It is of critical importance that all composition teachers embrace a student-focused pedagogy. In terms of an overall student-focus, ecocomposition offers the most comprehensive approach. Not only does it focus on emphasizing and supporting students within an academic setting, but also in their lives, as an individuals, as community members, and as citizens of this earth. Herman Daly says, “When something develops it gets different” (Owens, 30). Although Daly is discussing a model for sustainable development, the quote also works for the development of students. Students bring their own backgrounds, their own experiences, and their own interests to the classroom. They bring their own knowledge and are indeed the “travelers” that Drew depicts in her essay. The aim of ecomposition is that students become aware of their own voice, the many factors that have shaped that voice, and how that voice can be used to change the world around them. In effect, persons begin to live lives of inquiry and lives of action based on their concerns.
The first step, as an instructor, is to make the concepts of sustainability real by drawing on those experiences that students already bring to the classroom. Not only is place an important area of study, as suggested in most of the essays, but the decisions made within those spaces can become the object of inquiry as well. For example, the grocery store or food court seems entirely appropriate in terms of a place in which everyone has had to make decisions. The entire notion that everyone has had to make choices allows for there to be questions asked with regard to why a certain product was purchased and/or why a certain thing was eaten. By exploring further those issues relating to food, students may come to see their own choices as having more power than they had ever imagined. In the end, it seems that students, themselves, are organisms that thrive by becoming self-aware and aware of the interconnectedness of everything around them. The classroom is an organism as well, dependent on student interaction and differences. Drew would suggest that we begin “moving beyond thinking of pedagogical space as fixed, and thus students as fixed” (Drew, 67). In this light, it seems too that ecocomposition itself is an organism. The pedagogy for any specific class, of necessity, must be particular to what the students bring to that classroom and the culture that gave rise to those conceptions. I am suggesting that although there ought to be a similarity between all ecocomposition courses, the direction any one course takes ought to be dependent on the students. By being so student-focused, students are able to draw on their passions in order to become writers, community members, and fully-rounded persons.
Nic, I agree. Collectively we hold the answers. I guess I would add that once a community has been built in the classroom and been pushed to engage in questions, how does that communal voice manifest itself. So often in classes I've felt this sense of connection with my classmates and felt resolved in some of our discussions only to be left blowing in the breeze once the semester is over and the community disperses. It seems like no matter how much a class bonds together and comes up with great ideas to make the world better, individual synthesis and voice remain the primary means of remediation once class is over. I think something is lost in that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dorbin, students need to move beyond the static space of the classroom, both literally and pedagogically. I guess the question for me is: If students of a classroom community dictate the direction of the class, how does a teacher give the "organism" a collective voice that seems to be so important to sustainable communities?
Nic, I agree that ecocomposition offers a fully rounded, multi-faceted approach to student-focused instruction. This student-focused role I get to play has been the most rewarding aspect of my short time as an instructor; I’ve already had several conversations with students about their lives and interests that have led to enthusiastic revelations of what they will write about for their personal academic argument. At the same time, I think they are surprised at my eagerness to just talk to them about themselves, to just talk “ideas” – the sort of thing I’ve become so used to in creative writing instruction – and they are even more surprised when they find that our casual discussion has opened up doors, given them things to think about, places to explore in their writing. Clearly, as we endeavor into ecocomposition, we are doing something very special, very intellectually fruitful, here. What I would like to see by the end of my first semester is a socially fruitful outcome, as well, though I am still uncertain how, exactly, to pursue this, and I share Joel’s concerns about the impact of such outcomes continuing to ripple out after the class has ended.
ReplyDeleteI keep coming back to Cooper’s assertion that writing with impact is not a solitary endeavor but a social one. I have encouraged my students to not only talk to me about their research topics, but to also talk to each other, and I look forward to our class workshops as an opportunity to see how well we can practice this idea of writing as a social activity. If we are going to ponder sustainability buzzwords in our classrooms and encourage our students to explore themes of sustainability in their own lives, what better way to explore and reiterate (what I see as) the core concept of sustainability – its connectedness – than by demonstrating such through a collected journey into inquiry, process, criticism and dialogue?
