Making Space for Deep Learning: A Conversation about Productive Quiet and Sustainable Teaching

 Future Professoriate Workshop

Sometimes, a quiet classroom can be unnerving. What does our students’ silence mean? This workshop invites participants to reconsider how spaces of quiet in classrooms can be both productive and necessary for deep learning. Participants will explore how they can design learning environments that slow down the pace for both students and teachers. This intentional slower pace can help teachers, as it is a way to manage the labor of teaching, and serve students, as it can make room for reflection and student-driven discovery.

Laura Davies is Professor of English and Associate Director of Writing Programs at SUNY Cortland. She teaches courses in first-year writing, technical writing, public rhetoric, and writing pedagogy. Her scholarship focuses on student composing processes, writing pedagogy, and writing program administration. She is the co-author of They Say / I Say with Readings (W. W. Norton & Co.), a textbook used by first-year writing students and high school students across the country. Davies is a a 2012 graduate of Syracuse University’s Composition and Cultural Rhetoric Ph.D. program.

The event is supported by the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition and the Graduate College at Syracuse University.