Jess Pauszek December 8, 2013 Composition Pedagogy Patrick Berry Writing Everyday Life: Spaces, Places, and Community

Literacies within the Basic Writing Classroom Identity At A Crossroads: Its a cold day in Syracuse, New York. As I walk the mile to campus in the wind and snow, I am surprisingly managing the cold with my bundle of clothing and hot coffee thermos in hand. Just before I cross the intersection of the main street to officially enter the private campus, the man next to me asks if I have a lighter. I dont, but I want to talk to him. I want to talk to him because hes not wearing a coat, and its freezing. I want to talk to him because hes pushing a shopping cart of bottles and cans so full that there are garbage bags hanging over the sides to accommodate the extra. I want to talk to him because he broke the ice and started the conversation, as simple as it may have been. He reminds me of a lesson I learned the previous summer: while co-teaching a service-learning immersion course for high schoolers and discussing systemic issues of poverty in Baltimore, three previously homeless people spoke on a panel to our students. One of them told us all that most just ignore people who are homeless, in hopes of not making eye contact and feeling obligated to give money. But this person stated all too simply that many still like to be acknowledged with a smile or a small conversation. Embarrassingly so, these speakers reminded me of the humanity in noticing each other. As I walk a few steps with this man in Syracuse, I finally get up the courage to say something more than no, sorry to his question. I need courage because this situation was reaffirming many of the systemic stereotypes and flaws I never wanted to be a part ofme, a

2 young, white, female grad student heading to my private institution to teach; yet, the African American, middle-aged man next to me is homeless, underdressed for a snowy day, and shows me what financial hardship really is. I say something to the effect of looks like youve got your hands full with that. He engages me in a conversation, tells me he collects bottles and cans around these neighborhoods and pushes the cart a few blocks up the way to get what money he can on the refunds. When I exclaim that it seems rough to do the work hes doing, he tells me its not so bad. At least its some money, he says. He tells me that he has been staying at an abandoned building with some buddies but otherwise doesnt know when hell have a roof over his head. We chat for a few more steps, and hes curious about what Im teaching and studying. I dont how to say Im studying Composition and Rhetoric, specifically community engagement and literacies, because at this moment Im so far removed from the community I seek to engage. I feel embarrassed that ahead of us is a cross-street where Im going, making my way to the warmth of a classroom, a paycheck, and a private institution that I know privileges me. Today, this street intersection that I cross daily becomes a physical and metaphorical representation of our situation: we are literally on the edges of campus and the larger community, and I wonder if hed be allowed to cross this intersection with me, into the guarded campus community. I wonder if these boundaries are able to be blurred. As I walk past him, Im overtly aware that the places we walk and the spaces we inhabit are not neutral. That when I say I want to do community engagement, I cannot forget that this is the reality where some have access and others do not. As we part ways, he tells me to keep up the studying. After this interaction, I began thinking how spaces and places are constructed and how the intersection I stood in front of with this homeless man was both metaphorically

3 and physically a point which divided us because the university afforded me access that would most likely be denied to him nowthe physical space of the campus as well as the institutional support for literacy development. Literacy was not something we discussed aside from his questions about what I was studying because, in that moment, I didnt know how to explain my interests in community literacies without seemingly reifying an us/them binary. As Deborah Brandt explains, literacy opportunities refer to peoples relationships to social and economic structures that condition chances for learning and development (7). For me, the university has been a valuable sponsor of my literacies, as well as provided the security of an office or classroom space, and has pledged financial support for four years. Yet, the universityas an institution and a physical structureis also a part of the broader community of Syracuse where this man resides. My point here is to explain that, as Brandt notes, literacy is a complex set of circumstances and mechanisms that include social and economic factors and various identities, and we can gain some insight into these connections if we examine the spaces and places around us. To separate them would be to deny the interactions, both positive and negative, that community members and students have. This interaction opened my eyes to how geographical community/university divides around me may connect to the literacies we teach, sponsor, or study within our classrooms. I decided that I wanted to devote one of my writing classes the following semester to an inquiry about space, as a way to think through how students and community members interact with and create the spaces around us. To connect this explicitly to writing, I decided to use pieces of community literacy, or texts written by community members in Syracuse, to represent some of the literacies circulating beyond the university. My goal was not to reify the us/them or university/community divide but rather

