This past semester, as a part of my Writing as Social Practice class, we worked with the Salt Lake City (SLC) Community Writing Center (CWC) for our community-engaged learning (CEL) requirements. The CWC is located on the grounds of the SLC library and is a place open for anyone and everyone to write in an environment committed to a rhetoric of respect.
For our CEL involvement, each student was supposed to engage with the CWC in three ways: participate in an activity put on by the CWC, help to facilitate a CWC activity, and contribute a form of writing to one of the community publications created by the CWC. The following is my CEL portfolio and reflection.
Participation
The first thing I chose to do with the CWC was partake in their Writing as Healing workshop series, one of the many writing workshops that the CWC puts on. I was excited to go to one of the CWC’s workshops because I was interested to see what the environment and atmosphere were going to be like.
Removed from the direct involvement of an academic institution, the workshops put on by the CWC offer a space for learning and development free from expectations, constructed consequences, and “literacy rules.” You’re not going to get docked points for missing some arbitrary comma placement, you’re not expected to know and use “academic vocabulary,” and you’re not going to be criticized for what you contribute. All of this is aimed at progressing linguistic justice and encouraging people to write free from the stigmas and power structures that shape public perceptions of writing.
The Writing as Healing workshop was essentially a crash course in narrative therapy. Led by a licensed therapist, everyone at the workshop was encouraged to not only participate in writing exercises focused on themselves but to engage in writing as a group. We covered various phases and strategies associated with narrative therapy, as well as concepts that can be helpful to writing about your personal experience. After going through a few group writing exercises, it was interesting to observe the different genres and styles that other people used. Since we were not restricted in any way other than a timer to stay on track, everyone gravitated to writing in a way that they felt personally comfortable with.
Facilitation
The atmosphere of the Writing as Healing workshop was something I wanted to emulate in the workshop I helped to facilitate. Early in the semester, I elected to help out with the Research Writing workshop hosted by the CWC in November. Throughout my life, I feel like I have become well-versed in the ways that academic institutions traditionally expect you to conduct and write about research. My goal for the workshop was to make it clear to the participants that this is NOT always the best, easiest, or most efficient way to perform research writing, and it is absolutely not “correct” by default.
Another thing I was interested in implementing was a discussion about how to use artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the research project. While I don’t think it is ever a good idea—or ethical—to rely on AI for source information, and I am not really a proponent of utilizing AI to actually write what you want to say, there are plenty of ways AI programs can be helpful throughout the research project. For example, I fairly regularly use ChatGPT as a brainstorming tool to come up with and organize ideas. Similar to using the references section of a Wikipedia page, ChatGPT can point you toward references and resources that are applicable to your personal research.
Overall, the workshop itself went alright. There was a fairly diverse group of participants with respect to age and what each person was trying to research. However, we were not really able to effectively engage all of the participants so the workshop felt very one-directional, something I wished to avoid.
The following is an example of the handouts we provided to the participants:
Contribution
As I am sure you are aware, the Great Salt Lake here in Utah is in critical condition. In an effort to raise awareness and stimulate community involvement with conservation efforts, the CWC is publishing an anthology of community writing submissions that all have to do with the Great Salt Lake. I decided to break out of my writing comfort zone and submit a poem to this anthology for my contribution piece.
Since I have never really written poetry before this seemed like a bit of a risk, but I wanted to try it anyway. My goal was to try in earnest and to connect with what I was writing on an emotional level, however, after completing the poem for submission I feel as though I failed to reach this goal. I did end up creating the poem, but I never really connected with it. Everything felt forced up until the submission deadline which is not how I wanted things to be.
Here is the poem that I ended up submitting:
Reflection
My time in this Writing as Social Practice class has given me a much more holistic view of what writing has been, what writing is, and what writing can become. Throughout the course, we referenced a couple of books that encompass a lot of the key themes of the class: Naming What We Know and then briefly (Re)Considering What We Know. I would recommend reading or at least looking at summaries of these books if you have never once thought critically about how you personally have learned or have used writing (even if you have, give them a look).
Directly related to our involvement with the CWC, we read sections of Tiffany Rousculp’s book Rhetoric of Respect which has a specific focus on the birth, goals, and development of the SLC CWC. One of the things discussed in the book—and that is very noticeable once made aware of it—is about the CWC’s drive to maintain a non-distinguishable connection with their governing body, the Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). They do this intentionally to prevent any of the barriers of exclusion associated with academic institutions from getting in the way of community writers. The CWC is much more accessible, much less daunting, and generally a more comforting place given that it is not on a SLCC campus nor do they outwardly advertise association with SLCC. Recognizing the importance of this, I was eager to make sure I propagated this within my contributions, especially during the facilitation of the Research Writing workshop. In fact, I was actually trying to steer the workshop away from any influence from academic institutions so that the research process would seem more approachable.
Another concept I took from class into my involvement with the CWC comes from Naming What We Know, concept 1.7: Assessing Writing Shapes Contexts and Instruction. A few of my classmates—Barstow, A., Donohoe, C., and Wen, F.—summarized part of this concept by saying that, “assessing writing can create critical thinking for a writer, however, it can also limit the ability of the writer at the same time.” Taking this idea into my collaborations with the CWC, I wanted to ensure—again, particularly in the workshop I helped to facilitate—that participants understood the complexities associated with assessment, especially for those who were working on something to be graded for a class. Not that I was recommending that they change how they view assessments of their work to be more positive or negative but to understand that the assessments they have received in the past have shaped how they write now and how they interact with the instruction of writing. I hoped this would have a similar effect on the participants that learning the concept had on me early in the semester. Looking back on my relationship with reading and writing, I can see how my experiences with writing have been negatively affected by assessments of my writing, both from school and work.
Overall, I believe that both the study of theories and concepts within the actual Writing as Social Practice class coupled with the example of the CWC was really eye-opening for me. I found it interesting to engage in this critical deconstruction and analysis of what I thought writing to be, as well as to see how these concepts are playing out in real-world contexts. While there are for sure still issues with public conceptions, interactions, and instruction of writing, it is uplifting to see the progression of writing and where things are headed in our future.
Tschüss!
