Service Learning in a Composition Course

Here is the annotated bibliography from my progress report last Monday. I don't have a claim yet but I have narrowed down my definition of service learning (SL) or at least of what SL should look like in high school. I need some feedback before I construct a claim so if anyone reads this before Monday please let me know your thoughts.

SL program components:

• should be a subject/subject relationship between student and community members
  
• students should be focused on researching how their SL reveals a larger social issue
• SL should result in an academic research paper
  
• academic research should be focused on the larger social issue and possible solutions (maybe "solutions" is too strong a word?)
  
• the project should consist of a presentation in front of peers, community members, parents etc.

Question: What should the purpose of a service-learning project in a high school composition class be and how can the course be constructed in order to achieve that purpose?

Welch, Nancy “’And Now That I know Them’: Composing Mutuality in a Service-Learning Course” College Composition and Communication. Vol.54, No. 2 (Dec 2002): 243-263

Context: Nancy Welch has developed a service-learning course titled U.S. Literacy Politics at the University of Vermont. She writes this article revealing the socio-economic, cultural, and political problems that occur in subject-object relationship service learning programs. Welch asserts that students must go into the community with the intent of a subject-subject relationship and uses feminist psychoanalytic object-relations theory to support the construction of her course.

Summary: Welch primarily uses the work of two of her students, Janis and Jacqui, to explore the various issues at stake when privileged groups go into underprivileged areas with the intent to create change. Welch sets up the binary subject-object relationship, or the classic anthropological situation, and states that students (anthropologists) may go into a community (strange land) viewing its members (natives) in one of two ways: absolute identification (even though I am privileged we are all the same in the end) or absolute differentiation (because of my privilege we are complete opposites and who am I to ‘empower’ them). Although these views shift the relationship slightly they both conform to the subject-object view and reinforce the impossibility of change. Absolute identification seemingly negates the subject/object relations and yet in its denial of any difference it never allows questions about oppressive structures in play and therefore still objectifies the “others.” Absolute differentiation creates a further gap between subject/object relations and in its cynicism obstructs change. Welch turns to Jessica Benjamin’s and Melanie Klein’s feminist object-relations work to construct a subject/subject service learning program where “a mutuality…allows for and presumes separateness” (255) by ensuring “intersubjective exchange” (257) or a “back-and-forthness” (245) Welch does not however claim that this relieves tension. In fact, she states that it is at tension or conflict that this intersubjective exchange can occur and without tension the relationship turns into subject/object.

Evaluation: Welch has a very persuasive argument in her decision to actively create tension in the relationships between her students and the community and cites several times when these tensions were used to further conversations on social structures concerning the gap between the privileged and underprivileged. One major problem with this article is the conclusion where Welch uses Janis’ final reflection paper to sum up how a subject/subject relationship service-learning program can be effective, however, in her paper Janis uses absolute identification subject/object language. Interestingly enough, Welch never comments on this language weakening her argument.
Green, Ann E. “Difficult Stories: Service-Learning, Race, Class, and Whiteness” College Composition and Communication. Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec 2003): 276-301

Context: Ann E. Green is an assistant professor at Saint Joseph’s University where she directs the Writing Center and teaches two first year service-learning courses. In this article, she illustrates how her white middle/upper class students refused to discuss racial and class structure issues at a personal level even though they were willing to have this conversation on a theoretical one. Green asserts that this refusal can be overcome through the sharing of personal narratives of racial and class conflicts and that this sharing must start with the teacher.

Summary: The conflict between seeing oppressive race and class structures in the abstract and viewing it as a personal reality, Green confirms is a major obstacle in service learning programs. Green points to several of her white students who did very well in critically analyzing and writing on theoretical work regarding race/class and yet maintained, and in some cases strongly reinforced, racial and class divides on campus and in the community during their service-learning work. Green claims that this division is due to her white student’s inability to view their race as inherently privileged and their belief that it is “impolite to acknowledge race or class directly”(293). According to Green, students “have difficulty applying theory about race and class logically to individual experiences”(291), making the problem twofold: “finding ways for white students to talk about race and then finding ways for white students to analyze race”(292). Green presents two possibilities in confronting the problems. One way is for the teacher to take the risk first. The teacher must model how to talk about race (the white race specifically) by sharing personal narratives of dealing with race. Through this modeling students will learn how to construct their narratives and through in class sharing these narratives can be critically examined as a group. The second way is to insure that the service-learning situation is not top-down. The students are not at the service-learning site to give knowledge to recipients but rather they are there to work with the community. Green requires her students to share their writing to gain feedback from the community members at the service site. Green also asserts that students must maintain a friendship with the community members, claming that “it is through friendships that [students] learn the most about the ways oppressions intersect”(295). Green realizes that these friendships do not always form but she states that by making “power relationships visible and encourage students to develop relationships with the learners at their site that are more mutual and egalitarian”(296).

Evaluation: Green makes some very interesting revelations about her issues with her own whiteness through a story about her first “volunteer” experience. She uses this story to connect the experiences of her students with her experience and then to a pedagogical choice to tell stories in the classroom. In her work she is assuming that all service learning teachers are white with white middle/upper class students and that they choose to do service-learning out of white guilt. The claims she makes about white students needing to analyze their white privilege are valid, however, her ways to encourage this analysis seem either vague or idealistic. This may be a start to understanding how service-learning has thus far been constructed.