Come early December, perhaps every fall term feels this way. But here at the Community Literacy Center, it seems that this semester has been an especially intense one. Teens in our youth projects, Hands-On Productions and INFORM, spent the fall examining the city's new curfew policy, a policy implemented just two days before the projects' final Community Conversation. Over the past several years, politicians have been working in Pittsburgh to implement curfew; they possess the political power to put it in place. So the focus for the projects was not whether teens felt curfew should or shouldn't happen, but rather what would it take for the city to implement a wise curfew, one that would work for the mutual safety of teens and police. Teens identified rival scenarios to the city's policy statement. They also wrote about possible outcomes, many of which would put teenagers further at risk unless additional safeguards were to be implemented. As a community-based organization, we at the CLC also ventured into rather unfamiliar political water by making public our own position on curfew: that teens, once again, were not included as part of the problem-solving equation; that curfew is a family-community responsibility which enforcement by police turns into police action at a time when our city needs occasion for cooperation, not confrontation.
Intensifying the drama of the fall projects, on the evening of the Community Conversation, a new development in the Jonny Gammage case was breaking. The first officer charged with murdering Gammage (an African-American man stopped for a traffic violation) was found not guilty. As you might expect, the media's cameras were all down at the courthouse. Yet a second chapter in the story of the city's police-citizen relations was unfolding here at the Center. Congressman Bill Coyne and City Councilman and African-American leader Sala Udin joined a police sergeant, operators of the curfew facility, a host of people from the community, and Carnegie Mellon students and faculty in listening and responding to the teens' analyses of the problems surrounding curfew. A vocal advocate for the civil rights of Johnny Gammage and his family, Councilman Udin declared publicly that he attended the Community Conversation because he wanted to part of something positive the night the verdict came in.
This fall semester has also been a time of growth and transition for us. Linda Flower accepted the position of Director of Outreach for the Center for University Outreach at Carnegie Mellon University. Inspired, in part, by William Julius Wilson's When Work Disappears, she along with graduate students Susan Swan and Jennifer Flach are focusing their efforts on an educational support system for Community Problem-Solving Dialogues that will not only demonstrate how good kids, caught in a net of violent streets, can learn to think through tough problems, but will also link these urban teens to college mentors and local growth industries. Lorraine Higgins, now at the University of Pittsburgh, led a community-literacy project in conjunction with The Rainbow Health Center here in Pittsburgh. Their document, Getting to Know you: A Dialogue for Community Health, was presented at the group's Community Conversation held in October. And I, Elenore, have moved back to the CLC on a more formal basis to direct the CLC while teaching one course each term at nearby Robert Morris College. Wayne Peck, Joyce Baskins and Gwen Gorzelsky, and I have been developing a new project here at the Community House called STRUGGLE. This project is described in more length below.
As you finish up this year and start the new one, please do take a moment to send a note to share with others in the Network. We think you'll agree: the announcements and pencil portraits below provide an inspiring spectrum of compelling projects and passions.
Sincerely,
Elenore Long and Linda Flower
editors, CLNN
I am doing my dissertation on the college-age literacy volunteers at Lehigh. I have data on Students for 5 semesters. I am examining why they joined, what they expected the experience to be like vs. the actual experience. I'm wondering if any one . . . could help me find a citation: In Cairn and Kielsmeier's 1991 article, "Growing hope: A sourcebook on integrating youth service into the school curriculum," a quote from Martin Luther King is used, but no other citation is given: "Every person must decide whether to walk in the light of creative altruism or darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others." I have gone through several books of his words and speeches but can't locate this. [Suggestions, anyone?]
In what I take as a hopeful sign of the times, Harcourt has asked me to remake the 5th edition of a text book I did, Problem Solving Strategies for Writing, into a book for writing in college AND THE COMMUNITY. Given the good books that are already available on setting up programs (like Watters & Ford and Cooper & Julier), I am concerned with teaching writing. I see this as an opportunity to help build an image of the wide RANGE of ways we are all working with the community and the different kinds of writing and learning this supports. And I see it as a way to make more public the NETWORK of people around the country who are doing interesting new things.
