In these two chapters, Dobrin and Weisser really stressed and defined ecology and then how to incorporate eco composition into the classroom. I found myself resonating (and disagreeing) with the service learning component. Firstly, I think there has been a shift since 2002 (when this book was published) about what defining service learning. This term is used as a catch all for any writing done with/for/about the community, which isn’t entirely correct anymore.
Service learning is typically now a semester-long engagement activity where students work to get to know the place/organization, and then work with the community to fill the needs. What was described in the book was more community engagement which is a smaller commitment and you can work with or for the place/organization. When I think about principles I want incorporate in my classroom, I always want an element of community engagement, ideally it would be great to have service learning, but that is a much bigger overtaking than I’m ready for at the moment.
…okay rant over, but now applying some of what the chapters taught me….
I really want to focus on chapter six because this chapter really resonated with me. The portion where the authors discussed public writing was very enlightening. The authors stated that in the 1990s public writing emerged as a “significant and important goal of university writing courses”. They then went on to define public writing as “any written discourse that attempts to address an issue of important to any local, regional, or national group or groups in order to bring about progressive societal change” (p. 87).
Currently, I see this type of public writing occurring with a hypothetical audience, but I feel this mission could be better served by incorporating those elements of community engagement into the classroom. As of now I see students writing material to sway a hypothetical audience member, which is a great starting point, but I feel that more could be done. I feel that this could be especially true for universities that define/pride themselves as being land grant universities, such as OSU. These universities can extend education with the surrounding communities through this act of public writing. For example, students could work with a local food bank (such as Our Daily Bread) to learn about the culture, who they serve, and the community surrounding the place. Next, students could work to craft written discourse with members of Our Daily Bread to meet some of their needs. Not only would this be an act of community engagement, but it could potentially inform the local area and serve as public writing. When I think about principles in my classroom, I also agree with the authors when they state that students tend to resonate more with writing when they can produce meaningful written discourse (p. 90), and this can be achieved through public writing and working with a community member.
I found these chapters to be helpful in learning more about ecocomposition, and I also found that these chapters really called to my pedagogical interests and how I could incorporate this form of writing into my classroom.
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 
Katie, this was such a helpful post to read! I’m not very familiar with ideas of service learning and community engagement, and I love your distinction between working “with” and working “for.” Thinking hypothetically, I feel like there seems to be a very precarious line between the two terms. As I begin to construct my service learning project for this course, I certainly want to keep this in mind. I agree with you about hypothetical audience versus real. So often I hear myself saying “pretend your audience is X” while teaching, and I want to find ways to integrate actual audiences into the classroom, particularly since the surge in social media/online resources in recent years makes this very possible. I love your idea about Our Daily Bread!
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I completely agree writing “with” or “for” can be a precarious line (with several power dynamics attached to it).
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I’m really fascinated by the differentiation you are making between service learning and community engagement here. I guess I lumped community engagement pedagogies and service learning pedagogies into the same category before now. I’m now questioning this. I think the question I would ask is what is the difference in the goals between the two pedagogies in your opinion? Because you mention community engagement being a smaller commitment, but I know in the WC the commitment of our community engagement is huge so i’m not sure if I fundamentally agree with that comment, but I’m not necessarily saying that it’s wrong either. I’m just not sure I understand the exact lines you are drawing as the differentiation, but I know this is an area you are really interested in, so I’d love to hear more from you on it!
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Jenna! Great question. Organizations (like the writing center) can definitely be involved in community engagement projects. Service-learning just usually refers to a course that has an entire semester (or multiple semesters) worth of dialogue and work between partner/student/teacher. This shift in name has occurred in the past 10 years or so; it’s pretty recent!! Really anyone can do community engagement, and I only meant small-scale in the classroom because it usually doesn’t take the entire semester. 🙂 Thanks for mentioning that!
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I did not write about this, because I wanted to pose some questions about the way the chapters were rhetorically pairing ecocomposition and writing with particularly problematic terms, but I too was very interested in public writing.
I have very little to add to your post, but I am trying to think through some smaller building blocks through which larger public writing projects could be accomplished. Currently, I am thinking of activities that build on one another, such as beginning with a Wikipedia page and working through some public writing genres.
Similarly, I wonder if there is a place for social media as public writing. Twitter and Instagram are coming to mind simply because they tend to be the social media sites most used publicly, whereas Facebook tends to be set to private–yet even private is public online.
Again, I don’t know if this is a question or comment on your post specifically, but your post had me thinking about public writing in terms of how to incorporate it successfully but not overwhelmingly or in ways that would not be productive.
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I really appreciate your insights, Katie! I know little about service learning but appreciate its ability to actively engage students in real, consequential work, and your critique of the authors’ (probably outdated) conception of service learning has given me more insight into its positives and possibilities. I also like that you’ve contemplated the role of public writing and what that might actually look like as a component of service learning in the ecocomposition classroom. As you (and the authors) note, the decline of public writing is disheartening, and I’m made optimistic by the connections you’ve created that make a reemergence (or at least a appreciation) of public writing a real possibility for our students.
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I love your idea of having students work with Our Daily Bread, it would be a great place to engage with as well help with the public writing aspect of a composition course. I definitely think it is interesting to read this book 16 years after it was published to see how things have both changed and stayed the same since then. I think back to when I was in my first composition class and how I would have felt about writing publically. The authors talked about how it makes people have a little more purpose behind their writing and I completely agree. As we have said in class many times, the general attitude towards a composition class is to just get it over with since it is a requirement. However, I think your idea would be a great idea to get students to care more about what they are doing in class. I wonder if maybe an element of competition would maybe enhance that even more? Maybe by working with The Daily Bread to find out what they need for content students could work towards making their content useful for them and in the end one piece gets chosen for use. This might have the opposite effect in the end but definitely something to contemplate I would think.
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^ We actually did that! All three students in the group made different flyers, and Becky (the volunteer coordinator) chose the ones she thought fit the best. 🙂
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I think there could be a great deal of interest in the field on public writing and certainly when you go on the market. I was recently doing a workshop at UMass Amherst and they were really excited about thinking about professional writing and service learning. It is, as you say, a huge undertaking and that was the biggest resistance from faculty in approaching a service learning model. But the rewards and benefits from service-learning–that is what needs to be meaningfully captured. And I think that is what you’re on to.
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