Response to Critical & Community Service Pedagogies
I’ve just returned from south-central Illinois, deep in the heart of river and corn country. I dropped my eldest off at a weekend retreat called “Emmaus Days.” It is an opportunity for him to discover further and reflect on the role his faith plays in his life and where that relationship will lead him. It is alot to ask of a sixteen year old, I think. And yet, I am in awe of his willingness to engage in such mature and meaningful reflection. This brings me to my question: Is reflection a skill we assume all students have? Or as teachers can we somehow do a better job in preparing our students for meaningful reflection? I have stated elsewhere that reflection is an integral part, from my perspective, of the writing process and yet it continues to be an area students either rush through or attempt to skip altogether. Is it because they simply don’t know how to do it? When we teach reading, we encourage our students to ask a series of questions that will help them assess their own comprehension levels. Through practice, they eventually learn how to do it on their own without any particular formula. Do we need to do the same practice with writing and reflection?
In Ann George’s “Critical Pedagogy,” I have found the fundamental answer to my questions: What is the purpose of my course? What is my main function as the teacher? I inherited much of what I teach my seniors from my predecessor, and yet have looked to make the course more personal, more my own in hopes that my students too would make their writing more their own. In essence, I believe I am striving to stimulate a greater critical consciousness in my students. George refers to Paulo Freire quite often and I will add him to my reading list. I want my students to really connect themselves to their writing and hopefully invest themselves through action. Perhaps it is my liberal arts background motivating me. It seems what is missing for many of my students is their ability to envision something different, to be inspired to address possible alternatives, and to be the ones responsible for growth and change. We all strive to empower our students with knowledge, but do they know how to convert that knowledge into active participation and leadership? How do students learn to value their own educational experiences without seeing a practical application in their own lives? This is where reflection can connect the learning with experience. But in considering the reflection, students need to first know what they value. They also need to know what the moral implications of their actions may be and possibly should be. This is where ethics education steps in and where the focus of my project begins.
I was also attracted to the principles of community-service learning. Finding opportunities for students to put their critical thinking to work by way of solving community-based problems and “to engage them as subjects of intellectual inquiry” (137). Writing becomes a tool for understanding their own role in society, based on first-hand learning experiences. The idea of securing students service-based opportunities to research their own inquiries into areas of their communities is exciting. Their learning becomes relevant and has to infuse their writing with greater depth and elaboration. For instance, my juniors read a novel titled Our America, recounting life of two teens in the Chicago housing projects. Although the students enjoy reading the novel, there is a gap between appreciating what is written and making it relevant to their own lives. Adding a service-learning opportunity in conjunction with the novel may be the way to make it all more relevant and engage the students in their own community needs.
Again I ask how I can make learning more meaningful for my students? In a time when skill sets and test results drive the curriculum, how can I step away from the statistical requirements and truly focus on the development of the conscientious young adult? George and Julier offer some attractive alternatives to the traditional pen and paper. They offer enrichment opportunities for individuals to really think about their words and their purpose.
June 28th, 2008 15:11
Katie, an interesting and provocative post! I absolutely think reflection is missing from our students’ lives–beyond just writing. Why else would so many choose the behaviors they do, suffer the consequences, fail to make any adjustment to their behavior, and suffer again? I think about how I respond to my son’s poor choices. He is only four, but after he finishes his “time out,” he has to tell me 1) why he’s in time out, 2) why he did what he did, and (if appropriate) 3) what he could have done differently. On the other hand, when I discipline students at school, I find they can’t answer these three simple questions, and they’re 15! I know there is a move next year for the dean to use these types of questions with the students once they’re kicked out of class, so we’re making baby steps in the right direction towards reflective thinking about behavior, but it can certainly be strengthened with reading and writing as well. Good point, Katie!
June 29th, 2008 11:48
Very good set of questions and probes. Reflection is massively difficult for many reasons, not the least the experience required to make comparative judgments. I’ve often avoided it because of falling into cliché (”It was the most I ever threw up, and it changed my life forever”) or similar problems. As Katherine writes, this is not just a writing problem, and I don’t think we can magically make students as reflective as the sample essays in our textbooks. Does that mean we shouldn’t try? Heck no. And here’s a large part of the value of experiential learning; it provides rich experiences which provide contextual supports far different (some would say better) than the classroom can provide. The reflection I’m looking for is less the essay which accompanies the project but the differences between drafts of the projects–that improvement is far better evidence for me.
June 29th, 2008 14:43
Excellent point, Bradley. Perhaps that is an area I can really push for reflection–between the drafts. I am revisiting the way I am looking at writing and revision for my classes in the fall. I really want to spend less time worrying about the number of projects produced and focus more time on working the kinks out of the process. Offering more discussion time, more potential reflection, and revising more aggressively could produce better essays in the end. If the students are more confident and more self-aware of the process, then changing the format shouldn’t completely lose them, right?
June 30th, 2008 09:51
After reading Katie’s original post about the value of reflection, my immediate reaction is that it takes perspective provided by time to develop those thinking skills and to remove the emotion from an incident in order to view it constructively. Bradley said it well. That’s one of the few benefits of growing older; theoretically, as we age we have more time to invest in that sort of activity. Sixteen-year-olds can’t fathom “wasting” time thinking about the past with a cell phone in one hand and car keys in the other, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep trying to encourage reflection whenever possible–just like Katherine does with her four-year-old. When I began my present job, my boss was 93 years old (you heard right!); she often sat with her eyes closed “meditating,” as she called it. She asked me how I could get through the day without taking time out to contemkplate life, blessings, problems, etc. I remember thinking that she was nuts since I had three children, a difficult marriage, and worked full-time–doing my job and hers, too, since she spent a good part of her day “meditating.”
The point is that reflection takes time–time to develop the skill and time to experience it. I’m not sure we can teach a student how to reflect, but we certainly can slow down the writing process to provide more time for the writer to think about an assignment and to tackle revisions with less dread. In that light, I think classroom teachers have an advantage over tutors who rarely get the chance to work with a student on an assignment more than once.
June 30th, 2008 12:56
“I really want to spend less time worrying about the number of projects produced and focus more time on working the kinks out of the process.” — good precedent for that in the literature. From my experience, too; WIU’s default FYC syllabus includes six essays. Ugh. I do two. That’s enough grading.