I have organized things around 4 sections: 1. Community/university relations: Why am I here?; 2. Observation & Reflection; 3. Community Writing; and 4. Dialogue & Inquiry (with the community). It will let me showcase some wonderful examples of student work and different kinds of writing from people like Tom Deans at U. Mass, Nora Bacon, at Berkeley, Jan Shoemaker & Wade and Susann Dormann at LSU, Joyce Speiller-Morris at Miami, Eli Goldblatt now at Temple, Ilona McGuiness at Loyola in Maryland and others. And it will let me include quotes from or pointers to published and in process work on community outreach writing like Deborah Mintner's, Bruce Herzberg's, Linda Adler-Kassner's, Ann Gere's in the Instructor's Manual.
So my request: Do you have good examples you think would 1) show the distinctive ways your program uses writing and 2)would benefit teachers trying to support student writing, that 3) you or you students might like to see reprinted in the book or IM? And do you have work in print/progress that addresses issues a writing teacher would need to know about I should mention or cite?
The deadline is very tight for all this. So e-mail or call me (412) 268-2863 over Winter Break if you have any suggestions.
--Linda
Coming to your neighborhood bookstore in February, 1997. . . . Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Composition edited by Linda Adler-Kassner (University of Minnesota), Robert Crooks (Bentley College) and Ann Watters (Stanford University). Part of the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) series on service-learning in the disciplines, this book features both practical and theoretical essays about the role of service-learning in composition. Most of the essays are based on contributors' experiences with students in their classes; they offer a rich discussion of community service classes at schools ranging from community colleges to research universities. Essays included:
1. Edward Zlotkowski (Bentley College) - Introduction
2. Linda Adler-Kassner (University of Minnesota), Robert Crooks (Bentley College), Ann Watters (Stanford University) - "Introduction: Community Service and Composition at the Crossroads"
3. Lillian Bridwell-Bowles (University of Minnesota) - "Introduction: Service Learning: Help for Higher Education in a New Millennium?"
4. Tom Deans (University of Massachusetts) - "WAC and CSL: Correspondences, Cautions, and Futures"
5. Nora Bacon (University of California - Berkeley) - "Community Service Writing: Problems, Challenges, Questions"
6. Bruce Herzberg (Bentley College) - "Community Service and Critical Teaching"
7. Paul Heilker (Virginia Tech) - "Rhetoric Made Real: Civic Discourse and Writing Beyond the Curriculum"
8. David Cooper and Laura Julier (Michigan State University) - "Democratic Conversations: Civic Literacy and Service-Learning in the American Grain"
9. Linda Flower (Carnegie Mellon University) "Partners in Inquiry: A Logic for Community Outreach"
10. Wade and Susann Dormann (Louisiana State University) - "They Also Serve Who Write"
11. Rosemary Arca (Foothill Community College) - "The Road to Authority"
12. Gay Brack (Arizona State University) and Leanna Hall (Grand Canyon University) - "Combining the Classroom and the Community"
13. Patricia Lambert Stock (National Council of Teachers of English) and Janet Swenson (Michigan State University) - "Write for Your Life"
14. Chris Anson (University of Minnesota) - "On Reflection: The Role of Logs, Journals, and Notebooks in Service Learning Courses"
15. Nora Bacon (University of California -Berkeley) and Tom Deans (University of Massachusetts) - Annotated bibliography
16. Appendix - Descriptions of composition programs offering community service
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Ruth Overman Fischer (English Department, George Mason University) will be presenting two papers dealing with her work in the Community Service Link. The first one, titled "Writing Across/Beyond the Curriculum: Connecting Experience with Concept in the Community Service Link", will be given at the Third National Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, February 6-8, 1997, in Charleston, SC. She intends to focus on ways in which the students can be helped to relate their micro-level community service experience at an area elementary magnet school to macro-level issues concerning education as a social institution.
Fischer's second paper, titled "Applied Scholarship in the Community Service Link: From Classroom Texts to Classroom as Text", will be given at the Conference on College Composition and Communication on March 12, 1997, in Phoenix. She intends to focus on ways in which students use their writing of field notes about their community service experience to develop the critical thinking skills which allow them to place their experience within and participate in a critique of the larger social context.
