Iris
Chapman,
Assistant Professor -
English
|
As first-year writing coordinator,
I wanted to link with agencies in the community that
are willing to form collaborative partnerships in
experiential writing situations. Situating students in
real writing contexts provides one of
the best ways to develop better writers, and
real situations give students
real audiences and purposes, working
collaborative with real people. While serving the
community in any capacity is noble, we want our
first-year writers to serve in writing situations. The
collaborative project I propose below is one of the
ways that these joint writing efforts can be
realized:
Because of bad weather, we had
difficulty getting started during the first two weeks
of the semester getting going, but we are underway. My
students meet weekly with a senior English class at
Cummings High School. Students are bussed in to the
Belk library every week at 9:20 and leave around 11:00.
My students serve as advisors in writing and have been
paired with a student(s) from Cumming, based on my
students' interests?where applicable.
Thus far my students have assisted
with locating print & nonprint material, taking
notes, thinking of ideas. Next week they will be
sounding boards to listen to their advisees draft.
Comments from the teacher have been overwhelmingly
appreciative. For me service learning is best when it
reinforces my teaching, so I will be following closely
what my students say; thus far students seem to be
enjoying the experience. Some of the comments are as
follows: -
Helping Kevin will help me become better acquainted
with Elon's library
-
In College Writing I'm talking about evidence and
that's exactly what DJ and I are gathering right
now.
-
Starting from the beginning refreshes my mind on the
basics of research
-
It's nice when you learn something from someone?s
who?s been there and done that
-
I had a lot of research and preparation to do before
my papers actually materialized into something
-
Working with Keisha shows how far I have come in my
writing development; I'm not only capable of
writing, but teaching and helping someone else to
write!! It helps me review the proper procedure for
research.
-
I wish I had had someone to help me write when I was
in AP World Lit.
|
Course for
which the funds were used: College Writing 110 in
Spring 2003
Iris Thompson Chapman Department:
English
Situating students in real writing contexts provides
one of the best ways to develop better writers, and
real situations give students real audiences and
purposes. While serving the community in any capacity
is noble, first-year writers learn more about writing
when they perform service in writing situations. The
collaborative project I undertook during Spring 2003 is
one of the ways that joint writing efforts can be
realized:
My spring college writing class worked collaborative
with a senior English class at Cummings High School.
Modeling the senior project on the work from
Southwestern Randolph High School, Cummings expected
each of its senior students to complete a semester-long
research project. Students researched a topic of their
choice. Later, using the research that they had done,
they worked with a mentor, an expert in the area of
their research to discover more about their topic and
create a product (something tangible or abstract that
reflected volunteer visitation that connected to the
research). Pulling on the first and second-hand
research to develop a product, students' projects
culminated in an oral presentations in front of a panel
of judges the last week of their semester.
The high school students were paired with students in
my College Writing 110 class. As advisers, they
assisted the Cummings students at every level of the
writing process: introducing them to the Elon Library,
researching , drafting, revising, giving feedback, and
speechmaking. Students were bused to Elon in order to
use the State of Art library facilities. On the
average, students saw their advisees eight times during
the semester. Bonnie Roane, Lead English teacher for
ABSS High Schools of Alamance County says, "The
ability to experience a college library will broaden
[Cummings'] students' experiences and may open
possibilities for a college education that otherwise
might not have been realized."
Description of the Impact of the
Project
Below are some of the comments from the Cummings
students and the 110 College Writing students about the
project:
Cumming High School
What did you enjoy most about the experience
at Elon University?
-
Teachers and students were warm, friendly and
concerned about our progress.
-
Every student helped in finding sources and writing
the research papers.
-
Enjoyed the use of the library.
-
My partner
-
Meeting new people and having the chance to work with
them.
-
Able to work with an Elon student and the Elon
library sources
-
Working with college students who really understood
my point
-
How my partner taught me to write a good research
paper
-
The friendly advice.
Would you recommend this
collaborative experience for next year?
21 students said "YES." More specific
answers were the following: |
-
It would be an asset to the Senior Project Program
-
This experience has been a self-esteem booster.
