your prose seems advanced beyond typical FYS–can you please speak to that?; What do you do for a living?; I need to meet with you to determine if you actually wrote this; You must not have written this because it is beyond the typical freshman performance–be honest, did you plagiarize this? And if so, it is ok for a first offense, many students like you do this in the beginning due to not being prepared for these kinds of writing; Your assignment was fine, but I am sure you plagiarized; Your writing includes some sophisticated claims–I am unsure how to critique it since I’m not used to reading a First-Years writing this sophisticated…but, you did not use the oxford comma; Are you sure you wrote this? I assume many students like you usually cannot; I did not like your interpretation–I just don’t like it because, well, I have never read a perspective like yours and now I’m not even sure you wrote it to be honest. Did you really write this?; I tried to find something wrong with your report but couldn’t so I was forced to give you an ‘A’; Your writing is well, pithy–very pithy. You may want to not be so pithy…and using the em dash is pretentious.’” 22 Locating Composition’s Thresholds Prologue: I will attempt to analogize these fretful experiences: imagine the various effects we use to alter pictures on our devices, where certain filters create different visual upshots. Some filters are meant to refine or bring critical characteristics into focus–others are meant to reconcile or distort perceived imperfections. In any case, the illusion of these applied surface treatments cannot actually modify the picture–only its perception, however superficial. Our realities as Black and BIPOC students–me, as a returning student of 40–my DEUs as high school age Dual Enrollment students–both described as “non-traditional” students (Sullivan 15)—our execrable interactions with composition’s thresholds are snapshots of our inadvertent and unknowing infiltration of compositions disciplinary boundaries—which should be malleable. As a tutor, master teacher, and later confidant of this particular group of former dual enrollment students, hearing their stories and the ways in which they reflect, theorize, and in some cases, rationalize negotiating their identities with composition, inspired me to reflect on my own trauma of interactions exposing a similar violence. In UX theory, our storytelling demonstrates memorial interactivity, where our narratives of nostalgia as stories of memorable interactions, invoke critical reflection (Kurlinkus 275). My interlude–unfathomable to anyone who teaches–reveals quite a few painful realities which implicate some possible writing teacher biases and/or disciplinary strongholds. If by some off-chance, after reading our accounts, particularly, the comments made by our colleagues, if these narratives cause an uneasy, sunken feeling, please know the pathos is intentional (Ahmed 12). Each excerpt is a real-time account of how composition pillaged any affordance I, or my DEUs believed our agency warranted, where the impact of our interactions at composition’s thresholds, are dependent on “past histories, 23 which surface as impressions on the skin” (Ahmed 34). Maligned by such dehumanizing appraisals injured our writerly bodies, as physical residue of our embodiment, which echo the festerous scars from the raw flesh wounds of insolence endured by our ancestors. Our writing performance was subjectively admonished or criticized as if untenable. I came to know this chastisement akin to our slave origins as normative, which was most certainly not a choice—neither is the pain and sense of being dehumanized for the sake of disciplinarity (Ore; Freire). The apparent antagonism after the first few inquiries were rationalized signifying a protective practice of quasi logical acceptance of the deafening chord inversion of racist, classist, otherist implications by denying these aggressions fit discriminating characteristics. While this inward disparity of two-minds screams DuBoisian and is most common in places and spaces where Blackness and otherness are perceived as the opposition, Freire also applies this excise of ontological possibilities “as an individual perceives the extent of the humanization, he, or she may ask if humanization is a viable possibility (38).” Reflecting on our experiences, our voices or yet, our writerly authority was in question—delegitimizing our performance in ways only abject subjectivity can do so effectively. The decontextualization of our composition—separated culturally and scribed—revealed a dichotomy presence invisible to our dissident eyes where our advent was lamentable. We collectively and individually express a knowing from these instances that continues to invidiously haunt our writerly identities—we testify how we saw our agency, our Blackness, our authority–and in many ways still– in stark conflict with compositions disciplinarity. ~ end prologue Before we get down wit da get down, I want to contextualize the ethos of the forthcoming discussion. Our stories and the arguments critically reveal a tale of two Oz’s with 24 varying yellow brick roads to the emerald city of composition—one, complete with golden stones, smooth martyr, and clear direction with guidance along the way. And the other— navigating the potholes of composition’s thresholds, with limited to no visibility nor guidance of adjacent pavement in which to effectively avoid the cracks of covert biases, disciplinary philosophies as constitutional as most often experienced as unwelcomed travelers. I want the reading of these racialized stories to remain etched in our synapses as “stories as reflection of some underlying, largely coherent cultural ethos” and counter-ethnography “which exposes prevailing self-conceptions” (Levinson 20) in conversation with scholarship rationales suggesting mitigating or restricting access to composition for dual enrollment students (Brewster; Browning; Farris). As I describe the relationship composition has with dual enrollment as situational, the disputation of the arguments in opposition of the inclusion of dual enrollment students can be described by this adage: we cuttin off our noses to spite our faces. Meaning, is the act of relegating access to composition reconstituting the very boundaries we as a field continue to fight against with the goal of advancing inclusivity? Also, does the premise of classifying dual enrollment students writing—which is described as insufficient predicated on age, measure of maturity, and lived experiences—possibly contradict and, therefore, problematize composition’s thresholds, specifically for Black and BIPOC writers? In this chapter, I will examine a few pivotal arguments made by field scholars upholding disciplinary expectations and biases with reasons why dual enrollment students, as “non- traditional” and described in contrast to attributes of the ideal student, are portrayed as unable to perform the breadth of writing expected in our composition classroom (Schneider; Brewster; Taczak & Thelin; Tinberg & Nadeau). Within arguments pointing to chronological age and age of 25 maturity, and lived experience milestones, I will refute (or validate) these generalized characterizations using our nostalgic narratives, along with some current examples of the literacy practices of youth activists to demonstrate the scholarship claims as a fallacy of composition ascribed to all younger dual enrollment students. While I see the opacity of the characterizations singularized as infallible indicators to reject inclusion of dual enrollment students in the university composition classroom, which are more than likely, if not mostly, Black and BIPOC students, the point of this comparison analysis is to include, and recognize evidence of the contrary. By looking at the ways Generations Z and Alpha have greatly contributed to the ways we presently do composition, it is worth acknowledging what these acts of rhetoricity may mean if included in our composition classrooms, and/or the possibilities afforded if our praxes activated the cognitive activity of prior knowledge. This analysis is meant to challenge our individual and collective reflexive thinking as pedagogues, the ways we may quantify and qualify our assessment, and to suggest broadening our domain of inclusivity as a field of advocates and agents of literacy. No Cap: The Violence of Traditionalism Within a field which boasts freedom but seemingly incarcerates those who choose to be liberatory, the quotes and interlude are examples of trauma-inducing moments as for Blacks and BIPOCs at least, trauma associated with the learning and practice of literacy (Inoue; Stuckey; Kareem). As a result of these egregiously subjective interactions, an unexpurgated fault line between the presumed traditional intentions of composition, and the reality we endured bring into focus a dichotomy of decontextualization—the clear distinction between what Jamila Kareem describes in The Violence of Composition as the “often unspoken relationship between 26 racial identities and literacy practices in the composition classroom (32).” Evaluated as a non- conforming way of knowing, arguably indict Black and BIPOC students lack and limitations of adhering to discipline expectations (Kareem 33)—expectations, that according to Scott & Inoue, are “shaped by a variety of individual or institutional factors…disciplinary philosophies of literacy and learning…common cultural assumptions about writers and literacy (35).” Yet, for Black and BIPOC students, dissonance of the violence this contrast causes in the teaching (and assessment) of composition portrays what Kareem describes as a Euro-centric “universalism” that imposes covert racial violence, also identified by Kareem’s analysis of rhetoric in the WPA Outcome statements (34). Applying Kareem’s description of the “often unspoken relationship between racial identity and literacy practices in composition classrooms” to both my and DEUs purports a disjunction between what is authentic and what is expected where pseudo “objectivity on knowledge-validation processes”(33) critically segregates Black and BIPOC students writing performance as inadmissible. As users of composition, we each recall interactions at similar commonplaces within composition’s thresholds. When compared, we collectively noticed another commonality in the ways we see our student identities perceived. For DEUs, they collectively view themselves and their experiences as vastly different than their counterparts and all identify as not a-typical students, opposed to those who represent the ‘traditional’—the habitual and long-standing population of monolith archetypes of which we are subjectively and commonly compared coupled with cultural assumptions of our perceived incompetence. We all see our genesis as distinct, and identify these schemas as products and later, ascribed due to factors that are out of our control. As a result of this divergent description, we also attest to a stifling or muddying of 27 our ability to write in an authentic voice, where who we are and what we know for sure is received and/or evaluated as radically antithetical to those with the inherent authority to measure our written veracity. Within our comparison, we all confess to repressing our writing to the situational and guarantors’ expectations—viewing this surrender as abandoning our authenticity in The Void. In my experiences, after enduring the diatribe to assuage my lived experiences, as well as privy my perspectives and interpretations as inconsequential, and remaining in the shadows (Chawla), it was not until a specialized writing course for writing center consultants, and now, presently, as a brimming Black scholar in writing and rhetoric, where I believe my Black voice, my Black agency, and my 50 year-old Black authority are emphatically encouraged. My agents as advocates, who are non-BIPOC, constantly and unequivocally reaffirm that my voice, in all its unfiltered audacity, must be heard. Yet, doing so confidently, without fear of spectacle and/or ostentatious indifference, even as I write this, means to effectively shed the remaining scabs from “legitimating” my embodiment as “the violence, once inscribed on the body, is difficult to erase, as such, may control the readings we do of ourselves, our experiences, and others” (Banks 21). Trying to scale the barbed-wire gate protecting our disciplinarity apparently from someone like me—non-traditional—is carried in my body (21). Let’s assume when we hear the word traditional, there is a universal definition applied where traditional, in the sense of assessing writing conventions, checks all the boxes of performance as expected. Yet, as cultural rhetoricians, where knowledge-sharing comes from a collective of lived experiences, non-traditional, demonstrating the unexpected, is conventional. The violence associated with the relativity of tradition is the essence of Dr. Ore’s piece Pushback: 28 Pedagogy of Care, as she describes her experience with pushing back at traditional whiteness— both colleague and student—and their need to legitimize her Blackness as a non-traditional presence as faculty—an experience within the university in concert with Black and BIPOC DEUs, and my own, as Black student, and now, Black faculty. Ore describes the university as a location that unequivocally follows tradition as a “rhetorical space” with “cultural orthodoxies” as embedded beliefs with “accepted views, attitudes, and practices that have been, through invariable repetition, calcified so flawlessly that they express as commonsense, as natural — normal” (Ore 9). This description can also be applied to our disciplinarity, as the extent of our scrutiny of the unexpected, as agents of literacy, act as discriminate filters–deprivileging any agency, autonomy, and authority deemed “non-traditional” such as with Black and BIPOC dual enrollment students. The non-traditional student, according to Patrick Sullivan in An Essential Question: What Is “College-Level” Writing?, describes the “traditional undergraduate” archetype as attending college immediately after high school (unless allowed to take a ‘gap-year’), yet still dependent upon parental financial support (7). [However, observing the current student debt numbers and political divide on loan forgiveness, this paradigm of traditionalism via affluence is present-past-tense even with educational debt remaining higher and more burdensome for Black and BIPOC women.] Whereas current undergraduate student attributes: the returning student who has had disruptions to their post-high school education; the first-gen language learning student who is multilingual; the transfer student who has some college; the working student who attends less than full time; and, the dual enrollment high school student, as FTIAC or first-time-in-any-college—these in fact, are our traditional students. 29 They Said What They Said: Composition’s Institutionality The precariousness of composition’s relationship with dual enrollment among issues with time and access, also includes continuity of competing First-Year Writing courses across institution locations. The dual enrollment version of FYW or DECOMP, sparked debates over quality of content and instruction as composition scholarship illuminated the challenges foreseen for both the institution and discipline. As a result, research in the field, however minimal, inordinately portrays the students as the victims—and the villains. Looking at dual enrollment’s perspective, the quasi-kinship with composition resembles a complicit partnership where both sides seem equally committed to the same goals–to serve the collegial literacy development of matriculating students. However, while the field is working toward the dismantling of department and institutional silos as a result of declining enrollment, dual enrollment program initiatives, as well as state policy mandates have increased access. Therefore, compositions attitude toward dual enrollment has been reactive and less than formidable since its perceived infiltration with arguments against (Schneider; Taczak and Thelin; Brewster; Tinberg and Nadeau), and suggestions for mediated access (Hansen; Farris; Taczak and Thelin). Beginning with Taczak and Thelin’s 2009 qualitative research of dual enrollment students in a summer section of composition sought to determine if younger high school students, “fourteen or fifteen years old,” could perform equally or “indeed, succeed, alongside other,” traditional college students (8, para.2). While the descriptions of the students depose a kind of hierarchy of identities e.g., traditional–”eighteen to twenty years old”--and “non-traditional over the age of twenty one” alongside the dual enrollment students, it is these age-defining 30 attributes where the researchers assert how their research provides a gate post for restricting access stating the dual enrollment students “negatively impacted” the “traditional students” in the class (Taczak & Thelin 20). What’s interesting about this claim is that based on their research, which included class observations, interviews with the professor and other students in the class, there is no definitive data which can assess that the younger students were cognitively “incapable.” However, what is clear from the research is the universal assumption by everyone within the study as well as the researchers, that chronological age is viewed as a mediating factor for why all things composition were ineffective. Without electrodes or the results of an IQCODE test (which was not disclosed nor clearly indicative either), the data collected is based on the ascribed schemas of younger students. Another interesting factor within Taczak and Thelin’s 2009 research was mentioned as part of the STEP students’ profile but not fully explored are any other characteristics attributed. First-generation college students are the target of current dual enrollment program initiatives— which also ascribes class schemas to participating students. As I approached this research, I experienced multiple conversations with other students who participated in dual enrollment prior to designing this study. Within these off the record conversations with multiple former DEUs, I learned there is a stigma attached to dual enrollment students where many mentioned not disclosing their participation due to ridicule or embarrassment. My previous research revealed the university does not assign any identifying attribute to dual enrollment students who may be present within our composition classrooms. While dual enrollment programming is touted as encouraging more college access, especially for Black and BIPOC students, other first- gen students also see the same stigma associated, therefore creating an affective filter (as in 31 second-language acquisition theory by Krashen, 1970) or barrier to their learning. To say it another way, which may destigmatize the conjecture that dual enrollment students concern over identity demonstrates a lack of maturity, their concernment can be seen as a form of imposter syndrome where what they know of their ability is in conflict with their perceived preparedness—an identity that is certainly not age dependent. Yet, the albatross of feeling like an imposter should not be solely on the students, as response to younger students in the composition classroom brings forth assumptions of ability not ascribed to the other or “traditional” students in the class. For instance, Taczak and Thelin’s research includes the professor’s perspective as well as the other students in the class reactions to the dual enrollment student’s inclusion in the course. The professor, who was described as student-centered utilizing the Freire critical pedagogy method, along with the other students, revealed the notion that the younger students “lacked life experience (“Professor Foley”).” One of the students in the class who interacted with the dual enrollment students also suggested younger students lack life experience explaining “in high school the maturity that comes with experience is not the same as in college. Before we look at the latter part of this opinion closer, suggesting the premise of maturity being predicated upon age is yet another perspective of this fallacy of composition that is not synonymous. The preconceived notions of what a high school student identity provides diminishes the student to the tropes and ideologies commonly associated with this identity. Returning to a principle of critical pedagogy—knowledge should relate to and develop from lived experience—supposing that the younger the age, the less has been experienced is not only unfounded, but also counterintuitive. 32 In an experience shared by @raed.hennessy, during his attendance in an African- American lit course led by a tenured, and renown Black woman scholar, they share how during most of the class discussions, he and his dual enrollment peers were treated as he described “as babies'' indicating the professor presumed that due to their high school identity (which was identified by matching school uniforms), they were inexperienced or unknowing of certain concepts, continuously asking other students to “explain this to the kids” without inquiring if further explanation was needed. I was able to witness this interaction as the presumption of knowledge was contrived by a Black woman, to Black males, about Black history, with the expectation that the student she requested to explain Black oppression, was a white male. When I asked why he believed she did this, @raed.hennessy responded “all teachers here [at the university] assume as soon as we walk into the room because we are high school students or maybe cuz we from Detroit, I dunno, but they think we don’t know anything—but would we even be here if we didn’t?” I then followed up by asking if he felt part of the class at any time during the term where he quickly responded, “the other [dual enrollment] guys didn’t even want to participate due how the professor treated us. But I jumped in after a while cuz I was tired of being explained to. Some of the stuff I was familiar with…even if she didn’t think so.” In this example, teacher assumptions about dual enrollment students' comprehension, even if the assumptions and expectations are made by those whose outward identity presents affiliation, assuming no functional knowledge exists can cause harm. The professor’s behavior pedagogically can be interpreted as attempting to facilitate a flexible and inclusive learning environment; however, she missed the mark on ensuring each class member had a voice– including the dual enrollment students—a clear conflict within critical pedagogy. While the 33 remaining DE young men deferred to not displaying any facet of comprehension, due to feelings of exclusion, or lack of community, @raed.hennessy believed his involvement would eventually be valued as an actual contribution. While critical pedagogy also asserts pursuing and/or facilitating democracy and equality in the learning environment, in order to enact democracy, we should also see the necessity to instill a foundation of trust which is invaluable. Based on the expressed assumption in Taczak and Thelin’s 2009 research which indicates “Students learn different life experiences at different ages, and certain experiences can only be learned at a specific age (30),” how can we as teachers of writing, expect diverse students' life experiences to be disclosed in our classroom without first establishing trust? As a practice within writing center pedagogy, establishing a relationship between writer and consultant is essential to our mission of active inclusion. Within this establishment is also reciprocity (Vygotsky; Palinscar & Brown), where trustworthiness activates an exchange, and therefore creates and nurtures a viable learning environment. However, what is apparent in my case studies responses is a lack of or limited attempt of community initiated, which as a result, may have gravely influenced the dual enrollment students observed behaviors. Looking at @raed.hennessy’s experience, we can deduce that there was clearly a disconnect between them and the other classmates within the space, as well as minimal interaction due to the assumptions made by the professor toward younger students not having enough life experiences which could afford their perspective on social issues discussed. An example is demonstrated in one of the case studies mentioned in Taczak and Thelin’s research, where the professor describes one of the students (e.g., “CeCe”) as unable and unwilling to “analyze in a way that put her experiences in a larger context.” Yet, if we look to 34 David Russell’s piece suggests writing mediates activity, (e.g., “writing is a social and rhetorical activity”) explains internal activity of thought also mediates external behavior (26). This explanation may be interpreted as supporting both Schneider and Taczak and Thelin’s research argues that cognitive maturity must be developed for success in composition–however, it is external factors – classroom climate, instructor persona, representative and/or cultural congruent content, prompts which scaffold and activate prior functional knowledge that can also arbitrate emotional and social compliance. For Black and BIPOC students, due to the presumed, or experienced lack of trust in educational spaces—origins which still exist in present day— cognitive dissonance appears where participation may be performative and less than authentic. Assumptions made toward any student, including dual enrollment students, can influence everything from self-efficacy, to motivation, to performance—implications that do not differ from any other student who inhabits our composition classroom. In my most recent term teaching FYW, it was discovered that I had a half dozen dual enrollment students in my online synchronous class. What is most interesting—their writing performance alongside their classroom peers did not provide any demarcation of deficiency that can be associated with age or maturity any differently than what Taczak and Thelin’s research describe as a “traditional” FYS. If we take a concerted effort to look closely at the reality of what we consider as traditional students, and honestly acknowledge the identities that intersect, our diverse students, who more than likely represent the attributes of what has been described as non-traditional than not, as Sullivan includes, “bring all sorts of challenges” (7) to the [contemporary] composition classroom—challenges that aren’t seemingly different than many of our entering FYS. 35 Subsequently, I am almost sure the ideal of traditional students may have a collective pathos within the field [as at least a dozen field articles following cited these same indicators], especially, to those of us who covet a universal idealistic view of our beloved FYW students. Rose argues such characterization of students, particularly those who have been underserved, chastising teachers and educational discourse for victim blaming of students' lack of literacy due to lacking cognitive capacity—a characteristic raised by other field scholars such as Brewster, and Schneider. Yet, with all that we know for sure about many of the diverse [non-traditional] students who cross the threshold to inhabit our classrooms, our hearts still solicit anticipation of the quintessential disciple—the incoming FYS. Enthusiasm on ten, as we eagerly await the fully mature, fully developed with rosy cheeks, and diverse lived experiences, gleefully entering our majestic composition classrooms, ardently and unabashedly willing, and amply prepared to perform what Barbara Schneider says younger dual enrollment students are inapt, “to critically examine their own experience in light of broader social concerns (13).” A fantasy chance to shepherd this indefectible and prototypical fledgling across the threshold, guiding them through the yellow brick road, with grandiose hope of shaping possible future writing scholars is all but a desire of many. Our indulging in these specious musings further supplant our emphatic and vainglorious need as career teacher-scholars, to remain cemented in this exaggerated, but desired portrayal of this non-existent composition student, believing this as the absolute way to essentially ascend to disciplinary heaven. Admittingly, I, too, had this perspective. After teaching secondary ELA and AP, where my students arrived skeptical AF, but eventually, after weeks of my corny ass jokes and impassioned lectures of my disdain for Kanye and Drake, along with learning rhetoric 36 as a technology, more succumbed to viewing themselves as writers which was often a Sisyphean task. Much to my chagrin, the entering versions of FYS aren’t much different from earlier high school ELA versions I had experienced, with the exception of being mostly white or non-BIPOC (but still Kanye and Drake lovers). Here, I ask when we look at what our hearts desire, or what our biases ensue, we should ask the following to inform this banality: When we think about the actual students entering our composition classrooms, can we for certain use the same qualifiers as described where chronological age alone actually signifies emotional and/or mental maturity? Can the “performance” of maturity be qualified through a quantitative lens, where younger students whose prior learning environments may have been less than inclusive, therefore lending to a silenced dialogue, such as with Black and BIPOC students? Are lived experiences a quantifiable characteristic where chronological age is the indicator of presumed ability? Are such prescriptive predictors effective in our ongoing pursuit of inclusion? Will continuing to use such indicators provide our classrooms and our discipline the multiplicity we seek as teachers? As rhetors? What does our adherence to these codifications say about how we see diverse or non-traditional students? Along with carefully examining the ambiguity of diversity described and/or performed within our own initiatives, we also need to ask ourselves, how can we as a collective of rhetors, whose entirety rests on the value of knowledge-sharing, for argument's sake, ostracize any student identity for not substantiating our ideas of traditional reverie and righteous expectations of what a FYS should be? Looking to Rose, who in his own literacy narrative, Lives on The Boundary reminds us of the faulty perception of error used to evaluate and points out the flawed logic of our desire for more traditionally "literate" students (188). Rose challenges our 37 lofty expectations for a traditional student without baggage of prior literacy practices, and how this expectation may unintentionally, (or intentionally) exile performance of the actual students in our classrooms– the new traditional students (Rose 189). Composition continues to position the discipline with efforts advocating for the inclusion of writing instruction as institutional infrastructure continues to deteriorate, what McCrimmon describes as territoriality, should not be the most prevalent focus as disregard for inclusion, leaving dual enrollment students to navigate composition’s thresholds unaccompanied. If we orientate to reevaluate our focus toward dual enrollment students as actual users, their perspective may provide ways to accomplish realignment to capture what may be missing. Looking closely at their journeys seeking to occupy FYW across the divide, and in multiple locations, without knowing, may tell of their experiences with composition’s thresholds as a continuum of violence—especially for Black and BIPOC students, who may substantially experience characterizations of deficiency in literacy, life, and learning more than their white counterparts. Black and BIPOC people, regardless of age, our