Using the Garden to Promote Reflective Writing

Squash 1
Originally uploaded by Clint Gardner

As I mentioned in the previous post, during the initial sessions of the Thayne Center for Service & Learning Garden Parties (held every Tuesday at 9:00 am at the SLCC Community Garden and open to all), I distributed "gardening journals" to those who were present. The purpose of these journals is to allow space for Community Garden participants to reflect on not only gardening, but also what involvement in the garden means to them, or the impact that work in the garden is having on them.

My own journal has charted a growing commitment to the garden and its purpose: "I am really stunned at how involved/committed I've become to this project. I think it is because the garden so clearly shows the fruits of our labors, and how working as a group we've done something so significant," I recently wrote.

I am excited to get more students involved in the project once they return in the fall. I am currently planning some projects that I want to suggest to the Thayne Center folks to take place during the garden parties.

How does our garden grow?

Bell pepper
Originally uploaded by Clint Gardner

At Salt Lake Community College, where I teach, I've had the honor of first volunteering with our new Community Garden, and now being the advisor for the Slow Food/Community Garden student group. For a few years now, I've wanted to do something like this, but kept putting it off because of professional commitments. I'm happy that SLCC students got on the stick and pushed this project forward.

The Community Garden involves various departments and clubs on campus such as the Thayne Center for Service & Learning, the Disability Resource Center, the Nursing Department, the Environment Club, and Distance Education (to name the groups I know of.) There are other groups involved, so forgive me for skipping your group.

The ultimate purpose of the Community Garden is to educate SLCC students and community members about where our food comes from, learn about our mutual environmental impact, and to provide some of our produce to our new campus food co-op and to other local charitable groups.  As far as the Student Writing Center goes, our goal was to promote thoughtful writing about environmental concerns, so we provided free gardening journals to early attendees.  The Student Writing Center also hopes to conduct readings from those journals as well as other nature/environmental readings during the Thayne Center for Service & Learning weekly garden parties head each Tuesday from 9 until 10 am.

Given our wet and cold spring and a weird case of tomato leaf curl (that doesn't seem to have hurt the tomato plants) I wasn't certain there would be enough produce. The garden, however, kicked in last week and the various garden plots are bursting with produce.  The various group plots have produced everything from broccoli to zucchini.  I'm looking forward to an abundant harvest to give back to the community.

SLCC colleague Paula Michniewicz is blogging her garden experience at Watch My Garden Grow.

Notes on "We Compositionists" and Class Conciousness

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Chris Gallagher, in a 2005 article in JAC titled "We Compositionists:  Toward Engaged Professionalism" offers various suggestions on how the field of composition can, for wont of better terms, remain relevant.  The term relevant appears to bother Gallagher, however, given that he throws relevant in (mildly ironic) quotation marks in his discussion that compositionists seem to be bereft of an audience other than themselves and seem to be constantly worrying that what they are doing is irrelevant:  "And it's consisten with a whole range of efforts to make composition and rehtoric more 'relevant,' including various calls for 'public intellectuals'...the study of 'everday literacies...' and service learning....What is behind this fear of not mattering?" (76)

All of this worry about relevance seems to come from a certain worry that what we are doing as compositionists just doesn't matter; that it is unimportant; that it is a waste of time.  No one, of course, wants to see what they do as a waste of time nor unimportant:

"what compositionist, striving for tenure, has not wondered if her talents might do more good in the world outside the academy?  What compositionist, upon earning tenure, has not felt some guilt--and perhaps more than a touch of depression--as a result of being rewarded by a system that is demonstrably corrupt?  What compositionist has not looked upon his publications and wondered, Do these make a difference?  How else could I have spent my time?"  (79-80) 

Gallagher then goes on to quote Barbara Ehrenreich about the dangers of a hedonistic, soft, cushy middle class Babbittesque existence that seems to befall all professionals at one time or another.  Gallagher states early in the piece that all this self-referential discussion of disciplinarity is a "middle-class psychodrama" (75) that the field seems to be stuck in:  "Whether we are looking 'down' at the 'mere teachers' or 'up' to our colleagues in literature and critical theory, we are plagued by self-doubt" (80).  All this self-conscious worrying about worrying about worrying is best summed up by Gallagher in one like "Isn't there more important work I should be doing" (77)?

