“With” instead of “For”

This weeks readings were really helpful. This was my first time reading any of Freire’s work, and I started with Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This was a highly practical piece, and I got a bit tidbits throughout that I found very helpful, and others that I wish I hope we explore more in class. For example, one of the thoughts I kept struggling with is the “form of false generosity”. I remember one my AP Psych teacher in high school telling me there is no real form of generosity. Anytime you do something for someone else, you are really doing it to feel better about yourself. …Well, that is a little macabre of a thought for me, but I believe there still might be some truth in it. And, this is what I think Freire might also be talking about? Again, this is just something I have been thinking about since reading the chapter, so I’m interested to hear what others took from this chapter.

I did resonated with Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the idea of working “with” instead of “for” because of the power dynamics. I then thought about how this works with service learning and how at the 2016 CCCC conference there was a call to make service learning as writing “with” instead of “for” or “about” the organization. I know I spoke about this another post, but I find it as a pertinent point, especially since we are about to work community partners. If we work “for” a community partner we are asserting our dominance or oppressing that organization. Instead if we work “with” we are becoming equal partners and share information with one another to create a piece of work.

This concept of working with a partner is something that I want to keep taking about while working on my proposal. I think my proposal might be something to do with my technical writing classroom, and I’m still stuck as to go further from there. Will we work with the dog pound? I don’t know. But, what I want to make sure of is that whomever I work with, I want it to be a collaborative effort. I don’t want to just go in with my class and take that role of the oppressor and have my students do work “for” the organization because if I take that approach, I don’t think it will really meet the needs of the organization, and then once again, we have oppressed and used the organization for our own selfish gains rather than learning from one another.

I also really enjoyed Long’s piece Education and Environmental Literacy: Reflections on Teaching Ecocomposition in Keene State College’s Environmental House. I think I really enjoyed this piece because of what a unique opportunity it is, and that I was heavily involved in ResLife in my undergrad years. Many times Learning Living Communities (LLC) have a theme based on major or interest, as Long described. I really thought his opportunity to work with the environmental floor was super cool, and this is something that I want to look more into when I get a job somewhere. I really appreciate LLCs because I lived on one my freshman year, and to be honest, it was more enriching at times than my actual classes. At the time I was a Cellular and Molecular Biology major, and everyone on my floor was taking the same biomedical lecture and we all were in some form of composition. What I really appreciated was that our actual teachers would come to our floor once a week and do experiments with us or help us with studying for upcoming tests (it was a pretty sweet gig). My favorite experiment is when we actual swabbed various surfaces on our floor (toilet, shoes, water station, backpacks, etc.) and then let the samples grow in a petri dish. Long story short, watch out for those water stations, they are disgusting. While this is a long and rambling story, these types of experiences made me really appreciate my major and see real-world applications, which as a freshman I loved. When I think about Long’s project, it makes me Giddy, and I really want to do something similar. As a grad student, I think this might be more difficult to do, but I think I might have changed my service-learning project….