-
It was very helpful and researching is easier to do when
you have a partner.
-
It was a great experience, and we had the opportunity to
access many types of sources.
Comments from my 110 College
Writing students.
My interest in the project was to ascertain the impact of
the service learning on my students' writing or writing
development; therefore, the question I paid most attention to
was the following:
How does your experience take you back to your
College Writing class or to your own writing
development?
-
I feel that through these experiences I have improved my
expectations of writing and research as well as my own
writing skills.
-
I have always found that writing a thesis is the hardest
part of writing a paper and that once I get through it, the
body of the paper comes together, and I told this to my
advisee.
-
I appreciated knowing why/how she picked the topic as it
made me think of how I was picking my own topics, for it
was such a tough job trying to find a specific topic in the
many journals.
-
Reinforced what coach is telling us about how helpful peer
editing was; it really does help
-
Even though I was supposed to be helping him write his
paper, he was helping me to be more organized and not to
procrastinate. When I went home that day, after seeing how
organized Anthony was, I got myself five manila folders to
keep all the work for my five different papers in my
college writing class.
-
I improved my writing skills by correcting his works and
finding mistakes that I commonly make which will make it
easier for me to recognize them in my own works from now
on. I have improved my people skills by sharing these days
with Anthony.
-
I realize what a hard-worker April was, and I found that
her work ethics began to rub off on me, and I became a more
dedicated student.
-
By helping Nadine revise, I realized how far I have come in
revising my own papers. The experience has allowed me to
see the feedback that people truly find helpful. Revising
also gave me a chance to better my grammar skills as I
didn't want to tell her the wrong change to make, so
there were times when I would go look up a proper usage. It
helps me review the proper procedure for research and
starting a paper.
-
It brought me back to organizing information and we work on
that a lot in College Writing.
-
This experience made me review the writing techniques that
I already know. It was a good way for me to look at someone
else's writing to see how I could improve it.
-
It would have been really helpful in my case to have had
someone to help teach me to manage time and work throughout
such a long project last year.
Since I had had the project already, I knew exactly what
they were going through. I helped them plan what they were
going to do and in what order.
-
It's good having college freshman helping seniors in
high school because the freshmen have been learning about
the many types of writing at a higher level and can help
students with many different aspects of their papers.
Students tend to be more positive too..
-
For peer editing to work, the participants too must
remember that they too have to revise their own paper.
-
The one-on-one tutoring was good for the students, so they
could receive a lot more motivation than they would if they
were only working with their teacher; I felt the same way
about peer editing in my College Writing class.
Other comments that revealed 110
students' assistance in areas other than writing are
worth noting:
-
I didn't just help a student in need, but I walked away
with a new friend as well."
-
Most noticeable was the fact that these students didn't
have the same opportunities as we did in high school, and
that's why I was determined to help even more.
-
I have become a better person from doing this assignment
because initially I was selfish and felt that I
shouldn't be teaching and helping someone else during
my class time.
-
I appreciated how much I was being appreciated!!
-
Even after the paper was completed, April and I continued
to email one another. Next week, April and I are meeting
for dinner to catch up on each other's lives and
celebrate the ending of her last year of high school and my
first year of college.
-
Not only did we succeed in working well together, but we
formed a friendship that probably would have never happened
without the help of the Periclean grant.
-
It was amazing to have such a connection with someone who
comes from such a different background than you do.
Throughout the project, we communicated through emails, and
I hope to keep in touch with her to find out how her life
goes after graduation.
-
We spent lots of time in our meetings talking about the
ideas of going to college and striving to do their best, aq
perfect situation for college writing freshman to provide
inspiration for someone.
-
College writing freshman are a great resource for high
school seniors to use, for they can easily relate to the
seniors and their situation. They can be role models and
friends to them.
Funds were used for transporting students
to and from the Belk Library, notebooks, note cards, and
sheet protectors for 60 students,( even though we were able
to work with only one class) and one meal for 40 judges and
110 College Writing students.
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