Service-Learning and Freshman Composition

I began my adventures in service-learning a few years ago while teaching freshman composition at A-B Tech Community College. I wanted to give my students an opportunity to explore something that was meaningful to them rather than asking them to write on topics that sparked my interest. Besides, I've sat down to read sixty-odd papers on the same prompt before, and no matter how good they are, by the end of the stack, I'm as bored with the topic as a second-semester sophomore in a lunch-time lecture on a rainy afternoon.

Over the course of the next few years, I shifted and revised my course based on my experiences and observations in the classroom, readings in the field, and the changing realities of my population and department as I moved from teaching at A-B Tech to UNCA. My first semester at UNCA is now almost at an end, and while it has definitely been a learning experience, I feel as though it has been effective, interesting, and enjoyable for both me and the students.

As Thomas Deans explains in Writing and Community Action: A Service-Learning Rhetoric with Readings, the term “service-learning emphasizes two complementary purposes for the approach: to provide a pragmatic service to the community and to engage in meaningful learning” (24). Utilizing Deans’ book and focusing on these goals specifically this past semester, my classes have analyzed and discussed readings on writing and community, reflected upon their service-learning experiences in both formal and informal writing assignments, and shared their projects through group activities, peer review, and presentations. This format has provided the opportunity for my students to explore through writing their own identities, not only as individuals, but also as members of a classroom community, the UNCA community, and the greater Asheville community. It has allowed students to focus and develop their passions as Donald Murray urges in “All Writing Is Autobiography” and encouraged the cross-culture dialogue and rhetorical listening that Krista Ratcliffe’s “Rhetorical Listening” promotes. I have indeed found, as Deans explains, that the “service energizes and deepens the learning, and the learning energizes and deepens the service” (24).


Works Cited

Deans, Thomas. Writing and Community Action: A Service-Learning Rhetoric with Readings. New York: Longman, 2003. Print.

Murray, Donald M. All Writing Is Autobiography. n.p.: 1990. ERIC. Web. 3 Dec. 2012.

Ratcliffe, Krista. "Rhetorical Listening: A Trope For Interpretive Invention And A "Code Of Cross-Cultural Conduct.." College Composition And Communication 51.2 (1999): 195-224. ERIC. Web. 3 Dec. 2012.