Nic,
ReplyDeleteI love your thoughts regarding the classroom as a growing, changing, and alive organism. Such a wonderful metaphor for our classes! I agree with your thoughts relating to celebrating and supporting each story every student individually brings with them. I did an activity last Wednesday that was centered on inventing ideas for the PAE. In short, each group of students in my class was given a word or subject that related to sustainability. At the end of the activity, I asked each student to share an individual story or connection to their respective topic. The topics varied from land-use terms, language, culture and environmental topics. When I asked for the students to share, I was amazed at the amount of participation, class discussion and how eager my students were to share their stories and connections. One student shared his experience growing up farming wheat in Eastern Montana, another girl mentioned she spoke fluent Polish and another student told a detailed account of his time spend in a national outdoor leadership school. All is to say, once I drew a connection to their own individual sets of knowledge and what was demanded from them academically at that specific moment, the entire class community changed. It was if suddenly, each student had new aura of confidence around them. Our class, as an organism had shifted and changed.
I think I’m really starting to enjoy the idea of student-centered pedagogy. I haven’t stopped to marinate in the thought that perhaps this idea may be just as new for me, as it for them. Cooper and you seem to agree that the more social, intimate and personal discourse in the classroom, perhaps the better the writing?
Thanks!
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ReplyDelete[I write too much. Google wants me to split my comment in two. Here's Part One]:
ReplyDeleteNic,
I agree with you in thinking that ecocomposition offers a very comprehensive approach to focusing on student development. I especially like how you’ve recontextualized Owens’ concept of development vs. growth to apply to our students’ writing progression. Apart from being an astute observation, this recontextualization is itself an embodiment of the concepts Dobrin and Weisser explain in their article on ecocomposition. Dobrin and Weisser make clear that as writers, readers, and learners, we are all active participants in environments of pedagogical discourse. The theories and concepts we develop and espouse, including your idea of applying Owens’ concept of sustainable development to instructors’ views of their developing students, all arise from the existing discourse communities. As writers, students, teachers, learners, and citizens, we are all constantly drawing from, alluding to, expanding on, engaging with, and recontextualizing the thoughts of other writers, students, teachers, learners, and citizens. Ecocomposition embraces this fact and advocates instructional awareness of it.
I also like your commentary on the importance of self-awareness in the shaping of our students’ voices. Not only should the student be aware of the assumptions and knowledge that they bring to the classroom, but we as teachers must also acknowledge their preexisting notions about sustainability in particular and composition in general. This drive for students’ self-awareness is at the heart of The Curious Writer—through the text and its writing exercises, Ballenger encourages students to recognize their preexisting beliefs about writing and reading, and frequently asks them to reflect on their writing process in post-draft or post-invention responses.
[And Part Two]:
ReplyDeleteI think that Drew would agree that this process of cultivating students’ self-awareness of their writing process and their ways of thinking will help them develop into better student-writers in the long run—by knowing how they work as writers and readers, they’ll know what skills to apply in order to be more successful, whether in academic or civic contexts. (After all, as Owens suggests through his description of effective sustainable pedagogy, our students should be able to apply what they learn in our eco-conscious composition course beyond the classroom—as Writ 101 instructors, we must transmit not only rhetorical but also social knowledge to our students).
I’m further intrigued by your idea of the classroom as an organism that dictates the pedagogy. Looking back, I can see this concept in play in my own Writ 101 class—on one occasion, I altered my future lesson plan after a particular invention activity was not as well-received as I’d anticipated. Thus, through self-awareness of my class’ reaction, I altered the plan to fit the organism.
Thanks for your excellent synthesis of these articles!