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Anne Meis Knupfer's book, Toward A Tenderer Humanity and A Nobler Womanhood. African American Women's Clubs in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago was released this November (New York University Press). One chapter on literary clubs discusses various community and church programs and clubs for African American youth through which political and critical literacy skills were developed.
I appreciate your request for contributions to CLNN and wanted to let you know about my dissertation work, which is in progress. I have visited the University of Washington in Seattle and several other universities in order to uncover archived documents from writing programs of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I went into this project concerned with the ways larger social movements affect writing pedagogy, and I have ended up focusing on the intersections of race and writing at the University of Washington (UW) between 1968 and 1972. In order to locate connections between 1960s writing education and contemporary concerns with writing and difference, I closely analyze university documents (such as correspondence from the writing program, writing assignments, and training manuals for teaching assistants) together with 1960s published accounts of interrogations into race (such as the CCCC Statement on the "Students' Right to Their Own Language") and contemporary studies like Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark.
My analysis reveals the central role composition played in the University of Washington's fight against racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This potentially revolutionary role, however, was shackled by the university's inability or unwillingness to understand fully its commitment to white political, social, and linguistic norms. Important changes did occur at universities like Washington, but the institution of Black Studies, Women's Studies, and basic writing programs--while important steps toward an inclusive curriculum--also contributed to a growing political chasm in the academy.
Texts from the UW writing program reflect the fact that programs for basic writers, for example, were often defined by their political and social interests, while traditional programs such as "English" remained, for the most part, unmarked and "apolitical." The relationship between "English" and white political and social interests, for example, was, and continues to be, rarely questioned. Ultimately, I argue for sustained inquiry into the intersections of race and education. A white dominated academy, especially in a contemporary culture often willing either to deny or fetishize difference, needs to reflect on the depth of its commitment to white power and to the ways this power is both problematized and maintained through educational mainstays like first-year composition.
I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who is doing similar work or who has input on this project. In particular, I have been reviewing contemporary accounts attempting to define "whiteness" (accounts which also rightly note the dangers of any such racial categorizations), but most of these, such as Morrison's work, specifically deal with literature. Are there efforts to define "white culture" as it relates more directly to general education and writing pedagogy that I am missing? I am finishing my dissertation at Ohio State, but I am currently teaching at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH and can be easily reached at [tbarnett@wittenberg.edu].
I heard Linda Flower speak about this project both at UMass, and at 4Cs in Milwaukee. I'm working on projects with Community Action Brattleboro Area (CABA) here in Vermont and the director of CABA is interested in a more permanent partnership with Marlboro College. The Community Literacy Center model, which involves a movement toward action--town meetings, multi-media presentations--is one which CABA values, so I'm interested in learning as much as I can.
I'm now working on a dissertation that emerged from my experience integrating a service-learning component into college writing courses I've taught for the last few years at UMass Amherst. My diss. will examine how community-based college writing instruction (including service-learning) and literacy initiatives relate to composition and critical theory. My project is 2 pronged: contextualizing community-based writing initiatives in comp and critical theory (using John Dewey and Paulo Freire as my anchors, then a variety contemporary voices); and limited empirical work (primarily interviews with people from different kinds of projects). My working claim is that I see 3 basic types of undergraduate community-based writing courses emerging, each working out of discernibly different (even if related) values, assumptions, ideologies, and each foregrounding different aims, relationships, and discourses. There are those more focused on writing "for" the local community (i.e.,: writing projects such as those I've been working on here at UMass where students create purpose-driven documents and do research for use by community agencies); others more focused on writing "about" the community (where students do work in the community--not necessarily a writing project--and reflect on that work in the classroom to facilitate academic writing, critical awareness, and more probing analysis of society); and others focused on writing "with" the community (here I mean projects that are less classroom/campus and more community based, like Pittsburgh's Community Literacy Center). I see all these projects relating in compelling ways to theory and scholarship in rhet/comp studies generally, engaging sub-specialties like non-academic writing & critical pedagogy, and pushing the boundaries of current practice. Happy to hear all the voices the CLNN is bringing into conversation, and to contribute in any way I can.
