The Problem Today, many college composition courses have become breeding grounds for student apathy. A variety of factors contribute to this situation, not the least of which is freshmen's lack of confidence as writers. Freshman English programs are typically isolated from other disciplines' knowledge-producing processes, in spite of their intimate bond (Dorman and Dorman, 119), a scenario that encourages students' misperceptions about the writing course and features compositionists as ivory-tower relics, arbitrary and niggling in their expectations and out of touch with the "real" world. Depending on the individual teacher, such perceptions may be justified. But the problem is more systemic. A high percentage of U.W.S.P. students come to college accustomed to earning good grades in high school and expect to maintain that G.P.A. in college; when they don't, either because their high school English classes ill-prepared them for academic writing or because university classes are generally more rigorous, many adopt the defeatist attitude of doing "whatever it takes to earn an A," which shifts the focus from their writing to what the professor, presumably, "wants." This zero-sum game frequently manifests itself in students' spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get "the words right" and not on tackling the messy, riskier business of critical thinking and writing. Other students react by chalking up class to "doing time" or feel so incompetent that they entreat their teachers to "rip up" their writing (Huot, 169). Like their compatriots chasing that elusive mot juste, these students have effectively disowned their writing and disengaged from class. By far the most common complaint leveled against freshman English classes, however, is that the writing assigned seems artificial and unrelated to life outside academe. Since the majority of students care about learning when it interests them or has meaning and purpose, it is no wonder that traditionally-taught composition courses readily mire our students in disaffection and ennui. Possible Solutions: One civic-minded innovation that has generated great excitement among composition students and teachers alike--and that is reinjecting real-world relevance into freshman English classes while confronting students with pressing social problems--is service-learning. Service-learning in composition classes has been heralded as a way to enhance student engagement in coursework, especially for those whose learning styles do not mesh well with traditional classroom pedagogies (like the "sage on the stage" lecture-only format). It also responds to today's students' needs by giving them hands-on experiences writing for a public, real-world audience.

Evidence of Student Learning & Methods of Analysis Since fall, 2008 I have collected and will in the future collect the following types of student writing to analyze (from both the service-learning and control classes): informal and formal journals; peer group responses to the formal journals; and term papers. I will assess this writing using grounded theory (GT), a type of content analysis that induces its theoretical apparatus from examining systematically collected data (rather than imposing a pre-existing theory on the data). In order to gain students' approval to evaluate their writing, a third party will give them a consent form (approved by the IRB) to read and sign; these forms are then collected and stored in a locked file cabinet until I turn in my final grades. (Below see both my IRB Informed Consent Form and IRB Proposal for the research). As students reflect on their service experiences, they keep two types of weekly journals: an informal, more private one for me, and a formal one for small groups of their peers. In their journals each week, students write about their service experiences, applying a different writing skill learned earlier in the semester. The formal journals are revisions of the private journals based on feedback from me and excluding all personal information; these are then assessed by their peers, a process that habituates students to the peer reviewing they already do for formal papers. The journal entries are written with a rubric based on the one used by Gregory Jay, UW-Milwaukee Professor of English who teaches a 100-level, service-based multicultural literature course. In adidition to giving students more practice with various modes of writing and types of argumentation, the journals help students negotiate the often messy terrain of service and formulate their term papers with an eye towards constructing sound counter arguments (Below see Appendices C, D, and E for all Journal assignments). After teaching at least two semesters of the service-based courses, I plan to administer a satisfaciton survey so that students can self-report their perceptions of and attitudes toward service learning. (See below Appendix F below for the survey). IRB Informed Consent Form IRB Proposal for Analysis of Student Writing Service Learning Informal Journals Assignment Service-Learning Formal Journals Assignment Peer Review Assignments for Service-Learning Journals

Related Documents Feedback Form for Service-Learning Community Partners Template for Students' Initial Email Contact with Agency Service-Learning Community Partner Agreement Professor's Service-Learning Agreement with Community Partner Examples of Service-Learning Projects for Freshman English Composition Students