4 interrogate how spaces contribute to the ways we define ourselves in relation to those around us who are also a part of these spaces. I argue that an inquiry about space that also draws from community productions gives us the opportunity to reexamine our positionalities as students and teachers in order to be ethically responsive to the community around us. Overview of Writing 104: Responding to the many critiques of community-based pedagogies as merely charity work, paternalistic, or service, I will discuss a Writing 1041 class, where I had students do beginning engagement with the Syracuse University community starting simply with noticing spaces around us and how they are constructedin an effort to find a middle ground between descending on a community and being completely removed from it. While this essay focuses specifically on a class of what I would consider basic writers, these examples provide benefits and challenges for all levels of composition students. Specifically, I will address how composition teachers can construct a basic writing classroom that enables students to think of themselves as researchers and intellectuals (and having experiences worthy of their research), while also acknowledging that other people occupy the spaces we come into contact with on a daily basis. To be part of a university, we must also consider our positionalities within the larger community as well.

WRT 104: Introduction to College Writing is not officially labeled a basic writing class; however, in the sequence of writing courses at Syracuse University, this is an introductory course that is sequentially lower than the 105 course most students take. This class was also offered in a program called Summer Start, which is designed for students who may need some extra time to get used to college requirements before the Fall semester. Some methods for placing students into this course come from parental income, first generation college students, and a placement exam. Besides courses specifically for non-native English learners, this is sequentially the lowest level of writing instruction.
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5 Through my discussion of this class, I will describe my reasoning to incorporate local writingcommunity literacyinto our basic writing classes as a beginning framework for engagement. As it was described to me, Writing 104 is meant to provide students with critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. Beyond that, it was up to the teachers discretion how they wanted to fulfill these outcomes. I was a bit appalled to hear students are placed in this course largely based on status as a first generation student, parental income, and other factors such as learning disabilities and standardized testing results. Because of the various placement procedures of students in this course, we had a range of learners, including students from other countries (Japan, China, Puerto Rico) taking their first college writing course, students who had difficulties on standardized testing, firstgeneration college students, and students from disadvantaged socio-economic situations, notably from parts of Chicago and New York City. Perhaps this class doesnt signify basic writing specifically, but the mechanisms for placing students into this course specifically echo scholarship that locates the assumption that these factors (socio-economic class; native languages; standardized testing, etc) correlate with less-proficient writing abilities. These are not quite the same students described in Mina Shaughnessys widely debated Errors and Expectations, stemming from a moment of widespread change in the admissions policy at CUNY within the 1970s, guaranteeing all residents the chance to attend college (5). However, just as Shaughnessy explains the importance and difficulties of basic writing, emphasizing that basic writers still have something to give, I argue that these WRT 104 students needed to see themselves as valuable contributors in their writing. Students came into this class, nearly every single one of them, stating that they were horrible writers

6 and worried about how theyd be evaluated. I almost believed them, with how much they told me. In the other classes I taught, I never saw this level of self-deprecation or lack of confidence in writing abilities. This was my first time teaching the course, and by no means do I want to argue that it was without fault. However, what I found really unique about this course was how personally and critically my students engaged with the readings and spaces around them. Listed on our class syllabus, the structure of the class included the following: Our readings and discussion will focus on how Place(s) physical and digital, public and privateare created, shaped, and experienced through writing. When we talk about writing, we will be thinking about it as both a noun (an object in front of us) and a verb (an activity which we do). As such, we will discover how writing shapes places in our lives each day. To do this, we will work on a few different levels thinking about writing as it functions in digital spaces (the internet), in contested spaces (graffiti on public property), and in physical everyday spaces (such as coffee shops, the library, and in our classroom). More specifically, we will also look to how writing works within Syracuse itself, as we read writing done within and about Syracuse. We will continuously think about how each of us understands writing as a way to engage (or perhaps) exclude the world around us through factors such as race, gender, socio-economic class, etc (Pauszek 1). I decided to juxtapose community publications from the Westside of Syracuse with readings from Michel de Certeau, David Sibley, and others scholars who focus on space. To reflect on my own teaching, my question became: What is productive about putting these texts, community publications and theoretical foundations, into conversation with each other? In their piece on basic writing, Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington remind readers that we need to be aware of the ways we frame writing and that this should serve our students well (34). Here, they start to suggest the ways in which basic writing connects not only to how we teach but also how we assess writing. They mention