Here at the Community Literacy Center, we have completed a two-year pilot phase of a literacy project called STRUGGLE. This phase has been a generative one for us, challenging us to articulate the big picture that motivates the project, as well as to refine the day-to-day practices that embody STRUGGLE. As we see it, STRUGGLE aims to recover the grounds for hope. Teenagers within America's inner cities are faced with a daunting challenge. Work, and even more importantly, the culture of work is disappearing from poverty neighborhoods. And gangs, violence, drug trade, dysfunctional schools, teen pregnancy--the grinding, cumulative effects of poverty -- have taken their toll. In Pittsburgh, as in other cities, teenagers have been the hardest hit. Too many teenagers in Pittsburgh's broken neighborhoods have breathed the air of rage, sensed the reality of no real opportunity, and have emerged directionless, in the grip of lethal anguish.
To confront this loss of hope, the STRUGGLE project is designed to give voice and presence to incipient dreams and visions of life projects of community residents. At its core is the belief that power, the capacity and practice of thinking and acting daily upon dreams and visions of one's life project, makes us human and re-builds grounds for hope in ourselves and each other.
A STRUGGLE project normally takes 6 weeks to complete and has 4 phases: gathering, collaborative writing, presenting, and renewal. The gathering phase begins by inviting a group of teenagers and each one's sponsoring parent or adult to come to a dinner table in the Umoja Room of the Community House. Sharing a meal together, the conversation turns to the possibility of talking and writing about our lives as "life projects" or "works-in-progress." In the first few sessions, the logic of the STRUGGLE project is explained and a set of collaborative writing strategies are modeled for the teenager-and-adult pairs. (For the first two phases, teens are paired with adults other then their own parents.) The collaborative writing phase begins as the teenager-and-adult pairs find places to talk and write about their life projects around computers in the Community House. Each computer runs an easily accessible multimedia writing program that supports the teenager-and-adult pair in reflecting and then writing about these core questions: 1) What am I going through? (i.e., my struggle); 2) What am I up against? (i.e., the barriers); 3) What am I up to in my life? (i.e., my goals); and 4) What are the ways to be together in this? (i.e., my support system). After all the teenagers and adults have completed their work, their computer responses are developed into individualized documents.
The presenting phase begins when all the teenager-and-adult pairs come back to the dinner table and share a meal at which they present to their family members their discoveries and their struggles. "Rituals of enactment" (such as making promises to support each other) are articulated and then incorporated into the document. Two weeks later, the final documents -- now completely formatted with pictures -- are mailed to the participants, along with an invitation to participate in the ongoing phase of the project, Renewal. The formal part of the renewal phase is simply returning to the Community House two more times to revisit the experience of writing about one's life as a struggle and as a "work-in-progress." The goal is to spark a commitment among project members to continue their conversation, a conversation that is filled with struggle and grace, with a present sense of solidarity and possibility. The strength of STRUGGLE seems to rest in it being a continuous cycle of re-examining, revising, and recapturing the grounds for action and HOPE.
If you're interested in learning more about STRUGGLE, please call us at the CLC: (412) 321-5498 or contact us over e-mail.
I am teaching a desktop publishing/community service writing class in which students write and design leaflets, brochures and newsletters for various community organizations. One problem I have encountered is that it has been hard to get the community groups to "order" a leaflet, etc. and provide information in a timely fashion so that students can get the work done by the duedate that I have decided on. I have thought of providing the organizations with some sort of "order form" with blanks to fill in re: audience, purpose, text, format, graphics, content, etc. But with their busy schedules that might also be hard to obtain.
Any suggestions from anyone?
I work with the Youth Sector Training Council of Queensland, Australia. We are a not-for -profit community organization which supports workers with young people, from both mainstream and alternate organizations. Many workers have reported that many young people are dissatisfied with the literacy help they receive from community organizations and government agencies, and as a result, withdraw from participation in the existing programs.
Our organization is very interested in investigating a peer advocacy and empowerment model of community literacy delivery. We are looking for a model that enables young people to guide their own literacy learning, preferably in self directed, action learning sets focused on group-selected advocacy/other outcomes.
