Crystal Dombrowski

HON 3000 Option (ENG 2510)

19 December 2016
Service Learning Final Reflection
After looking through my handwritten notes from the semester I realized that they were
out of order and often in shorthand; not the sort of thing I felt good about turning in as my final
reflection from my service learning. In an effort to make everything more ordered and fluid, this
journal that I had kept has been transposed here, with each entry including a description of what
we were working on in ENG 2510 that week, what I worked on in the Creative Writing course
with the students, and any other miscellaneous information from each week at Churchill High
School.
As a side note, I quickly realized that I would not have much to offer to the students in
ENG 11 who were on a much more rigorous content schedule than the Creative Writing
students, and thus I focused mostly on CW throughout the semester. The time I spent in ENG
11 was mostly spent helping Mr. Hebestreit edit students papers and give guidance to students
about work that he had assigned to them, and so I have not included those anecdotes here.
Date: September 6
ENG 2510 Topic: Myth of the Teenage Brain - The Outsiders
CW Topic: Teenage Perspective
Notes: In this class section I lectured about The Outsiders and talked to the students about the
importance of YA fiction in the development of a society that values the written word. We
finished with an exercise in which I asked them to write a piece of flash fiction, or a piece of
writing that comes straight out of a moment in time, from their own lives.
Date: September 13
ENG 2510 Topic: Interview with S.E. Hinton/YA Markers - The Outsiders
CW Topic: Changing Perspective
Notes: Today, I focused on the circumstances surrounding S.E. Hinton writing her novel to
reinforce the idea that the teenage perspective is worth sharing. We took the pieces of flash
fiction written last week and turned them into third person perspectives in order to develop
better language skills and to work on switching perspective. This reinforced the idea that their
memories are worth sharing and are valuable stories to tell.
Date: September 20
ENG 2510 Topic: The Scourge of Relatability/Fanfiction - Fangirl
CW Topic: Relating to a Narrator
Notes: In class today we discussed the books that have had the biggest impact on the students
lives, and what that means in terms of relatability. I organized a class discussion in which we
split into groups first to come to a consensus and then each group shared with me what they
had discovered in their group talks. Each one came up with a different book or series that they
felt had impacted their lives and discussed the traits of the narrator that they had related the

most to. For example, one group talked about Harry Potter and how Harry, being an orphan and
an outcast, was relatable for a student in the class who had spent a long time in foster care.
Date: September 27
ENG 2510 Topic: Intertextuality/Gender and Beauty Pageants - Fangirl
CW Topic: Fan Fiction
Notes: Today I had the students write a fan fiction about a text that they were very familiar with,
which is The Great Gatsby. They each wrote from the perspective of a character from the novel
and wrote a storyline which fit within the universe of the novel but that was not detailed within it,
producing some interesting dialogue and some inspiration for my own creative project, which
ended up being an Outsiders fan fiction.
Date: October 4
ENG 2510 Topic: Irony of Narration/Body Image - Dumplin
CW Topic: Body Image
Notes: In class today we discussed representation in media and how this representation affects
our own body image and self-esteem. We held a class discussion about body image and I
eventually had the students write a short piece of prose about how someone who admires them
might see them. I had them do this because I thought that it might positively influence their own
body image and help them understand how the use of certain words and signifiers in prose
connote different concepts.
Date: October 11
ENG 2510 Topic: YA and Horror/Illustrated Text - Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children
CW Topic: How to Convey Horror
Notes: This week I had the students write about how to convey a sense of horror in literature. To
do this I asked them to write me a three sentence horror story, in which they conveyed a sense
of terror to the reader and yet made them want to read more of it. One of the best was, A box
rested alone on a table, neatly wrapped and stained with both scarlet and knowledge. It was
said to hold the answer--to life, to love, to everything-- and that it killed all who laid eyes upon its
interior. Silence buzzes in your ears as curiosity drives you forward, heavy footstep after
footstep, until you, too, fall victim to knowledge.
Date: October 18
ENG 2510 Topic: Trites/Power/Audience-Hidden Adult - Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar
Children
CW Topic: Writing for a Specific Audience
Notes: Today we had a discussion about the difference between writing for an audience and
writing for yourself. I put a select group of students in the middle of the classroom who took
questions from the rest of the class and discussed them amongst themselves in a fishbowl type
of setting. Some of the questions included, what have you left out of writing for Mr. Hebestreit
that you would have otherwise included? and if you could write about a topic and never have
your name attached, what would it be?

Date: November 8 (was actually November 11)

ENG 2510 Topic: Power and Culture/YA Violence - Monster
CW Topic:
Notes: The reason the date is off is because November 8 was Election Day and thus the High
School was closed because it is a polling place. We discussed certain excerpts from Monster
that exemplify this violence, and how it relates to what they have experienced in their own lives.
I had the students write a prose piece about a scene of violence and what language signifiers
that they use in order to convey a sense of urgency and chaos.
Date: November 15
ENG 2510 Topic: Race/Reconsidering Unreliability - Monster
CW Topic: Race in YA
Notes: I lectured the class about how the race of a protagonist changes our perspective on the
story itself. We talked about Monster specifically and whether or not we can trust Steve Harmon
as our narrator, which led to a discussion about certain popular culture moments in the past
year, and I had them form groups and discuss how race had impacted their individual lives.
Date: November 29
ENG 2510 Topic: Censorship/Family, Friend, Romantic Relationships and YA Fiction Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
CW Topic: Censorship in Schools
Notes: This was an interesting one because the students are a part of a public high school and
thus are subject to the school boards decisions about what books they are allowed to read in
class. We talked specifically about the censorship of Oscar Wildes novels and why they had
been censored. The students had previously read The Picture of Dorian Gray and so the
students discussed this novel in particular while they worked on an assignment for Mr.
Hebestreit.
Date: December 5
ENG 2510 Topic: Book to Film Adaptations - Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
CW Topic: Film Adaptation
Notes: In this class, we talked about film adaptations of novels and particularly about how they
view novels that have been adaptations of films, such as Star Wars, and how the students view
films that are adaptations of novels, like Paper Towns or other John Green novels. We had a
discussion that ended in me having the students write a sort of adaptation of their own, where I
asked them to think of their favorite song and write a fan fiction about it in a way where the
reader could identify the song based on the writing.
Date: December 12
ENG 2510 Topic: No Class
CW Topic: Poetry
Notes: Because we did not have class this week in ENG 2510, I worked with the topic that the
students have been considering, which is poetry. I lectured about verse, meter, and how we can
convey certain connotations through our choice of words.