7 the need to explore ways to engage with our communities (on campus and beyond) to be attentive to local assessment needs as opposed to large-scale standardized assessments that homogenize expectations for writing without recognizing the multiplicity of students positionalities (34). My attempt in WRT 104 was to have students think about these questions and reframe the ways they understand their connection with writing and the community (34). Specifically, I asked them to explore how we can engage with our communitiesthrough texts, spaces, and interactions; how these texts challenge who we see as intellectuals; who has the authority to create everyday writing through their lived experience; and who has access to create the spaces around us. Shannon Carter writes in The Way Literacy Lives that Teaching basic writers to investigate and use more familiar literacies in negotiating academic ones requires us to work againstconsciously and activelythe dominant models of intelligence and (relevant?) content (Carter 66). Indeed, by blending community publications, and having students write about their own communities, I wanted them to use these familiar literacies to inform their readings of theoretical texts, seeing them all as intellectual endeavors (66). The goal of the course readings, and an assignment Ill discuss later on, was for them to reflexively examine where they fit into (or perhaps are excluded from) and how they create meaning in a particular space, as students, community members, or based on whatever identities they claim. This course was meant to find a middle ground between doing community engagement that has the potential to be intrusive or solely charity-based. This idea draws off the integral work of community-based pedagogies such as servicelearning, civic outreach, and public writingactive teaching that really pushes students to connect themselves not just with the university but also quite literally the community

8 beyond the gates of campus. Unfortunately, though, despite the best of intentions, pedagogy that seeks to bridge the university and community isnt always viewed positively. For instance, in the Syracuse-based community publication, Home, Tony Lombardo (Syracuse native) writes, The do-gooders from Syracuse University, right? Theyre intellectuals, right? Many of them are too sophisticated to understand the basics. They dont understand us (70). What I appreciate about this statement, apart from its raw honesty, is that its reminiscent of the same critiques scholars have made about community-based teaching. The critiques abound and the cautions are in the scholarship; theyre also, as we see, in the community. When the university and community intersect, the relationship is often characterized (and for good reason) that we are merely dogooders; aimed at charity; looking to serve those less fortunate; or there is an us/them dichotomy privileging the institution as intellectual (70). Reminding students of these negative connotations and the issues with ethically interacting with the community around us, I had my students read HOME and discuss how residents of the Syracuse community describe where we all now reside. I wanted us to, as a class, be reflexive about how we define ourselves individually as well as the perceptions reflected back on the university from community members. Why We Should Care About Space In Michel de Certeaus chapter Walking in the City, he begins with a description of looking down on Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. He mentions the skyscrapers, Central Park, Harlem, and he describes how the city is structurally composedthrough buildings and ecology (157). He critiques being up above the city or out of the citys grasp because elevation transfigures him into a voyeur (157). Here, de

9 Certeau suggests that to be above the city is to be removed from it, from really being apart of it. But, what does it mean to be apart of the city? According to de Certeau, those who are most a part of the city are actually those who evade our sight, and who often fail to be noticed: The ordinary practitioners of the city live down below, below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walkan elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmnner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban text; they write about being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen. (158) de Certeau describes how individuals navigate and, in a way, (re)create the city each day, as if its a text. He says that there is a rhetoric of walking and that the paths we create through walking are tied to the real story of the city (161). de Certeau pushes us to think about being in a city rather being above it and looking down as a voyeur. In this example, to be a voyeur is to separate yourself from the lived experiences; you lose perspective and you are unable see these everyday practices of lived space (161). This concept of creating the text of the city is a powerful idea when applied to community literacy because it acknowledges that residents or community memberseveryday citizenshave the agency to create meaningful productions with their lived experiences. This asks us also to question what happens when people who are not community memberssuch as many students from the universityinteract with the spaces where these rhetorical creations are being produced. The answer is not to simply flip the hierarchyto value community literacy more than student productions, but rather to see the potential for community literacies to inform our teaching practices, and to see student writers as having agency as well. In effect, thinking of Lombardos critique, I wanted students to see the authors in Syracuses community publication HOME as ordinary practitioners who, like de Certeau says,

