Summer Session 2026

Disrupting the Transaction: Humanizing College-Ready Writing in the Age of AI.

In collaboration with KQED.

Join us this summer from June 15th-18th for our second summer program focused on AI! We are excited to present Dr. Marie Heath as our keynote speaker. All teachers who register and attend will receive a complimentary copy of Dr. Heath’s new book, Critical AI in K-12 Classrooms – A Practical Guide for Cultivating Justice and Joy.

While the ubiquity of AI can raise fundamental questions about our role as teachers and the ethics of technology, its emergence also offers us an opportunity to question transactional writing practices that can undermine student learning and their sense of themselves as writers. In the age of AI, we suggest that it is essential to disrupt transactional approaches to writing in favor of those that center student process, authority, and voice.

We will partner with KQED on Tuesday, June 16th. Rachel Roberson will join us to share strategies for AI integration that center student voice and promote critical media literacy and awareness.

Our Summer Program invites these essential questions:

• How can we build classrooms that engage in humanizing pedagogies of “writing” and “rigor” and reduce students’ desire to outsource their work?
• How can we focus on a writing process more than a product?
• How can we cultivate and center student voice in the age of AI?
• How can we support student partnership with AI rather than their dependence on it?
• How can we promote critical media literacy perspectives in students and ourselves as we use AI technologies?

Who: Our Summer Session is for secondary teachers in grades 7 - 12. It is free for everyone. Spots are limited.

University Credit Options: You can purchase (up to) 3 units from San José State University for university credits that will fulfill expectations towards progress along teachers’ salary schedules.

When: June 15th - June 18th (Monday through Thursday), 10:00 AM - 2:30 PM with approximately 1-hour lunch break each day.

Where: San José State University campus, Sweeney Hall room 229

Please consult the Campus Map to find our location and suitable parking. We recommend that you enter the campus from the South Entrance (7th Street and San Salvador Street), and turn into the parking garage on your left.

***Please note the registration only displays one date, however by signing up, you are signing up for all four dates, Monday-Thursday.***

Summer Session Schedule

Day 1 – Monday, June 15th

Morning Session: Keynote Address by Marie Heath, Ed.D.

Afternoon Session: “Disrupting the Transaction: Centering Student Voice & Choice in the Writing Classroom,” led by Andy Robinson

Many high school writing teachers have seen an explosion in students using generative AI to complete assignments. As John Warner argues in his book More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, much of writing education – and education in general – has become a transaction, while the ability to generate this type of transactional writing has become one of AI’s clearest strengths. This session will explore how writing teachers can reimagine assessments in ways that center student voice and choice, disrupt the rote transaction that students are so willing to outsource to AI, and reinvigorate the writing classroom for students and teachers alike.

Day 2 – Tuesday, June 16th with Special Guest KQED

“Centering Student Voice in a GenAI World”

Morning Session: Rachel Roberson, KQED

We will explore and discuss KQED's Guidelines for Responsible Use of Generative AI, which promote student voice and transparency, and address accuracy and bias. In a world where AI generates a product in seconds, how can we emphasize and support students’ process, and where would AI fit? We will unpack the “process crisis” with specific examples of trace, curation and dialogue as they relate to English and writing instruction.

Afternoon Session: Rachel Roberson, KQED

We will explore an example of “trace”: using AI to provide feedback on student first drafts. This session will offer the “how-to” strategy and – more importantly – a discussion and reflection on feedback and the value of this use of AI. Finally, we will highlight how GenAI feedback prompting can help students position themselves as a partner rather than a subordinate in their usage of GenAI.

Day 3 – Wednesday, June 17th

Morning Session: “Defining College-Ready Writing in the Age of AI,” led by Bronwyn LaMay

High school teachers often feel pressure to prepare students for the demands of college writing, but can present “college-ready writing” in ways that differ from what this actually is. While college writing can ask students to engage in scholarly dialogue to advance a perspective in a field, a more transactional approach can ask students to produce a specific text format and perform “measurable” skills for the purpose of evaluation -- tasks more easily outsourced to AI. College writing may ask students to make writerly decisions that feel difficult when they are conditioned to compliance or have learned to compromise their voice. In this session, we will consider how some first-year writing programs help students regenerate their sense of themselves as writers, where qualities like voice and authority matter. What might authentic preparation look like at the high school level?

Afternoon Session: We will devote the afternoon to implementation and planning time.

