Gleaning

Yesterday, my students and I took our second gleaning trip this semester to a farm in Hendersonville, NC. We ended up with 40 students, filling two UNCA shuttle buses and several cars. It was another chilly but gorgeous WNC day, and in a mere 3 hours at the farm, we managed to glean 4,000 pounds of apples, a large crate of cabbages, and another one of pumpkins. I'm so proud of the efforts of these first-semester freshmen!

Thanks to our community partner, Society of St. Andrew, we were able to load the produce right into Rose of Sharon Mission's truck. I had met Charles and Wilene Williamson, the General Directors of the mission, on our last gleaning trip, and I was excited to see them again and asked about the 2,500 pounds of apples we'd gathered for their organization two weeks ago. Mr. Williamson smiled and told me that the people he and his wife served out in Canton were really excited to have the fresh fruit, but that it was long gone. Hopefully, what we were able to gather yesterday will last a bit longer, but the reality is that there will be little more to harvest in the months to come, and many families in WNC will be forced to subsist on what canned goods and packaged, processed foods they can get through the winter.

I'm excited to work with the Society of St. Andrew with my classes again next fall, but as there will be nothing ready to glean during the spring semester, I'll be looking for other ways to support the organizations in our community that work to make real food accessible to as many people as possible.  My students will continue their work in the community gardens at UNCA which the Student Environmental Center is hoping to expand enough to provide for local food banks, but I'd like to explore off campus opportunities as well. I welcome any and all suggestions!

Food Matters: Cultivating a New Plot

In the past, I have always given my first-year writing students the opportunity to focus their semester on a topic of their choosing and then attempted to find corresponding community partners so that their service and topics were as closely related as possible.  I feel strongly about providing opportunities for student choice since, as Donald Murray urges in “All Writing Is Autobiography,” it allows students to focus and develop their own passions and they are therefore more invested in their written work (73).  I am also, however, concerned with the correlation between my students’ service and their topics.  As Nutefall argues in “The Relationship between Service Learning and Research,” “The theme-based approach . . . is based on the ‘assumption that good writing and good research happen when students consider the writing/research process within a particular context, with a particular purpose, and with a particular audience’” (252).  As much as I have tried to connect students with service-learning projects that are meaningfully related to their topics and as hard as I have tried to base our class discussions around readings related to community and service, at times I have still felt a disconnect between students’ writing and their experiences in the community.

Based on these observations and concerns, I have decided to try a different approach in my service-learning classes this semester, initiating a theme-based structure in which all students are writing on similar topics and participating in the same service-learning projects while still attempting to preserve an element of choice in the class.  This has enabled me to choose readings that will be intricately related to both student writing and community involvement. Working with a colleague and the UNCA Key Center, I developed a first-year writing course titled "Food Matters" through which my students can explore the complex issues surrounding food production and accessibility through reading, writing, research, and service in the community.

This semester, my students have been working with the UNCA Student Environmental Center cultivating and maintaining the three community gardens on campus as well as gleaning produce at local farms. So far it's been a rewarding adventure! 

Service-Learning Celebration, Spring 2014

Last semester, an unfortunate raccoon thwarted the Undergraduate Research Symposium and Service-Learning Celebration when he fell into the electric transformer facility and shut down power to the campus.  This semester, however, we were back on track with both events.  My service-learning classes took full advantage of this opportunity to share their work with a wider audience with twenty students presenting at the celebration.  A big thanks to the student presenters, the community partners, and the UNCA Key Center!

Service-Learning Celebration, Spring 2014

This semester, twenty students from my two service-learning designated classes volunteered to present their projects at the Service-Learning Celebration!  While the turnout for the event was less than expected, the students did a wonderful job presenting their work and talking with the community members and students in attendance.

Service-Learning Meet and Greet, Fall 2013

Every semester, I try to provide my students with enough information about the different community organizations working with our classes so that they can make informed placement requests.  Over the summer, I started thinking about how much more effective it would be for my students to hear this information directly from representatives of these organizations instead of me.  So I invited all fourteen community partners who had confirmed interest in working with my students this semester to come and present to my classes.  Knowing how busy non-profit organizations are, I was hoping to hear back from maybe half of them, expecting only five or six to actually be able to make it.  The response I got was a complete surprise!

Almost every organization expressed and interest in coming to UNCA and presenting to my classes, and in the end, ten of them were able to make it.  Both classrooms were packed, and the community representatives were able to give my students specific information about the needs of their organizations, current projects, and the application process.

I offer my thanks to everyone who made my first service-learning meet and greet on August 30th such a success:

Emily Lindesmith, ABCCM

Lindsay Kazi, Asheville Middle School

Ben Herring, Brother Wolf Animal Rescue

Robin Mehler, Girls on the Run

Emma Harver, LEAF

Jim Faucett, Youth Outright

Ryan Rosemond, UNCA Rhodes Property

Amy Leitner, In Real Life

Traci Thompson, Women's Wellbeing and Development Foundation

Susannah Crawford, HAPI Lab           

2012-2013 Feedback from Community Partners

At the end of each semester, I send out a survey to the community organizations my students have worked with, asking for feedback about the partnership.  While the response rate has been lower than I would like, their comments are always reaffirming:

"We love our UNCA service learning volunteers- they bring high levels of engagement and enthusiasm, connect with the kids, and truly add value to our programming."

"The kids really enjoyed having some young, energetic people in the classrooms. It also was a huge help to teachers-- breaking the classes into smaller groups so they could concentrate energy on students with the highest need."

"[One student] was a great volunteer with In Real Life- he was reliable, flexible, and most of all worked extremely well with the kids."

"[The students were able to] build relationships with our folks and to begin to understand the way homelessness hurts our entire community. Also helped with specific needs in the community."

"[One student] was fantastic. She helped with office tasks, though her most valuable contribution was in translating documents for us into Spanish and she wrote an article for the Spanish newspaper in West Asheville to promote GS to that community."

"We gained a dedicated volunteer for one of our EC classes, and the students greatly benefited from the extra adult support, as well as interacting with an 'outside' adult."

"[One student] was very helpful in any task assigned to her. LEAF gained a competent and dedicated volunteer and are excited she is coming back for the Spring semester."

Congratulations!

Two of my students from this past fall semester have landed internships with the community organizations they began working with during their LANG 120 service-learning project.

Samantha Singer is continuing her work with LEAF in Schools & Streets.

Sam's blog: http://samhsinger.blogspot.com/ 

Emily Lindesmith is interning at a program called Our Circle that is run by ABCCM.  She writes, "[t]he program is a part of a study for the Department of Labor," the purpose being to determine if vocational programs are more effective when participants receive a 'circle' of mentors."  Emily has also volunteered to serve as a liaison between service-learning classes at UNCA and ABCCM in attempt to strengthen and sustain a working partnership between the two organizations.

Emily's blog: http://emilylindesmith.tumblr.com/

Congratulations to both of them!