10 construct the truebut often invisiblestory of the city, through their physical actions and lived experience, as well as in this piece of community literacy or everyday writing. Similarly, in her book, Geographies of Writing, Nedra Reynolds argues that places are embodied and that the spaces in which we live interact with and inform the literacies in these spaces as well. Geography, she writes, gives us the metaphorical and methodological tools to change our ways of imagining writing through both movement and dwellingto see writing as a set of spatial practices informed by everyday negotiations of space (6). In both de Certeau and Reynolds examples, spaces transcend simply being there to be complex creations that are imbued with power, depending who creates them and for what purposes. Importantly, the ideas of belonging or exclusion are within these distinctions of spaces as well. What Reynolds and de Certeau so importantly point out is that there is a materiality to communicative acts and that the constructed spaces around us have both apparent and hidden traces of power dynamics. Everyday Writers Making Meaning Shannon Carter also discusses this notion of power dynamics set up between spaces and literacies within and beyond the university. She mentions this in regard to basic writing, and writers that we need to help students with rhetorical dexterity, which enables us to represent literacy differentlyto basic writers, to tutors, to basic writing teachers, and, through them, to those representing literacy beyond our learning spaces (15). Carter argues that by engaging with literacies outside of the traditional or standardized spaces, basic writers and teachers can see writing as not just a staid set of standards and practices but rather a blend of mutable, social forces that are deeply situated in time and place (15). Even more, while Carter uses the term basic writers, the

11 overarching goal of her book is to dispel this categorization and instead empower all writers to see literacy embodied through a variety of practices that occur within traditional learning spaces as well as in workplaces, homes, communities, religious institutions, etc. I appreciate her care with destabilizing the hierarchy of in school and outof-school literacies to explain how these can be mutually informative. I attempted to advocate this view in my own class, through the blending of community publications. For example, in the 2011 community publication HOME by Gifford Street Press (a communitybased press), Syracuse native Gary Bonaparte writes about his life growing up in Syracuse and always having a desire to move away and travel the country. After explaining his travels, he concludes, When I was young I was like a lone agent, you know? I felt like I had to go places where things were goodBut, it didnt help anybody here unless they went too, which they couldnt all do. Now as I get older I think its better to become involved in your community, and try to make it possible to have the things you want without moving away. (15) For me, this quote represents two things in particular that I value in my own teaching community literacies (local writing, done by community members) and writing that situates us in our surrounding spaces and communities (how identities are shaped through these spaces). Bonapartes narrative expresses his desire to ultimately stay in Syracuse because he felt a connection to the city and a desire to improve conditions around it rather than moving to a new place. Using texts from the community, such as Lombardo and Bonapartes narratives, in my WRT 104 class gave students a better understanding of how Syracuse residents see the city. This blend pushes against hierarchizing university productions or knowledge in a way that forgets to look to residents themselves.

12 Paring readings from de Certeau and Syracuse community publications, I hoped to scaffold my course so that students were able to see across texts and how the ability to make meaning is not reserved for only those with a title; instead, I hope for them to see how we all participate in knowledge construction. In particular, I framed one of our large assignments in the class as an Observation of a Space where students were asked to identify a space and familiarize themselves with it, modeling off of de Certeaus idea that we create meaning as we are walking through the city (161). Admittedly, teaching this class for the first time, this assignment could have been more carefully designed; however, the careful and critical writing and thinking I saw from most of my students in this assignment represents possibilities for future courses. Going back to my opening narrative in this piece, I wanted students to think about how the spaces and identities around them are constructed. Students were asked to observe a space in Syracuse and see how people interact and create the space through both their writing and walking. I also wanted them to see how that space was structurally or institutionally created, drawing on these questions as starting points: who is able to access this space? And how? Who takes care of this space? Who seems welcomed or excluded? My hope was that this could be a chance for students to think about places and identities, getting them to go beyond the classroom without descending on the community as part of a community-engaged project, before they really even know the community around them. One student in particular received admiring feedbackboth verbal and written from his classmates for his presentation and analysis of space. This student analyzed a dorm at Syracuse called Ernie Davis Hallone he interacts with every day. In his analysis he noted, however, that he never really paid attention to the design or how people interact