lived experiences are witnessed almost daily on the world stage, where the thoughtless vilification and extinguishing of Black and BIPOC lives continue to contribute to our mediated narratives. We choose to reflect as a means to decipher and make sense of surviving a Black existence–deprived but shared on our own terms. The reality of racial storytelling elucidates the assault on the presumed innocent endorsed by the abnegation of our lived experiences being eradicated from the immoral fabric of America’s history. As compositionists and teachers of writing, who as a field and discipline, that essentially believes in the agency, autonomy, and authority as the bedrock of composition, 38 we should ask, who are we to determine if there is enough life experience [which is the greatest teacher] and the effects that are made visible and invisible in composition, are in fact valid, and should be available to us? Composition lives, breathes, and feeds upon the stories, personal accounts, and narratives of lived experiences by those of us willing to tell ‘em unapologetically which in turn, advances evolution and growth. So, why would the stories of dual enrollment students' lived experiences not be value-added? If bona fide storytelling is truly how we livin, could it be possible there is a discrepancy where we question “experience” in quantitative versus qualitative ways? Could this divergence be received as a caveat of our established purposes for FYW, where the former characterization and biased expectations of an ideal traditional student cause unintended consequences for the actual students outside our purview, such as dual enrollment students, and by proximity, impact all students in our composition classrooms? ICYMI: Young Writers Changed the World Dual enrollment, which was created for pathways not riddled with apertures, became an option to reduce or lessen the disparities of college access plaguing marginalized students. While designed as a pathway to access, retention, and essentially, obtaining post-high school education for students otherwise predicated as less likely to enter and/or continue a college degree, dual enrollment programming is not without its inefficiencies. Issues with articulation within partnerships, program orientation or frontloading, lack of or unclear advising of impact to academic records, and transferability renders dual enrollment's identity speculative as a positive or effective solution. However, there is still an increase in the college-going culture, even post impeachment of the previous DEI–affirmative action. The reality of Black and BIPOC students experiencing inequality on the road to and within post-secondary education is not a new 39 phenomenon. The dissemblance of access and student success is encapsulated within college and university histories lack of diversity. This institutionality continues in perverse ways, where policies touting equity for diverse students seem beneficial on paper yet are still adversarial in practice. As a predictable response to the abhorrent events leading to and following the 2020 death of George Floyd, which illuminated a disproportionate lack of access unilaterally within Black and BIPOC communities from police brutality to COVID-19 response, the emerging commercial and performative efforts of the “recasted” rhetoric of diversity, equity, and inclusion has become paramount, especially in higher ed. With the sudden onslaught of DEI initiatives pilfering acknowledgment of the immediate need for diversity using exploitive practices by assigning Black and BIPOC people to do the labor, from making us “the face of,” to using illegitimate Black and BIPOC images to campaign for the appeal to and recognition of diversity. Current arguments across the political divide continue to exclude as well as exploit students, including Black and BIPOC students, while also using them as policy fodder voicing quasi-concerns of reform for quality education and equitable inclusivity, while revoking the teaching of America’s history as it happened and is happening. Yet, Black and BIPOC students—the interminable commodity valued for institutional-serving pipeline initiatives—our educational experiences continue to carry the same chattel of systemic and systematic barriers that our Black bodies inherited without equal access. Dual Enrollment is seen as an institutional issue due to the lack of agency in allowing high school students to be included in the composition classroom. Questions of the necessity of dual enrollment, though the barriers diverse students face attempting access were and still are prevalent—claim the rush to college is depriving students, arguing that “If we can change 40 perceptions of education and writing instruction in particular, we can better argue for slowing down this seeming race to adulthood and allow children to be children (Taczak & Thelin 33).” The ideal that children—essentially tweens to teenagers--are unaware of and do not have perspectives of real life issues, may reveal how we actually see our entering students—defined by their perceived deficits opposed to their strengths. Yet, to our dismay, we cannot ignore that over the past two and a half decades, what our children as young as toddlers have witnessed, and survived essentially disrupts any purist ideal of what previous traditional childhood should entail. Not predicated on only one culture or community, but a continuous onslaught of deprecating attacks such as online bullying, hate crimes, xenophobia, assault on LGBTQIA+ human rights, women’s rights, voting rights, the pandemic, the reoccurrence of mass school shootings, along with the modern diaspora of the oppressed that younger children are watching and experiencing in real time. Let’s keep it real-- #marchforourlives and Black Lives Matter, as well as the heinous events leading up to the need for these movements, happened on our watch. This passionate plea for gun reform reverberates through multiple generations, ages, as well as communities. According to Pew Research, recent data shows the leading cause of death for young people in the US, under the age of 24 is gun violence—which includes suicide (“What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.”). While not viewed as a phenomenon presently, or in past decades within many Black and BIPOC communities, gun violence among youth is intrinsically embedded. Yet, the #nationalwalkout which was inspired by a hashtag, #neveragain, tweeted shortly after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in 2018, high school and middle school students in schools across the nation—even in cities and districts which had 41 not experienced such tragedy, showed solidarity by participating citing it as one of the largest silent protests in recent history (“Mission & Story”). These events have undoubtedly disrupted our children as well as their contending with what they may make of the world as they witness it happening. Based on Taczak and Thelin’s argument for exclusion stating, “the cognitive capabilities of some dual enrollment students have not developed enough to handle effectively the challenges of the contemporary conception of composition” (18) suggests age, or lack of, delineates the inability to accomplish the rhetorical awareness or critical thinking outcomes set forth in our curriculums. Secondary ELA pedagogy situates reading, discussion, and inquiry surrounding topics of cultural, situational, and/or issues of social concern as according to Common Core State Standards (“Michigan K-12 Standards English Language Arts”; “College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading”; “Writing”; “Language”). If we consider Taczak and Thelin’s claims, which later, are applied universally, and therefore indicative as indexical stereotypes of dual enrollment students, then what does this reveal about the ways we evaluate maturity? Maturity is relative to the individual's experiences as well as the perception of an inclusive environment which fosters their contribution to the classroom community. bell hooks reminds us of the importance of critical pedagogy which “seeks to transform consciousness, to provide students with ways of knowing themselves better and live in the world more fully (14).” Barbara Schneider’s argument advocates for restricting access to composition until age and developmental milestones have been completed, quips the awareness that age is not a sole mediator of maturity stating “chronology, experience, and guidance all affect maturity, that it develops over time, and that it can be processed by a 14 year-old the same as 42 an 18 year-old or 40 year old (Taczak & Thelin 22).” Yet, Schneider’s claim remains convinced that younger students in composition are disadvantaged stating: “Writing courses often ask students to critically examine their own experience in light of broader social concerns, so very young students are potentially disadvantaged in two ways: First, young students generally do not have the miles on their tires to have accumulated much experience on which to reflect. But even when young students have a rich background on which to draw, critically examining the values, opinions, and beliefs with which they have been raised while they are still in the home and in the process of being raised is enormously difficult (Taczak & Thelin 22).” Taczak and Thelin’s 2009 research suggests the similar disregard to younger students' lived experiences as inconclusive. While Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development, where the exploration of identity happens (“Stages of Childhood”)1, and Piaget’s theory of cognitive development defines abstract and concrete thought as a product of a “plateau”(“Stages of Cognitive Development”)2, the explosion of literacy production and consumption that happened in 2009 when Facebook reached 500 million users, and Black Twitter was born (Wired), may serve as an antithesis to the belief these theories apply to the autonomy displayed by the most recent generations. Relying upon functional and critical literacy to engage with known and unknown audiences, users beginning as young as 13 years old were reading and writing at an unprecedented rate. Now, let’s think about where we are presently with literacy practices which have increased exponentially—more than any previous generation. What are these students reading and writing, if not about their lived experiences, ways of knowing their identities, and making new knowledge to contribute to the very world in which they live? Deborah Brandt in The Rise of 1 Erikson’s 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development describing personality development through stages from infancy through old age. 2 Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development to describe the developmental processes of children. 43 Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy, states this change in literacy habits of young people has been the “greatest challenge to the educational enterprise, which is growing increasingly out of step with the wider world (156).” At the time of Brandt’s book, 2015, writing had changed drastically to “broader, more diverse, more diffused, more sustained, and more comprehensive set of practices (150),” which was influenced by those who had the courage to live out loud in these open spaces—younger generations. The same children described as lacking life experiences of which to write in college contexts, leads to questioning if this reasoning, applied as a generalization, is fallible, or intentionally pejorative. Disparaging in the sense that portrays all younger students as limited to what their chronological age indicates their maturity affords them. Then, what does this reasoning say about how we quantify and/or qualify life experience at any age? Looking at recent examples of younger students' contributions to and advancements in literacy production and consumption, if the age evaluation is in fact the measure, then what does this exclusion mean for young activists whose advocacy for a healthier, cleaner, and connected human experience that simply began with writing? What do we say to the Little Miss Flints of the world—Amariyanna Mari Copeny, who at 8 years old, wrote a letter to then President Barack Obama informing him about the Flint water crisis, bringing awareness of the lead poisoning gravely affecting the people of Flint, specifically the children. In conjunction with facilitating the largest bottled water drive for Flint families, currently known as a Clean water activist, Mari now has her own water filter Hydroviv, which she gives for free bringing clean water all over the country. Mari’s activism continues with her other project, Dear Flint Kids, which continues her dedication to children’s literacy where she 44 crowdsourced to give free copies of the book A Wrinkle in Time, as well as request letters of encouragement for the children of Flint impacted by the water crisis (“About”). Or, what about Genesis Butler, who by choosing to become vegan at age 6, wrote a letter to Pope Francis to give up meat in support of her animal rights campaign at age 10. Genesis, who is the youngest person invited to do a TEDx Talk, in 2017, discusses the impact of animal agriculture on the environment titled A 10-year Old’s Vision for Healing The Planet. Due to her activism–which may be influenced by hereditary as she is the great niece of BIPOC civil rights and labor union activist, Cesar Chávez—Genesis was asked to co-author a California mandate to require prisons and nursing homes to offer vegan meals while also actively fighting against cosmetic companies’ animal testing. Now at age 15, Genesis has a thriving non-profit, has been featured on Marvel’s Hero Project, and is also leading the first youth-led organization which provides a platform for other young voices for animal rights and fighting against climate change (“Meet Genesis”). What of Greta Thunberg, whose essay as an open letter to the world demanding climate change spearheaded into becoming the most influential youth leading environmental activism globally at age 15. Known around the world, Greta’s decision to push the needle catapulted the conversation and incited multiple protests. Greta, now 20 years old, is recognized as the voice of Generation Alpha where change implies immediate action (Atler, Haynes & Warland 2019). Or, Nadia Greenawalt, who at 10 years old, wrote a book titled My Friend Linkin (2017), who as the subject is also 10 years old suffering from Brain Cancer. Nadia wanted to write a book to “help children like her understand cancer better” by following her friend Linkin’s journey, where she compiled ethnographic data with photos and interviews of the family and medical team, initially 45 selling over 500 books. Following Nadia’s success, she has founded a non-profit, where she has authored biographies of other kids' cancer journeys as My Friend series. Nadia, now 12 years old, with over 2,000 copies sold, was named in People Magazine’s list of Girls Changing the World in 2021 (“About Me”). Each of these extraordinary examples are just a few of the youth movements which began not only with habituated practices of writing in the 21st century, but also demonstrate writing as a social and rhetorical activity by composing for different audiences and purposes, multimodalities, with and for the community of which they see themselves a part—all under the age of 16, and without disciplinary influence (Yancey 53). When we look at the cognizance, and conviction these young people displayed to bring forth awareness, justice, and change—the very canon of thought and content we expect, and desire to interact with in our composition classrooms—we should ask ourselves if arguing against access, could we revise our institutionality to include dual enrollment students? What If…: Radically Imagining Inclusion Since the inception of social media, as a technology that has critically changed the way we language, read, and write--thanks to young people's rhetorical knowledge, social media is the most transformative communication that has ever been invented. While social media spaces, such as Facebook, were not intentionally created with adult users in mind [let that sink in], we witnessed the power of young people's literacy through the use of social media to bring about the country’s first elected Black president–twice. These same digital platforms which have been utilized by younger users for social justice movements have increased exponentially since its inception and should be seen as a positive innovation that has moved literacy forward—once 46 again, by younger writers who are not included in our disciplinary cistern. We also cannot disregard the negative implications social media has afforded, not only younger users misuse, but as an overt space where supposed learned adults take advantage of the limited restriction to extend their narrow ideas through cyber bullying, trolling, and ghost posting as the emblazon spectacle of #crcon, “Grand C’s Wizard,” and the Watson conference (Facebook, Twitter) illustrates user, or in this context, abuser corruption. Still, as a mediated space by those in power, social media also represents oppression for those who seek liberation through “literacy which began as a purposeful and collective liberatory practice, through acculturation into abstract institutional standards, has dissuaded becoming exclusionary (Fox 5).” For Black and BIPOC communities, where social media is yet another institutional space where othered voices are silenced and whiteness is centered, as a result, we make adjacent digital spaces such as Black Twitter centralizing Blackness intended for our performance, our language, our agency, our autonomy, and our Black authority—without white influence or white gaze. Eventually, as with all Black spaces which seek asylum from the incessant degeneration of our lived experiences, the micro to macro digital communities that made space for the ways and who composes freely, once admired and infiltrated by whiteness, these sanctuary spaces are co- opted and monetized as we are auto-billed to pay for our unintended freedom. James Baldwin, in his lecture in 1963, The Free and The Brave describes the essence and purpose of writing with community as an act of fellowship, where “the whole business of communication, of communion really, is to find some common terms to make something mean to you roughly what it means to me (3).” Baldwin echoes in each of these youth stories of activism, demonstrating their affinity for 47 what’s right and just establishing a sacrament of difference for communities at large. So, how can we omit the idea that young students cannot contribute something of value to our composition classrooms? If we consider “students’ non-academic behaviors such as maturity, along with ability, and college readiness to be an effective part of a composition course learning community at the college level” (Ferguson 83), then, I ask are we truly being honest with the ways we see our FYS behavior, maturity and college readiness, and their actual behavior in our classrooms? Are we ignoring or carefully misremembering a time where murmurs of side convos, interruptions, tech attention, sleeping, lateness, with excuses of multiple tragedies as adversities for every assignment, including phrases like I didn’t know what you wanted, or I didn’t understand the instructions? Are we seeing all of our students as they are? Freire reminds us that pedagogy that seeks to blame the oppressed for lack of readiness, subjugates those who have no power. If we look at the arguments made here for restricting dual enrollment students from experiencing composition until an idealistic persona has been reached before entrance, treating “literacy development as static and controllable limiting access,” this institutionality further substantiates gatekeeping, excluding students—that are often Black and BIPOC students—from access to academic literacy (Freire; Fox). If the universal expectation of what first-year students should be able to do and be in the composition classroom based on how old, how mature, and how much life, then, are we equitably communicating our disciplinary mission of “committed to supporting the agency, power, and potential of diverse communicators inside and outside of postsecondary classrooms?” (“Mission”). 48 If we look at what we do from the perspective of a partnership, then we need to know of our partners previous experiences with composition—not to validate specific experiences, but to acknowledge prior interactions and encounters at composition thresholds, spaces, and habits as lived experiences. Patricia Sullivan, who suggests through user experience research, to consider the benefit of providing balance which can be applied to the ways we see younger writers and teaching writing argues “today, with the rise of the internet and social and mobile computing environments, emerging user experience urges us to revisit how encounters may shape us and our interactivity” (20). If we acknowledge there is a possible continuum of experiences with literacy which we also may not have a view, then we can seek to avoid some of the pitfalls that reify inequities, render our students disengaged, or devalue their prior or current literacy practices as inoperable. Let’s ask ourselves: are we really offering all of our students the equitable space to grapple with subjects of their choosing, composing communications from their lived experiences, in ways young rhetors may find engaging? If we look closely, it may behoove us as practitioners and stakeholders to solely refer to an age-maturity algorithm to discount high school students as non-essential contributors of knowledge which vastly contradicts making as cultural rhetorics as practice considers all experiences with language, background, cultures, and learning. While I agree with scholars such as McWain, Hansen, McCrimmon, and others who suggest high school students may need more practice writing in college contexts, this suggestion is not out of the realm of how we should envision what we often do already—along with teaching writers, we coach writing practice. For those of us who may be bothered by such a simplistic description of what we actually do for writers’ development instead of reaffirming our 49 exigency to legitimize the discipline, let me ask: as you entered into the glamorous world of writing, research, and publishing for the academy, how many first drafts were final drafts that did not result from feedback, guidance, and encouragement? Ahmed explains that orientation may render our view costive as “we only know which way to turn once we know which way we are facing (18).” What I am seeking in this analysis is to challenge the ways we codify age of college-level writing ability, define what constitutes textual “maturity,” and what measures actual lived experiences prescribed by this schema of limitations. While this idea may seem radical in the sense dual enrollment student’s inclusion may not adhere to what we depict substantiates our disciplinarity, radical imagination suggests, with inclusion, something different can be created (Johnson; Stovall). But to do so, we need to acknowledge that our institutionality excludes by screening out the existence of dual enrollment students (feministkilljoys)3–therefore depicting our orientation toward students we deem essential to our disciplinarity. I believe the solution to inclusion is in the field’s directionality. Billie Jean King during the last Olympics stated initiatives that seek to center inclusion may not seem possible if one has never been excluded (“Closing Ceremony”2021)4. As I see it, through the arguments made here, excluding dual enrollment students, who have been swept into The Void, and steered from access, we are intentionally widening the divide by the way we communicate what we value, and what we expect students to value in literacy performance. The students who seek to inhabit our spaces may be affected by the way our habits may communicate indifference, inaccessibility, and inequity, as Ahmed reminds us how: “Spaces take shape through the habitual actions of bodies, such that the contours of 3 Feministkilljoys.com blog by Sara Ahmed 4 U.S. Olympics 2021 Closing Ceremony 50 space could be described as habitual…how spaces acquire the shape of the bodies that “inhabit” them. We could think about the ‘habit’ in the ‘inhabit’(25).” If we look only to those whose path may seem to align with how we define what’s acceptable, and equitable, we are depriving ourselves, our research, our classrooms of untold stories of lived experiences that we have no way of knowing. And, as rhetoricians, aren't diverse stories what we value? 51 CHAPTER THREE: The Algorithm “Yeah, being Black was why we were in dual enrollment, or so that’s what we were being told. But it’s not like they treated us like being Black and in dual enrollment was a good thing because the professors absolutely did not respect us…at all.” ~ @khaliltay “In my dual enrollment writing class, I didn’t think the professor, like, she treated us different because we were Black, because she was Black too. But she did treat us like babies though and would have the white students explain to us Black history, like we didn’t know anything she was talkin bout because we were in high school.” ~@raed.hennessy “We knew the writing professor didn’t like us in the class and was treating us differently because she kept talking about our writing in front of the whole class, like we were the worst of the worst because we were high school kids. But, we wouldn’t have been there if we were that bad.” ~@sabiyah.denee “I believe we were treated differently because we’re Black kids, yeah…because we’re dual enrollment, because we’re from Detroit, or high school. But we were the only Black kids in the entire class and were the only ones answering and trying to join the discussion which was about Black literature and Black people and Black things, yet [the professor] kept treatin us like we didn’t belong, like what we had to say wasn’t contributing.” ~@blkmystique “I can’t say for sure ya know if he was racist, but I don’t think the professor was happy we were in his class ya know he would seem to only like to position his body toward the other side ya know where most of the class was sitting. He didn’t ya know really engage with us as much as the rest of the class, but we still participated anyway.” ~@lovelittlejean [Me as Teacher Interlude] “Ironically, in the grand-colonial-scheme-of-things, our stories intersect by place as we share being inhabitants of the same university campus concurrently, and simultaneously. I was navigating the same thresholds of the battle of the disciplinarity between English lit and composition whose indifference with each other’s pedagogy led me to go awol. At one point, I’d seek to avoid the continual side-eye by altering my practice, only to return back to bustin into all my prose like the Kool-Aid man, purposely blowin up tha spot— thinkin if imma go down, I’m goin down as Jerrice, which essentially got me the pithy-so sophisticated commentary. While I saw myself fighting against the regime of the classist, and racist enterprise of composition that sought to subdue and silence me, my then students, were fighting on the same grounds of which they were completely unaware of, unprepared for, and where they were told they were soldiers, and instead, became casualties. It was reliving the calamity of their trials and tribulations through their stories of journeying the yellow brick road– without an accompaniment and within the absence of accountability. I was there, yet my orientation had no view of what was occurring in the spaces I was not privy. During their stories–stories of being racialized, stories interacting at and across thresholds, stories of different institutional spaces, stories encountering those who presented as being of the same, their stories convicted my own role of unintentional, but glaring espionage. As a practicing 52 agent of literacy, whose intrinsic motivation is equality, my praxis in ELA and composition inadvertently endorsed the same supremacy I flagrantly endured as a Black student. I recall Audre Lorde describing this as, “the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us” (105). I was their point of contact when seeking guidance, support, and acknowledgment, and realized, my presupposition as an agent of composition inserting the same scold’s bridle used in my own shackling. As a Black teacher, and tutor, whose own Black body had and still experiences constant consternation, including my writing performance, as the supposed advocate and activist, I unequivocally contributed to the systemic and systematic oppression of composition’s already existing underpinnings for Black and BIPOC voices—I became complicit in subjugating the violence of literacy.” Clutch: What I Didn’t Know I Had I went to an interview at my old campus for an adjunct position in technical writing. I wasn’t really nervous because I figured I’d know whoever was on the search committee since it was a couple of my mentors who referred me to the position. As I sat during the interview, a professor I didn’t know asked about my research. When I began to explain it, as I tend to do even with those in the field who I felt had an idea of what is dual enrollment, I explained how my time on this campus with a particular cohort of students led me to pursue research in composition. What those in the room, including one mentor who was my former creative writing professor, and current board member of my non-profit organization, Scribe Tribe–what she wasn’t aware of until then was I had continued relationships with just about all of those students—as they entered and graduated college, and even now as they embark on their careers. I mentioned my mentoring and supporting these students in passing, not really thinking that what I just said was actually something extraordinary—thankfully, there was someone in the room who did–enter, Dr. Liz Rohan. I made it home to relieve my fill-in caretaker slash brotha-from-anotha-motha, who sat with my mom while I went to interview, when my phone suddenly rang. When I looked at my 53 Apple watch the name read my mentor who I just saw at the interview. I was shocked and nervous because I didn’t know if her call meant I was not moving forward in the interview process. I let it ring again as I scanned my over-thinking-self-deprecating brain for anything I may have said out-of-pocket that maybe she was calling to give me the yeah, Jerrice, what you said is true buuut… speech—not that I get scolded that often. I answered my watch trying to sound pleasantly surprised, which I was, as the voice matched my excitement: “Jerrice! I’m so glad I caught you!” The voice continued with elation of my interview, and their impression of me since I’ve left campus. Then it was what they mentioned next of their thoughts on my research that set my brain into Tony-Stark-hardware mode, and essentially, changed the trajectory of this research project for the better. As they complimented me on my continued relationship with the cohort of dual enrollment students, they asked if they could offer some advice as a possible idea for my research: “Since this is the same or similar group of students used in your master’s research, and you have a rapport, you should consider a longitudinal study.” While they continued with what this type of research would do for my work and what it may bring, I was reminded of how I initially believed I could do this type of research. I mentioned to Liz that someone who works in the department emphatically told me that not only I couldn’t use the same people in my research, but I couldn’t do this sort of research in composition– because there is no interest. While listening to my mentor’s perspective, I was already seeing possibilities in my head as I shared how my interest in User Experience and Design may help my ideas. After the phone call, I couldn’t wait to talk it over with my committee and knew my chair would love it. As I sat and pondered my thoughts, I began voice 54 recording the ideas percolating, from what I could possibly learn to what I believe the field could also learn from former dual enrollment students' experiences with composition. I could see a picture emerging as I finally felt like the researcher I often imagined. When I was a kid, I used to do extended experiments at home that I learned in school. My mom and dad, who both fueled my desire for questions and solutions, my mom assisted and endured home experiments from crystallized sugar on a string wrapped around a pencil under their bed to shield from light–to the Lima bean growing in a glass versus Styrofoam cup to conduct the vibrations from my singing to it. Even the many different iterations of extending bread mold experiments, including one in undergrad trying to prove if hand sanitizer works on living organisms or dead organic matter e.g., toasted versus raw bread. My self-proclaimed science-cey and creative brain was in the zone for days after. I began to think about my previous research—my master’s manuscript which focuses on this same group of dual enrollment students on campus—and another study as a co-investigator, which asks students in a pilot section of a writing studio course, their thoughts on writing, and themselves as writers (Donelson, DeGenaro, & DeGenaro, 2017). My interest in pursuing the new idea further appealed to the multiplicity of my scholarly identities: the rhetorician in me is interested in learning of and sharing the stories of their experiences, whereas the advocate in me is interested in bringing awareness of dual enrollment students' existence on our campuses by presenting stories of their experiences, in their voices. The UX researcher in me is even more interested in learning of their journeys as users whose perspectives of compositions usability may inform possibilities of (re)alignment with our field’s mission. Yet, the activist in me—which is the loudest, and most visceral-- is taking this 55 opportunity to illuminate these voices that are minimal, as they tell of their learning experiences with composition as Black and BIPOC students, in 4-year universities, particularly, PWI’s. As a returning student, while also working within PWI’s, existing within these distinctly different, yet similar environments, conditioned me to be keenly aware of what my Black body means in commonplaces like the composition classroom. I have shared in my varying interludes a few first-person experiences with the continuity of barriers located at thresholds of institutional access essentially created as solutions for inclusion of those inadvertently located in The Void–an indexical reality signifying margins of institutional spaces for Black and BIPOC people. It is learning of these experiences which uphold my dedication as an activist-teacher- scholar, advocating for institutional transformation through equal and equitable access, and learning experiences, beginning with composition. Vibe Check: From Student to User I’ve established a rapport with my former dual enrollment students where our informal conversations over the years have inspired many of my evolutionary research questions since their time in dual enrollment. During these informal convos, many through social media and text messaging, I spent a lot of time listening to their experiences in the varying commonplaces of composition. Most reached out during their FY while encountering FYW or other first-year composition courses at their prospective institutions. For this project, I decided to reach out to the group of my former students who I donned The Talented Tenth after DuBois’s historical leadership course and essay (1903)5. I reached out to all of the students through socials, and 5 The Talented Tenth by W. E. B. DuBois is an essay which argued the concept of exceptionalism. Here, I am using it loosely related to the group of students I chose for this study. 