Brittany
Nic,
ReplyDeleteAs you highlight, Drew calls for us to reject the view of student as “fixed” and start to see them as “students-as-travelers.” I also had a powerful response to this proposal. The “student-as-traveler” idea identifies one of my first (and, I think, most important) realizations after a few weeks of teaching: I have done my best as an instructor when I regard my students not as fixed members of the vague “undergraduate demographic” but as people—people with families and friends, people with witty comments and plans for the weekend, people in a place. That place happens to be my classroom on MWF, 9:10-10:00. But, outside of those times, what’s the value—the power—of what we do in that classroom—both this semester and after?
I think that the answer to that question is connected to your proposal that we see the classroom as an organism. It seems that, if we can see our classroom interactions and processes in that dynamic light, students and instructors alike will be better prepared to value ecocomposition as a changing process that influences and is influenced: affecting, and affected by, the environments we inhabit, as Dobrin and Weisser propose. To underscore the message of influence, interdependence, and change that is contained in both their calls for ecocomposition and your “classroom-as-organism” thought, I think that we also have to consider how we “fix” ourselves as instructors. What changes am I going through, as I lead this group of people in WRIT 101? How is my relationship to UM and Missoula (new places for me) influencing my relationship to the people before me? How does my history affect how I lead and direct the plans of the class?
We, too, are traveling here— “instructors-as-traveler”—and it behooves us to reflect upon the specificity of experience that we bring as instructors to our sections of WRIT 101. With that in mind, I think it could be productive to make an addition to your proposal that the direction of the course ought to be dependent on the students. The direction of our courses is also, of course, dependent on us as instructors, and we have to be aware of that. Are we ready to challenge the initial “fixed” ideas we had about what we would need to be, how we would need to act, as instructors? Are we to acknowledge our own ongoing intellectual, spiritual, and emotional travels—as they influence the identity we inhabit before a class? Are we willing to let ourselves change and be changed by our classroom experience from the whiteboard side of things?
I raise these challenges not just for you but for everyone and especially for myself. I think that one of my most significant challenges as an instructor will be accommodating my own growth and environmental reactions/interactions as I travel through my first year as a graduate student, my first year in Missoula—my first year as a TA. But that’s why I appreciate what I see as generosity in the idea of ecocomposition: there’s room for change. There’s room for influence. There’s room for students-as-travelers and instructors-as-travelers.
And on we go a-travelin’.
Dobrin & Weisser:
ReplyDeleteI must be honest: I don’t yet understand the concept of ecocriticsm, let alone its implications.
The Dobrin & Weisser reading did give me some history and background of ecocriticism (pp. 567-572), and it did provide a workable definition: “The study of the relationships between environments and discourse” (p. 572).
That info helps, but still leaves me fuzzy. I do want to understand the relationship between communication and environment. I do want to know how they are actually, as Dobrin & Weisser write, one concept, but this idea still confuses me.
When D&W hone in on the keywords “communities” and “communication,” the concept begins to become a tad clearer. Writers are communicators. The environment or community in which they write influences the writing.
Ecocompositionists are supposed to write about relationships among all environments (p. 587). How to do that, I’m not exactly sure.
Plevin:
After reading this article several times, I am still confused about its purpose. The main point I gathered from Plevin’s article was: we, as comp teachers, should put place on equal footing with traditionally important subjects such as race, justice, gender, class, etc. (p. 160).
Drew:
Drew begins by writing that her idea of ecocomposition is “the place of writing itself” (p. 58). Sounds clear enough, until she dives into the concepts of spatial theory (p. 58), students as travelers (p. 60), and the pedagogical possibilities of mapping discourse (p. 63). Say what?
I am not certain, but I think the point of her article is similar to the statement I once made about the centers of learning in my undergraduate experience: I learned in the classroom, but much of my education took place on the walk to and from class (places outside of the classroom).
Perhaps she is suggesting that one of our goals as composition instructors should be to help students bring all of their varying experiences into their writing.
