Drawing from a qualitative study, we share findings that demonstrate how students articulate and express emotion in reflection. As they reflect on their writing identities, processes and products, peer and instructor feedback, and assess their work, the students in our study routinely discuss their emotions. Our essay closes with pedagogical strategies for helping students reflect on their thinking and feeling about writing.

This essay presents a polyvocal review of the 2019 Conference on Community Writing. It is composed of a series of vignettes and reflections written by the authors, community partners, conference organizers, educators, and others who attended the conference. Together, these reflections examine a central theme of the conference, “the work” of community writing, by attending to four questions: 1) What is the work of the Conference on Community Writing, and what does it tell us about the state of the subfield of community-engaged writing?; 2) What spaces does the conference encompass, and who is included in these spaces?; 3) What are the material realities that enable and constrain our work, in and beyond the conference?; and 4) What work is unfinished, and what will sustain us as we tackle it? The polyvocal essay presented here examines these questions through multiple positionalities within community writing studies, ultimately arguing that attending to the diversity of voices, stories, and perspectives in community writing must guide our efforts to understand community writing as a field and imagine its future work.

Young people have the potential to transform public perspectives about pressing social issues—if their audiences listen deeply to what they have to say. This article examines the ways that high school student participants in a community-university writing partnership employ self-disclosure, or emotion sharing, to encourage audiences to listen empathically to performances about complex social issues. Our analysis of two student performance pieces reveals rhetorical strategies that might promote empathic listening. We argue that empathic listening is a necessary precondition for the kind of collective community listening that can lead to social change.

Scholarship in community writing and service-learning has called attention to the lack of community partner voices in the assessments of writing partnerships. This article foregrounds those missing perspectives by reporting on the consequences of a community literacy program, Writing for Change, from the perspective of the high school youth involved. Analysis of high school student interviews and letters demonstrates myriad benefits of the partnership, extending from personal growth to a heightened sense of social responsibility. However, our study also reveals disconnect between participants’ development as writers and rhetoricians and their perceptions of that growth and its relevance to their academic work. We ultimately argue for the importance of building connections between the rhetorical activism often forwarded by community literacy programs and the “school literacies” that youth associate with writing.