FOCUS ON POLICY: Cultivating Transcultural Citizenship: A Writing Across Communities Model

In an increasingly globalized world, in which demographics suggest that the U. S. population is becoming increasingly diverse, educational institutions are focusing almost exclusively on learning outcomes and generally ignoring learning incomes—i.e., what students bring with them when they come to school. To mitigate this trend, the author draws on his work with Michelle Hall Kells to describe a cultural ecology model that provides the tools students need to become transcultural citizens. The author considers how a move from writing across the curriculum to writing across communities in elementary and middle school classrooms—and through it, the teaching, learning, and use of writing in communities outside of school contexts—can be integrated into such a model. This essay is an attempt to think through how that might be done.