"Neighborhoods, Communities, and Teaching Writing" Derek Owens Associate Professor of English & Director of the Writing Center St. John's University, Queens, New York City

Maybe I'm just a nosy person. But I've always had an interest in where my colleagues and my students live. What do their homes look like? Their blocks? Their apartment buildings, their backyards, their streets? Are these neighborhoods noisy? Tranquil? Serene? Chaotic? Is crime an issue? Would one want to walk there at night?

What kinds of economic classes are represented in the surrounding community? Is theirs a pretty affluent neighborhood? Upper middle class, middle middle class, or lower middle class (if in fact such categories even make much sense any more)? Mixed? Or is it predominantly a working class neighborhood? Or downright poor? Or perhaps, as is the case with some of my students from time to time, might their residence be the street itself, or an out of the way parking lot where one can live out of one's car?

Are the buildings in these neighborhoods architecturally engaging and creatively designed? Are they relatively homogenous and unexciting? Are they bleak? Should they be torn down and replaced? Or renovated? Or left untouched?

Is the landscape a busy urban area, a dense suburb, a sprawling suburb, or rural countryside? Are the people who live there happy? Tired? Lonely? Visible? Invisible? Socially active? Just trying to get by?

Above all else, how do these neighborhoods make one feel? Are they invigorating? Rejuvenating? Depressing? Nothing special, but basically satisfactory? Are these the kinds of places one wants to move out of as soon as possible? Or the type of community one wants to preserve, to hold on to for as long as one can? Are these places in a state of decline? Are they at risk? Are they on the rebound?

 Admittedly, part of my interest might just be your run-of-the-mill, garden variety voyeurism. You know what I'm talking about: the kind that, when you're taking a walk at night, causes you to peer into well-lit rooms to get a peek of how other people live--how they decorate their homes, how they spend their leisure time. The kind of nosiness that makes you contemplate how big your Provost's house really is, and what it must be like to live in a neighborhood like that.

But this fascination with where we live--the places and spaces we spend our lives, where we sleep, and work, and construct a life--it's more than just idle curiosity. In fact, I consider it a pedagogical necessity.

Although westerners have been conditioned from day one to separate the individual from his or her surroundings--to think in human-centric concepts of independence, autonomy, and sovereignty--we are in fact utterly, and intricately, woven into the places we live in. This is physically true, of course, as we inhale the air and drink the water found in our local arenas, along with any toxins found therein (www.chemicalbodyburden.org/home.html). But on various "psychic levels"--emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically--the places we call our own have profound, albeit largely unarticulated or unrealized effects upon us, and how we envision our worlds. If our neighborhoods and communities are thriving, then it'll probably be easier for us to be thriving as well. If they're depressing, chances are we'll be depressed (see Helen Epstein's article, "Enough to Make You Sick?" on how stress is killing more people in poor neighborhoods than perhaps any other environmental factor: www.nytimes.com/magazine).

What does this all of this have to do with basic writing and the teaching of composition? For me, quite a bit.

 As writing teachers, it's our responsibility to design assignments that aren't simply academic hoops for our students to jump through, but opportunities for them to think critically about subjects that matter a great deal to them. And it's our responsibility to choreograph conversations where our students aren't just passive listeners soaking up what we have to say, or what the readings in our textbooks have to say, but where they might be the experts, the authorities, the voices that demand listening to. On the other hand, I'm also one of those instructors who is reluctant to let students write about whatever suits their fancy--I need to be able to sink my teeth as well into the subjects they investigate. (I don't think I'm being selfish if I come out and say that I never, ever, want to read another essay on how a student won the big high school football game. Urgh!) In other words, in the writing classroom students and teachers need to meet each other halfway--to critically explore a subject that has immediate, local relevance, and in which nearly everyone can take an active interest.

I think an easy and compelling way to do this can be to make "place" the subject of a writing classroom, for at least a four week period, if not longer. I've found it's a great way to kick off a writing course, as my students tend to be just as nosy as I am about where they live. Beginning the second week of classes with a unit in which students start writing and talking about their neighborhoods, and what they think of them, is ideal for opening up conversations, and establishing some semblance of coherence and community within the classroom. When I do this, I'll draw a map of the tri-state New York metropolitan area on the board, and as each person talks about where he or she lives (for most of our students either commute or live within 50 miles of campus), I'll mark that spot on the map with their name. So far I've never had students fall asleep or express disinterest as their peers discuss why they love, or hate, or are indifferent to their neighborhoods. (And because so many of my students work 20-40 hours a week, in addition to their 15-18 credits, and on average commute over 10 hours a week, falling asleep in class is a perennial concern. I honestly think it's got less to do with what's going on in class, and more with the simple toll of sleep deprivation.)  