Project Summary A substantial body of literature attests to the greater cognitive and affective gains students involved in community-based writing initiatives make over their peers in non-service-related courses (NCTE and AHE, 2000, Cushman, 2002, Jones and Abes, 2004). For these reasons, I undertook a S.o.T.L. project to integrate service learning into my Freshman English curriculum and assess its efficacy by analyzing students' writing in the class. I also incorporated service-learning into my classes to address my students' changing skill sets and to convince them that the writing in composition class can be relevant to their lives. (Below see Service-Learning Syllabus). As my first semester (fall, 2008) of teaching service-learning soon revealed, however, I first had to see what such a course looks like from the perspective of teaching before I researched its effects on students' writing. Since U.W.S.P. was unable to hire a new Service-Learning Coordinator by the fall, moreover, I felt a bit overwhelmed at the outset of the term and decided to decrease the scope of my research. (I was able to enlist the aid of a graduate student earning her teaching certificate in secondary English education by creating an Independent Study project with her. She helped me coordinate the service placement sites, and I helped her research and write about service-learning). (Below see Independent Study description for my student assistant). Some promising preliminary results have emerged demonstrating students' enhanced engagement and positive perceptions of the class, which are detailed in the "Research Results" section of this snapshot. Service-Learning Syllabus Independent Study Description

Annotated List of Helpful Resources & References - Please Click Link Below Annotated Bibliography

Research Results and Implications Most of my students agreed that the exposure to individuals of different races, classes, ethnicities, disabilities and other minority groups was an invaluable experience. For example, a resident of the Stevens Point Housing Authority's low-income housing units made a big impression on one of my students when he described his lunatic antics while drunk--such as flying to Los Angeles from Wisconsin without knowing it and losing his car. His account hit home with my student, who becamse so interested in alcoholism that he wrote about it for his final paper. Other students who interviewed homeless people at the Salvation Army's local shelter learned that the economic down turn had driven some middle class families, like their own, to homelessness, either because their houses were in foreclosure or because they could no longer pay the rent. The writing projects that students undertook as part of their service were almost unanimously well received by our community partners. The Salvation Army's Hope Center, the local homeless shelter, is using some of my students' essays about its clients (with approval from all parties) in its brochures, newsletters, and national promotional materials; so too will the United Way. The Portage County Literacy Council sent out the letters my students wrote to advertise its annual Un-Scrabble tournament, a regional competition with a distinguished history. Many of the senior citizens whom my students interviewed remembered vivid details of the history and lore of Stevens Point, unique knowledge about our town that otherwise would have been lost at their deaths. When students know more about the place where they go to school, they are likelier to contribute to these communities, thereby helping decrease the usual antagonisms between town and gown. The fourth-grade teacher at the local elementary school where a number of my students served told me that these days, with the constant influx of foreign migrant workers to Wisconsin, many of whose children do not speak English, and the rise in learning and emotional disorders, she literally could not attend to all of the children in her classes without the help of volunteers like my students. In such tough financial times, her words argue strongly for partnering college students with local grade schools--especially since working in the schools was by far the most popular choice among my students for where to serve. And the graduate student who took the Independent Study with me has become a service-learning devotee, and once she completes her teacher certification at U.W.S.P., plans to integrate service-learning into her high school English classes. Looking Towards the Future . . . My service-learning courses revealed the wonderful potential of this pedagogy for enhancing students' emotional and cognitive development and forging positive bonds with the surrounding community. I am uncertain, though, whether I can continue this project without a university-wide Service-Learning Coordinator or Center. Having taught a semester of service-based Freshman English, I feel strongly that without a deep-seated institutional commitment to this type of experiential learning in the form of competent and fairly compensated support staff and a university-wide awareness of and concerted effort to foster it, "early adapters" like me will be working in isolation and, sometimes, in abject fear. Such conditions militate against the survival of service learning, whose positive effects on student achievment have fast become one of the best unkept secrets of a college education. (See below for a few of my Concerns about sustaining service-based education in English). A Few Things I Learned and Some Concerns

Career and University Impact of This Project Because of my S.o.T.L. research and experiences teaching service-learning, I have become our department's default expert on the pedagogy and will lead a roundtable session on it at this year's UW-System English Teachers' Conference. One of the pillars of Chancellor Bunnell's Vision 2015 for U.W.S.P. is the need to prepare students to be knowledgeable and engaged global citizens; service-learning is indispensable to realizing these goals, since it exposes students to people unlike themselves and asks them to become involved in the larger community. Whereas learning a new language or living abroad expose students to new people and cultures, neither of these experiences directly engage students in bettering the world. Equally important, service-learning can reduce students' disaffection and cynicism, proving that they CAN make a difference in a world where outmoded institutional structures may seem so entrenched that change seems impossible. As I write, U.W.S.P. is retooling its General Education program, and there is talk that we may soon require a service-learning experience for graduation. It is therefore imperative that departments like mine act now to define the parameters of discipline-specific, academically rigorous service-learning projects that build upon the foundations of their majors and minors. If we don't, the "service" part of service-learning may devolve into forced volunteerism and the "learning," reduced to nothing more than stuffing envelopes--menial activities that don't require much interaction with the community members who make service-learning so worthwhile.