We are hoping that the work network members are doing, and the resources detailed on the Network's homepage, may offer us some help. Once we have found the model we are looking for, our organization will provide professional development for our workers, to enable them to facilitate young people's literacy groups, within existing community organizations and government agencies.
We are very concerned with the number of young people experiencing literacy difficulties; ways to increase retention rates of those seeking help and the correlation between lack of literacy skills in young people and involvement in juvenile crime and increasing levels of mental illness.
I am Program Director of (LIFT) Literacy Instruction for Texas, a non-profit, community based organization in Dallas, Texas, the state that ranks 50th in the United States as far as literacy rates are concerned. We run a program which teaches English-speaking adults how to read and write. Most of the adults we see are at the lowest levels of illiteracy. Over 50% of our students are remanded by the courts to improve their literacy skills as part of their probation.
LIFT uses a phonics-based curriculum developed by Scottish Rite Hospital (in Dallas). Originally developed for children with dyslexia, it has been adapted for use by schools and community organizations. In a classroom setting, a group of students views a videotaped lesson. The lesson is "delivered" by a language therapist and "facilitated by trained community volunteers. Each student has a workbook which corresponds with the taped instruction. The beauty of this curriculum is that we are able to teach over 600 adults without using any paid instructors - they are all (over 300) volunteers.
Each volunteer receives a minimum of 8 hours of training, including 4 hours of phonics training, before he/she starts working with students. Scottish Rite has helped us develop the training. While the lessons focus on learning the rules of the English language, students also learn to write the cursive alphabet, spell, and, slowly, to improve their comprehension skills.
Classes are typically made up of 10 students per class. Each class meets twice a week for two hours each day. A team of two volunteers teachers one day and another team of 2 volunteers teaches the second day. The class may "loosen up" with a lifeskill (i.e. how to register to vote) or by having a conversation about last night's baseball game. Conversation is foreign to many students, by the way. The program takes a minimum of 18 months to complete (attending class 2 days a week for 2 hours each day) and that is a challenge for many students.
LIFT also offers a multi-sensory basic math program, pre-GED level reading and writing classes (after completing the LIFT basic literacy program) and basic computer instruction. The computers have been loaded with multi-sensory, multimedia software, mostly icon-based. The students have been thrilled to have the opportunity to learn how to use a computer!
LIFT tries to remove as many barriers for the students as possible - we give out bus passes and do not charge tuition. We are entirely funded by individual donations, corporate and foundation grants, and fund-raising events. No government money (and no government regs, either!) comes through our doors. An issue that keeps coming up is what defines success for the typical literacy student? Is it our definition (completing the program) or is it the student's definition? If anyone is interested in knowing more about our program, please write us at: LIFT, 2904 Floyd Street, Dallas, Texas 75204 214-824-2000
I am an advocate for literacy because I feel it is such an important skill in leading a fulfilling life. I would like to see our literacy percentage increase as a nation. I have tutored not only young school-age children through Chapter 1 Programs but also adult learners through library literacy programs. I am surprised at the number of people who graduate from high school yet are either illiterate or have very low level literacy abilities. I realized that English is a difficult language to read and write in comparison to other languages.
The adult learner whom I tutored, reading level was at a 4th grade level. His comprehension was low and his writing levels were also low. He felt frustrated, unsure, and had low self-esteem. He truly wanted to become more literate so that he could find a better job. It's unfortunate that we are such a big super power nation, yet our drop-out rate is so high. Yet, many who do graduate can read and write only at the 6th grade or lower level. I would like to help those who have literacy difficulties. There is such a wealth of information available to us if we have the ability to read and write.
I am pursuing my doctorate at the University of Illinois-Urbana in Writing Studies and am currently interested in two community literacy projects. These projects have not been sponsored by established university-community programs; rather, they have been sparked by my interest in merging my work both in and out of the university. Particularly because a pre-existing community literacy community has not been available, I've greatly appreciated hearing about other community literacy programs through this newsletter.
