Service Learning, Developing Writers, and Writing for Change

Ann Green
St. Joseph's University

A few years ago, my first-year students and I sat in a hot basement coffee bar on campus, waiting for adult learners from the GED tutoring site we work with to arrive. They were late; traffic is terrible between the Center and the University. As we waited I looked around the room and watched how nervous my first year students were. They had spent the last six months working with these adult learners at a church in the Olney section of Philadelphia , but this would be the first time that the adults would visit them on campus.

We had asked the learners to come to campus to celebrate their accomplishments and read from their writing. When the learners arrived, they immediately sought out the one or two tutors they had worked with and sat together. As each learner went to the microphone to read, the tutors went to the microphone as well, both to introduce the learners and to stand with them as they read. It was in these moments that I witnessed some of the potential power of service learning, to bridge differences, to provide opportunities for listening carefully to those who are often silenced, and to see some students come to a more complex understanding of a systemic inequality that they would—prior to the course—probably have dismissed as an individual failing (see Cushman, Flower, and Parks and Goldblatt for more on links between the community and the university).

I teach service-learning courses to link the community and the classroom and to provide students with ways of linking their academic work with work in their communities. Often service in the community provides a more immediate context for issues that we discuss in class. For example, working with an immigrant adult learner who must pass a high school equivalency test provides context for students who have just completed their own series of mandated testing. Students can then think critically about how mandatory testing effects different groups of people who may be similar along lines of race and class.

Service learning has three overlapping components that differentiate it from community service. First, the service experience itself must be relevant and meaningful to the course work (where possibly, my students do literacy work or English as a Second Language tutoring). Second, the service experience must enhance the academic content of course. Third, the service must provide meaningful civic engagement ( Service-Learning Course Design Workbook ). At my institution, students perform two to three hours of weekly service in the community for a total of 30 hours per semester. This amount of time at the service-learning site provides many opportunities for students to first observe and then think critically about the service experience.

While there are many ways to imagine service learning linking with a writing course, the type of service learning that I advocate is relationship-based. By relationship-based service learning, I mean service in the community where students directly encounter the “other” and interact with him/her. Students in the courses that I teach work with wheel chair bound adults, homeless women, adults earning their GEDS, and English as a Second Language adults.

Particularly with traditional-aged first year students, I find it important to ask them to work with adults or teenagers. For developing writers, the opportunity to mentor and tutor at-risk teenagers can prove to be empowering and lead to a stronger commitment to course content and opportunities for revision. Often students who have been historically disempowered by the educational system welcome the opportunity to give back to their communities and to act as a mentor rather than their traditional disempowered position of being the one “served” by an after school tutoring program.

As service learning is most effective when course content links closely with the service experience, working with adults at the service site facilities critical thinking about course readings concerning poverty, racism, and social class. If the course includes a literature component, often students can take poems or short prose pieces to the service-learning site and discuss these with their learners (see Green 2001 for more on literature and the service-learning classroom).

The service itself need not involve writing for the site to be effective, although preparing a brochure or document for a service-learning site can be a useful experience. Students should, however, regularly reflect on the service experience through writing. Rather than calling these reflections a “journal,” I often refer to them as critical responses or field notes.

At the beginning of the semester, I emphasize description in these field notes. Students are often inclined to write about the service experience as either a “before the grace of God go I” moment or with pity for those being served. By initially focusing on description and then leading students to analytic work that connects the service experience to course readings, students are able to begin to understand how systemic social change is necessary. In this way, service learning can teach critical thinking.

As a concluding assignment, I often ask students to identify a systemic issue and write to an person in a position of power about this issue. Because much of our work often focuses on education, another final assignment asks students to create their ideal educational system based both on the service experience, their own educational experiences, and the course readings. Asking students to imagine an ideal educational system gives them an opportunity to reflect on and synthesize course readings, as well as a way of imagining and hoping for change.

Often implicit in the service learning experience are encounters that cross race, class, gender, and dis/ability lines. I have found it particularly useful to address race through course readings on whiteness and white privilege, and class through readings on working-class identity. Readings from Dorothy Allison, Barbara Smith, and Dalton Conley have been particularly useful in thinking about social class, race, and whiteness. As we think together about service learning and developing writers, I would be particularly interested in listening to how others deal with issues of differences between the service-learning site and the classroom. Some questions that I'm wondering about are:

•  What advantages do you see to including service learning in basic writing courses? What disadvantages?

•  What is service learning like for nontraditional aged students?

•  How do you address “difference” in the service-learning classroom?

•  How do you integrate the service experience with course content?

•  If weekly service by individual students isn't possible, are other kinds of service possible? (Class visits to local elementary schools, letter-writing projects between different groups, and days of service at community organizations?) How would this work differently?

•  What books and assignments can you imagine that would move students toward critical thinking and systemic change?

•  What is the greatest difficulty in implementing service learning at your institution?

•  How do you select service-learning sites for your students?

•  What kinds of supports are available for faculty who wish to integrate service learning into their classrooms?

•  How do students respond to service learning?

•  How can we make service learning and service-learning programs sustainable?

I look forward to the conversation!

Links

Useful Works for Thinking about Service Learning

Teaching Basic Writing