This program profile describes an intergenerational workshop focused on the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. The workshop was nested within a 15-week community-based intermediate composition course in which undergradu- ates interviewed older adults while older adults wrote personal narratives of their firsthand experiences during the rebellion. The workshop is an example of how intergenerational collaboration built around inquiry into historical events can be the basis for authentic community-university relationships.

Recent interest in reflective writing in the classroom is tied to the suggested links among reflection, metacognition, and learning transfer. There is still a limited understanding, however, about the distinguishing features of reflective writing and how teachers might identify and use these features to teach effective reflective practices and to interact with student reflective writing. This study uses Gorzelsky et al.’s (2016) taxonomy of metacognitive behaviors to examine the end-of-semester reflective essays of undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year writing course at a large midwestern university. The authors identify and describe a feature of student reflective writing involving the use of emotional language and, working from their findings, suggest a teaching strategy and set of classroom activities aimed at leveraging students’ emotive expressions in ways that foster metacognitive awareness.