Jeremy's Reflection

Here we are at the end of another semester. And here I am, writing a reflective blog-post. I promise, I’ll try to keep the complaining to a minimum, but I do need to say that every time I assign one of these reflections to my own students a little part of me dies. Ok, so this may be an overstatement. Nonetheless, some small, idealistic, plucky, happy-go-lucky, part of me does just sort of wither a bit. It isn’t that I don’t see value in reflective writing; the research bears this value out. It’s just that writing about your learning is an exceedingly difficult rhetorical situation. When I assign this sort of thing to my own students, I’m wary that my instructions come across as “write about your experience (honestly?), so that it can be assessed.” That’s a hell of a prompt.

And oh, how the tables have turned.

So I’ll start by talking about how I got involved with SNIP. I’m meta-reflecting on my reflection, so I just want to explain why I’m making this rhetorical choice. It’s because I’d like to dispel the ghost of meaningless platitudes at an early stage of this draft. This is my own particular way of building ethos. So here it goes. I chose to get involved with SNIP because I thought the name was really funny. Not knowing a whole lot else about the community partners, I figured that “best name” was as good a reason to pick someone as any.

Later that first day, I had some tinges of regret because of this decision. I was working with a great group of people, but I couldn’t help but notice that the Boise River Project and Banned Book Week had a certain slick appeal. Similarly, the HIV project seemed highly relevant humanely, socially, and politically. Regardless, I eventually accepted the idea that my first instinct was a good one. I like cats, maybe a little too much. And I do spend a lot of time thinking about animal welfare and sustainability. Worrying over our furry friends—cats, dogs, elephant shrews-- is a bit of a hobby of mine. I mean,

if you don’t love animals you’re a bit of a jerk.

In any case, I’m glad things worked out in the end. There were some iffy moments. In particular, I remember having once slothed out of bed at seven in the morning to shoot trap-neuter-return. When Amanda and I got to the site, we found some non-SNIP people in their pajamas stuffing housecats in to traps. Though this was tragically hilarious in a way and did make for a great bloopers-reel, it was nonetheless a bit of a low point. But despite occasional challenges, I do think that our service-learning project for SNIP helped me to both extend my learning and to give back to our community.

I’ve always felt that giving back to my community is important. So being enabled to help and to learn from SNIP as we worked on our final project was an extension of a philosophy that I hold dear. The social and collaborative nature of our work certainly made me more committed to it. Especially considering recurring software issues, I don’t feel that I could have worked on the time-sink that became our project without having felt some responsibility toward others. Similarly, I don’t feel I would have become quite as attached to my project if the sole audience had been my professor. (With apologies to Tom). Writing essays for the sole review of one person can feel, if not artificial, than at least differently valuable than producing a video that will be seen by a broader audience. Producing something for the Boise community was just a nice change.

Because I was working for and addressing a “live” audience, this project extended my thinking about the rhetorical problem. Because I have experience teaching in front of a classroom and working collaboratively with others, I feel that I had some sense for effective communication prior to entering this project. Nonetheless, the live nature of our video enabled me to think in a more nuanced way about how I address others. For example, I recall having been told by Diane to use the word “kill” in place of “euthanize” as we described the unfortunate consequences of the shelter situation in our video. She felt the use of a stronger term would better connect with a lay audience. Similarly, my group chose to emphasize the theme of “community” throughout our project, so as to keep our message upbeat and positive. This was because of Diane’s desire to avoid alienating potential supporters. Our video helped me to reflect on the broader consequences of rhetorical decisions in a more nuanced way than I’m used too.

As I reflect on my service-learning experience, my primary concerns are honestly more pedagogical than personal. Since I’ll be teaching my own service-learning section next semester, I find myself thinking about the value this experience can potentially bring to the classroom—about the manner in which it can inform my students’ thinking about rhetorical situations and the broader value of inquiry. Too often, I feel our students enter first-year writing having become convinced that writing is just another potential roadblock on their path to success. Though I don’t want to cast students as the unfortunate victims of predatory high-school instructors, they do seem rather jaded by having consistently produced and been evaluated on written work that has little perceived relevance to their broader lives. I feel that service-learning, especially when combined with digital-rhetoric, can help students begin thinking about their composition in a more sophisticated way—in terms of an authentic rhetorical problem. At the same time, because academic inquiry is so often perceived as being disassociated from the wider world, I feel that it’s important to make visible the connection between university research and the broader potential for empowerment through activism. In other words, I feel that service-learning has the potential to intercede upon students’ modes of thought at the same time that it influences their methods of composition.

Despite its’ potential, the addition of a service-learning component to my course-load seems to bring a number of challenges. I’m honestly a bit nervous. My discussion here isn’t going to be all-inclusive, but firstly I’m concerned that students may resist the idea that community service and digital rhetoric has a place in the English classroom. Secondly, I’m concerned that service-learning requires an intensive time-commitment from my students on top of their regular workload. Though I feel that these two concerns are manageable through effective scaffolding and classroom-management, I’m intensely worried over my third point. A recurring theme in the literature on service-learning is that it is often too easy for students to view community work purely from the standpoint of their personal empowerment—in terms of what they have given to others. It seems that this particular manifestation of the Horatio Alger myth complicates a thorough consideration for the dialectical and structural relationships that exist between and across diverse communities. In other words, though I certainly want my students to feel good about whatever it is that they are doing, I also want them to get past this “feel-goodedness” and begin considering the structural conditions that produce social problems. This seems to be the real challenge. At this early point, I’m not sure entirely what I’m going to do with it.

Regardless, I’ve deeply appreciated the opportunity to take a service-learning course this semester. It helped to extend my thinking about rhetoric at the same time that it afforded me the opportunity to give back to and learn from our community partner. At the same time, having gone through the experience has given me a better understanding for how to incorporate service-learning in to my own pedagogy, even as it has left me with a number of vexing questions. Service-learning has been a positive experience, and I look forward to continuing to wrestle with it in the future.