The 2026 Fall Conference will be held on Friday / Saturday, October 23 - 24 at the Cascade Campus of Portland Community College in Oregon.

Program Co-Chairs

Local Arrangements Co-Chairs


Call for Proposals | Deadline June 12, 2026

CONFERENCE THEME: “SWIMMING SIDEWAYS”

In the Pacific Northwest, we are warned against rip currents—powerful, channeled currents that pull water away from the shore. If caught in a rip current, survival necessitates not swimming against the current but, instead, swimming parallel with the current until one is free of its pull and it is safe to swim back to shore.

Like waterways, our pedagogies and our personhoods are influenced by movement—historical, cultural, technological, and political. Together, we will consider how these currents carry us forward, where we encounter resistance, and how we might navigate them with intention and care.

As we reflect on these changes in the world of 2026, TYCA-PNW welcomes proposals that celebrate your work, that reveal your dilemmas, and that lay bare the shifting tides and currents in which you currently find yourself. We invite you to share strategies for swimming sideways in the face of the currents that might pull us away from the values that are deeply embedded in our instruction of first-year-composition.

As you develop your proposal, you might consider:

  • What currents are shaping your teaching right now?

  • Where do you see tension, resistance, or transformation?

  • How do you help students navigate complex intellectual and social landscapes?

  • What practices sustain you and your students in times of change?

  • How do you manage resistance, fatigue, and complex systems while maintaining or growing your work?

Thanks for a great conference! See the pictures below

“Poco a Poco | Little by Little”

Date: October 17-18, 2025

Location: Columbia Basin College

2600 North 20th Ave, Pasco, WA 99301

Conference co-chairs Annalee Kodman (akodman@columbiabasin.edu) or Amy Wortley (awortley@columbiabasin.edu)

Conference program

Alex Lee (alex.lee10@pcc.edu)

In a time when the challenges of teaching composition intersect with the demands of an increasingly polarized socio-political climate, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless. The pressure to cover all the bases—help students think critically about the news bombarding them, analyze every source, and compose thoughtful essays on complex issues—can feel like too much. We are each just single instructors with limited time and limited energy (be they AA or AAA batteries) to meet the course outcomes laid out in our syllabi. Overhauling our curriculum to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle probably isn’t realistic, but inaction also feels wrong. So what can we do?

In short: a little. But not "little" as in the meager bump of a cost-of-living raise—if you’re lucky enough to get one. Think of "little" instead as the dash of salt that transforms a dish. When it feels like we should be doing everything, let's resist the urge to either take on too much or lapse into inaction. Instead, let's try to embrace the power of small steps.

The theme of TYCA-PNW’s 2025 conference is poco a poco—Italian for “little by little.” This year, we invite you to share your small wins, small steps forward, and small moments of encouragement. Another term for these moments is “glimmers” as coined by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana in her 2018 book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy. Glimmers are the opposite of triggers. They are moments of joy when the nervous system is regulated or in a calm and connected state. We believe that these little glimmers are what sustain us and our students through challenging times.

TYCA-PNW welcomes proposals to celebrate your glimmers. Our goal is to create a space where the joys of teaching composition are celebrated, even amid the stresses of the profession. Together, we’ll explore how to uphold the values of equity, critical thinking, and open dialogue in our classrooms. By balancing positivity with purpose, we’ll reaffirm the vital role of composition in shaping a more thoughtful, just, and empathetic society.

Join us to discover how glimmers and small steps can create big change—poco a poco.