For several years I have been tutoring at substance abuse centers (for three years in a religious, urban center and for the last year at a secular, mid-sized city center). In that time I've been struck by how the language of recovery seems to speak the recovering addicts. All of a sudden, people in the land-locked mid-west are using images of being adrift at sea (an image in many recovery texts). This language and these images seem a "life-line" to recovering addicts and employing this language seems a necessary step for their recovery in a community of recovering addicts. I am curious as to how these language practices effect the perception of being an insider in the recovery community and how access to these texts (whether through reading, writing, or listening) influences the recovery process.
A second project I'm engaged in is exploring how self-defined Catholic feminists are negotiating their identity when their "Catholic" beliefs and their "feminist" beliefs clash. I am interviewing women (all of whom have attended at least some college) from ages seventy to twenty, attending weekly "Re-imagining God from Feminist/Womanist Perspectives" meetings, and finding interesting community networks that are experimenting with articulating their religious/feminist beliefs in their own terms. I am interested in learning more about what, who, and how these women cite and invoke persuasive ideas/people within their communities and how literacy practices (especially texts that they see as religious and/or feminist) have impacted their identity negotiations.
I am starting the second year of a service learning project in community literacy. I am also setting up a program for writing and art in a homeless shelter, to be run voluntarily by teams of faculty and students from the college.
Service learning course. Students in my advanced composition course spend one hour per week running small creative writing groups for middle and high school students in several local communities. These public school students are enrolled in a state-sponsored after-school program for students considered at risk because of problems at home or in school. My students work in pairs, writing with their groups during hour-long sessions. They use materials published by Teachers and Writers Collaborative to develop the assignments. The schools report a number of interesting outcomes from these activities: the writing groups, we are told, build self- esteem, develop skills (especially with non-native speakers), help students discover and express creative abilities, foster positive contacts among people of different cultures. I require from my students two major essays involving research along with several shorter writings. The second of those essays must in some way connect to their community work. Among other readings, Mike Rose's "Lives on the Boundary" serves as both a focus for writing ideas and model for students' own essay writing.
Homeless project. I have been looking for ways to involve more faculty and students in community literacy, and in a few weeks I will be sending teacher and student teams into a local homeless residence to run writing and art groups. Responses to my initial contacts with local homeless providers this past summer were very positive. Because the majority of residents in local shelters are women and children, I decided to take my idea to the college's Women's Studies Project; they have been trying to build up their community activities, and so their response was also enthusiastic. Faculty in English and Art are currently recruiting students to work with them in developing ideas for and running the occasional sessions. If the project is successful, I hope to make it happen more regularly, possibly with the participation of students in my advanced composition courses. By next year, I would like to have student teams running weekly writing workshops for homeless children. But I would also like to facilitate other community literacy activities for needy populations--for example, a large local Latin American immigrant population-- to be run by campus groups, clubs such as creative writing and departments such as theater.
So far, I am doing all this without release time or a grant. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has ideas about shaping these kinds of activities into some sort of well-defined larger program attractive to granting agencies--or else ideas about where to turn for support.
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ABOUT THE COMMUNITY LITERACY NETWORK NEWSLETTER: Across colleges and universities, many of us are developing university courses and lines of inquiry to address issues of community literacy. And it seems that we are asking many of the same questions: how might literacy, social institutions, and education work together to define and support social action? Our university courses that address community literacy typically share a commitment to innovative, hands-on learning through socially relevant experiences. Yet each of us teaching such a course must shape these commitments according to specific constraints and opportunities. Because of this shared dynamic, we educators have much to learn from one another; conversely, we stand to lose if working in isolation. The aim of the Community Literacy Network Newsletter is to put educators interested in issues of community literacy in touch with one another. The network is sponsored by the Community Literacy Center, a collaborative between the Community House and Carnegie Mellon University, both in Pittsburgh, PA. Editors are Dr. Linda Flower and Dr. Elenore Long.
For information or to send us your contributions to the next volume, please contact Kathy Meinzer [km39+@andrew.cmu.edu]. Postal address: Carnegie Mellon / Center for the Study of Writing & Literacy / Dept. of English / 259 Baker Hall / Pittsburgh, PA 15213.