56 text. In the message, I asked if they would be willing to share their experiences with composition when they were in dual enrollment, and just about everyone I asked was graciously willing, and even eager to be a part of my research–even after mentioning it has been sooo long since they were in high school [insert eyeroll here]. Nonetheless, the responses were positive. One of which I have the closest rapport, shares his experiences more frequently as he fervently sought my tutelage throughout college, and even now, as the editor to his upcoming release of his series of graphic novels. I, of course, reached out to him first, because it was his journey that sparked the most interest. The others all responded, but it was the scheduling conflicts which reduced the number of active participants down to five. Those remaining also had conflicts. All working professionals, which at the time, I had no idea all were professional writers. One was in the throes of planning her impending wedding in a few months, new mom to not even a one-year-old, relocating, and changing careers from a financial analyst for a major international bank and New York Stock Exchange. Two others were planning relocation from Michigan–one headed to Kentucky for work within their newly started UX consulting firm, where I am their technology expert, while also applying to pursue their MBA. The other, received a promotion which took them to Illinois as a content producer for NBC, where once arrived was also suffering from COVID. The one which I see almost weekly due to my being the editor of his impending graphic novel series, also in the middle of his 100th revision working toward publication, while working full-time as a retail manager. The other had just suffered a recent loss and found himself in a new role after gaining custody of his younger siblings which have been in his care since high school—also commuting to work in Ohio from Detroit weekly. 57 As each continued to share their current life happenings, mostly in text messages, and in the same exact moments, my own life was life-in–a solo-parent-caregiver, who suddenly found myself in a severe health occurrence delaying my own progress drastically. As we communicated and exchanged moments of misgivings and courage, it was here where I could no longer see their former high school-Dual Enrollment-college-student identities. I now see them as adults adultin–continuing their journeys to the distinct places in the world hopeful in finding success through past and present lessons along the way. I now saw their previous identities as all had expressed—at a distance. I also saw a continuum where writing is an essential part of their experiences and I wanted to know more. This new perspective also signaled a need to reorientate the way I would represent their experiences with composition as students–even in the former sense–which was not fully encompassing my perspectives, and assumptions of their journeys. Originally, I was interested in knowing of their experiences as dual enrollment students within composition, asking to see what I believed was happening but did not have a first-person view. As I continued to think about the assumptions of encounters with dual enrollment programming, high school, university campus, varying discipline expectations, cultures of writing, and different institutional spaces, I began seeing former students as users of composition within these contexts. I also remembered, this same cohort also experienced other versions of composition courses at other institutions while in dual enrollment, as well as after. I began wondering if their experiences with composition at other institutions were at all different or similar, from what I had observed. I wondered what their encounters were while attempting to perform the kinds of writing expected at the college level, especially without prior college- 58 level writing experience. While I witnessed moments of their managing the hybridity of their academic identities across the asymmetrical environments of secondary and higher education, I was interested in possibly learning of what I didn’t see. It was in the wee hours of the night—my optimal productive time pre my 50th, where I began to think about my former dual enrollment students, now graduated, and working within writing intensive careers—wondering if their experiences with composition from dual enrollment and beyond, may have shaped their ideas about writing, and who they are as writers. Here is where I started my inquiry of this particular group: what happened during their journeys through commonplaces of composition? M-E-T-H-O-D: Questions of Experiences with Composition I chose my methods based on what I believed would answer the questions and would best represent the experiences being shared. I wanted an approach to center the voices of my participants as the nexus as well as focus the themes that may emerge. By using both Cultural Rhetorics and User Experience to also serve as methodologies, I am able to answer my essential questions: 1. What are Dual Enrollment students’ experiences with composition? 2. What might we in the field of composition learn from stories of dual enrollment student experiences with composition? 3. How might what we learn inform the ways we communicate and develop our values of inclusion pertaining to access, equity, racial identity, and literacy development? I chose to use Cultural Rhetorics and User Experience as methods which also serve as methodologies. As practices, both are human-centered, where learning of lived experiences is 59 the nexus. User Experience or UX, as a methodology is newly entering the field of writing studies with not a lot of use in this context. UX seeks to prioritize or validate an idea of what, where, and when as a tool to understand thoughts and attitudes of the user including behaviors and pain points to help identify a problem. UX as a practice is found in the principles of human- centered design which emphasizes broader and more diverse methods positioning the user central to design. Collecting user-specific data to assess interactions, places, products, practices, services, and systems unique to the individuals, UX uses a different way of seeing experiences by centralizing an individual’s experiences to measure specific emotions at various moments in the user journey (Roto, Law, Vermeeren, & Hoonhout 12). I wanted to use a method I was somewhat familiar with from my previous life as a systems-design consultant where internal and external systems and the people who use them were the focus. In my consulting work, learning about the people I was creating systems for helped me identify new opportunities to improve or design solutions for the users’ goals and needs. Capturing actionable insights from user stories was a different way of seeing what users encountered during interactions with a specific system. Here is where user experience and cultural rhetorics approaches to storytelling allow me to centralize not only the voices of the people telling the stories of their lived experiences, but the stories themselves. Maria Novotny in Cultural Rhetorics in Precarious Times, reminds us that as a pillar of cultural rhetorics, “story as theory, orients us to critically engage with whose stories are told, who is trusted to hear some stories, and why who listens matters (2).” User Experience uses story for specific purposes and audiences in design as well as UX allows for a multidimensional approach to the ways we hear stories, as well as ways to share the stories. 60 Patrick Parrish in Design as Storytelling says, “stories are revealing journeys that we can take multiple times, discovering new things in each telling (21).” While storytelling from CR can serve “as a theoretical lens to better understand [ways] systematic structures [can] operate as a colonial construct reinforcing racism (Novotny 2),” storytelling from UX serves as “stories [that] are used during data collection to guide users or let them describe their problems and feelings in the form of stories (Wu et. al 23).” Using these orientations toward storytelling allows me the opportunity to see relationships, which are also an essential element in both cultural rhetorics and user experience methodologies. While I was interested in learning of dual enrollment students' experiences with composition, based on scholarship within the field pertaining to dual enrollment, I saw the arguments as an us vs. Them-kind of tone. Interpreting the field arguments orientation as a seemingly contentious relationship with dual enrollment led me to inquire about composition's relationship with dual enrollment through time. Relationality, as an Indigenous rhetorical practice, provides me a CR lens in which to view this situational relationship “to understand one’s position in the world, one’s relationship to land, space, ideas, people, and living beings, and to understand how these relationships have been and will always be at play with each other (Mukavetz 1).” Based on scholarship, I began to see less relational accountability for the actual students who matriculate in dual enrollment programming, who are the subject, or objects of the arguments against access–leaving them and their literacy needs constellating in The Void. With situational relationships also imperative to UX practices, where behavior and responses to interactions are essential to identify relationships specifically within social and 61 cultural contexts, I wanted to use a different method beyond basic charts or graphs to display these relationships. As someone who remembers the lack of enjoyment felt completing the wretched concept maps, sentence diagrams, and word trees as a prescriptive practice for English and grammar, I wanted to use a different visual yet something similar to concept mapping to represent moments across times and spaces, as well as illuminate specific interactions along the way. Here is where I found the UX method of journey mapping as a viable option. Nielsen Norman Group describes journey maps as a “visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal (Gibbons 3).” The process or the journey includes touchpoints where the person interacts with and experiences objects, people, and systems prior to, within, and after leaving a space or place. Journey mapping creates a holistic view of the entire experience from the user standpoint. It is within interactions with composition–the teachers, curriculum, practices, assessment, and spaces where I wanted a closer look at the good, the bad, and the indifferent. While I assumed there may be notable experiences shared, I also had assumptions of what these interactions may sound, look, feel, smell, and taste like. I wanted another lens of which to possibly “classify” the interactions as I also saw dual enrollment students, while existing on our college and university campuses, also moving through multiple sites, and learning thresholds. I wanted to consider the role of threshold concepts described in Naming What We Know, and (Re) Considering What We Know by Adler-Kissner & Wardle as lens for the participants interactions to possibly identify the ways these thresholds are malleable for some students and not so for others, such as dual enrollment students. With UX and CR practices of relational accountability centering experiences and stories 62 as knowledge-making, which includes embodiment, I wanted to make sure I am preserving the identities and stories with a cultural rhetorics orientation which ensures that “a set of respectful and responsible practices to form and sustain relationships with cultural communities and their shared beliefs and practices including texts, materials, and ideas” is also centered (Mukavetz 3). I chose racial storytelling both as theory and method to tell the stories needed to be told as Lamar Johnson describes “as a response to our racialized memories, repressions, suppressions, and oppressions” of our embodied experiences “that situate themselves in present contexts (467).” Protecting the stories I tell, and re-tell, including my own, is important to me–not only as a Black woman, but as a Black literacy scholar, Black teacher of writing, student advocate, and activist. The stories of, and by the people in this project, who identify as Black and BIPOC people, are important as an essential contribution to the field where the voices of Black and BIPOC students as users of composition are minimal. April Baker-Bell, in For Loretta: A Black Literacy Scholar’s Journey to Prioritizing Self-Preservation and Black-Womanist-Feminist Storytelling, employs racial storytelling, demonstrating the importance of storytelling from a Black and womanist lens: “Black feminist–womanist storytelling is a methodology that weaves together autoethnography, the African American female language and literacy tradition, Black feminist/womanist theories, and storytelling to create an approach that provides Black women with a method for collecting our stories, writing our stories, analyzing our stories, and theorizing our stories at the same time as healing from them (527).” Illuminating multiple methodologies including autoethnography and storytelling, Baker-Bell’s research also serves to “expand the field’s knowledge of what counts as literacy research by understanding the complex racial and gendered life span literacies of a literacy researcher of 63 color (527).” This research is a critical example of the imperativeness of researcher positionality, particularly, Black women literacy scholars and the stories we tell of our embodied experiences to ensure that “this work is significant as scholarship that centers Black women literacy researchers’ lived experiences [because it] is missing from the field” (Baker-Bell 527). I include my stories as interludes, which are reflections of various embodied experiences where my identities–as student, as teacher, as rhetor–and my Blackness are in conversation with the racialized experiences and embodiment of the DEUs. As Banks reminds us: “Because our bodies-as-we-understand them are conscious (and unconscious) extensions of not only our mind, but also the minds around us. I know the bodies of others by knowing my own body, and vice versa [...]I read into those bodies as I read into my own[...]I write these bodies as I write my own (71).” According to Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone description of autoethnography as “a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them” (35), I believe my interludes offer a view into the ways my subjectivity was admonished by past experiences–a past that Sara Ahmed describes in On Being Included as experiences I recalled that I had “forgotten” (“introduction”). Similar to UX and CR where storytelling is a valuable approach to qualitative inquiry, my use of racial storytelling is to also illuminate the underrepresented narratives of systemic challenges our identities face within institutions as well as society. To get to these narratives, I sought to use a UX method for the interview process. As a participatory approach, I utilized memorial interactivity to scaffold narratability during multi- stage interviews. This method, according to William C. Kurlinkus in Narratability: Encouraging Nostalgic Stories, describes stories about memorable interactions and authentic experiences as more meaningful or “residue of nostalgia” (276). Kurlinkus defines nostalgia in his chapter as “a 64 gap in the past to be resolved through story; an authentic trace to be mused over; an experience that one cannot duplicate; a means to post the self as champion.” The stories included and gathered during the participant interviews are not meant to sensationalize any positive experiences, or disregard any past experiences of trauma or violence, where the connotation of nostalgia carries with it a denial of injustices of the past. Prior to the interviews, I had no implication of what would be said, or which stories would be shared. The stories collected in this project are authentic lived experiences told by those who lived through it. Kurlinkus quotes memory theorist, Svetlana Boym who distinguishes nostalgia, as both restorative and reflective where “restorative nostalgia does not think of itself as nostalgia, but rather as truth and tradition” where it is meant to “protect the absolute truth” (278). Whereas reflective nostalgia “dwells on the ambivalences of human” and the “longing and belonging” while also calling such absolutes “into doubt” (278). In racial storytelling, “remembering” is used to illustrate the intentionality of narrating and preserving racialized stories differently than methods of counter-storytelling and autoethnography (Johnson). I see our stories separately and collectively adhering to what Johnson describes as “the process of (re)membering through racial storytelling [which] illustrates the intentionality of narrating these stories as ways to employ these memories and to preserve these racialized stories (476).” Johnson’s description informs how I describe our stories as racialized while also acting as counter-stories. Johnson explains: “Counter-storytelling is utilized by people of Color as a theoretical and/or methodological tool to counter and disrupt traditional and dehumanizing stories that institutions and society hold about people from different racial backgrounds and ethnic identities (477).” I do not view these descriptions as synonymous but distinct in that racial storytelling is relative 65 to the lived experience and perspective of the storyteller. By sharing our stories of overt and covert racialization that happened, and is happening at sites of composition, while ethnographic and autoethnographic by design, our narratives demonstrate how: “Engaging in racial storytelling creates a contested space that illustrates our stories […] merely telling a story involving race and racism without the gaze of the dominant narrative […] and stories that perpetuate white privilege, white supremacy, and patriarchy (Johnson 476).” The purpose of these racialized stories may not be to “counter” any existing narrative, but to include this perspective narrative of lived experiences in conversations surrounding purposes for composition. Check Tha Technique: Data Collection The original study design for this project included a survey of FYW students who would identify their previous, or current enrollment in any version of dual credit-concurrent enrollment-dual enrollment type programming. Then, to ensure I could get the perspectives of specific Dual Enrollment Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (DEPSEO) students, I would ask those who matriculated to 4-year colleges or universities if they would be willing to share their experiences in recorded interviews. Thanks to the suggestion to use these particular people as participants for this project, this adjustment was certainly feasible and seemingly more compelling. The actual data I pursued post IRB approval began with conducting one stage of interviews with each participant individually, and a second stage as a whole group interview. Here I assumed a bit of cross-talk would happen and possibly provide further perspectives. Three out of the five were in courses together, while the other two shared in having me as their initial tutor. The configuration of student groups that matriculated in dual enrollment courses from their high school included sociology, anthropology, African-American literature, 66 philosophy, and other math and sciences. This cohort of participants now made up an eclectic and varietal group with three different matriculations. Three out of the five were enrolled in multiple courses together including African-American literature, and a specialized course in sociology focusing on the city of Detroit. One of the other participants experienced a different version of the same course during the same time matriculating with two others that are not part of the study. One matriculated after this group and experienced several different courses as well including advanced exposition. As a Black woman literacy researcher, it was imperative to me to include the stories in Black voices. Each participant included in this project identified as Black unequivocally, as most were emphatic that this representation be included in the research. A few participants had identity and cultural interests which aligned with many of the purposes of this research. One participant in particular, an activist in their own right, wanted to ensure the stories told would benefit others who may have had similar experiences with composition in PWIs asking if I will be illuminating Black, Queer, and Feminist theories as an anchor–it’s as if they were reading my Sara-Ahmed-Queer-Phenomenology-lovin mind–I was also impressed by the inquiry. Another participant was interested in how this project will influence conversations surrounding literacy practices of Black males as they are also an educator whose interests centralize this theme. Their interests also informed what I would ask specifically during the interviews. These inquiries sparked additional conversations where perspectives of their own educational experiences, including dual enrollment, were compared to the current state of education for Black students from areas such as Detroit. During these informal conversations is where identity was in the forefront of their agency. Since pseudonyms are common practice in human- 67 centered research, I wanted to use something that represented each participant's individuality. As I reached out to ask permission to use their social media names as pseudonyms for this project, all collectively loved the idea. During our communication where they shared which persona to use, a few shared a meaningful anecdote in crafting their “ats.” Choosing social media handles to function as pseudonyms is multipurpose. From an UX point of view, 21st century literacy practices such as those used through social media, represent users' functional, critical, and rhetorical knowledge-making in media spaces. Since Black identities are prescribed and proscribed in most spaces without permission, I wanted to disrupt this tradition of displacement of identities often present in academic research. As I returned to drafting the questions, I knew I wanted to know of their experiences as former dual enrollment students—not just as students in composition, but of their practices, processes, and perspectives of composition as Black students, Black graduates, and Black professionals in writing intensive careers. I redrafted the questions from a user experience perspective because I was interested in hearing the thinking, feeling, saying, and doing, the participants may recall across the multiple sites, beginning with dual enrollment such as: 1. What did you know about “college” composition or FYW prior to attending dual enrollment? 2. What did you think or believe you would experience writing in (and for) college? 3. Do you recall doing anything differently writing in college than writing in high school? 4. Did you feel prepared for the expectations associated with writing in college? 5. What were your expectations, if any? During stage one interviews, which due to pandemic protocol had to be conducted via 68 Zoom, I began by catching up to signal reassurance of my sincere personal interest of where they are presently, and ensured I allotted enough time to make sure this interaction was included. Not only for their comfort, but for my own as our interactions over time have mostly been predicated on their student identities until most recently, when I had the chance to re- connect over pivotal life moments. In doing so, I believe I encouraged a level of intimacy where an exchange can take place. After these initial conversations, I read the consent and provided a bit of context for user experience methodology. Three out of the five were aware of UX and were eager to learn of the ways I was seeking to use it to illustrate their experiences. I found a personal picture by happenstance and decided to use it as an artifact to prompt memory of this specific time period. Prior to asking the first question, I asked could I send a text message of the photo. The photo included the entire group of students assigned to me during their first semester on campus, which only included three out of the five participants at the time. For the three participants of which I shared, based on their initial reactions of elation and laughter, followed by a quick analysis of their feelings of themselves and others in that particular moment, and the silent-staring–I would say the photo represents a moment of nostalgia for each participant in differing ways. One participant–after the initial laughter, silently stared at the photo then, broke the silence with an assessment of their student identity moment, which led seamlessly into my first question. The stage interviews weren’t as challenging to schedule as everyone was eager to get started as soon as I was ready. One participant who worked overnight, completed their interview in the car parked in their driveway after a catnap to ensure they didn't miss the scheduled interview. What became challenging was scheduling the whole group interview. I 69 hoped to conduct member-checks by creating collaborative statements based on their collective answers to encourage cross-talk. I informed each of the whole group interview at the end of the individual interviews where almost all were willing. However, one of the participants seemed reluctant asking if the whole group interview was mandatory and wanted time to think about participating. While awaiting their response, a few other schedules became unyielding, as well as my own. I was suddenly scheduled to have major surgery around the same time as many of the events mentioned by the participants. I postponed the whole group interview until after my surgery as I believed during my recovery there would be a better time to convene. When attempting to re- schedule the whole group interviews, it was increasingly difficult to nail down the best time. It was during transcribing the individual interview data, where I decided to scratch the whole group and do individual member-checks instead due to some interesting findings. After each individual interview, I made personal notes of specific moments I found interesting. I began transcribing the audio of each interview soon after to determine if there is anything I needed to ask during the proceeding interviews. After completing the individual interviews, I transcribed everyone’s responses where patterns emerged. I created categories [that will later become swimlanes] of themes based on the collective responses by first creating a spreadsheet to keep the individual responses organized. I initially wanted to map each interview separately, but eventually discovered that I was doing this exactly minus creating a visual map. I needed to determine which type of map would best represent the patterns: journey mapping where the touchpoints as locations will serve as an aerial view into the journey across 70 sites and thresholds; or empathy map where responses to interactions throughout the journey will serve as a first-person view as DEUs travel across thresholds and boundaries. Using either method would provide a visual depicting DEUs journey as all of the users mentioned specific experiences which mirrored each other, so I decided to create an empathy map to synthesize responses and include themes. As the first step in design thinking, Nielsen Norman Group describes empathy mapping as a way to visualize users' external attitudes and behaviors as responses to interactions and encounters. I created a similar map using some of the same participants for my master’s research where themes emerged from the conversations. In this example empathy map, where the responses were generally subjects of self-efficacy Figure 1: Example empathy map of themed responses including their student stakeholdership and the values this identity presented during dual enrollment; I named themes based on the action being expressed as well as direct quotes which tell a story of similarity. The column headers were topics based on field scholarship regarding dual enrollment students' lack of preparedness for college composition; uninformed writing processes; inability to interpret writing assignments and so on. The swim lanes were based on touch points illustrated within the question asked, and which emotion was expressed during an interaction in the interview—precisely what thinking, feeling, saying, and doing. 