I've got a number of thoughts on why students and faculty would do well to explore and critique their local communities--how it all ties into what I call a sustainable pedagogy, and is related to recent work in critical pedagogy (O'Sullivan) and ecocomposition (Weisser and Dobrin). But I can get into that later as our discussion opens up. For now, here's a glimpse into where I'm coming from.

I think we need to get students writing and talking about their neighborhoods and local communities. Get them (if their neighborhoods are safe enough to support such activity) to go out and take photographs of their immediate neighborhoods, and to bring those pictures into class for discussion. Get them to describe in rich detail what their blocks or streets or cul de sacs are like, so that we can have a vivid image in our minds of where they're coming from--literally. Get them to go beyond surface descriptions, to the point where they're offering commentaries on how their neighborhoods make them feel, and why. Why these places are desirable or not. Get them to dig even deeper so they can begin contemplating why their neighborhoods have certain psychological effects on them: to offer insights into how the design of their homes and hoods and suburbs and cities create specific moods and emotions. And if there's time, get them to investigate, through the internet as well as their local libraries, the histories behind their communities. What were these places like 500 years ago? 200 years ago? 100? 50? 25? 10? And what might happen to them in the near future--where are they headed?

An Australian aboriginal tribe, the Pintuppi, have a word that means a lot to me, so much so I had printed on my baseball cap: ngurra. Roughly translated, the term not only refers to a physical location--campsite, landscape, the earth--but also to a person's sense of self. Ngurra points to a way of conceptualizing a combination of self and environs that, unfortunately, remains quite foreign  and bizarre to westerners like myself who grew up in a culture where these phenomenon are considered inherently separate. (Within the academy we have "the humanities," and "environmental studies," but these two disciplines are never expected to overlap.) It's this conceptualization of the self as inextricably situated within neighborhoods and ecosystems that fuels much of my work.

The places we live in are reflections of us, and vice versa. The health of our local communities is a mirror reflecting our own image. With this view in mind, I've recently begun working on a "21^st Century Neighborhoods" project, which would (if I can ever get grant support!) create a national consortium of writing faculty interested in investigating place-based pedagogies and designing assignments aimed at exploring, and ideally enhancing, our local communities. The project is still in its early stages--the website won't be ready until the end of this year--but this is something I wouldn't mind discussing further if anyone's interested.

 So: with all that in mind, some questions to kick off the conversations:  

        * What experiences have you had with a place-based pedagogy? What kinds of successes and failures have you encountered in getting students to write about their neighborhoods, communities, or simply places that matter to them?

          * For those of you who've made "place" a focal point in your classes, what exactly have you done? How have students responded?  

        * As for those who have reservations about structuring part or all of the writing classroom around students' local communities, how might the rest of us learn from your concerns?

          * What examples of place-based learning, neighborhood investigations, and related service-learning activities can you share with us?  

        * What would you like to say about your neighborhood, your community--and why do you think engaging in such a conversation is relevant to our pedagogy? (I've done something like this in a chapter titled "Place" in my  book Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation, NCTE Press 2001. I create a portrait of my neighborhood here in Lake Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, in New York, followed by a look at what many of my students at St. John's University think about their neighborhoods.)

          * What types of traditional and alternative forms could be introduced successfully into the classroom as mechanisms for further exploring one's neighborhood? I'm thinking, for example, of not just research papers, but  memoir, oral histories, photo essays, videotapes, and hand-made books, all which provide various angles for exploring elements of a neighborhood, its history, the people who live there.  

        * What might be some of the political and theoretical elements associated with any investigation into the study of communities and neighborhoods, particularly within a writing course? Is there a moral imperative here? A social or pedagogical responsibility? (I certainly think so--but would love to hear from those who are inclined to disagree.)

         * And finally, for an audience of "basic writers," why might exploring the intricacies of local neighborhoods be a particularly apropos assignment?

I hope this module will be of interest to some of you, and I look forward to some lively conversations!

          -- Derek (owensd@stjohns.edu)

 

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