Service Learning and Teaching Writing (AERA, Part 2)

One of the considerations that I am keeping in mind as we re-imagine the midtier field placement for ENG 315 is to wonder if and how we could conceive of it, at least in part, as an opportunity for service learning. While it is critically important that our students spend time in elementary and middle school classrooms — and that they observe writing workshop instruction in those classrooms — it is also quite important that they have time and space to talk and work with writers. One of the best ways that I can think of doing that is to set up an out-of-school or after-school space for students, from struggling writers to very proficient ones, to share their thoughts and ideas with our undergraduate pre-service teachers.

The more formalized space of a writing workshop is, even in the “best” of classrooms, a place where teachers and students adhere to a set of norms about writing. Even in the most “authentic” of writing workshops, where students are given choice and inquiry drives instruction, the students are not generally the ones who are really in charge of their own literacy learning. With the many scripted curricula that exist for writing instruction, teachers are still leading/guiding/forcing students through units of study that are contrived for specific, “schooly” genres.

What I imagine is a space more like 826, a space where our pre-service teachers have some flexibility and ability to change their approaches to working with and for students. Some of the panelists described this with the notion of “third space,” and Guiterrez followed up with a discussion of many related ideas. It is within these spaces that, I believe, our pre-service students could work, writing center-like, not only as novice teachers, but also as peer consultants, adopting the persona that invites inquiry and exploration. Here are a series of summarizing tweets that I recorded during her discussion, in reverse chronological order:

Troy HicksTroy Hicks ? @hickstro

Kris Guiterreez: is a community better off for us having been there (as teachers and teacher educators)? #AERA2012

Kris Guiterreez: repertoire of practice, inter subjectivity, zone of prox dev, mediated praxis, teaching organized for the future. #AERA2012

Kris Guiterreez: Reject binaries; prior knowledge not only from one place to another, instead there is negotiation/hybridization.#AERA2012

Kris Guiterreez: Contradictions become the engines of change, a space for sense-making and examining our assumptions.#AERA2012

Kris Gutierrez: ecologically valid, race-sensitive, equity-oriented, transformational, grounded in particularities of communities.#AERA2012

Kris Gutierrez: How do we develop a new “pedagogical imagination,” remediate activity, involve multiple activity systems…#AERA2012

How can we design creative, collaborative spaces for students, pre-service, and in-service teachers to learn literacy together?#AERA2012

Novice teachers as students and organizers of learning, especially n out-of-school and after school settings. #AERA2012

Narrative as a way to make sense of pedagogy/theoretical ideas. How are pre-service teachers socialized to talk about teaching?#AERA2012

How does a strategically designed experience for undergrads in a K12 university partnership affect their views of literacy? #AERA2012#nwp

Listening to discussion on university/community partnerships#AERA2012 Thinking about implications for ENG 315 and @chippewariverwp #nwp

How we might design such a program, I am not sure. I would have to imagine that we would use the space of the school, although I would prefer that we didn’t. Instead, I would imagine a “collaboratory”  type of space, yet how to get the many students from various schools into that space would be difficult, at best and could not fall on the shoulders of our pre-service teachers. Transportation and other issues would hinder this, too, so I need to think more about what the possibilities are and could be, let along if my colleagues would go along with the idea as a parallel or even alternative experience.

That said, I am still inspired by visions such as those provided by 826, and I wonder what we might be able to do at CMU to capture some of the service learning ideals expressed in this session.

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