71 The direct quotes were interesting moments from individual students which captured the ethos of the collective. Using students' voices is essential which informs the data by providing first-person experiences and is a critical element of this project. Based on the data I collected at this stage, I determined I could do both journey and empathy maps as the responses provided multiple views which could be captured in either map. But, to represent the group, I chose a map style similar to the example which includes aspects of both empathy and journey mapping where the quotes are individual responses used to signify interactions. The synthesis map provides a view of all the users' responses to interactions that occurred at one threshold—dual enrollment. As I returned to the second data set to begin to create individual maps, because at that moment I believed mapping each user's journey would offer different perspectives. I noticed a few of the responses in the synthesis map seem to read similarly in tone. So, I returned to my original data set which was separated by user to determine the responses. What I discovered in this moment was that while I was attempting to randomize the responses for the synthesis map by not identifying the user, I somehow ended up recognizing the users based on their responses. What I thought was a mindless screwup actually became the basis for the case studies as I returned to the master list of quotes and began highlighting the responses I believed were from the same user. To my surprise, the responses lead to three users whose stories I originally thought were varied from each other in interesting ways. I began connecting the responses to the users. At this point, I created a list of responses per user I wanted to use for the case study, as I also noticed the responses seem to follow specific themes. 72 Droppin Dimes: What The Data Told Me During the stage one interviews, there were a few stories shared that brought on an embodied response for me. As I began reflecting on what was said while writing post interview notes, it became painfully clear that my role during dual enrollment was egregiously complicit at contributing to their trauma. As I began listening to the interviews, I could hear and see visibly through facial and body movement more and more emotional triggers as each recalled their interactions. While I was only mentioned explicitly as the “only one who cared about us and how well we did in our classes” (@blkmystique; @raed.hennessy; @khaliltay), it is what was shared of the feelings endured, and even rationalized as acceptable when treated and told their writing performance was unacceptable. This moment of conviction brought with it a tsunami of emotion and guilt as I began to see how my advocacy for their success underpinned by the very adversities I endured in composition, and actively sought to obscure. But it was my upholding the culture of whiteness embedded through the practices of composition where this revelation caused a downward spiral emotionally for which I was unprepared going in. While I was wallowing in self-doubt and despair, I returned to the stories shared in the interviews and discovered some similarities to my own experiences. Not of the ironical nature, but explicitly identical interactions which I had not noticed before. It was the second pass through of the interviews where I began to recall moments which caused some of the same embodied reactions that were shared. I compared our stories side by side as we shared quite a few similarities of experiences involving encounters where our existence was in question due to our performances. I wanted to represent my experiences alongside the users as I believed my experiences could provide an additional perspective of the same encounters. I returned to a 73 piece I had written from an assignment in writing workshop, where I composed a free write of my experiences as a memoir-monologue-of-sorts. These excerpts became chapter interludes. Also, during the second pass through, I discovered three distinct stories where the experiences were described differently than the others. Here, I wrote direct quotes per user, creating a vertical list highlighting signal phrases which were juxtaposed to the others. While I was still attempting to schedule the whole group cross-talk, it became apparent this may not be necessary to bring forth the stories I believe would be compelling for this project. I wanted to know more so I requested a second interview where I would conduct individual member-checks of three users: @lovelittlejean, @blkmystique, and @raed.hennessy. I was able to schedule the second stage of interviews pretty quickly as each was eager to continue our discussion. I used the quotes listed from the second passthrough as entry points as well as ways to ensure my interpretations were accurate as well. What ended up happening during this stage were deep and meaningful tautological conversations of the thoughts and feelings of their journeys, and how their experiences with composition–good, bad, and indifferent–shaped their present identities as writers. I listened to the ways each user described moments within their journey, while also theorizing their own responses and behaviors during their interactions. I noticed how aspects of their stories were more similar than different as experiences with suspected bias toward race, class, and gender were common themes, which were also common themes within my own experiences. Based on these conversations, it became clear their individual stories needed their own space to breathe. Their stories will serve as individual case studies, where I look closely at their journeys, and what their responses to interactions can provide as users of composition. 74 Tha Read: Meaning Making After hearing the stories during the member-check, I wanted a visual representation that will show not only the movement through time and different institutions but include their voices. For these particular Maps, I sought to use a combination of Journey and empathy mapping to visualize what thinking, feeling, saying, and doing was happening during their interactions across institutions. I assumed this kind of mapping will provide a multi-layered view of the behaviors, and responses as three individual cases of interactions at composition’s thresholds. The journeys across thresholds are represented by concepts described in Naming What We Know and will signify sites of learning for dual enrollment, while in college, and career in which to view some of the common themes found in encounters at these touch points: concept 1: writing is a social and rhetorical activity; concept 3: writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies; and concept 5: writing is (also always) a cognitive activity. As described by Anne- Marie Womack in Writing Only Occurs Within Accessible Conditions these concepts are “limited (and limiting) in so far as they focus on dominant groups and ways of writing (26).” Jennifer Helen Maher Rhetoric as Persistently “Troublesome Knowledge”: Implications for Disciplinarity, describes concepts “that at the same time, highlights the consequences that arise, when a threshold concept, for very reasons, remains presently troublesome (94).” I interpret Womack’s description pointing to the limited view of non-dominant groups' ways of writing as well, while Maher describes what can also be problematic with threshold concepts. Both descriptions provide context in which the concepts will be used as lenses. I see threshold concepts as our disciplinary expectations where we assess and evaluate how 75 effectively students orientate toward their “new” rhetorical community by enacting conventions, genre knowledge, and audience awareness. I also see these concepts representing our anticipated traditional and ideal student identities, and our hope for students to quickly adapt to our disciplinary ideologies while reorientating their agency, autonomy, and authority toward our disciplinarity, all while expecting diverse students to lessen or abandon their cognitive dissonance toward disclosing their lived experiences as a means to contribute to knowledge sharing. While threshold concepts have been revised and/or reconsidered in (Re)Considering What We Know, I believe the premise of the concepts may still be present in our practices, processes, and pedagogy as Maher suggests: “Threshold concepts constitute important and much needed disciplinary work that, at the same time, highlights the consequences that arise when a threshold concept for varied reasons, remains persistently troublesome (96).” I learned in some informal conversations that dual enrollment or being considered a dual enrollment student, have described that this identity comes with a stigma regardless of cultural background. Dual enrollment requires that students have an above standard gpa (3.75- 4.0) to participate in some partnering universities, such as where I met my users. Yet, once DEPSEO students are on campus, and disclose, or are identified as high school dual enrollment, “the assumption is that you need to have help because you are labeled at-risk, impoverished, etc.” (“Autumn”). I witnessed this occurrence while sitting in a few courses where dual enrollment students were enrolled. Once students have been identified, the treatment or handling by the professor either differentiates from FYS, or not at all. This variation of interactions in the classroom implies the students are perceived to lack or are deficient, furthering the chance to establish, or even feel a part of the new learning community. If we 76 look through the lens of writing is a social and rhetorical activity, it is this concept that represents a threshold where dual enrollment students, as well as Black and BIPOC students, may encounter feelings of displacement due to a disconnect from or not belonging to the classroom community. One of the notable responses during the member-check conversation describes this very experience: “I come from like, a community-oriented teaching and like, rearing where community means more to my, like success. Not feeling like, we were a part of the class, like we were not a part of the community, made us feel, or made me feel like, they didn’t see us or like, value me or what I had to say like an equal contributor to what we were talking about.”~@blkmystique I found this story interesting as other DEUs expressed a similar expectation for classes in dual enrollment, and later, in their college classrooms. They expressed missing a sense of belonging, which was also collectively rationalized. Initially I wanted to map each person’s interview on the first pass through, then later create a larger map of their journey. Similar to the use of DEU quotes to frame each chapter, quotes also represent DEUs responses at the various touch points across thresholds. The purpose is to offer a first-person view of the journey, response to interaction at these thresholds, including notable encounters shared in the interviews. But, what became challenging was choosing the data that would best depict the stories being told about their journeys, as well as their interactions with the thresholds and responses to encounters in one map. So, I decided to create the synthesis map where the responses were not just from one user’s interview but represented a few moments of truth responses that were essentially repeated by others in the group. I created the synthesis map in lieu of a whole group crosstalk where I wanted to observe and listen to what they would say in response to each other's experiences. 77 The map essentially does the same thing by visually representing their responses to the same questions which are sub headers. What was interesting about creating the synthesis map was how this data spoke directly to a few of the main arguments in the scholarship pertaining to stakeholders, equity, student preparedness among other topics. This made it simple to create the columns where the responses would be placed. I randomly chose responses to use since there were quite a few in common, but I did want a different “kind” of response in each column that expressed varying reactions. I randomized the responses by compiling a separate list without user handles. However, once I began placing them in the columns, I noticed some responses were juxtaposed to the others, which provided an interesting contrast. Hit Different: User Experience as Racial Storytelling I saw aspects of a few threshold concepts in relation to some of the themes in the responses, so it was here where I chose specific concepts to represent the sites of dual enrollment, college, and career as the thresholds for the case studies journeys. I then mapped each case study using emotional responses to the encounters at the site of the thresholds; and, theorizing at the transition between thresholds (or thresholds within thresholds). I chose the responses I believed best depicted each case studies experience and will tell the most compelling stories of their journeys. While completing the maps for all three case studies, I was sure I included enough data to represent what their stories tell of their journeys and interactions. As I began organizing the elements I wanted represented at each threshold, I began to see something I hadn’t seen before. As I continued to work with the maps, I returned to the other user’s responses that I didn’t choose for the cases. I was curious if what I was seeing in the cases was only in their 78 responses, or if there were any other commonalities. What I found was disheartening, yet extraordinary. The commonalities in user data among the case study users, as well as the other users, depicted experiencing racialized encounters at the same thresholds. As I reviewed the responses multiple times from all the users and not just the cases, I realized that the maps I initially created didn’t include these narratives. At that moment, I realized I couldn't just rely on the way journey maps are typically done which are void of specifics that would illuminate these encounters because what I had in my data was a kind of story that is not well represented in this UX method. Now, it was imperative what I wanted to depict—racialized encounters—which should be interpreted as violence—as well as the thresholds where the interactions occurred. Comparatively, all users, including the cases, shared encounters that occurred specifically at sites interacting with university professors—acts of decontextualization, and delegitimization: “Yeah, I had some racial exclusionary experiences in previous English classrooms which were umm disorienting socially ya know. This one time, I remember a writing teacher who said to me ‘you didn’t write this’ and I was like umm yes I did! and she was like where is your phone? Let me see your phone and like I didn’t have a cell phone ya know and if I did I wouldn’t be able to ya know connect because it would be an Obama phone but she was like ya know what teenager doesn’t have a cell phone ya know. She wasn’t expecting me to be, ya know at the level I was. So, she went immediately to, ‘you couldn’t have written this’, ya know.” ~@lovelittlejean This story is but one where a teacher of writing displayed expectations which were apparently exceeded by the student prose, but still became subject to interrogation based on disciplinary, and I would say, personal biases. It is encounters, such as this one that appeared in the data that are critical to the DEUs journey. I did not see these stories in common as coincidental or ironical, considering my interactions with the some of the same patriots of literacy produced similar encounters of racialized violence at the thresholds I encountered. Hence, it was 79 necessary to use mapping to visualize these stories—these racialized, denigrating, debasing stories of literacy learning. However, traditional journey mapping does not include specifics such as characteristics or identities of the users—no cultural, gender, racial, demarcations identifying who exactly are the people who are on the journey, their connection to the journey, or significance of their experiences as journey mapping is often used to capture the emotional responses to encounters during interactions. It was in my users' responses to their interactions where it became clear that the encounters at thresholds occupied by university composition professors included experiences of racialization and racial violence. And, since there wasn’t one map to illustrate this imperative and extraordinary finding—I created it. For this research, I utilized journey mapping as a method for racial storytelling where it provides a first-person point of view of DEU’s encounters at composition’s thresholds. The goal of this type of journey mapping is to communicate disparate narratives of diverse experiences, and to also include this method of racial storytelling as a UX approach. These methodologies intersectional approaches to storytelling are necessary and can recontextualize racialized stories that are critical to these conversations. Journey maps serve as a visual that includes moments throughout a user journey highlighting emotions and responses to interactions. Since mapping’s purpose in UX is to illuminate real human experiences, creating maps that center the lived experiences of Black and BIPOC users includes a narrative of experiences that is missing from human-centered design thinking. In user experience, the goal of a journey map is used to communicate insights of the entire experience from a users’ point of view. I used this newly created tool to centralize the underrepresentation of narratives depicting dual enrollment 80 students as users of composition, while also creating a visual that illustrates the touchpoints where racial violence took place. 81 CHAPTER FOUR: The Analytics [Violence at Composition’s Thresholds] “When I got to honors college, that writin was turnt up! and their expectations was implied! But a lot of what I was going through in this class umm painfully reminded me of that dual enrollment class where uhh that’s all we got was like what we did wrong or what we didn’t do to her expectations.”~@khaliltay “I remember being in my major writing class in a peer review group where I was like the only girl and only Black. Those white boys treated me and my writing like it was like never good enough…just like in dual enrollment. I’m sure in both instances it had to do with my being Black.”~@sabiyah.denee “In my college writing class, like the only other Black person was a guy who like always wrote poetry and raps and like the professor and all the other people in the class who were all white women, like hung on his every word. Then like giving me the stare like why aren’t you writing like this too? Like I’m not like following her idea of what Black people should be because in my writing I’m choosing not to be like performative.”~@blkmystique “When I was in dual enrollment and then in college, I was nervous and embarrassed because I knew my writing is not like what they want per se. My writin was always like critiqued as not standard every since I was in elementary school then in high school it didn’t seem to be any different…I knew it wasn't what they expected it to be.”~@raed.hennessy “When I got to college I thought ya know finally I will get to write about things that I care about ya know like social justice. But I learned that before in high school ya know they wanted to know about process and structure but in college they wanna know how well you follow instructions.”~@lovelittlejean [Teacher/Tutor Interlude] “While hearing my former DEU’s stories, each with its own depiction of villain, victim, and victor, I was initially unconscious but conscious of my upholding practices within literacy teaching formerly used to correct, appropriate, and sanitize. Replaying their shared stories, one by one, I continued to uncover my own traumas that were strategically buried deep within the plots of my psyche as a learned means to cope with the ways my identities succumbed to the violence experienced at quite a few of composition’s thresholds. During the many informal conversations over the years with this extraordinary group of writers, what began with my being an ear to hear, during the interviews, quickly became a sanctuary where we all touch and agree testifying to our encounters. However, as Black people, even generations apart, we are accustomed–one can say, inherently developed to ameliorate the constant bullshit that comes with Blackness, being Black, indefinitely racialized, and prejudicially radicalized. The compromises and contrived negotiations of our identities are not without moral injury induced by encountering the violence of composition. In many ways, these wounds still exist–for all of us.” 82 No Filter: Black Students’ Perspectives on Black Body Value Throughout my early tenure of secondary teaching and even prior, I spent a lot of time with high school students headed to college. During these non-teaching moments in a pathways program students would congregate in my location just to chat–usually about random topics such as disbelief of my age or sneaker collection. I learned quite a bit about Black and BIPOC students' perspectives and their take on the systemic and systematic inequities they have experienced voicing their suspicion such experiences will continue. Not all students were interested in these convos as few were resistant to the idea that their existence in or acceptance to specific universities were fashioned for access. In some cases, I didn’t have the heart to tell them of their delusions for fear of bursting their ‘everyone is the same, it is not always about race’ bubble. Yet, some inquired directly asking point blank what is happening they are unable to see or what exactly is implied in the surrounding rhetoric of the college going culture toward DEI. When the discussion was raised by a Black girl who had plans to attend one of the state’s top tiers R1 universities without the help of the access programming of which she was currently a part, she wanted to know “why is my Black skin the only thing that seems of interest to these colleges. Like, it’s like they care more about my Black body and not my Black mind.” Her words reverberated through the crowd which had increased at my desk and many more nodded and reiterated their concern, and in some cases, their disdain at the idea the only reason they are sought and viewed as valuable is because of our Black bodies. I proceeded to let the group air their grievances and thoughts on the matter while few asked why did the others believe the concept was even of importance as someone stated, “if 83 we are going to college anyway, what does it matter if I am Black or not, poor, or not, from Detroit or not? I am still a good student like any other and I would be an asset to any university who wants me there. Period.” While the others clamored to respond to this, I managed to bring the crowd to a silence asking to allow everyone to share their perspective equally. They obliged and began to allow their classmates to answer as they saw fit, interjected when something was said in which they didn’t agree, and reiterated what another said that supported their response with the new blanket phrase of “to your point.” As I sat there and watched in awe at the students debate on whether or not being racialized is a benefit or an adversity in the aspect of ivy league and R1 university recruitment, I heard some disturbingly valid concerns that made my heart sink at the thought they will be navigating these treacherous waters alone–the same way I did. The difference of course, I was much older when I began my journey to the center of the earth, and often experience the shark infested waters of both education and industry, all while floating on a dingy too small to hold all of the baggage acquired during the constant racialized encounters in these institutional spaces. Fearful that sharing my lived experiences and perspective would sullen these kids' desires and ideal views of higher education, something I always disclose to students, I just continued to move the conversation forward by reiterating or rephrasing questions which seem to go unanswered to keep the group thinking. The Matrix pause in the molecules happened when a kid blurted out over the mob of voices, “just because we Black, we valuable, until we need help. These universities don’t care about us, really. We just represent money like we always have.” A hush fell over the entire room as you could see each word that was just released laid upon our skin like ash from a volcano, yet no one moved. In this embodiment we 84 were one, not Black teacher and Black and BIPOC students, not old and young, not Detroiters, Southfielders or Ypsilantians, not city or suburb. Just Black. After the comment, students stared at each other–some in horror–others in solace as everyone eventually moved their bodies, one limb at a time it seemed, disbursing peacefully to their desks without saying a word. The eeriness of the statement wasn’t just that this was and still is a harsh reality for Black and BIPOC students, particularly at PWI’s. But what is interesting is that these high school students, sophomores to seniors, who had yet to go to any college or university during this time, already believed that what was said is truly a statement as fact. Everyone in the room seemed to know how being Black is valued. I recall having a similar conversation with my very first group which came from a neighboring school district to the campus. The students in this cohort were a bit younger and were already stressed and disillusioned by their even being there. Yet, seeking to understand their perspective, I asked why they are here and why they believe they’re here. Only one answered both—“because high school is boring, and we are ready for college.” As I viewed his comment as arrogant and yet uninformed, I proceeded to ask why this campus and not the community college campus that was only steps away. Another answered, “because universities get more money for us and give us more money.” As I nodded to assure the answer given was formidable, I proceeded to explain how community colleges in the Detroit area actually provide free education for Detroit high schools and it would be worth it to check into whether their high school graduates qualify. While they sucked their teeth and rolled eyes with haute derision, one blurted out, “but, my parents told me if I get good grades, I can go to any school I want, and the university will give me all the money because I’m Black.” 