Download PDFConclusion
These challenges notwithstanding, I maintain that service-learning’s benefits make it an ideal approach to teaching FYC. Through community engagement, students fulfill the learning objectives of FYC by practicing purposeful and audience-driven writing; developing greater rhetorical awareness; and exercising critical thinking and reflection (Dorman & Dorman, 2023; Brack & Hall, 2023). Just as important, SL education has been shown to reduce prejudice, promote multicultural knowledge, enhance leadership skills, and increase levels of civic responsibility (Asghar & Rowe, 2017; Caspersz & Olaru, 2017; Tinkler et al., 2017). If we want our students to view composition as one way to create a more just society, as opposed to something they do in exchange for a grade, we ought to strive for those same results. But for this to happen, we must first be willing to rethink how composition is taught; and service-learning is one pedagogical philosophy that “because of its incongruence with traditional pedagogies can disrupt the norm of individualism, teacher control and student passivity” (Carnicelli & Boluk, 2017, p. 132). While considering the power (im)balance between university and community is an important component of SL, I contend that we must also address this same dynamic within academia itself. As Elizabeth Wardle (2009) suggests, perhaps our goal should be to “no longer ask FYC to teach students to write in the university and instead construct FYC to teach students about writing in the university” (p. 767). Are we going to teach FYC to empower students as agents of change, or will we maintain the status quo and our place in it as authorities?
This question is never far from my mind. For most of my students, FYC is their all-important introduction to college-level writing. This class can shape how they think of composition for years to come, an important consideration given that composition is a skill that spans across all disciplines. I have had more than a few students confide in me that they are not excited for my class at first, and when I ask why, the near-unanimous reply is that they were discouraged by how they were taught to write growing up. I am never offended by my students’ honesty. Quite the contrary, I welcome it as a call to action, to not repeat the mistakes of the past. While service-learning is not to be undertaken lightly, it allows FYC to transcend the typical expectations of writing instruction and produce compositions that speak more to “the values of connections, reciprocities, and interdependencies among peoples” (Duffy, 2014, p. 217). This is the sort of composition that matters to me, and as I have seen firsthand, it is what matters most to my students, too. Our students are ready and mature enough to go into the world and heal it. As instructors, we can help make their journey possible and join them along the way.