When Sherry stops by Duane’s office and asks about his seven-month-old grandson, his face lights up. His response is no different from that of another colleague who has planned a trip to see her twenty-year-old son, who recently moved 1,450 miles away from home. Family is one of the most important connections we have as human beings. Whether it is the family we are born into or the one we construct for ourselves, it is the relationship with the members that is central to how we have shaped and identified ourselves. As writers we are often drawn to the people and events that have preceded us in time and space. Researching and writing about familial connections allows us to have a deeper cultural and social understanding of who we are because of where we come from. During the last twelve months, Sherry has witnessed a similarity among the 140 students who have completed the first year of family writing courses being offered through our campus: each student has been invested in becoming a better writer—perhaps it is the connection the student has to the stories she hears and the evidence she locates. As the writing teacher, Sherry is most excited to see students having opportunities to be engaged in writing that is meaningful to not only the students but also those around them, and students are conducting research with passion. In the writing and recording family history program at Arizona State University at the Polytechnic campus, students are encountering projects that provide the opportunity to weave personal interest with academic research without the limitations of imposed traditional topics and formats. This past summer Sherry worked with a particular student who wrote in her introductory blog entry that she had often associated family with some embarrassment because her family’s southern roots were poor and uneducated. The student stated that one of her goals for the course was to learn as much as she could about her maternal grandfather of whom she knew very little. During the brief five weeks, she was able to locate a family member who shared with her the details of her grandfather’s life and allowed her to see her grandfather as an instrumental role in Civil Rights for the small southern town where he lived. From conducting this interview, she was able to find snippets of her grandfather’s life in printed texts, which led her to a conversation with the state senator and a writer at the New York Times. She worked tirelessly in learning about her grandfather’s history; she contacted everyone she could find who knew her grandfather, which allowed her to see him through many lenses. Using the ethnographic research strategies discussed in class, she examined the culture, language and customs of the south during the 1950s and 1960s. Her work included details of how traditional class separation, gender roles, and religious influences affected the life of her family members. She made a full-time job out of historically contextualizing her grandfather in time and place. In her last-day-of-class metacognitive analysis, she wrote how the process of learning about the life of her grandparent in the times he lived allowed her to find a source of where she came from, which instilled a sense of pride for her heritage. Additionally she noted that the projects she completed forced her to leave her own preconceived notions about her family’s history behind. A couple of the projects this student embarked upon were: a biography of someone over 70 years old; description of a place in time prior to 1975; a research proposal for family history research. All projects in “Introduction to Family History Writing” include both primary and secondary research sources. In another family writing class, Writing a Personal History, students participate in student-led discussions over a text from an approved list of family narratives/autobiographies/memoirs; students examine the rhetorical devices used by the author. Additionally students produce projects that investigate the traditions and cultures of family. In both classes all students have the opportunity to explore the details of their own family or that of another. All projects ask students to think about audience and purpose to select the appropriate medium. Some students produce wikis while other students build websites with PowerPoint presentations and audio embedded. Students employ critical and analytical thinking skills and decide why the medium selected meets the needs of the intended audience and purpose. While some teachers prefer the traditional essay format, many of our students have technological skills that allow them to display writing proficiency while engaging in a text-centered alternative. If a student does not have strong research skills, she can develop them through family history research projects. Students not only have the opportunity to conduct primary research (i.e. interviews) but also search secondary sources (i.e., archives and newspaper databases.) Regardless of the struggles writers face in academic classrooms, family research and writing establish an opening for basic writers to develop academic research skills through “real world” application and provides topics for invention to jump-start the writing process in a non-threatening way. Students bring with them rich cultural backgrounds where the bank of possibilities is plenty. We do not find plagiarized papers when students are given the chance to write about family members, places, and culture that are meaningful to their own personal history. The blank screen does not hinder the process for students when they are given freedom in academic space. Students of all writing levels benefit from the option to explore family research and writing. Discussion Questions:
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