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A friend and colleague of mine, Jason Pickavance, and I have from time-to-time discussed the ins-and-outs of teaching at a community college with its teaching load that is at least two and a half times the load of a research university teaching load.  Community college classes usually also have greater enrollment caps.   It isn't uncommon for a community college compositionist to take home (and I do mean take home) over a hundred portfolios every few weeks.  Added on top of that, as well, is committee work and other institutional activities as well as community service obligations*.  Most CC compositionists, as well, strive to stay abreast of the field and to engage the field, whenever possible.   At the same time, some CC compositionists are uneasy at even calling themselves "compositionalists" or actively engaging in a field where they may feel "looked down upon" by the gentry of our field (the researchers and not the 'mere' teachers.)  Many CC compositionalists, too, bristle at being thought of as burned out drudges working a menial job.   


"At least I don't have to work in a coal mine," Pickavance once said in response to a complaint about how bad CC compositionists have it.  I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that some CC compositionists also ask themselves "Isn't there more important work I could be doing?"  They often don't say this aloud, however, but actions, which I won't go into here, often show evidence of the desire to take on other kinds of work

*I'm not making this blog entry a complaint against community college working conditions, mind you.  This is just a simple reality of our existence. 

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Now, dear reader, I suppose you would like me to find some neat  reconciliation between these two sections.  Frankly, my dear, I don't know that there can be reconciliation.  As long as the working conditions are what they are and being a researcher is valued monetarily more than being a teacher or an active agent in the classroom, there is going to be a very distinct class divide.

What can happen, however, is that we apply something that Gallagher offers up in the final part of his piece:

Redefine traditional categories of academic work....Research and teaching should be defined as two forms of the collaborative discovery and sharing of knowledge.  "Service" should be done away with as a category of academic work, but academic professionals should be expected to demonstrate how their research and teaching both involved and affect others within and beyond their immediate institution.  So instead of ticking off how many committees faculty sit on or how much administrative work they do, personnel committees might instead consider how professionals contribute to the collaborative discovery and sharing of knowledge in multiple sties--including, of course, on committees and in academic programs.

 In other words we can take our field--our discpline--and activate it.  Our field does something in other words, and doesn't just sit and navel gaze and worry about its relevance.

I will say that I am just a bit bothered by this call for action.  While I heartily agree we should be engaging in praxis (I am a writing center person, after all), I am a bit flummoxed about how a CC compositionist takes on this call, or even if we are included in it.  Rather than navel-gazing, CC compositionists seem to be preoccupied by their position in academia and inundated with work.  Again, I don't want to make CC work out to be like some Mike Leigh movie where the beset working class can never escape. Worrying about position seems to be just as disabling as navel gazing.

What's the answer?  I think the only way we can find that out is by actually applying the ideas we believe in and taking action through them.

Work cited

Gallagher, Chris.  "We Compositionists:  Toward Engaged Professionalism."  JAC.  25.1 (2005).  75-99. Print.

All of our yesterdays

Here's what I wrote over on the old College server I've been using for my WordPress blog for years now:  

While my academic blog has not been the most active creature in the sea, I still wish to maintain it. The server on which the blog currently sits is getting fairly old, however, and there are no plans to replace it with a new one. Given that it holds our record-keeping database for the SLCC Student Writing Center, I think I would prefer to free up some space on the server and move my blog off site to a blogger.com blog. At least in moving to blogger, I won’t be forced into upgrading WordPress ever week or so (I’m not kidding.) Maintaining PeerCentered on blogger.com has been relatively worry-free, after all.
The new spot is clintgardner.blogspot.com. Eventually I will auto-forward from this page to it. I’m still contemplating being all ego-maniacal and buying up clintgardner.org while it is up for grabs.

Long may she wave.


And yes, I do notice there is some WP code artifacts that didn't convert.  I doubt that I will ever be inspired enough by the blog to go back and clean it up.

Writing Center Mission Statement Wordle

I am curious to have community comments on this Wordle constructed from approximately 33 mission statements freely provided to me by WC administrators from various institutions. If you aren't familiar with Wordle (http://www.wordle.net), it crunches texts and represents the most prevalent terms appearing in the text by size. I don't believe color or position has any statistical significance, and is mostly chosen by the person who creates the Wordle based on her or his aesthetic sensibilities. In the following Worldle, I have removed "writing" and "center" as terms. I did this simply because those terms, quite expectantly, were ubiquitous in all the mission statements and, therefore, took up a lot of Wordle screen real estate:

Available from http://www.wordle.net. (Corrected version.)

