The Power of the Pen: Writing Mentorship and Chicana/o M.A. Students

Abstract

This article draws on my experience as an adjunct professor in the Master's program of the Department of Mexican-American Studies at a large public university in California. Seeing my students’ struggles with writing, I conceived of a set of practices of writing mentorship anchored by a series of writing workshops held in Summer 2012. In this article, I document the pedagogy and content of these writing workshops in order to think about the unique struggles and opportunities Chicana/o Master's students face in the writing process and to provide an outline for other instructors interested in developing a practice of writing mentorship.

Keywords:

• Chicana/o graduate students
• writing
• teaching practice
• pedagogy
• Master's programs
• higher education

Notes

¹All names are pseudonyms.