85 Her answer wasn’t assailable due to the programming set forth to supposedly capture and retain exceptional Black and BIPOC students and first-gens, whose families combined income indicates this possibility. What was painfully missing in her explanation was the awareness of the many institutional entrapments attached to this access leaving these invaluable bodies circling the drain. Numbers representing retention and graduation for Black and BIPOC students who attend the particular university she was pursuing–the rates are indicative of what this institution truly values–and success of Black students ain’t it. I was in undergrad at the scaled down version of her desired institution during this time, so, I replayed her answers over in my head which included a bit of derisive laughter as well. At the time I worked within this program, which represented job number four out of five I was managing due to my financially struggling immensely. I worked every day and weekends on and off campus including a work study which paid minimum wage —a number I hadn’t seen since as an adult. I would take extra shifts working in IT and the writing center on campus, while also tutoring students with learning exceptionalities in reading and writing as well as language learners. My UX consulting and technical writing business, which I maintained through the auto market crisis, began waning due to the auto dealers lack of desire to want continued support, leaving me with occasional writing projects far and between. When the semester would get to finals week, after turning in my own 18-22 credit hours of finals, I’d work as many shifts as I could while my co-workers studied for exams. When I worked a split shift, I would sleep in my Ford Focus because I didn’t have enough money for gas to go home, which was only a good 20 minutes away minus the midday Ford shift-ending traffic. Due to having a limited food budget that was solely supported by a state provided food 86 card, I would only eat from the snack machine until I discovered the fast food dollar menus. Some days as I sat in the parking lot, I’d painfully watch the parade of middle eastern and southeast Asian teaching and business majors badly, and often illegally park their luxury cars. My love for cars was often overshadowed by disdain as I found myself repeatedly tearful–I, too, bought into the fairytale of being a good Black student. Yet, even with a dean’s list GPA and low income, I believed I would be valued in the university, only to discover the adversities I endured to not only become, but remain a student wasn’t nearly as debilitating as the consistent quest for funding, riddled with an abyss of barriers. I told myself I have to believe this journey through the Temples of Doom would all be worth it, even after experiencing encounters with professors, because for me, the alternative was no longer an option. While I didn’t proceed with my usual militant-adjacent lecture to this group, revering the importance of being aware of the ways the institution exploits marginalized students–or, even how their professors expressed extreme levels of disdain for their presence in the classroom. I did mention one thing I believe is pivotal: “make sure to stay informed of what may be available to you, even when no one at the university may tell you. Your embodiment and your learning experience is valid.” By the time I met the cohort which included DEUs in my research, I had multiple variations of The Talk. Each group vocalized their ethos regarding their experiences and interactions on campus. The original cohort was made up of Black, BIPOC, and one minority–a white-presenting student whose behavior depicted a level of privileged inclusion. Yet, during my discussions of the same topic of Black and BIPOC students embodied value, I still maintained my dialogue regarding being Black at a PWI without censoring. What was interesting in this 87 space with these students who were also already slated for college, their attitudes were not orientated toward any conversation of Blackness–at first. It wasn’t until their experiences on my campus began to depict an embodied indifference when they began to warm up to me and my meant-to-enlightenment discussions during our twice weekly whole group sessions. The conversation of race became even more prevalent, and a few began sharing recent experiences with racialized encounters with professors. While I believed these encounters had some merit, as I witnessed some suspect behavior during my class observations, I wanted to provide space for airing their perspectives as well. The consensus perspective included being ostracized by professors for their being high school students, who seemingly were forced to be in college classes. But what was most interesting was the whole group commentary regarding race as the main factor for the mistreatment, even by Black and BIPOC professors. While these conversations were earlier in our time together, they provided some interesting implications I had not considered in previous cohorts. Questions such as: what do dual enrollment students' high school or other identities signify in contrast to disciplinarity in the composition classroom? Entanglements: Self-efficacy as Identity As I approached this study, I chose a particular cohort of former dual enrollment Students because of what they have shared with me over the years. Their situations are most interesting beginning with their high school. The high school the DEUs attended was a public school academy in the former Detroit Public Schools district. Located in the city of Detroit’s historic Eastern Market neighborhood, visible abandonment with large uncut fields and forgotten desolate homes lined one side of the street. The school campus, which includes the middle school, occupies the majority of the space adjacent with older commercial buildings of 88 former butcheries and meat packing right beside that had been in operation periodically. The DEU’s, who were part of the newly expanded high school with grades 9-12 and four out of five represent the first senior graduating class, all lived within a relative distance in areas such as the North-End, and Eastside Detroit. Named as an “early college of excellence,” the high school’s curriculum is considered college preparatory with curriculum that is Advanced Placement (AP), and International Baccalaureate (IB). Dual Credit and Concurrent Enrollment courses where college instructors come to the high school campus to teach college-level coursework for both high school and college credit was also included in their college prep curriculum. This school’s Dual Enrollment was a partnership established between the high school and my then university campus, where the students were bussed from their high school to and from our campus daily. There were approximately 250 Black and BIPOC students from this high school enrolled per AY on our campus. Courses enrolled varied as the selection of courses were limited by the university and space availability. What is interesting here is the course selection, which should have been based on what the state of Michigan designated as the “core curriculum” in which to enroll at any college or university within the state offering dual enrollment. However, more than the general education courses of entry-level math, science, and English were made available for these students–which I conjectured at the time was an administration-based decision to make more courses available. What I later learned was that it was in fact an admin decision but was also predicated on an ongoing internal conflict surrounding funding allocation. Initially, varying dual enrollment programs have different cost structures for student-school district-university responsibility, which also dictates course availability in some cases. For this 89 particular school partnership, the cost structure i.e., zero out of pocket for students, essentially caused in-fighting over how much university money, [money designated by the state specifically for access-type programs] should continue to go toward the costs of dual enrollment without an expected “guarantee” the students would then enroll as FYS after high school. This lack of a covenant–an agreement that historically does not include the Black people who are the subjects, and has not provided benefits for Black people, was later re-allocated. But not until after the initial group who were in partnership had completed dual enrollment and graduated. This contextualizes the students attending dual enrollment as well as providing a view of the environment of the high school. Four of the Five DEUs mentioned the emphasis the high school expressed regarding their participating in dual enrollment, while one had a different motivation. They all expressed a clear effort of overt encouragement by the high school administrators in conjunction with their parents to enroll in college courses. Although, they each shared an anecdote where these themes were prevalent, it was their collective answers that indicated alignment with a few arguments made by field scholars. After the first pass through of the interviews, what emerged was more than I suspected, as their experiences thematically echoed a few existing scholarship discussions (Figure 2). Topics such as understanding stakeholdership, student preparedness, and student expectations are examples of a few anchor talking points. I was able to display a few of these points in the experience map their experiences as a synthesis of responses across the whole group. The headings represent scholarship themes, and as lenses, represent the ethos of the questions asked and the responses. When each DEU was asked if there was a clear understanding of college writing and high school writing differing expectations e.g., did you understand the 90 differences between writing in high school and writing in college?--two out of five users acknowledged during their interview an intrinsic understanding to determine what’s needed in any academic situation as an essential part of their identities as Figure 2: Interview response synthesis exceptional students–which is also a dual enrollment requirement. Angela Elizabeth Browning’s 2011 research sought to identify the characteristics of dual enrollment students’ success and if their experiences taking college composition in a college classroom influences this success. Browning’s purpose was to determine if dual enrollment students’ perspective toward college- level course work and their efficacy as writers helps or hinders their learning. Browning’s findings suggest dual enrollment students’ inability to be explicit about their learning (Figure 3.) indicates their lack of understanding their “stakeholdership” (56). As a composition teacher, I have yet to experience a collective efficacy where not even half of the students enrolled in any of my FYW, technical, and professional writing courses are explicit or even honest about their learning experiences without coercion. Based on conversations with FY students, their looming fear coupled with extreme anxiety of not receiving an ‘A’, not hustling an acceptable Hail-Mary fabrication indicating I learned a lot in this class about writing that I will take to all my courses 91 would just be giving up totally. While Browning’s research also focuses on how dual enrollment students lack opportunities to improve their communicative competence and writing abilities, Browning’s findings highlights factors such as professors' reticence, and biases toward high school students based on age (61). In my experiences as an ELA teacher, explicit learning is expressed when dialectical thinking happens–something unexpected that challenges, contradicts, and even forces a change in perspective and therefore, a change in process and product. This magical moment in teaching and learning is why I signed on for the gig but isn’t as easy to come by in recent years due to an amalgamation of factors impacting how students learn and see their efforts as futile, especially with composition. Yet, the concept that high school students taking college composition should display a level of reflexivity that FY students still struggle with identifying and safely. Another DEU also Figure 3: Responses about stakeholdership expressed their understanding of the difference between high school and college writing expectations which they indicated were “clear from the start.” The expectation that writing in dual enrollment would prepare them for college saying “it mattered” as they saw the importance of their performance predictive to their future as a college student. This user, who also indicated their intrinsic desire for learning “wanting to know everything I can beyond relevance” at the time of attending dual enrollment at my campus, had already experienced 92 writing in the social science disciplines as they experienced dual credit courses taught at the high school campus, and concurrent enrollment courses at a community college. Two DEUs admitted to “not taking the situation as seriously considering it is college” suggesting their high school identities are what hindered their understanding. This attitude seemingly supports Browning’s findings as well as scholars who suggest maturity is a factor. However, this conjecture is not absolute considering those who expressed not having a serious attitude were clearly aware of the stakes. One user was very much aware, as they shared during the interview that the course grades that received below a “B+” which included the writing course during dual enrollment, were not included on their transcript to enter into college, being clearly mindful of the negative impact to GPA. As a collective, the DEUs responses were an interesting juxtaposition of self-efficacy coupled with beliefs that managed to aid their sharing moments of tautological reflection. Presumptions of ability began to emerge when asked about feelings of preparedness for writing in college as high school students e.g., did you feel prepared for writing in college when entering dual enrollment? The collective varied in the same ways as the stakeholdership responses where four of five DEUs expressed feelings of a lack of preparedness for writing in college. The complaints cited their early college ELA curriculum having no emphasis on college-level writing, differing expectations, concepts in college composition, or knowledge of college-level resources such as the writing center. Three of the five responses implicated this lack of readiness as cause for similar challenges writing for college once in college. Responses, “someone lied to me!” and “they left us to figure it out” revealing heightened emotions when learning of their [assessed] writing performance. Tinberg and Nadeau discusses the topic of lack of preparedness of the 93 academic performance of dual enrollment students indicating while dual enrollment has a positive effect on the persistence of students continuing onto college, there is a lack of proof programming successfully enhances student learning (37). The DEUs identified both lack of preparedness for the specifics of composing in college, but also asserted a genuine effort was made at attempting what was assigned–even without knowing for certain the often covert expectations set forth by individual professors and, based on our mission, the field writ large. Tinberg and Nadeau's conversation illuminates the implications how lack of access to the discipline gravely impacts the students, as well as perceived or otherwise proven ways dual enrollment access impacts the discipline (212). While we believe “assessing writing shapes contexts and instruction,” Scott and Inoue inform us that assessment is not neutral as “writing assessment is judgment or decision based on the reading of student writing with a particular set of expectations or value in mind”(29). As a result of such prejudices, which are often unabashedly expressed with the evaluation of standard-white-English-of-the-academy language use, coupled with antiquated genre conventions, unintentionally, or intentionally signal to Black and BIPOC students that ineffective adherence is their own liability. Is it fair to expect an instantaneous behavioral change and understanding once students cross our thresholds? Critical pedagogue, Paolo Freire in The Pedagogy of The Oppressed describes a systematic, (and I would argue systemic) false dichotomy between those who are deemed to have a specific knowledge [or literacy] and those who do not is problematic toward the efforts of abolishing hierarchy (17). M.M. Karp’s research asks what knowledge of academic readiness skills dual enrollment students have to be a college student while still in high school (21). Karp argues all college students must learn to orientate toward collegial behaviors and expectations 94 (23). But how can we expect any of our students to conform to an institutional dynamic without guidance and practice? Hearing their pleas, I sought to determine a possible answer as my mind began once again questioning: how can we, as practitioners, continue to leave our Black and BIPOC students wandering in a wasteland without direction? How does leaving the students to figure it out aid in improving or enhancing their literacy practices? The Council of Writing Program Administrators Position Statement for Pre-college Writing, as a policy written in 2013 by Hansen, Andelora, Estrem, Gardner, and Janangelo, lists student readiness to be determined locally by institution. Yet, stipulates FYW is designed to orientate FY students to institutional culture at a specific university, as well as habits of mind. This policy can be critically read as a call to disallow dual enrollment students based on a desired set of performance indicators that in all honesty, vaguely exists with FY students–so, let’s keep it one hunnid here. Although, this policy has been critiqued by field scholars (McCrimmon; Farris, Perryman-Clark, Craig, etc.) and since revised for the purposes of, what I would assume is a more tenable policy which situates diverse writing and writers as valuable to what we do, let’s ponder the ways our practices also communicate our values by asking: does our assessment practices communicate a sincere value in contrasting perspectives, language use, rhetorical techniques, and conventions, even when the practice of diversity does not conform to our personal disciplinarity? From my own recollection, I remembered four of the five DEUs attended other university programs during the same AY as dual enrollment, such as Harvard and Alma college. I recall hearing of these experiences while at the high school campus and now again during the interviews. For the purposes of providing adequate college access options, area high schools 95 establish multiple partnerships and programs with in-state and out-of-state colleges and universities. Programs such as Telluride Association Summer Seminar (Cornell, University of Michigan, University of Maryland) purpose is to offer ivy and other R1 PWI’s as options for “exceptional” Black and BIPOC students from school districts like Detroit–essentially another DEI pipeline initiative. What is interesting is how each who attended writing courses at Harvard, raved at how their experiences there greatly impacted how they saw themselves as writers in their careers– something I hadn’t heard at this point during our conversations. During the interviews, I heard all of the DEUs explicitly express their expectation of learning, emphatically stating that the college prep high school courses should have prepared them for college coursework. One user said, while the high school coursework did not actually prepare them for college-level academics, completing their high school work early made more time to work on college coursework. During their attendance at Harvard, three DEUs shared how their experiences with composition at this particular institution was different from dual enrollment and even later once in college. What is interesting–three users who attended Harvard for the summer following dual enrollment, indicated that the writing courses they experienced–which were writing intensive communication, composition, and creative writing courses–shared how they were keenly aware of the importance of performing well while also feeling the same level of self-efficacy as described previously. I find this interesting due to the fact that when each responded to feelings of unpreparedness of college-level writing during dual enrollment, none mentioned any lack for the courses experienced at Harvard. However, these responses are not represented on the interview synthesis map but are worth mentioning due to the contrast. 96 After hearing more about their attendance at Harvard, I realized these shared experiences were in fact a divergence to the logistics of their dual enrollment experience at my campus in some aspects. Initially, the U.S Department of Education states the purpose for dual enrollment is to provide an immersion experience where students experience college as a college student (“2009 dual enrollment data”). Unfortunately, this was not exactly what this group experienced in dual enrollment at my campus. Similar to how they were selected for dual enrollment, this group was chosen due to being considered high performers with higher percentile grade point averages. Unlike dual enrollment at my campus, where the students were bussed with a large number of class and school mates to campus, the Harvard experience included fewer and required the student’s families be responsible for their transportation to the campus as well as arranging accommodations on campus, just like an incoming student. The course selection process differed as well, where dual enrollment courses were offered to the highest performers at the high school to choose on a first-come-first-serve basis, leaving whatever courses available left to those who chose last. For Harvard, the students could choose their own courses, keeping in mind prerequisites and course sequences, as well as some nominal fees. When taking these differences of logistics into account, I can clearly see some plausible reasons why the responses differentiated. I believe inhabitants of a space may impact how dual enrollment students see themselves as stakeholders as well, influencing their perspective of writing in and for college, as informal discussions with former dual enrollment students outside of this cohort share the same sentiment. In the instance of dual enrollment on a college campus, students who travel with their classmates see this similarly as their high school environment therefore also viewing the 97 coursework as not actually college-level. For dual enrollment at my campus, where the cohorts were large in number, the courses where the groups were enrolled varied in subjects. Although there is a change in location in this matriculation, attending with a large number of peers may not allow for much individual discovery–a concept a couple DEUs expressed briefly during interviews. Whereas, attending Harvard, where only a select few were accepted, provided more space and “opportunity to actually feel what college life may actually be like (@sabiyah.denee; @lovelittlejean; @khalitay).” Not many of the responses during the interviews were initially surprising. I was aware how most of the cohort felt about their preparedness as well as expectations during conversations over the years, beginning in dual enrollment. All expressed across time and mediums their feelings about their writing performance once becoming college students. Unfortunately, for my research, I am unable to recall the commentary verbatim, nor am I able to find the written messages to include any previous impromptu conversations. Yet, what I do remember stems from recalling my response or advice in the moment. I remember one DEU, now a university student, posting on Facebook an epiphany of mind-blowing proportions regarding a newfound perspective of their writing performance. While I responded in a DM, the conversation became an emotional exchange revealing the damage that has impacted their self-efficacy. Conversations like this one repeated throughout most of my chosen users, pronouncing disappointment, disdain, and discontentment once becoming college students. During the interviews, I tried to cue their vitriol in these instances by asking if they remember and what occurred to prompt the need to express it. I wanted to see if any would expound, yet what emerged was their own theorizing of these moments now that they are on the other side, looking back at these as revelations. 98 The narratives were in response to initial questions regarding topics within the synthesis map. However, a few poignant and emotional responses piqued my interest in gaining a deeper understanding. Additionally, I was aware of the differences when these DEUs came to be in the programming at my campus. Yet, I still assumed I’d hear more similarities of their experiences. However, what emerged, as I transcribed the interviews, were some differences I found most interesting, as well as some commonalities that essentially depict variables of which I had no assumption would occur. As a result, I became intrigued at the fact that the DEUs felt most compelled and especially comfortable to share the traumatic and emotional memories of practicing literacy as Black and BIPOC students. There were three responses which follow or preface the quotes used in the synthesis map which led to my further exploration. The commentary from these DEUs positionality may make the case for seeking descriptive narratives of a user's journey for the purpose of understanding varying individual interactions. For instance, one response to the question pertaining to knowing the different expectations between high school and college-level writing demonstrated a greater sense of awareness by expressing an expectation that there is a difference in the writing process—which they confidently believed would be effective in college-level writing. I interpreted this response as more self-reliant—basically following the newly co-opted affirmation of if ya stay ready, you don’t have ta git ready. Their response doesn’t move too far away from the other DEUs of the whole group where self-efficacy is expressed but does differ in positionality of efficacy from those chosen for the case study. Additionally, one of the other DEUs who does also mention self-efficacy, essentially looked toward extrinsic support by expressing their content with “being in it together” referring 99 to high school classmates matriculating together as a community, but reticence with the separation from classroom community of other university students, and the professor. This DEU, also reliant on having the academic acumen to figure out what was needed in college- level writing, does so even without a confessed knowledge base of a difference in expectations. Viewing their ability to “figure it out” as their only effective method essentially places greater emphasis on relying on a group dynamic as a means to provide support—an indicator I interpreted as a gap of awareness being subverted. The final of the three DEUs had a slightly different positionality absent of community expectations but viewing their initial awareness of college-writing by pointing toward a perceived chronological or numerical difference of time that would be needed in contrast to writing in high school. This DEU’s perspective prioritizes concerted effort toward fulfilling a requirement as self-efficacy versus actual awareness of precise performance—although, they mention knowing there are differences. My interpretation here is of two minds—current student and teacher. As a Black student, whose previous interactions with compositionists and teachers of writing, who believed my performance to be an egregious aberration, I concur with the hypothesis to only do what’s expected in this context. However, as a teacher, I am giving this response a strong side-eye with a throaty mph at their audacity to use expected amount of effort as the measure for engagement— something I am seeing even more so often from today’s students. While the case study DEUs responses demonstrate how perspectives of stakeholdership may depend upon the user’s view, what is interesting is how their assumptions aren’t completely uninformed. Field WPA Michael Schwalm emphatically contested that dual 100 enrollment students have access to college composition while also requesting the impeachment of alternate versions of composition e.g., DECOMP, due to the lack of knowing curricular outcomes (272). However, Schwalm’s call to resist inadvertently reveals an aspect of dual enrollment students' journey that may have been arrogantly overlooked—a continuum of interactions at composition’s thresholds across time and place. Big Facts: Stories from the Thresholds As I began mapping the case study data, I began seeing notable similarities and contrasts differently than the interview synthesis. What was notable is how their responses capture the ethos of the concept as well as, in some cases, speak directly to the concepts. While this data became extremely interesting as I sought to represent each user's journey using the same three concepts, for the purposes of this chapter, I will only briefly highlight aspects of each case study per concept. There most likely will be some overlap of the concepts as well as comparisons to each other. I believe there is more to be analyzed within these maps, as these were created with an additional element which differs from maps commonly used for representing response to encounters on a specific journey. However, limiting this chapter’s analysis allows for a precise focus on what the data provides as a view of experiences interacting at these thresholds told by the DEUs themselves. @raed.hennessy: Concept #5-Writing is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity “No one cared about my writing, so I never really wanted to like writin, per se. I just knew how to write for myself and maybe one day I hope that eventually someone else will too.” During our interviews, I found their commentary interesting as I recall feelings of conviction at my harboring the same feelings as a student from time to time. What they revealed is a common positionality seen among Black and BIPOC students whose learning 101 experiences, while unknown at the thresholds, are often barbed with indifference. When I met @raed.hennessy as a dual enrollment student, I was assigned to support their particular group due to the course in which they were enrolled. They were juniors and selected by their high school as what a few of the group described during the interviews as “the best and the brightest” representation. Almost all said this same phrase coupled with what I can assume by each of their faces as they uttered it, precluded this sentiment was more for the high school administrator’s performance—a topic not left for interpretation by any in the group. It was clear that all had a similar perspective of the lack of cohesion between what was being projected by the school's persona and their actual experiences. @raed.hennessy mentions how they weren’t looking to attend Figure 4: Journey + Empathy map of experiences college beyond high school with sights set on music writing and producing yet was given an ultimatum by their mom that college was the only option. Their motivation for participating isn’t infallible and is often the reason many of my composition students claim their attendance in college–as an obligation to satisfy their parents' demands. I believe this perspective has some generational connotations, considering Millennials and Gen-Z have substantially increased college attendance, even among Black and BIPOC communities, with reasons which speak to inordinate plans for success beyond the traditional corporate cog. @raed.hennessy mentioned 102 their desire to work in the music industry far surpassed what their mother believes should be their trajectory, so they leveraged their bets by convincing the need for learning the business from the creative and business perspectives. This, as @raed.hennessy shares, is how they made the case to attend a local specialty communication arts college majoring in audio and sound production. I have a unique insight into DEUs journey as we have established a rapport which continues to the present day. For @raed.hennessy, our relationship is a bit different than the other cases, which did have some frequency of contact over the years—and not always about writing. @raed.hennessy and my burgeoning relationship did begin over writing as they became intrigued when I diagnosed a noticeable pattern of how their sentences followed a style of songwriting. Their bewilderment at my ability to notice as well as having knowledge of songwriting created a space where I was described as “ you’re not like normal humans.” This exchange led to my becoming a confidant of sorts through their remaining time in high school as well as all throughout college. While all of these relationships began during dual enrollment, it was during their college years and after graduation where, during the interviews, I wanted to ensure the same level of continuity, so I attempted to refrain from dialogue which informed my knowledge. Attempt is the best word for what happened, as our conversations were just as open and enlightened as they have developed over the years leaving me to ask follow-up questions in more thoughtful ways. This became most challenging for all of the case studies conversations, especially with @raed.hennessy. As I moved through the interview stages with @raed.hennessy, arriving at the final question, I asked them to reflect on their experiences from the perspective of how they 103 see themselves as writers currently. Their body language shifted from a relaxed position, arms folded leaned back in the chair to accommodate the length of their legs, to an immediate upright posture. As they rose to sit erect: “Somebody lied to me. I went to a college prep high school where they told us that we were the best and the brightest but didn’t learn the things we needed to know. Had you not been there for the latter part and in college, I’d have no knowledge of writing and what I was doing wrong in my writing all things I’m having to learn now on my own.” This statement also prefaces another moment of our connection over writing during their senior year. As expected, this high school requires seniors to submit as many college applications as possible. @raed.hennessy only submitted to the one institution they were most interested in, only to find their top choice rejected the application due to the incoherence of the essay. Befuddled at the notion as they explained their ELA teacher reviewed it prior to submission, they came to me for help. While we worked on tailoring their style for college-level writing during dual enrollment, @raed.hennessy assumed the college essay prompt applying for an audio music program was just the space to enact their agency–a rhetorical choice not outside the realm. Heidi Estrem in Disciplinary and professional identities are constructed through writing, describes the challenges writer’s face when a new rhetorical situation may appear in opposition: “For many students in college encountering disciplinary writing for the first time, discipline specific writing threatens their sense of self because these ways of thinking and writing are so distinct from other more familiar reading and writing practices, such as those valued at home or in the other communities in which the students are members (55).” Of course, this description is applicable to all entering FYS, but especially applies to students 104 like @raed.hennessy whose autonomy was devalued. They admit to initially “trying to stay under the radar and not do too much” viewing their efforts, or as they see it, their identities historically lacking value in the composition