While I am drawing my own nefarious conclusions from this smash-up for my CCCC presentation, I just wanted to hear what the WC community thinks; that is why I haven't really shaped perception with questions, but I suppose if you are stuck in commenting on it, you might want to consider the significance of the prevalence of certain terms.

Update: I noticed an error in my text file where "writing" was not always removed. I corrected that (3/10/2010; 9:48 am). I apologize for the error.

"Sapping the Strength of the State" or notes on reading Berube

While I was away attending the TYCA Southeast Conference in Chattanooga, the faculty/staff discussion group for the 2010 Writing and Social Justice Conference met to discuss Michael Berube's Life As We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child. I've been told that the discussion went quite well, and I had a few moments this morning to discuss Berube's ideas with one of the Student Writing Center tutors, Lori. As she is a person with a disability herself, I found her insights into the book profound, and useful in helping me to understand the broader cultural ramifications that Berube discusses in the book in the context of individual experience.

1) It would seem that many of the things that become so problematic about the treatment of the mentally disabled since the late 19th century is that such treatment were often "for the best" or had "good intentions" and were based on progressive thinking. In other words, the manner in which all disabled were treated previously (seen as somehow tainted by evil or corruption a la Richard III or the more sympathetic, and even more tragic Quasimodo) was, at least, set aside during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and many of the disabled were institutionalized "for their own good." They were sent to "hospitals" where the implication was that they would be "cured" of their "disease." While such institutionalization was no doubt better than being treated as a social pariah or a demon-besotted creature, mal-treatment was still the norm for the disabled. As Berube notes, drawing from Foucault, the institution of treated the disabled inhumanely never died, but transformed into a more "modern" system where the disabled (and most particularly the mentally disabled) were institutionalized "for their own good" and for the "benefit of society." In essence the "system" justified the inhumane treatment because it was supposedly benefiting the disabled, just as, perhaps, an exorcism would benefit a medieval disabled person because it would drive the demons that were causing the disability out. In either case, you end up with the same result: someone being treated inhumanely and that treatment being justified because the ends were supposedly beneficial to the individual and to society.

2) On a further note, I am also interested in the generally accepted metaphor of disability as disease, rather than just another way of being. Berube doesn't seem to be getting into that too much (I'm only half-way through), but Lori in the Student Writing Center certainly was interested in talking about it, and I am curious about the adoption of metaphors as means of defining ourselves. That doesn't mean, of course, that a disability doesn't magically disappear just because one and others accept it as one's normal state of being. If any thing, disability highlights the impossibility for us to escape our physical bodies, and how those bodies shape our identity.

3) Berube is quite adept at spotting American foibles. We, it would seem, are a patently anti-social who mistrust big groups that we aren't members of (and perhaps leaders of) and particularly of government. This distrust of society runs the gamut of American political beliefs from far left (fight the man) to the far right (damn gubmint!). Berube notes that these extremist notions of independence and individualism have a profound effect on the disabled, given that the disabled are often obviously dependent on others in order to sometimes lead their lives lives, but also for some, in order to sustain life at all. Lori was particularly interested in inter-dependence. I noted, as well, that the able-bodied ideas about independence are often just lies we tell ourselves to get along in the world. As Donne said, of course, "no man is an isle entire unto himself." Amercians, however, seem to feel that at least we are all peninsulas with really narrow causeways. I think the disabled throw our American notions of independence and autonomy right in our faces. Many people with disabilities cannot be fully independent (nor should they be.) They cannot be expected to fulfill the ultimate demand that some people put on American citizens to buckle down and "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Sounds familiar, eh? Victor Villanueva discussed the same idea in his book Bootstraps.

I believe, as well, that the disabled prove the lie that charity is ennobling. Charity is only ennobling of the giver. It forces the recipient into the eternal groveling position as the dependent on some able-bodied benefactor, and are, therefore, a lesser being. All this individualism, for all its vaunted greatness, sure seems to have a great more to deal with social position than it really does with "freedom" now doesn't it?

2010 Writing & Social Justice Conference: (Dis)ability

This year's Writing & Social Justice Conference's theme is (Dis)ability. Sponsored by the Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) English Department in partnership with the SLCC Disability Resrouce Center, Family & Human Studies Department, The Thayne Center for Service & Learning, the SLCC Community Writing Center, SLCC Student Services Art & Cultural Events Committee, Art Access Utah, and the SLCC Student Writing Center, the Conference is open to all undergraduates in the state of Utah (USA). The deadline for submissions is March 12, 2010. The conference will be held on April 10, 2010.

WSJC2010DisabilityverSPRING