Day 4 – Thursday, June 18th

Morning Session: “Considering Alternatives: Broadening Perspectives on the Role of AI in Education,” led by Scott Jarvie

"AI is here to stay." "AI will revolutionize education." "AI is a powerful tool for developing students' writing." Do these statements sound familiar? This session aims to broaden educators' perspectives on the emergence of AI in education beyond popular notions of inevitability, instrumentalism, and optimism. While these notions may resonate, their popularity is undoubtedly a product of the hype: the many billions invested in promoting AI's adoption and daily use, in schools and beyond them. Such hype, of course, isn't particularly concerned with the truth. What we do know, for sure, is that ChatGPT was not developed as an educational technology. Together, we'll keep that in mind as we explore two alternative perspectives on AI-in-schools, technoskepticism and refusal, which may help educators develop and sustain a humanizing approach to teaching writing today.

Afternoon Session: We will devote the afternoon to implementation and planning time before ending the week with reflection and closing.

Instructors

Marie K. Heath, Ed.D.

Dr. Marie K. Heath (she/her) is not a robot, but sometimes she busts out her awkward robot dance, much to her children’s dismay. She currently works as Department Chair of Education Specialties and as an Associate Professor of Learning Design and Technology at Loyola University Maryland. Prior to her work in higher education, Marie taught high school social studies in Baltimore County Public Schools. Her scholarship interrogates schools and technologies as current sites of encoded oppression, and labors to advance more just technological and educational futures.

Since earning her doctorate in 2016, Marie has published over 50 scholarly articles, book chapters, and proceedings on AI, technology, justice, equity, and education, which have been cited over 900 times. Her book, co-authored with friend and colleague Dr. Stephanie Smith Budhai, Critical AI in K-12 Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Cultivating Joy and Justice, was recently published with Harvard Education Press. She has also published policy reports on AI and Education through NORRAG and to the United Nations General Assembly, via the Special Rapporteur on the right to education.

Rachel Roberson

In Collaboration with KQED

Rachel Roberson is senior program manager for education at KQED, where she brings together her passion for student voice, media literacy, and creative storytelling to support educators and classrooms. As a nonprofit, public media partner, Rachel leads the development of KQED’s Youth Media Challenge curriculum and professional learning workshops, and is a course writer and instructor on KQED Teach. This work has taken her to conferences, including ISTE, NCTE, CATE and CUE, where she has presented on how media storytelling can spark learning and creative expression across subjects and grade levels. In her 15 years as a classroom teacher, Rachel taught middle school English, ELD, humanities core and social studies, and served as a literacy coach and teacher leader in California, Texas and internationally. Before becoming an educator, she was a newspaper reporter in the Bay Area. Rachel has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's in teaching leadership from St. Mary's College of California. When not sharing her love of media literacy, Rachel enjoys reading and swapping book recs, traveling, writing, hiking with her wife and dog, and any type of food or wine tasting.

Andy Robinson

For the past 17 years, Andy Joseph “A.J.” Robinson has been a teacher at Title I public high schools in the Bay Area, creating and implementing primarily English/Language Arts & Performing Arts curricula, but also developing courses in Restorative Justice (as featured on the PBS Nova Documentary “School of the Future”), Ethnic Studies, Advisory, Film, and Media Arts. He has directed, produced, and co-written seven full-length hip-hop and poetry-based plays with high school students and has been a guest teacher in courses at Stanford, San José State, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State. The chapter of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World which includes research and analysis of the impact of Robinson’s work argues that in an educational environment that consistently alienates low-income youth of color, his classroom is “giving students a place to engage and belong.” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 130) More recently, his writing, curricula, and extracurricular programs were featured in the book Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures with his chapter “Hip Hop, Whiteness, & Critical Pedagogies in the Context of Black Lives Matter” (Alim, Chang, & Wong, 2023, p. 322).

Scott Jarvie

Scott is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State, where he teaches courses in English Education for graduate students pursuing a teaching credential. A former director of the San Jose Area Writing Project, Scott joined the faculty at SJSU after receiving his Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University, where he helped with the Red Cedar Writing Project. He is the author of Affect, Learning, and Teacher Education: Getting Stuck in Social Justice, written with Erica Colmenares. Prior to graduate study, Scott taught high school literature and creative writing courses in the Rio Grande Valley and in the city of Chicago.

Bronwyn LaMay

Bronwyn has been a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator for over 20 years in the Bay area. She has taught middle and high school English in Oakland, Hayward, East Side Union, and Santa Clara. She has her Phd from Stanford in English and Literacy Curriculum, her MA from Mills College in Educational Leadership, and her BA in English from UCLA. A few years ago, she published what began as a literacy curriculum that she co-created with her students; it revolved around their self-narratives on the topic of love. The book, Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom, was awarded NCTE’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for 2017. Bronwyn currently lectures in the Departments of English and Teacher Education at San José State, and has worked with the Writing Project as a teacher consultant and participant for many years prior to becoming a director.