classroom, so they saw an attempt beyond less necessary. In @raed.hennessy’s case, throughout their journey across compositions thresholds, I interpret many of their responses explaining conformity, as a disciplinary expectation, even with missions and purposes for writing described otherwise. I found their attempt at using another convention, or to “circumvent the traditional space of literacy”(Viera et al. Reconsidering) a cognitive decision—not with the intent of “breaking convention” but to write within a genre that is related to the writer’s identity. Needless to say, these encounters, as well as stories shared of previous interactions at composition’s thresholds, influenced @raed.hennessy‘s perspective of their writerly identity (Figure 5). Bazerman and Tinberg NWWK, tells us writing is an expression of embodied cognition, where I Figure 5: Professional Writing Threshold believe writing is linked to identity as a conduit. For @raed.hennessy, in response to their embodiment of their writing experiences crossing the threshold from college to professional writer, this site acted as an epiphany of sorts. For many Black and BIPOC students, me included, displaying identities in educational contexts where assessment of writing performance, or lack thereof, may be interpreted as indifference with more than our writing—interactions that are also commonly internalized and transferred. Bazerman and Tinberg describe a continuum 105 which also impacts embodiment “that writing comes from full engagement of the entire writer, which is developed across many years of a developing self.” @raed.hennessy theorized their own continuum of experiences at compositions threshold to eventually arrive at the reflexive decision to pursue what they believed was missed in writing instruction. I believe this demonstrates an embodied cognition in the way it shows how @raed.hennessy saw writing and themselves later as writer. After drafting their graphic novel series for the past six years, and still disheartened at the lack of writing instruction received prior to their independent study, 2022 marks the first year @raed.hennessy self- identified as a writer, sharing how shedding previous experiences with writing still plagues their efficacy. Andrea A. Lunsford in Writing is Informed by Prior Experience states: “All writing is in some sense a response to other writing or symbolic action. Even when writing is private or meant for the writer alone, it is shaped by the writer’s earlier interactions with writing and with other people and with all the writer has read and learned (54).” I believe @raed.hennessy worked more towards learning what they didn’t know about writing to identify as a writer, reluctantly. Crossing the threshold from college to what is now a career as a professional writer, who is basically self-taught in the genre, @raed.hennessy now embodies their awareness of their necessity to invoke agency, autonomy, and authority on their own terms— a realization that I believe could have developed in an effective learning space, but only resulted through the encounters experienced. Yancey reminds us to remain mindful of how writers' history, processes, and identities influence writing (54), where Phillips et al. in Literacy is a Sociohistoric Phenomenon with the Potential to Liberate and Oppress describe writing as individualized (67). Kasia Krzus-Shaw in Literacy is Embodied, tells us “Writing is rooted in bodily expression […]rooted in socially and 106 spatially situated bodily experiences–and how such embodiment matters,” yet also “bodies are marked with social and cultural labels” (43). @raed.hennessy may just now confidently identify as a Black writer—an identity they now share with members of their family who are songwriters as well, and partly due to my annoying encouragement. But this embodiment as a meta moment in and of itself, recapturing the empowerment to produce writing for the public is an extraordinary accomplishment considering the encounters at composition’s thresholds could have resulted in the contrary. @lovelittlejean: Concept #1-Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Activity “But I think this is what we were to do in ya know secondary writing where teachers allowed us the opportunity to ya know write so we can learn our voice and once we go to college ya know we would already knew how to do this.” “I wish that were true” is what I said following the above statement as I listened to @lovelittlejean theorize their perspective of their experience with writing in high school—the very same high school where the cohort of DEUs attended but having vastly different experiences with literacy instruction. My response was an amalgamation of first-hand experience and multiple convos with ELA teachers who claim teaching students “college writing” is not something they believe is their responsibility. I take these responses with a grain of salt considering the teachers who made this comment were all from one of the so-called top performing high schools in the city of Detroit that is not college prep but claims to provide students who are “#1. Second to none.” What my commentary also alluded to be the conversations in field scholarship which say the exact opposite of this statement naming the lack of preparedness for “contemporary composition” as a reason why dual enrollment students should not have access before 107 becoming a FYS (Schneider; Taczak & Thelin; Hansen & Farris). Yet, as @lovelittlejean began sharing their stories of experiences across thresholds, I clearly saw how their embodiment in some cases are contrary to many of their counterparts, including the other two cases. Like the cohort prior to @lovelittlejean’s, we met once I became their dual enrollment tutor the following year. Since the prior cohort provided successful results according to the high schools’ metrics, e.g., all 75 of the first graduating class was accepted or conditionally accepted to over 50 different colleges and universities—an accomplishment the high school presented proudly as the acceptance letters were framed and displayed in the hallway. The high school continued with the partnership with my campus as well as upped the ante for other college programs. The admins at the high school knew nothing of Figure 6: Journey + Empathy Map of experiences the continued battle over funding at my campus, and from what I witnessed after also becoming a substitute at the high school, funding for dual enrollment was seemingly not a concern. The high school continued to funnel as many students as they could, all those who qualified to attend college courses, as well as include more options for dual credit and International Baccalaureate courses. Later in this particular AY, an Advanced Placement writing course was created as a means to provide intro to college writing slated for those who would enter dual enrollment. The school administrators referred to me, who at the time had 108 moved into my master’s program in Teaching. The plan was for me to head all of the college prep writing curriculum as well as coordinate with the university for support. However, instead of an AP course which was only available to juniors and seniors, the high school requested writing workshops from the university partnership to prepare students for the writing expected in dual enrollment—an initiative I, too, was a part. @lovelittlejean shared how they returned back to this high school after leaving to attend a private school outside of Detroit. They mentioned that the dual enrollment program was the reason for the return as they stated, “dual enrollment will get me to where I need to be for when I go to college.” Having experienced writing in the disciplines in social science dual credit and concurrent enrollment, @lovelittlejean’s motivation depicts an aspect hardly mentioned in field scholarship describing dual enrollment students—the pursuit of rigor. @lovelittlejean may have experienced courses alongside their high school classmates still on their high school campus, as well as experience community college coursework. Yet, their response divulges a clear expectation of the value of experiencing college-level coursework prior to actually entering college as an investment into their success. @lovelittlejean expresses the same level of motivation when asked if they believe writing in dual enrollment would also prepare them for college stating: “What I learned in dual enrollment is how to cater my voice for the audience ya know because before, in high school, I was just writing for myself ya know because it wasn’t as challenging or thought provoking. The topics were not as interesting to write about, ya know so like I knew how to do it and do it well, but I wanted to advance for what to expect once I get to college.” 109 This commentary describes a perspective of self-efficacy that is tied to a specific trajectory as @lovelittlejean is considering the value of learning literacy practices in a different rhetorical community. While this response reveals what I can assume is a planned journey with a plausible hypothesis, their perspective of their writing performance orientates similarly as others in the cohort (Figure 7). I wondered where this attitude derives, and if an interaction at any of compositions thresholds was the cause. During the member check interview, I learned that @lovelittlejean comes from an educator family, a fact I had no knowledge of, but was greatly impressed by the level of writing I observed when assigned to support their cohort. I asked if they had any additional support for writing in dual enrollment, as others in the cohort referenced a peer group dynamic or no support at all as they shared: “Both of my parents were teachers and now my brother is going into teaching. My mom is a primary English teacher and my dad as a PE teacher also taught social studies so, ya know, I am a student by nature. I still send my mom my writing because I grew up watching her teach it as she was a big resource to me as well as my dad who I would go to for the human element because he is a huge people person.” Figure 7: Dual Enrollment Threshold For @lovelittlejean, the social aspect of writing is practiced with their parents which they explain helps to mediate their writing activity toward the agency and efficacy desired. The social and rhetorical activity of writing, described by David R. Russell (“writing mediates activity”) “occupies an intermediate or middle position to form a connecting link that people use to coordinate their activity (26).” The site of dual enrollment is a unique intermediary between high school and college, where knowledge-making is influenced by the classroom environment as well as previous experiences with composition. In this example, knowledge- 110 making happening at this threshold connects (or transfers) previous writing experiences. While @lovelittlejean did mention another social aspect of matriculating in the same courses as their high school classmates, and also enjoying being in a group dynamic, there was no mention of sharing writing in the peer group. When asked if this was a practice among the group, they mentioned that they rarely deviated from what they have always done, which is receive feedback for revisions from their parents. I readily interpret @lovelittlejean’s story depicting a major factor which influences how Black and BIPOC students engage with literacy. Home as an imperative social interaction, may greatly influence the ways students view their student identities, especially with writing and reading. @raed.hennessy mentions their family’s legacy of songwriters which they picked up as well, leading to that pursuit. Yet, based on a teacher's assessment of their writing their first comic book in the 4th grade, and the directive from their family how writing is not lucrative, these social aspects along with their encounters at composition thresholds sullied their perspective, until gaining self-efficacy. With assessment also being at the forefront of implications the field argues as greatly impacting dual enrollment student performance, our disciplinary biases for what constitutes “good writing” may communicate a sense of a specific acceptability. As a result, high performing students such as @lovelittlejean, may align themselves accordingly, but toward a possible detriment to their authentic voice. They describe their orientation toward writing effectively based on what they interpret as higher order concerns of college professors who evaluate writing much differently than high school. While they were confident their voice was what was expected saying “I had my academic voice down pat!, when crossing the threshold 111 from composition professor to journalism professor, @lovelittlejean reflected on how writing to the professor became challenging when the expectation is vastly different. Anson explains the possibility of habituated practice may lead to “a stage of automaticity” for novice writers who without knowledge, lack the ability to reorientate their practices to the current rhetorical community (77). However, @lovelittlejean also expressed confidence in their ability to apply a sense of agency regardless of the writing task stating, “if a professor read my writing, they would know it’s me because I knew I had a voice.” While Anson describes @lovelittlejean’s difficulty as entrenchment (77), Inoue explains how this attitude may be established through the ways writing assessment “constructs boundaries for learning and student agency, and frames how students understand their own writing (30).” Therefore, Scott & Inoue, who further argues student’s efficacy is “what teachers ask students to look for and evaluate in drafts signal[ing]what they value and encourage students to value it as well (29)” legitimizes @lovelittlejean’s experience as not misinformed but performative. What was interesting to me was my pass through of @lovelittlejean’s data showed a number of variances, which I initially viewed as different from the cohort. But, what I began to notice as I mapped their journey was how the DEUs perceptions may be closely related to the thresholds themselves. In @lovelittlejean’s case, whose interactions crossing composition’s thresholds, as well as thresholds within these thresholds, indicate how interpreting their journey using the lens of disciplinarity, may overlook other experiences that influences their response to interactions with writing. Looking at our disciplinary biases through the experiences of exceptional students, including Black and BIPOC students, may reveal damaging aspects of our assessment even for our always-hopeful “desired” student. 112 @blkmystique Concept #3-Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies “Realizing that I was like not really good at writing made me feel less than like my identity as a good student like wasn’t real.” Approaching this interview, I completed two others which had provided me with a bit of data I found interesting. Of course, @raed.hennessy provided a closer view due to our relationship. Quite a bit of what @blkmystique shared regarding experiences with composition in dual enrollment, as well as Harvard echoed those whose interviews I already completed. Yet, it was this interview that led me into something like the doppler effect changing the frequency of what I Figure 8: Journey + Empathy Map of experiences could now see all of their experiences providing. @blkmystique’s first-person account of encounters at compositions threshold, and their theorizing of their own experiences blew the doors off in ways I hadn’t fathomed. To the point, this chapter is not enough to do their stories justice. Like all the other DEUs, I met @blkmystique on my campus. This semester wasn’t their first semester in dual enrollment, but it was their first where I was assigned to support their writing. This group was one of the largest I had been assigned at this time, where a larger group within were enrolled in the same course. I spent a lot of time working with the group, but initially had some setbacks with trustworthiness where my presence wasn’t received as help but seen as a monitor learning later this was due to the complaints raised for support. 113 I believed I had established a rapport through group discussions in between classes where I’d stir the pot to provoke critical thinking about their course, their ideas and how they viewed their future plans. Only a few would bite, with @blkmystique leading the charge being one of the most outspoken. I got a chance to witness this behavior in the classroom as I came to observe a few times throughout the term. What was interesting was that I witnessed first- hand the mishandling by the professor, where their behavior toward the group was precisely what their stories reflected during the interviews including a few stories I hadn’t heard. Needless to say, I treaded lightly during the interview to refrain from including my perspective, although I too was a part of the lived experience. I wanted to ensure the story they shared remained their story. I was pretty sure at this point; I had already heard similar stories of the experiences during dual enrollment from the perspectives of other DEUs interviewed who were part of the group within the cohort. So, @blkmystique’s stage one interview basically reiterated what was already said with not much variation—until the question which asks did you refer to any previous experience with writing such as in dual enrollment while writing in college? I could see this question did the same to them emotionally as the answer did to me as this was the first time during the interview where their facial expression answered prior to providing an answer. I held the line with my own expressions as @blkmystique looked off to the side, where I could see a bit of a struggle I first interpreted as uncomfortable. Not because the question was received as triggering or perplexing — but, because it unearthed something they shared during the member check as something in transition. They expressed some reluctance after I’d shared during the consent spiel the desire to schedule a whole group cross-talk where I would 114 anonymously member-check presenting collaborative statements to provoke discussion. It became imperative that I rethink the approach for the next stage of interviews after @blkmystique shared their story: “I remember distinctly a moment that like… made me think about how the professor at dual enrollment treated me. I was in my creative writing class and like I had been thinking my writing was good like I was doing well until I got a lower grade like without any feedback. I scheduled a meeting with the professor to like discuss what I need to do to revise. When I asked what isn’t like right with what I wrote, she said ‘you need to up your diction.’ I was confused because not only did she like, not explain what this means for me to like improve but like… they had never like given me feedback like this before. So, in that moment, I like felt disillusioned about my writing.” Now, as facial expressions go, I am pretty sure that I was an epic failure at holding a poker face while listening to this story. What is even equally clear, was the murmuring happening in my head as hearing it infuriated me to the degree that it became an embodiment. I felt my jaws clench and my gut wrench as I leaned in to eagerly ask the absolute fuckin obvious follow up question: do you believe this feedback had anything to do with bias toward your racial or other identities? I couldn’t get the question out fast enough before @blkmystique began dialoguing with me and nodding in agreement describing this instance as a blatant micro aggression. Their embodiment becomes more animated with a change in voice tone as punctuation to the discussion. This story is what I’ll call the quake which shifted the axis as my initial speculation was I’d hear stories of many of the themes already in field scholarship regarding dual enrollment. But this story right here made me realize that I needed to ask the question. I believed I did pose a question about racial identity in the other interviews. But what was said and equally important provided a view into the ways the DEUs describe their racial encounters. I recall 115 asking if they believed the encounter with the professor in dual enrollment was due to bias toward any of their identities. The responses rationalized differently their perceptions, because “they probably didn’t know they were gonna have like a room full of high school students,” excusing the professor's behavior toward them. While another quipped “oh, she knew what she was doin! She didn’t like us and she ain’t front about it. She made it clear every class.” Both these stories were shared pertaining to encounters in dual enrollment. I continued to listen to @blkmystique share another story where the professor in the same class displayed yet another microaggression toward them. As they explained it, the only other Black person in the course was male-presenting, and seemingly had what they call “a fan club” describing the responses to their writing by the all white and female presenting classmates as “fawning.” They continued the story: “He like wrote all of his work like raps. No deviation, no variety, just raps. And every time he opened his mouth the entire class and the professor were like, hangin on everything he said. I was like, really? During class as he finished his most recent so-called rap, like I remember the professor providing all this like positive feedback and praise then like looked over at me like why your writing not like this? Like gurrl, you need to up your diction.” After our conversation, I was immediately curious, not if, but how many of our Black and BIPOC students experience such overt instances of misinformed or, informed but impervious assessment in our composition classrooms? Notice here I did not implicate white only professors as in my own experiences as a student, I experienced Black and BIPOC presenting professors who do the exact same thing–evaluate per expectations of a certain culturally derived performance. This confession is not conjecture. The only Black professors I experienced across institutions managed to say with a straight face when I suspected a harsher assessment: “you’re Black. You have to be the best because it’s expected.” While this ideology is predicated 116 on surpassing the adversities and breaching of barriers meant to lessen access, as methods to keep us in our lanes. As we say in the Black community, it be ya own people sometimes whose complicity to manage the gates essentially causes harm as well. Jamila M. Kareem in Violence in the work of Composition, speaks to this oppression ideology as an explicit failure to examine the ways writing assessment adheres to the norm of racism in society. Kareem includes Pendergrast’s call to “composition teachers to scrutinize the absent presence of race (24)” –a concept Casey Moreland’s 2018 archival research into the first recorded dual enrollment and composition program where the absent presence of race also extends the argument of “how white complacency has and continues to influence the field and first-year writing” (i). @blkmystiques encounter (Figure 9) serves as an example of some of the ways writing assessment encodes or inscribes identities and ideologies as both @blkmystique, and their Black classmate were racialized at this threshold. As Scott and Inoue explain how writing assessment shapes contexts and instruction implicating where disciplinary, institutional, and personal biases may intersect, they conclude, “writing assessment is judgment Figure 9: College/University Threshold or decision based on the reading of student writing with a particular set of expectations or value in mind (31)” This threshold represents the site where previous writing experiences e.g., dual enrollment, high school coincide with expectations for orientating writing toward an institutional culture and academic audiences. This is also the site where feedback, peer review 117 and the value of revisions are introduced–basically disciplinary practices. Yancey in Writers’ Histories, Processes, and Identities Vary, says while writing is linked to identity in embodied and performative ways (52), Victor Villanueva in Writing provides a Representation of Ideologies and Identities includes the power dynamic, where disciplinary and other biases may orientate toward identity politics stating, “identity politics–the idea that one’s self-defined identities drive one’s choices as they engage in discussions, actions, and interactions–entails a conscious decision by the individual (57).” @blkmystique later theorized how this instance was just another reminder of how they believe writing professors really value the performative when it follows their own ideas of what is representative. The professor’s actions can be seen as subscribing to enacting biased ideologies by applying stereotypical identities. The criticism and ovation they assessed publicly, as well as privately assigned value to @blkmystique and their classmate, which legitimizes one student’s performance while delegitimizing another [And, while we’re at it, what can we possibly assume is signaled to the other non-BIPOC students and their writing as well?...just a thought.]. In this situation, we can safely assume the rapping classmate chose to compose in relation to his interests, and whose identity may possibly be a rapper or poet, while @blkmystique chose differently–I mean, it was a creative writing class. This story illustrates how the socio historical influences seem to plague our writing pedagogies, and disciplinary ideologies that further instill messages we seek to admonish (Krzus-Shaw 33). As I responded through my clenched teeth that the professor's narrow minded and totally biased view of what constitutes Blackness was clearly, and unapologetically rooted in the historical belief that Blacks should be performative—like minstrelsy performative. The 118 idea that both students were being racialized in a writing classroom where creative agency is expected, and [should be] encouraged, made me disheartened. At this point in the interview, our dialogue was truly conversational, and I could visually see @blkmystique shoulders return to a resting position. As they paused at the end of the story, I had no problem saying with my whole chest what I was thinking. I broke the silence with an airy wow…she was racist as fuck! to which @blkmystique responded “hell yes!” Keep it Movin: Crossing Boundaries The lack of cohesion between secondary and post-secondary writing expectations is but one liminal space where dual enrollment students fall within the threshold between. It is often within these experiences where dual enrollment students are also left to figure out how to navigate the terrain of this in-between to adhere to or advance their literacy practices for varying expectations. Additionally, the boundaries between thresholds–the time and space where high school students become college and university students–is also where DEUs theorized their self-efficacy based on prior experiences with composition as dual enrollment students. The fact that DEUs shared self-reliance on prior learning and essential value on their studentship, as well as reliance upon their peer group for support across thresholds, we should ask ourselves, why? What do their experiences tell us about the ways our interactions communicate disciplinary biases and/or indifference toward Black, BIPOC, and Othered identities? How and/or in what ways do our practices miscommunicate our values? While a few of DEUs experienced composition at another institution during their time in dual enrollment, it was their encounters interacting at the threshold of dual enrollment that was mentioned as having the most influence on their writing performance once becoming FYS. 119 Only two DEUs shared positive experiences during their interaction here, yet still iterate how their encounters at the institution where they experienced dual enrollment, were more significant. All DEUs had an awareness and expectation of learning what was needed at the proceeding thresholds, yet few expressed a knowing once arrived. Each case included experiences during the journey, while also revealing similar ideologies of their self-efficacy as they crossed the thresholds into other college and university spaces as college students. It is safe to ask if the DEU’s experience writing in dual enrollment may have prepared them for their experience at Harvard, as well as once entered into college. However, beyond the DEU’s having the chance to experience matriculating with actual college students versus the same classmates in high school, the DEUs experiences in the dual enrollment space was less productive due to the interactions encountered at this threshold with university professors. It was at this threshold where the responses to interactions revealed encounters that were clearly racialized leaving an impression that carried across thresholds. 120 CHAPTER FIVE: Relationship Goals [What Inclusion Looks Like] “I write for myself now, like, for work, I know I have to… have to like, make sure I don’t write in a passive voice. Being a user experience consultant, like you have to make sure your writing is like effective. But I journal in like my authentic voice. I am working to.. like get back the voice that was taken from me.”~@blkmystique “I write for myself because I want to be better. I want to be the best writer I can, and I can only do that through writing more. My stories need to be readable but my voice. And I can only find my voice if I believe I have one.”~@raed.hennessy “Now, I write with more time a lot earlier to make sure it’s good. Like, with writin grants, you can’t like have a lot of mistakes or it will get bounced. So, I take my time because it’s important that I tell the right story the right way.”~@khaliltay “My writing process has changed in the way I use language, ya know, like, I have to make sure when I am writing a story, it can be read in the style of the anchor ya know. As a news producer, ya know you can’t not make sure everything is clear and concise.”~@lovelittlejean “I do write quite a bit at the exchange. Like, I publish articles with a fast turn around. I don’t write in my voice because I don't think it’s valid in the industry I'm in…which is why I am leaving it.”~@sabiyah.denee [Me as Researcher Interlude] “I asked myself before approaching this research:” what in the hell do you think you will find?” admitting I went into this project without many expectations of what would occur or what I may learn. Gladly, this was clearly a set up in a way which I was not at all prepared. I had no idea the experiences they endured, and what these experiences, learning experiences, impacted their views of writing, or themselves as writers. What was shared, in space and stories, I believe brought about a restorative harvest from the bounty of violence braved and tolerated. Some expressed the relief felt from talking with me because they hadn’t looked at this journey in the ways we did–leaving feeling a bit more empowered after each conversation that was visible and audible. When I finished the final interviews, I thought about all I heard. After, I took a tumultuous journey through the stages of grief because my empath solo cup split at the rim with what we all talked about, laughed about, and agreed in solidarity. I believe on some level, each of us had a moment–a moment reliving experiences where we were all told we are unacceptable intentionally played on a loop through every media orifice available. Yet, inadvertently, but intentionally, in some ways, we found a space, if only for a few hours where we could git it in and say the things that needed to be said–even if no one will ever hear us. I shared my stories, my traumas, and my triumphs, one of which would not have been made possible without them, without their stories, without their openness. Looking back at these moments, and listening to their voices rationalize, examine, and theorize their 121 own experiences, I realize we are all on the same personal journey as writers–to capture what was once lost, revoked, or surrendered.” Conversatin: DEUs Ideas for Change Once we approached the end of our interviews and cross-check discussions, I had the opportunity to explain to each DEU what it is I am exactly trying to do in this research—inform to transform. I explained how their stories would be used as examples for what may be happening to students like them in dual enrollment, and in composition at PWI’s. I shared how my experiences on the same campus and others shamefully mirror some of theirs, and how I believe(d) what was shared could possibly offer some insight. While a few shook their heads in agreement, it was clear there was some reticence across the group because, well, we already know what happens when we say somethin ain’t right. I, too, shook my head while my internal Jerrice was saying, ‘girl, ya know nuttin gon change.’ Yet, as I began to mouth the words I am trying, I was interrupted by a profound revelation: “What I know now is, like what I learned about my voice and like what I can say is that what I say is as important as how I say it. I know like my voice has created change because of the work I do and like I believe in the community that I’m a part of, so I need to keep working on like my authentic voice because it needs to be heard. And you need to keep tellin our stories because like they also need to be heard. Say more cuz you know the assignment~@blkmystique As I listened to my former student, who was the “delegate” of the group of DE students from their high school, and who once had a you lyin moment when asking my age, I took their words sincerely to heart. I watched them mature, becoming a leader and queer activist standing side by side with Reverend Jesse Jackson on the steps of The Diag in A2 demanding the university meet the needs of queer POCs, to becoming an entrepreneur and Black business owner working to help community non-profits be more effective through user experience. Now, 122 entering graduate school as an MBA candidate at the University of Louisville, I marvel at their grace and focus working to retrieve and revive their voice on their own terms for the purposes to speak to and for those who are othered. Yet I cannot forget the violence they experienced at compositions thresholds and how the wounds from those encounters, while apparently a healing work in progress, absolutely under no circumstance should be plausible, much less acceptable. As I shared my assignment with the rest of the group, the consensus was the same— these stories must be told if the purpose is toward change. Another mentioned at the end of their interview their ideas as a now secondary ELA teacher in a Detroit school district, at the same high school they attended: “I think more needs to be done to ensure our students get what they need to be successful in college by any means necessary. If people like composition can’t see how important it is to have students, Black and Brown inner city high school students who are working toward access to college, if they can’t or won’t see how what they do with literacy makes all the difference in how successful a student may be once in college, then someone needs to tell ‘em. Hopefully, Jerrice, that’s you!”~@khaliltay While I listened further, I began to hear the voice of a teacher whose heart was orientated toward students who need to see and know teachers just like them as a model. I watched my former student rise to the occasion in academic and familial matters, where their determination and fortitude became a great addition to my community tutoring organization. Now, an adopted parent of their siblings, and ELA teacher at a Detroit area high school closer to home, I am awe-inspired by their ability to see their experiences as lessons to teach others. When they shared their encounters at compositions thresholds, it was their passion to be mindful of how not to replicate the same violence in the name of teaching literacy—an embodiment I believe and can attest to being a challenge as a Black teacher teaching Black and 123 BIPOC students. The oh-so common practice of it happened to me, so it should happen to you for the purposes of developing and building character is the poison of white supremacy that spiked the kool-aid. And much to our demise as teachers of literacy, many of us drank it believing disciplinarity as ‘the way’ all the while pressing down the anvil of the diaspora instead of lifting it up. Stuart Hall reminds us how “The diaspora experience…is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity (223 ).” where Black and BIPOC teachers of literacy may have struggled to orientate around their embodiment but should not be the only ones who feel the responsibility for the effectiveness and fairness of literacy learning for diverse students. @khaliltay had a bit more to say about how literacy teaching is happening and should happen as they are vested in this work as a Black literacy teacher: “I believe that what teachers did in the past isn’t what’s needed now because the students we have aren’t what they were even when I was in high school. So, why are we trying to teach em the same thing when most of those things aren’t even applicable now? Where is the evolution? These kids are smarter than us and better than us when it comes to literacy because they started earlier with readin and writin which means if we want them to be engaged we have to find ways to engage em.” My response—where is the lie? What’s interesting about their commentary is not only are they saying an accurate assessment from an ELA teacher's perspective, but from the perspective of a recent former student who saw their journey riddled with encounters that shaped their view of pedagogical needs. As they finalized their commentary, their reflection included more about their own writing development: “I knew when I was in school waiting til the last minute was not what I should have been doing with my writing assignments, but I got away with it. And then when I got to dual enrollment, I believed I had enough to do as well as I did in high school and was mad when I didn’t blamin the teacher…who by the way was a huge problem why I didn’t excel, and she knew it. She was the teacher which means she was the subject master so 124 why didn’t she show us what was needed? I’m saying. But m my Which is why I won’t do the same in my classroom. I won’t assume or not assume they know, Black or white, all treated the same.” Stretchin Our View: Looking Toward Future Research Voices from The Void, as research in writing studies, is meant to illuminate the voices of users of composition and a critical need to examine composition’s usability from the first- person view. The purpose is not to invalidate or prove utilitarian characterization, but in the vein that what we do and how we do it, has an enormous influence on every student that crosses our thresholds. The results of the research conducted in this study critically analyzes the perspectives of former dual enrollment students as they journey across composition’s thresholds. Where these examples may be limited in providing a larger sample to identify whether other factors may possibly influence these outcomes, further research may be able to provide additional layers in which to view student experiences with composition. From an interdisciplinary approach, looking for possible connections or relationships of the ways students experience aspects of our discipline, could aid in establishing purposes which could benefit all students that cross our thresholds. There are still some unanswered questions that most certainly need a purview to determine ways to become more effective toward our purposes, as well as identify the ways our practices may cause harm. Understanding our disciplinary values, and the effects of our actions of assessment, may lead to solutions. Composition efforts at becoming more inclusive as a field, may still be haunted by the pursuit of inclusion we seek as a discipline. As practitioners, we seek to practice empathy as we also seek to receive empathy as a human collective with diverse lived experiences. Lately, as we seek to invoke anti-racist pedagogy, Kareem says “anti-racist outcomes actively work to oppose 125 racist interpretations of college writing standards (39),” which means we may need to increase our awareness of the -isms and -ologies that are festering and continue to be redistributed at our thresholds. In order to eradicate “the racist ideologies that are intertwined with accepted beliefs about what makes objectively good writing (39),” Kareem informs us that “we also have a responsibility to recognize and respond to the racialized experiences that students bring with their literacy histories into composition classrooms (39).” The purpose of dual enrollment, while initially moderated, and in some cases, derived from perverse agendas such as pipelines, as a program for access, also seeks scrutinized autonomy for offering options for literacy learning. The expressed lack of consent by some previous (and possibly current) WPAs and faculty (e.g., Schwalm), to include high school students in our ether–on our university campuses, and in our composition classrooms has uncovered the imperativeness of dual enrollment students' needs. There’s Room at The Cross: Recommendations Toward Inclusion If we consider the role we play as a discipline as agents of literacy and practitioners, there are opportunities for including the needs of dual enrollment students. While the field’s view may be split on the decisions to maintain dual enrollment students in composition, if we focus on what we can do to create a space and support for the quality of learning our discipline values, this change in orientation provides opportunities toward enacting these values in new ways: • Writing Studio– as a learning space dedicated to dual enrollment students matriculating on college and university campuses without DECOMP, writing studio provides opportunities for students to engage with writing in a more intimate setting without 126 ostracizing their experience with college immersion. In writing studio pedagogy, writing as a social rhetorical activity is embedded in the ways studio courses orientate around writing–learning from other writers, discussing writing, and revising. Activities in the writing studio centralizes shared concepts, processes, and practices for the purposes of writing and supporting writers. Creating a course for dual enrollment students can demonstrate an equitable and achievable approach to writing for younger writers • Embedded Writing Center Consultants/Fellows– Writing Center consultant development includes coursework orientated around applied practices and methods for coaching writing, as well as interactive writing and collaboration. Incorporating a consultant in our composition classrooms where dual enrollment students are also present, creates a connection to research-supported practices that support the development of writers of all levels. Writing center consultants can maintain the high expectations of the culture of writing present in courses where younger writers are learning ways to orientate their writing toward discipline and institutional expectations. This effort is achievable through pedagogy which centralizes relationships as best practices for supporting writers' needs. • Enacting 21st Century writing practices–With recent generations practicing literacy in new ways and at an unprecedented pace, composition instruction requires increased awareness of the ways in which we can accommodate these new literacies. Illuminating the shared concepts, and “big ideas” of process and practice across mediums provides opportunity for students to see a relationship between the ways they enact agency, autonomy, and authority in digital spaces. Technical Writing pedagogy, as an instructional method, offers innovative ways to design assignments around students' 127 literacy practices. For dual enrollment students, who more than likely represent younger students can find assignments asking them to incorporate literacy practiced outside of the classroom easier to approach while also considering the ways in which they see audience, voice, tone, and style. Adjusting Our Lens: Looking Back to Look Forward While racism is often experienced as a recurring infection upon the body leaving scars within, for those of us who continue to experience the pestilence of violence “from this inalterable condition,” it is purported by those who evade its existence (Kareem 35). Ta-Nahesi Coates in Between the World and Me, reminds us that race “is the child of racism, not the father (33).” As a Black literacy scholar, I am not at all surprised that the conversation on race is still happening in 2023. However, as a Black woman–I am tired of having conversations about race…it is 2023. The labor involved in educating those who seem oblivious, or even curious is exhausting because I shouldn’t have to explain my humanity–or students that are like me. Sadly, I can attest to remembering each racialized experience across just about Figure 10: Map for WPA, teachers, pedagogy, development 128 every threshold I encountered as Sara Ahmed in On Being Included describes this fully: “As memory, it was an experience of not being white of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as ‘out of place’, the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered as crime or threat (“introduction 3”).” I can also testify to my complicity assisting in the reverence of disciplinarity, even while I was tending to my own brutality. I shared my stories of encounters at composition thresholds because like those told by my former students, our narratives implicate being racialized in the name of literacy learning. As agents of literacy, If we don’t check the racism in our disciplinary concepts, practices and procedures, and epistemological approaches, we will continue to nurture biases that Kareem describes as upholding ideologies which “intellectually brutalize” Black and BIPOC students by “institutionally ostracizing writing knowledge and writing practices (35),”--which continues to foster violence at our thresholds. The adjacent map is a visual representation of suggestions for development needed to adjust how our practices, processes, and pedagogy lend to the barriers, actions, and outcomes applied through threshold concepts. Assumptions: How Proscribed Identities Create Barriers to Literacy Learning “How do we make sense of how change—which can certainly be uncomfortable—is a necessary part of the growth of any discipline or professional organization, and how do we plan a way forward with this necessity in mind? How can we adopt an abundant mindset that actively resists what bell hooks referred to as imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy—the interconnected, global systems of domination that inform our current social order?”~Jennifer Sano-Franchini, 2024 CCCC Program Chair Analyzing DEUs journey aided in providing a first-person view into the ways interactions crossing our thresholds can become habituated. For many of our students, specifically Black and BIPOC students, the effects of encounters in learning spaces may become incorrigible. If we use the same threshold concepts in NWWK as a method to review how our disciplinarity may induce certain experiences, we could therefore provide new insight into how our assumptions, 129 assessment, and orientation are incongruous to our mission and purposes–giving us the potential to realign. As faculty, if we look at our orientation toward the ideologies of our discipline, and how our teacher identities as practitioners are also shaped by these same philosophies, then we should look at how our assumptions are also influenced by our disciplinarity. If we are serious about inclusion through linguistic justice (April Baker-Bell), diverse stories, and storytellers, then our relationality as teachers of writing must demonstrate a collective where our assumptions of writers and writing will not create barriers to literacy learning. For example, looking at our disciplinary policies which are written and practiced prescriptively, we would see how biased ideologies, personal or student-based, differentiates legitimacy. At the threshold where writing creates identities and ideologies, where cultural, positional, and situational identities are enacted through practice, assessment, and disciplinary rhetoric, these embedded identity politics act as a barrier while also communicating what is valued and should be valued in our composition classrooms. Trevor C. Meyer in The Productive Violence of Pedagogy: Argumentation and Change in the Writing Course says there is a “conflict” in the ways we as disciplinarians view, teach and assess composition “as defending True American Values against their violation by viscous enemies”(98) while our students may believe their Figure 11: Barriers to literacy learning efforts at prose is following these same values. Meyer also suggests: 130 “One person’s attempts at reasonable critique can be seen by another as a personal attack, certain differences in opinion are acceptable while others are decidedly not, and which is which depends on who the person happens to be (98).” At the beginning of writing this research, I began wondering what our orientation toward disciplinarity causes our diverse students. After hearing my participants' encounters with discipline professors, I decided to experiment with my own writing to see what kinds of feedback I would receive. I wondered if my writing would warrant a disciplinary response considering it is academic research. However, I sent an excerpt of one of my interludes to a dear friend, and graduate colleague who already moved on to a tenured position at a southeastern university. I deduced not to include too much context other than, “please tell me your thoughts, ideas, etc.” What they returned was clearly a nicety of commentary which led me to inquire further. Their next response went something like this: “Just re-read it. I don't know that it's a ton more clear at the syntax level because there are missing verbs, fragments, you change tenses and have a ton of embedded clauses that get me away from the main part of the sentence. I tried reading it as if it was spoken word poetry and then it made total sense. I wonder if there is a way to frame it as spoken language that would then give the reader the opportunity to just flow through it, not needing it to be adhering to written genres or more precisely, Academic/SWE genres?” As Ahmed explains how schemas impart roles where our assumptions may inadvertently or intentionally recreate systemic and systematic underpinnings–that critically impede our diverse students' autonomy (100). In the feedback from my friend, I expected just what I got—a read on how the writing doesn’t follow expected convention. As I thanked her for being a good friend (who was at a writing retreat when she read it), I also praised her for the way she provided the feedback at sentence level, explaining what she saw for the purposes of this research. I replied explaining that I am interrogating how we assess writing from differing 131 identities such as Black and BIPOC identities, based on embedded expectations or assumptions as well as biases toward “academic/SWE.” I continued explaining how the ways we provide feedback may be signaling indifference in writing that does not demonstrate the expected performance we tend to deem “valuable” or valid. I ended sharing my plan for this research and that along with their (DEUs) experiences, I hope this critique will bring forth a greater conversation on how as teachers of writing, we need to reconsider our biases in assessment— especially if rhetorical choices such as syntax, fragments and clauses aren’t on the menu. If I’m being honest, as elated I felt that my experiment brought results, I can’t say the feedback didn’t hit a chord. It reminded me of experiences where I received feedback that mirrored my friend. What’s interesting is the content of the excerpt wasn’t mentioned nor questioned for context leaving it open for interpretation. But, what occurred is an example of how our disciplinary assumptions render our consumption unpalatable, therefore citing a rhetorical failure to reach an intended audience—us. However, if we look directly at the ways we see the development of our assumptions, would we see intrinsically what shapes these ideologies? My dear friend responded to explain a bit more her feedback and rationale behind it as she says: “I think my feedback about sentence level was just me really wanting to be certain I am understanding what you were writing about, making sure I was understanding YOU, if that makes sense? I'm realizing too, now that I think about it, that when I see people break academic forms (in scholarly writing), they simultaneously adhere really closely and precisely to a different/another form of some kind. So, like, writing in AAVE and following those grammar rules tightly. Or like Anzaldúa, where she intersperses other languages (versions of Spanish) without explanation but it's still pretty stylized and so you can move along with it in many of the ways you already would with academic prose.” 132 I recall reading this part of her response and saying to myself through my teeth, “hmph, break academic form” shaking my head side to side as I continued reading. I know there’s an expectation that often is not applied to or assessed as “different” or “another form” for white students who also make the rhetorical choice to break convention in academic writing. As a teacher of writing at an R1 PWI, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to have read dozens, or even hundreds at this point, of AP level FYS writing whose incessant pronoun-antecedent disagreements, prepositional phrasing, and superlative misuse that not only breaks convention, but reads like a smash and grab of every single prescriptive grammar rule. But Black language- first- language speakers, not following the supremacist language rules in any writing will most likely incur great judgment. My friend went on to further reflect on her rationale as she continued in her reply: “Such an interesting question about how we respond based on our expectations. Even though the field has been having this conversation for many many years, I think we do, as you point out, still base things on a hierarchical mode, like, is this student prose? Ok, then we do one thing. Is this prose from a colleague? Ok, then, wow, it's a whole other world of expectations and biases and hidden assumptions…So even with non-SWE forms, I've been enculturated into a specific set of expectations by the field, that's wild to think about.” What my dear friend is so eloquently grappling with [as the excellent academic she has become] is what I’m suggesting should occur to reconcile the ideologies that do not serve our students, or our purposes writ large—identify the origins of the assumptions as teachers of writing to realign or remove them. If we as practitioners practice what we preach pertaining to valuing the importance of identity work, as well as the processes, histories, and lived experiences of our constituents and the students we serve, then it is essential that we reorientate toward identifying how our 133 disciplinarity is maintained through personal, or professional assumptions of all of our students. I believe our success should be measured by the success of all students who cross our thresholds. But, if we continue to allow assumptions to promote our practices, where programming also contributes to the context of what we intend as freedom to exercise agency, autonomy, and authority, these actions will essentially remain a barrier to the equity and equality we want for our students, as well as the field writ large. Assessment: (In)Actions of Authority “Assessment of writing shapes context and learning environments it is a set of practices enacted by people in specific circumstances for specific purposes that have consequences for both the people whose writing is being judged and for those who are judging.”~ Scott & Inoue The conversation about implications of assumptions, and how disciplinary ideologies can be cyclical, the email conversation with my dear friend also discussed implications with our habituated practices. When I approached this research, initially I wanted to talk more about racism in assessment practices. But I realized, based on my participants and my stories, I wouldn’t be bringing anything new into the light that hasn’t already been researched and discussed so effectively by Black and BIPOC Figure 12: Authority action and inaction field scholars such as Carmen Kynard, Asao Inoue and others. But what this research can offer are examples of othering that may implicate an interstice in our writing programs, where top- down administrations with access programming such as dual enrollment seeks to go-along-to- get-along leaving students in The Void. Ahmed tells us how this entrenchment further 134 supplants “‘othering’ [that] can be redescribed as a form of extension, which extends bodily reach through acts of incorporation. Such processes of othering can now be described as habitual (65).” Habitual as Chris Anson’s Habituated Practice Can Lead to Entrenchment in Naming What We Know explains how writing can become entrenched in habituated practice rendering writing performance to be less effective (76). This concept can be applied to the ways we are entrenched in our disciplinarity through our orientation, our programming, as well as our processes. Anson states, “repeated practice of the same mental task or activity can lead to what psychologists call automaticity or unconscious competence, the application of a process or the retrieval of information that doesn't require conscious attention (77).” Yet, if we take a concerted look at the ways we see our authority as ‘automatic’ based on Anson’s concept, solidifying our authority through habituated practices would be counterproductive. Scott and Inoue remind us that “writing assessment constructs boundaries for learning (29),” the implications of our assessment actions or inactions may render our authority inequitable toward Black and BIPOC students. I suppose I am interrogating the practice of ‘attacking the surface versus content.’ It has been my experience with non-BIPOC, and even some BIPOC teachers, they are uncomfortable or do not believe they have the authority to comment on content written by and including Black students' lived experiences or perspectives. I have heard so many white-presenting teachers say ‘I won’t address what they’re saying or sharing because what authority do I have as a white person? I am attempting to provoke thinking around the ways in which our personal experiences, that are lived through varying means, can also influence how we view our authority as teachers of writing. While our discipline provides one perspective, where our authority as ‘teacher’ ascribes a schema chock 135 full of expectations from the students, colleagues, institution, field, and public–our other identities may influence the ways we perceive and enact our authority. For example, another colleague—a mentor of sorts teaches in the UAE every few years. As luck would have it, they always share their experiences with me, either through messages, photos, and even postcards from the many places they’ve visited. It is customary that we catch up when they return to the states, where we grab lunch at some of our favorite Lebanese, Salvadoran, or Mexican eateries—maybe even just Turkish coffee. I enjoy all of our conversations beginning in undergrad, as their knowledge and experiences in the field is one of the reasons I pursued it. I admire their perspective and the thoughtful ways they encourage my thinking. The fact that they see me as a colleague has been something I’ve had the hardest time orientating my interactions at times, because I continue to see them as I did when I was a tutor in the writing center at my old campus. While I’m still working on changing my personal perspective from student to scholar with just about all of my professors (yea, you), I value the relationships that extend beyond this identity. As someone who embodied the writing practice of stream of consciousness as a student, where revising was something I was forced to do, I’ve grown to value and even seek feedback. This is now something I find the humblest honor to do, as my mentor began sharing their writing with me for feedback—lil ol me. During one of our WhatsApp conversations while they were abroad, they shared a moment that happened in a writing conference with one of their students. They shared how the students were all second-language learners but seem to find American Rap music aka Black music most appealing to also attempt at speaking the language heard in the songs. My mentor 136 shared how one of their students, who I believe the entire class was mostly male-presenting, would continuously say the word, nigga—of course when they shared this, it was written as the ‘N’ word. My mentor shared how during the writing conference, they asked the student why they, meaning the students and I am assuming, a group of classmates or friends, use this word—where the student responded, “it’s just a word.” My mentor shared this with me briefly in our messaging, to which I asked what was their reply. The response left me bewildered as they indicated their lack of comfort speaking on something of which they don’t see themselves as an “authority.” While I couldn’t wait for their return to discuss this a bit further or tell em how I woulda handled it if it were me, I reflected on their response. I was a bit confused as to why they didn’t see themselves as an authority in this particular situation. What was more confusing, was that I saw my experiences with assessment, where language use, and its “correctness,” along with lack of alignment with standard conventions, is what is most critiqued e.g., the feedback from my dear friend. What had me stymied was the fact I believe the kid said it during the writing conference (and I cannot for the life of me recall why, but, yeah, that happened)--a time where we, as teachers of writing, language, discuss writing process, revisions, and such with the writers, as well as indicate what has been and how will assessment take place. Needless to say, while I respect my mentor's decision, this situation brings to mind questions of authority, and what our actions or inactions may communicate to students especially in instances of evaluation. Scott and Inoue explain that teachers “negotiate their relative authority through the way student writing is evaluated, and the consequences associated with those evaluations (30).” While this situation was not about assessment exactly, 137 the writing conference is a space where evaluation and expectations are made clear, as well as creates moments of knowledge-making. As a Black Language, first language speaker, as a Black Language user, we would believe that this is where my authority derives—and yeah, there is some. As an English major, and ELA teacher, I also have some situational authority—as a practitioner. Yet, it is as an English speaker, a user of the language, as a rhetor, where I enact the authority. My colleague deflected or denounced their authority, believing that their forward facing ethnic, and/or cultural identity is the reason why they believed they had no authority because it was in contrast to both the student and the word. But keepin it real—it is their forward facing prescribed ethnic, and/or cultural presenting identity where their authority derives, historically. It is moments like these where I see white folks tend to become obtuse of the ancestral contributions to the ways Black and BIPOC people are redefined, described, and explained in this country, and thanks to its fan base of oppressors, also used in other languages and cultures to do the same—denigrate, deny, and dehumanize. I’m sayin, quit frontin and own yo ancestors’ shit. From my perspective, in that moment, my colleague was the SME as the language user (but never that word), working knowledge of its use in its varying contexts, including as an avid fan and listener of rap and hip hop. There was access to this language knowledge as a teacher and scholar of literacy and language that would not have warranted a need for correcting but informing. So, saying I have no authority got me messed up. While in this example I am judging (I so am) the decisions we make as a discipline, upheld by the field, and the writing programming where our disciplines are held, I am also challenging the ways we as a field and as teachers of literacy, how we define and enact 138 authority. Based on field scholarship (Taczak & Thelin; Schneider; Farris, etc.) and starting with WPA’s (Schwalm) which seeks to cancel dual enrollment students' inclusion in our composition classrooms until later in their college careers, we can assume the ethos of this ruling appoints our authority. However, let’s ask ourselves if it is our authority, perceived or otherwise, which may render our purview limited toward enacting our purposes and efforts toward inclusion? Is it our actions of authority, or inaction as agents of literacy, where our disciplinary values, intrinsic or adopted, hinder our ability to be equitable? When we talk about power and authority, there is a prescribed power dynamic between student and teacher, as well as an expectation of authority. When we think about the practices of assessment, this is where authority is usually enacted through our disciplinarity—through the ways we see and believe how writing (and language) should be implemented. Yet, it is this authority where we also deem what constitutes ‘good writing’ even in the 21st century writer. When thinking about assessment, Terresa Moses in The Black Experience in Design, describes the intersection of cultural, institutional, and personal beliefs, as elements of oppressive actors (148). Actions transfer or translate expectations where “agentic action” is defined as “the practice of personal ideologies” that enact beliefs into behaviors (155).. The implications of our actions may need to be reevaluated, as authority, or as it is enacted in areas of assessment, professional development, programming are indicators. When students interact at this threshold, our actions or inactions communicate what we value. If we reassess our actions from a programmatic perspective, for the purpose of redesigning professional development and pedagogy, we may find areas that include actions that are not equitable. 