Service-learning - Community-engaged Writing

Community-engaged Writing

Community-engaged writing is a method of getting students to write toward and about public problems and issues. A variety of approaches are used by instructors, depending on age group of students and theoretical approach. Two illustrative/related summaries follow.

In “Literacy as Violence Prevention,” Ena Rosen, Associate Director of Need in Deed, describes a specific example of the teaching methods of Need in Deed, a Philadelphia-based education agency. This newsletter article is based on an anecdotal set of reports on an eighth grade teacher’s work with one classroom in 2005. Rosen’s purpose is to promote the effectiveness and work of Need in Deed, and Rosen ultimately shows that this method of working with urban youth is an effective teaching method and social intervention: “Meaningful service that addresses a root cause and meets an authentic community need: the best of service-learning and civic engagement” (Rosen).

In “Rogue Cops and Health Care: What Do We Want from Public Writing?” Susan Wells argues that writing teachers should not merely have students write within classrooms on socially relevant issues, such as gun control. She uses Habermas’s definition of the public sphere to analyze an example of a “citizen” attempting to enter the public sphere through discourse—President Clinton’s speech on health care reform—and ultimately demonstrates the failure of that effort. However, Wells contrasts Clinton’s failed strategies to get health care reform passed with a more local example of a Temple student who successfully entered the public sphere by writing a citizen’s complaint about his arrest and subsequent beating by a Philadelphia police officers. Wells concludes by suggesting four alternatives for writing teachers interested in helping students move their rhetoric into the public sphere: classroom as one type of public sphere itself, analysis of public and academic discourses, writing with and for public/community needs, and analysis of academic discourses as they intervene in the public sphere.

Works cited

Rosen, E. (2006). Literacy as violence prevention. Retrieved March 2, 2011, from Need in Deed: http://needindeed.org/static/LiteracyAsViolencePrevention.pdf Wells, S. (1996). "Rogue cops and health care: What do we want from public writing?". College Composition and Communication, 47 (3), 325–41.