Sounds obvious.
Conclusion:
I am, quite frankly, frustrated by my inability to fully grasp these concepts. I sense that they are very important, that they tie together ideas I am learning in literature courses and from required readings both in 540 and other classes. However, those connections have not yet fully formed, have not yet emerged from the fog.
I’m hoping that by re-reading your posts and listening to classroom discussion, I can better understand both the subject of ecocomposition and its implications.
Hi Nic,
ReplyDeleteThe idea of “students as travelers” really resonated with me as well. I love the idea that the students should be appreciated and understood for who they are as moving, changing, and traveling members of our society. I agree with Jenny that when my students share information about their lives I realize how diverse every classroom is and how much this diversity in information can add to our class discussions.
I think Julie drew is on to something when she states that “By reimaging our students as travelers we may construct a politics of place that is more likely to include students in the academic work of composition…” (Drew 60). Based on the comments left on this post I would say that this is something we are starting to experience in our classrooms and we are learning how to adapt to the idea that our students are not all the same, or have the same backgrounds so we need to approach them as the multifaceted individuals they are. I think this relates back to the idea of making our teaching student-oriented and focused, rather than concentrating on the teaching which could run the risk of losing the students along the way.
Nic,
ReplyDeleteI agree with the metaphor you've established that ecocomposition acts as an organism. By understanding the differences in experience, history, culture individual students bring to the classroom, I understand the classroom to also act as an organism, or a system. Dobrin and Weissen assert that "The relationship between discourse and environment is reciprocal and dialogic. Similarly, the diversity and richness of language reflect the diversity of the world in which such language arises (Dobrin and Weissen 574). These differences that arise through growth are key to understanding how ecocomposition works in the classroom. "In both material and a discursive sense, differences are a critical measure of a system's health," (574). Understanding our students as “travelers," we focus on the uniqueness of the individual in order to measure our system's success.
Going further with this idea, I think Lauren says some great things in respect to our roles as instructors, and the differences we bring to the organism that is our class. If we measure the health of our system by the differences involved, how do our personal histories and experiences translate into the classroom? As Lauren asks, “Are we ready to challenge the initial 'fixed' ideas we had about what we would need to be, how we would need to act, as instructors?” I like how Dobrin and Weissen compare the writer to a animal or plant that can't easily escape its own ecosphere. As instructors and students, we come to the classroom with certain ideologies—or “genetic codes”—from previous environments, and our compromising role is to create this new environment where each person's genetic code affects the evolution of the classroom. This raises a lot of questions for me as a teacher, and I wonder how my history in composition, my relationship between writing and environment, can alter the outcome of an individual classroom. As our organisms evolve and our discourse communities become intricate systems, I'm curious to discover similarities and differences from classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher. I'm encouraged by the idea Dobrin and Weissen assert that, “all writers are linked in a single discourse-sphere where we recognize that no discourse community exists free of other discourse communities (576).
Great things to think about Nic.
Nic
ReplyDeleteThe idea that in teaching it is all about the students does well to tie into Drew's theory that "part of the problem lies in the figure of "student" itself, a figure that resonates within the culture as the novice, young and as yet uninformed" (60). To grant that our students have the capacity to grasp more than we credit them to in regards to college curriculum, is to grant them sovereignty over this fixed generalization. Your assertion that "the pedagogy for any specific class, of necessity, must be particular to what the students bring to that classroom and the culture that gave rise to those conceptions" is a key approach in how we should regard pedagogy in light of understanding that our classroom is an entity of character, not preconceptions.
I love your idea of the classroom as being a kind of "organism," meaning that it is subject to change and vulnerable to influence. Too often we attribute that a classroom can have no habit of being or personality, and therefore we shape our conduct in the classroom in correlation to its connotations. Moving beyond the idea that a class is contingent on ossified principles and practices is paramount in shaping the character of the class to mirror the character of the students: "fully-rounded," dynamic, and communal.