139 Orientation: Positionality Matters “We may run the risk of perpetuating gatekeeping if we do not take a thoughtful look at the ways our positionality may codify a desired student archetype, omitting the many that may not fit this paradigm. We may need to change who we classify as ‘non-traditional,’ as dual enrollment students represent the characterization of learners who are actually in our classrooms.” ~ The Receipts The implications of our actions, or inaction are not invariable as the stories told here are meant to reveal some truths about the ways our positionality renders our purview confined. Jamila Kareem in Covert Racial violence in Covert Racial Violence in High School-to-college Writing Transition Outcomes describes the implications of Black and BIPOC students' experiences with violence at composition’s thresholds where, “the concept of race is commonplace (27),” in literacy and learning. Without acknowledging the possibility that there may be inexhaustible consequences for our lack of relationality with the students, the actual people who occupy the sites where literacy is practiced, racism may remain ambiguous (Kareem 30). Institutionality, which is the positionality of an institution, may render our agendas, purposes, policies, and our outcomes ineffective. Acknowledging that there may be critical Figure 13: Changing orientation for different outcome implications to the ways in which our biases–that may be unintentional and yet, egregious–is a step toward our agenda of integrating effective anti-racist practices. We should rethink our approaches toward what we deem as disciplinary progress where learning literacy outcomes are considered. To accomplish this, we may need to change our orientation as a field and discipline to assess our contexts, and instruction practices to rethink our approaches. Ahmed 140 reminds us that “whiteness is what the institution is orientated ‘around.’ so that even bodies that might appear white still have to inhabit ‘whiteness’ if they are to get ‘in’ (23). Ahmed suggests devices of orientation such as philosophies, ideologies, and identities, are at home in keeping disciplinary boundaries “in place” (56). The boundaries which exist within and/or around our disciplinarity may be “orientated around some bodies more than others (Ahmed 42),” and may be unseen as our disciplinary view is directed toward those we desire or who already exist. If we are to revisit our orientations (Figure 13)–individual and collective–personal and disciplinary– evaluating the ways our directionality expands the gap which already exists for dual enrollment, Black and BIPOC students who are in our classrooms, we may find possibilities for successful inclusion where barriers are removed as an equitable outcome. Since orientation is where our institutional, departmental, and individual biases are nurtured, then it would be remiss for us individually as humans, as practitioners, and collectively as a field, and discipline not to examine our directionality. UX as Racial Storytelling: Transformational Possibilities for DEI and Design Thinking “Having your story told–as a woman, as a person of color, as a lesbian or as a trans person, or as any member of any disenfranchised community–is sadly often still a radical idea. There is so much power in storytelling, and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling, in inclusive representations.”~ Kerry Washington As a former process and systems analyst, where my work centered on processes and compliance training within corporate and commercial settings also highlighted end-user experiences. This work provided groundwork for my journey into scholarly research, which began seeking to learn of student perspectives, and their perceptions of writing, and themselves as writers. Centering students' voices sharing their experiences in composing spaces 141 such as writing centers, and later, writing studio, allowed me to research if academic institutional spaces influence writing praxis. Yet, it was when I was assigned to dual enrollment students–all Black and BIPOC students–where my research expanded to learn of these particular students’ experiences with writing, and where composition is located in their journey. As a generative qualitative and feedback methodology, User Experience emphasizes a user-based approach to gain a deeper understanding of behaviors, needs, and motivations interpret the values, abilities, and limitations of individuals as users, and their interactions with objects, places, or tasks. UX examines usability of design practices that are meant to be accessible, inclusive, and liberatory (William Hart-Davidson, personal comm). As we examine the discussions here for ways to adjust our lens, further research can provide insight into the experiences of those who inhabit our spaces. More importantly, seeking an understanding of the ways marginalized populations are impeded by institutional barriers reinforced by personal and professional assumptions, assessment practices, and stakeholder orientation could provide possibilities toward effective realignment. Ahmed describes institutions (or working ‘at’) as what an organization, or discipline “imagines as the ideal[…]working toward, or even what it expresses its ‘character’(“introduction iv”).” Ahmed is referring to the ways whiteness essentially acts as the hubris or with any other business–its brand (v). However, the culture of whiteness which exists acts upon our efforts of inclusion as counter-stories. Here is where racial storytelling through user experience can bring forth the experiences and voices of those in The Void as these diverse and intersectional journeys and encounters by Black and BIPOC users need to be included in design thinking. 142 UX as Racial Storytelling, as a method created for this research, can offer possibilities at gaining Black and BIPOC first-person views of experiences interacting with our institutional thresholds by not only illuminating starting points, or periods of transition (Walters 374), but also obstacles (or adversities) experienced, and anticipated barriers. This method of visual mapping can provide a view of viable paths our diverse and Othered students encounter at all stages of their journey. Centralizing racialized encounters will include imperative aspects of diverse experiences within the user’s journey from Black, BIPOC, and marginalized user perspectives drawing attention to aspects of design. Spaces such as the writing center, where accessibility is orientated toward the needs of those the center serves, reassessing how this space can inadvertently exploit marginalized bodies can be visualized through mapping experiences of the internal and external bodies that inhabit and work within the space. UXRS can be used as a coordinated approach toward asking questions such as: how do Black and BIPOC students experience the writing center spaces? How do Black and BIPOC tutor/consultants experience working in writing center spaces? Questions such as these can be examined through the lens of UXRS to illuminate ineffective touch points throughout these particular users' journeys and create visibility of missing narratives in design-thinking. Other programmatic, institutional, and professional development can also benefit from using this method to make visible ways to improve efforts of inclusion such as increasing the hire of Black tenured faculty, and WPA’s as representation of the students. Ahmed explains the institution of whiteness, which exists in the lack of Black professors, to retain this “involves work” where “repetition of decisions made over time, which shapes the surface of institutional spaces”(110). I would argue the repetition Ahmed describes is carried out by the practices of 143 adhering to internal biases enacted by both actions, and by silenced dialogue (Delpit 3). UXRS, which acts as authentic and realistic experiences by those affected can provide visual stories as the missing narratives of existing Black and BIPOC faculty experiences interacting with: • professional development • interdepartmental interactions • observations • evaluations As a method, UX as Racial Storytelling can offer valuable user insight toward transformational possibilities in ways conventional surveying may not capture the voices, behaviors, and emotional responses to encounters at these institutional thresholds. The need for diversity has never been more imperative, yet when we hear the word diversity, this may communicate varying descriptions that are dependent upon context. For institutions that seek diversity of representation, such as colleges and universities, DEI initiatives tend to leave out exactly what their vision of diversity includes or uses a broad range without specificity. The failure of DEI rests in the latter, where rhetoric may cease to include exactly who or what should be included, essentially leaving the understanding up for interpretation. Businesses which promote diversity but lack a clear communication of what diversity means, may want to invest in finding ways to declare the meaning prior to engaging in ambiguous efforts. Ahmed explains how Othered bodies may feel out of place when whiteness is visible in a space, as “spaces are orientated ‘around’ whiteness[…] it ‘trails behind’ bodies, “shaping institutionality (34). Utilizing mapping as a tool may illustrate perspectives of what diversity characteristics are shared internally and/or externally can collect usable data to create 144 a heuristic of ideas. But what may be missing are the voices of those whose perspectives are necessary to the purposes of the initiatives. Through UXRS, identifying disparities in interactions, resources, and communications of diversity and inclusion may reveal a lack of relationship between what is equal, and what is equitable for businesses seeking these possibilities. UX as Racial Storytelling as a method for equity assessment can aid learning of and examining which aspects of diversity should be included by learning what works and what doesn’t from those who DEI effects most. Yolanda La Chappelle in The Black Designer’s Journey: Theory of Change says, “Design is not what we make, it's what we make possible for others (378).” User Experience as Racial Storytelling uses visual mapping to make visible aspects of Black and BIPOC users experiences during journeys designed for access and inclusion. In system designs, where Black and BIPOC users interact within establishments that may be limited or void of representation, due to design’s orientation around habitual bodies, diverse users' journeys become problematic. Design habits that find value in creating options where white bodies move freely, may not consider the experiences of Othered bodies seeking equal freedom to access and the unanticipated, or unexpected obstacles that influence diverse user outcomes. For design thinking, UXRS works as a visual representation centering Black and racialized narratives missing in design thinking emphasizing key aspects of diverse user’s journey. As a space that is void or limited voices of Black and BIPOC users included in design thinking, UXRS as a method, critically “creates spaces for empowerment and visibility (Walters 375)” by centralizing responses to touchpoints at different stages of the user’s journey that challenge behavior, usability, and access. Incorporating User Experience as Racial Storytelling in design- 145 thinking, brings racialized experiences in conversation with the ways design may not be inclusive or mindful of the journeys, periods of transitions, or even encounters at thresholds Othered bodies experience due to unintentional, or intentional exclusivity of racialized users. UXRS mapping can be a valuable tool to move design forward toward more equal and equitable design and user experiences. Real Talk: What we CAN Do If we look at the stories shared here, we can honestly see possibilities to reconcile composition's relationship with dual enrollment–if reciprocity is the intended goal. The experiences of DEUs can teach us what is important to our purposes for compositions usability for all students. From a programmatic view–WPA’s should look at our pedagogical practices with specificity to identify what we are doing, and how what we are doing may inadvertently impede our desired outcomes for learning. Jamila M. Kareem’s call to action suggests: “Composition is a field built out of social inequities in higher education, in recent development related to implicit racial bias in the field as a whole, and in WPA work, more specifically, call for a deep and critical analysis of the racial violence of every institutional and public representation of the work we do (42).” Looking from a pedagogical view–as teachers of literacy who seek Anti-Racist practices, we must examine our own biases to render our purview unobstructed as we cannot be anti-racist, until racist practices—personal and institutional—have been redacted. There needs to be development and training which explicitly examines our pedagogies, and ideologies, to our formative and summative assessment practices from a deeper view, beyond our disciplinarity to truly become liberatory. Sandra Descourtis et.al in Literacy and Identity are Coconstitutive, state: 146 “We want to build on that notion here: literacy, including, but not limited to writing, and identity, are co-constitutive, by which we mean they are mutually, informing and reinforcing. Our identities corresponding to class, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, citizenship, status, and other identity markers are entirely imbricated in how literacy is enacted, constrained, and operationalized (39).” As a field, we must be truthful and intentional in what we do to identify what is not serving our Black and BIPOC students' learning, as well as what is not serving our purposes. We must collectively and actively remove systems of hegemony that redistribute white supremacy in literacy teaching, and learning. Patricia Ratanapraphart et. al. in Conclusion: Socially Just Literacy, Pedagogy Addresses Power, Context, and History speaks toward liberation, saying: “Recent work in the field has made the case that for literacy to be truly liberatory, its conceptualization must be defined by marginalized groups to serve the need they feel best to benefit their own liberation (49).” To realign toward being liberatory, toward the liberation we seek for all of our students, we have to reflect on our perceived virtuousness and/or implied righteousness if we truly want to broaden our reach in literacy learning. Final Thoughts As I sit with final thoughts of my research, I am still enamored by the stories shared here of racialized violence encountered at composition’s thresholds. As I reflect on my own experiences, where my agency was deduced to questions of authority, I am reminded how this embodiment was the reason why I pursued the field. It was these experiences where I believed, as a Black literacy scholar, I could be a bridge, or a covering, as I ushered Black students like me, across the thresholds at PWIs. I am not sure why I believed my presence, as a Black woman, from the hoods of Detroit, could possibly make a difference, if only for one. However, the contrast is watching how society devalues my Black body, as well as all Black bodies, and our 147 unintended, and unwelcomed existence at just about every juncture, including spaces where education should be the equalizer. While I am hopeful for a time where equality will become as common as the hate that’s been displayed, my looking at this world through the eyes of my mother, who at 80 years old, is still hoping for the same, keeps our reality as Black people hoping to just be considered, painfully in the forefront. In the meantime, and between time, as a Black literacy researcher, seeking the next research bound project, I’ll continue to pose questions to the field regarding how we communicate what we value in equity, and inclusion. If we look at the stories shared here, we can honestly see possibilities to reconcile composition's relationship with dual enrollment–if reciprocity is the intended goal. The experiences of DEUs can teach us what is important to our purposes for compositions usability for all students. From a programmatic view–WPA’s should look at our pedagogical practices with specificity to identify what we are doing and how what we are doing may inadvertently impede our desired outcomes for learning. There needs to be development and training which explicitly examines practices of assessment from a deeper view, beyond our disciplinarity, and go further into purposes for all users. Looking from a pedagogical view–as teachers of writing and compositionists who seek Anti-Racist practices, we must examine our own biases to render our purview unobstructed as we cannot be anti-racist until racist practices have been redacted. To realign, we have to reflect and revise while also looking at the ways formative and/or summative assessment may enact virtue signaling to our diverse students. If we continue to look at our practices as virtuous or righteous based on our disciplinarity, we may be missing a greater opportunity to broaden our reach in literacy learning. 148 Some field colleagues who read Voices from The Void may interpret the stories, and the perils experienced crossing composition’s thresholds as exempt from any comparable liability on the field’s behalf. Some may also interpret the racial storytelling done here, only relevant to institutions that may have dual enrollment with a significant population of Black and BIPOC students. While the former may be nonsensical in our desire to hold harmless, the latter weakens the criticality of the need to further research the ways our disciplinary practices, processes, and positionality may communicate indifference to our diverse students. As we look at where we are now, as a field and discipline, with interpretations of the advent and recent use of Ai as cataclysmic to what we desire for our students to be able to do, I ask, can we really afford not to reconsider aspects of our work as a means toward other literacy learning possibilities? If true inclusion is as valuable as our missions, policies, and syllabi suggest, then, shouldn’t our efforts align with our vision? Let's ask ourselves if the stories told here are enough to start a new conversation discussing ways composition can improve its relationality with dual enrollment for the purposes of inclusive literacy learning? If we continue to mitigate dual enrollment students' access to composition as an effort toward preserving our disciplinary juice, is gatekeeping worth the squeeze? Is refusing to include dual enrollment students in our FYW classrooms at 4-year universities an effective measure to ensure “quality control”? Even prior to the pandemic, and at a time where writing departments are grasping at means to rescue, and increase cultures of writing, is our institutionality repeating the same post-civil rights-open-enrollment posture of overtly creating silos of supremacy for the purposes of saving the “integrity” of the discipline? Can we say for certain that the unintended 149 consequences of allowing dual enrollment students, more than likely representing Black and BIPOC students, access to composition will cause such a distinct disruption to our established purposes, that a concerted effort of inclusion is beyond the scope? If equity an actual objective, does congruence across the threshold between secondary and post-secondary pedagogy, and practitioners cause a qualitative, or quantitative disruption to our expected learning outcomes? If professional inclusivity is the authentic effort, then, can alternatives of FYW cohesively exist, be valued and appreciated as in-conjunction-with composition opposed to instead-of? If professional collaboration is possible, then can DECOMP also be viewed as a means to accomplish quality literacy practice, and literacy learning outcomes? Can we as a field and discipline, make space for the purpose of moving us, and all of the students we serve, forward? If we take an honest look, collectively we should be able to see where reorientation toward relationality can be beneficial. I believe there is room. 150 WORKS CITED Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. 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(c) Did you at any time elect to enroll in a composition course at the university where you were a DEPSEO student but was otherwise encouraged or not allowed not do so? (d) Did you enroll in any version of composition at another college or university any time while in dual enrollment? Prior Knowledge and Resources (a) Did you receive any information on resources available to you for your writing support while attending as a DEPSEO student from the university? (b) Did your high school instructors provide any resource information to you for finding writing support at the university? (c) Did at any point did you seek support for your writing assignments at the university? (d) Did you attend the writing center? Pedagogy and Curriculum (a) Did any of your instructors at the university provide or explain additional resources available to you for writing support? (b) Do you recall if any of your instructors explained and/or described writing genre differences or ways in which to apply the expected discipline writing conventions in any of the assignments you experienced? (c) Do you recall a time where you did not understand the expectations of a writing assignment clearly before attempting to complete it? (d) From your perspective, can you recall if in-class lectures, readings and activities helped you fully understand how to approach the expected writing in the course? Orientation Toward Access (a) Can you recall a time where you were made to feel different about your [reading and] writing than your colleague classmates due to you being a DEPSEO or high school student? (b) Was it ever disclosed or mentioned by the instructor at the university during class as being a DEPSEO or high school student? (c) As a DEPSEO, do you recall a time where you were discouraged from participating in a class discussion on writing or topics of writing? 160 APPENDIX B User Experience Sample Questions (a) What did you think about writing in college as a high school student? (b) How did you feel being in class with actual college students? (c) What expectations, if any, did you have about the writing course(s) in which you were enrolled? (d) After the course, do you recall feeling that you learned something new about composition, writing in college, or yourself as a writer? (e) How did you feel about the other writing course taken at Harvard? (f) Did you feel there was a difference between the writing course taken at Harvard, and the courses taken in dual enrollment? (g) How did the writing professor or instructor make you feel at Harvard compared to the professors or instructors experienced during dual enrollment? Can you recall a specific instance that occurred to compare or contrast that you would like to share? (h) Once entering as a student at your university, did you feel you were prepared for writing in your coursework at this point in time? (i) Once as a university student, were there any instances with writing or composition that you'd like to share? (j) Do you believe your experiences during dual enrollment prepared you for the writing expected at your university? If so, in what ways? (k) Do you feel the experiences from college influenced your writing practices and/or processes currently? (l) Have your ideas about writing and yourself as a writer changed since dual enrollment? (m) Is there anything further you'd like to share regarding your journey through writing as a college student to a professional writer? 161 APPENDIX C Consent to Participate in Research Study Title: Voices from The Void: Dual Enrollment User eXperience with Composition Researcher and Title: Jerrice Renita Donelson Co-Researcher, donelso9@msu.edu Dr. Trixie Smith, PI, smit1254@msu.edu Department and Institution: WRAC, Michigan State University, CAL Contact Information: donelso9@msu.edu BRIEF SUMMARY You are being asked to participate in a research study of experiences as a Dual Enrollment Post- Secondary Enrollment Option student, particularly your experiences with composition. Your participation in this study will take about 2-4 hours maximum total. You will be asked to participate in individual and group interviews which may be conducted by video or audio. If you agree to participate, you must be given a signed copy of this document and a written summary of the research. You will not directly benefit from your participation in this study. However, your participation in this study may contribute to the understanding of how dual enrollment students as users of composition actually experience composition while matriculating on 4-year university campuses. PURPOSE OF RESEARCH The purpose of this research study is to add to the general knowledge of the field and discipline of composition and the purposes for high school students who are also DEPSEO students concurrently enrolled in college courses through programs such as dual enrollment. The hypothesis consists of the belief that former DEPSEO students or Dual Enrollment Users (DEU) user journeys can provide a perspective of how and in what ways composition’s usability can be realigned or repurposed to fit the needs of all students as users, including dual enrollment students. The objective is to learn of this journey as a method of user experience. WHAT YOU WILL BE ASKED TO DO In a video or audio interview, you will be asked to share personal experiences with composition as a DEPSEO student and user of composition. There will be two-stage interviews beginning with an individual interview and later, a group interview with other Dual Enrollment Users. During both stages, you will be asked questions regarding your experiences with composition during this time. The total time for both stages of interviews should not exceed 4 hours with the individual interviews to be one to one half hour. Your participation is completely voluntary and at any time you are free to refrain from or omit answering any questions whole or in part at liberty. POTENTIAL BENEFITS You may not benefit personally from being in this study. However, we hope that, in the future, 162 others might benefit from this study because of what your shared experiences may offer current or future dual enrollment user perspectives of composition, as well as composition’s usability. POTENTIAL RISKS The foreseeable risks associated with participating in this study may be emotional and psychological in nature from thinking or talking about one's own behavior or attitudes on sensitive topics. Questions asking you to recall, reflect, describe and share situations during your time as a DEPSEO student such as completing assigned writing tasks without prior knowledge, knowledge of or access to resources for composition, knowledge of or interpretation of expectations and outcomes of writing assignments, prior knowledge or experience with composition, application and writing process may cause feelings of discomfort or embarrassment. YOUR RIGHTS TO PARTICIPATE, SAY NO, OR WITHDRAW Your participation in this research is voluntary. You may choose not to participate at all, or you may refuse to participate in certain procedures or answer certain questions or discontinue your participation at any time without consequence. You can stop at any time after it has already started. There will be no consequences if you stop and you will not be criticized. PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY Interview data such as audio and video recordings and identifying information including signed consent forms will be kept on an encrypted external device. These recordings will not be used for other purposes than this research and the information may be stripped of identifiers. If you have questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, would like to obtain information or offer input, or would like to register a complaint about this study, you may contact, anonymously if you wish, the Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180, Fax 517-432-4503, or e-mail irb@msu.edu or regular mail at 4000 Collins Rd, Suite 136, Lansing, MI 48910. Signing this document means that the research study, including the above information, has been described to you orally, and that you voluntarily agree to participate. _____________________________ ____________ Signature of participant date 163