13 with this space. During his class presentation, he talked about how the architectural design of the building made it accessible for people in wheelchairs without needing to draw attention to it being a place for handicap people: upon entering the building, everyone uses ramps because they are built into the structure of how people move throughout the dining hall to the gym. The ramps are normalized into the buildings traffic flow. Beyond physical accessibility, he noted that the food choices (vegan, vegetarian, healthy eating for Meatless Monday), the seating arrangements (chairs and tables were grouped for gatherings rather than individuals), and the respect for religious observances (since this was during Ramadan, there was a room for practicing Muslims to be with a group while they were fasting) were all aimed at inclusivity, not difference. However, very importantly, he discussed this building was institutionally built around access and privilege (for those who held Syracuse University identification cards) while also bordering a community park on the edge of campus. Despite this proximity to the surrounding community, he determined that it very clearly was not a space for the outside community. To be sure, I do not want to present a growth narrative that this assignment and class changed my students writing simply by its design. Despite his critical analysis and well-received presentation, the student failed to complete other assignments in the class, and may have relied too much on his past writing skills. I will maintain, though, that this student was able to use his observations to discuss the idea of community in two contexts (Syracuse University and Syracuse more broadly) and notice a tension between how these groups were able to interact with this space or who was even able to access the space. This assignment helped him notice things that he had previously taken for granted each day in

14 his interactions and connect these experiences with questions of power and social dynamics. The level of analysis I saw with this student reminds me of James P. Purdy and Joyce R Walkers article Liminal Spaces and Research Identity: The Construction of Introductory Composition Students as Researchers. They assert that students come into our classes with many research skills and we should take advantage of those abilities, rather than try and teach them static research practices: To be participatory citizens, students will need to be able to apply the kind of work they do in online spaces to other forums. If these activities are discredited, students may be less likely to find value in or critically interrogate them and therefore may be ill-prepared to effectively participate in civic activity (31). Purdy and Walker imply that civic activity or participation in civic life is a central tenet of a research and writing classroom, and I agree (31). When thinking of the responsibility of a composition classroom, especially basic writing, I believe it is essential for students to see writing as a means of public engagement in various spheres of community and civic life. Purdy and Walker powerfully advocate the resources students already bring to the classroom in terms or their research practices in a digital age, rather than focusing on the deficits of students perhaps not being able to search standard library databases. They advocate that positioning students as unskilled or illiterate researchersmay actually damage students ability to create a healthy academic identity (26). To see students as already skilled researchers (Purdy and Walker), as having literacies beyond the classroom (Carter), and as being able to create meaning through our spatial interactions (de Certeau), means seeing the assets all writers bring to the classroom. These ideas challenge us to see beyond standardization and assumptive placement decisions to the ability students have to

15 interact as intellectuals and people who are creating meaning through their own personal literacies. I started with the question: How can we use community literacies in basic writing classrooms to help students ethically and responsibly connect to the community around them? I see a value in basic writing courses that ask students to explore how our spaces and identities are constructed around us as both part of the institution, as well as how that extends to the broader community. It is important to have students read community literacies to better understand the material aspects of everyday lives from the people who live here, as well as understand, as Shannon Carter writes, that each manifestation of these literacies is valid and complex. The narrative I started with is, at the core, not about literacy but about people and spaces. And, most importantly, it is about the humanity and necessity of noticing how we interact with the people and structures around us. Whether teaching basic writing or another composition class, this idea of noticing pushes us to see ourselves, our students, and community members as embodied agents, all capable of creating meaning through our various productions.

16 Bibliography Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Susanmarie Harrington. Basic Writing as a Political Act: Public Conversations about Writing and Literacies. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2002. Print. Brandt, Deborah. Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. Carter, Shannon. The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction. Albany: State University of New York, 2008. Print. de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City." The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California, 1984. 156-163. Print. HOME: Journeys into the Westside. Syracuse: Gifford Street Community Press, 2011. 1-89. Print. Pauszek, Jessica. Writing 104 Syllabus. Summer 2013. Print. Purdy, James P. and Joyce R. Walker. Liminal Spaces and Research Identity: The Construction of Introductory Composition Students as Researchers. Pedagogy. 13.1 (2013):9-41. Print. Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2007. Print. Shaughnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for Basic Writing Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Sibley, David. Geographies of Exclusion. London: New York, 1995. Print.