“To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
In this class, students will study and practice community literacy by reviewing literature about school and community gardens; by reading education research; by engaging in creative writing workshops; by taking field trips to schools, gardens, and farms; by developing and conducting workshops; and by developing community literacy projects in area gardens. Students will form teams to complete projects about opportunities for garden-based learning on campus or in community/school gardens in Lewiston, or about other topics that emerge from our work; and they will complete a portfolio of creative work.
Week 1: Introductions
April 7 Classwork:
What is our focus?
What will we do? Community Engagement
How will you be assessed? Grading Contracts
What are your questions?
Introductions
List
Cluster
Read Remember by Joy Harjo
Write paying attention to texts what did you notice about Joy Harjo's poem: the word choice, line breaks ?
Freewrite: What do you remember?
What did you learn about yourselves and classmates and our class today? What questions do you have?
Homework For April 8th
Read
Urban Wild Foraging--Walk With Me, a One-Mile Radius by Dilafruz Williams p1-14
If you are able and it is safe, take a walk in a one-mile radius from where you live; and observe with all of your senses: what you smell, hear, feel, taste, and see..
Write Reflection 1
Please write at least 600 and no more than 800 words of reflection about Williams's essay in which you:
Compare your experiences with walking, with food, or with nature to the experiences Williams describes.
Identify a quotation that resonates with you or puzzles you and explain why you selected it.
Note what you observed about Williams’s writing and identify at least one specific example of her style, such as her use of the first person voice, her references to other writers, her descriptive language, or another feature of the text that made an impression on you.
Note the questions that this text raised for you.
If you were able to take a walk, describe your walk using descriptive language that includes all of your senses: what you smelt, heard, felt, tasted, and saw
Optional:
Finding Your Way In: Invention as Inquiry (Lessner and Craig) This is a great overview of how to read like a writer and how to approach writing as a process with helpful tips for generating material and peer review. If you wish to complete an extra labor reflection on this piece, it should be between 600-800 words. If you would like help creating a reflective prompt, just let me know.
April 8th Classwork
Class Q & A
Timelines: Writing experiences and goals. What makes for positive learning experiences?
Homework for April 9th
Read
Hip Hop, Food Justice, and Environmental Justice p 177-192 by Anthony J. Nocella, Priya Parmar, Don C. Sawyer, and Michael Cermak
“The Rose That Grew From Concrete” p 1-7 by David Kirkland
Write Reflection 2:
Please at least 600 and no more than 800 words of reflection about these essays in which you:
Identify the central problems that Nocella et al and Kirkland describe and the solutions that they propose.
Identify a quotation that resonates with you or puzzles you and explain why you selected it.
Compare Nocella et al and Kirkland’s descriptions of school and food access with your own experiences.
Consider how these texts relate to our class.
Note the questions that these texts raised for you.
Say a little about the writers' style and use of rhetorical appeals.
Classwork April 9
Write paying attention to texts what did you notice about Joy Harjo's poem: the word choice, line breaks
Freewrite/draw: you must make your own map
Mapping: Getting to know our neighbors
Homework for April 12th
Read for Monday
On gardening and agriculture
Write Reflection 3:
Please write at least 600 and no more than 800 words of reflection about these texts in which you address the following:
What connections do you see between permaculture and poetry?
What are the relationships between food, gardening, education, and liberation in the texts above as well as the other texts we have read this week?
What would rewilding the curriculum--especially in regard to writing--look like?
April 12th Classwork
Mapping: Getting to know our neighbors + rewilding
Homework for April 13th
Read:
Take another 1 mile walk and write about it using multisensorial description. Pay attention to the landscape keeping in mind what the Annie s White says in the Pollinator Garden website
Return to your map and sketch in places where you could image transforming the landscape into pollinator gardens or food forests or wildlife habitats.
Write Reflection 4:
How, if at all, does pollinator gardening and gardening for wildlife overlap with permaculture principles?
Say a bit about your walk. What did you notice this time?
What would campus look like if we had more pollinator gardens, food forests or wildlife habitats? Look at your map and the resources you read for today, and begin to describe what one such garden might look like.
April 13th
Creative writing workshop:
Mary Oliver The Summer Day Video Practice Peer Review
Preparing to work with community partners.
April 14th
Creative writing workshop: Introduction to peer review
Conference Sign Up https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/selfsched?sstoken=UUd4NVJJa2lZVXQ1fGRlZmF1bHR8NjQ2NTk4ZWIzZDk3N2E3Y2JiMDlhNWM5MDdmODI5NjU
April 15th Gardening or virtual field trip
April 16th No class. Community Engagement + Asynchronous Discussion.
Draft of creative writing due by the end of the day.
For Monday, April 19th
The Man Who Planted Trees (text) by Jean Giono or video
Rachel Carson: Excerpt from Silent Spring
Harryette Mullen On Starting a Tanka Diary
Seven of Pentacles by Marge Piercy
Reflection 5:
Giono uses the planting of trees as an allegory of sorts, while Carson focuses on bird song as an aural and visual symbol of human degradation of the environment. What are the other similarities between Jean Giono and Rachel Carson’s work? What are the other differences? If you were to plant something symbolically, what would you plant and what would it symbolize?
Harryette Mullen establishes a practice of walking to create poetry, while Marge Piercy finds inspiration in a card from the tarot deck. Both poets and practices allow for an element of chance. What parts of their work stood out to you? Why? Experiment with using chance to create a poem by picking a tarot card to write about or by opening a book and picking the first line your eyes rest upon and using it as a free writing prompt.
Look over the work we have read this semester--including the asynchronous discussion 1. Begin to offer definitions of the following
A good poem……
A good essay……
A good short story…...
Monday, April 19th: Classwork
Community engagement updates:
Start time for Tuesdays
Writing partners
Other
In class writing: preparing for writing workshops
In class writing: review your creative writing--or other writing from this semester-- with an eye towards practicing one of the techniques we reviewed today: Imagery, symbolism, comparisons (similes and metaphors), voice, and/or organization. Share something in the chat or in this collaborative document.
For Tuesday, April 20th
Please read about the history of community gardens on the Smithsonian website
Overview + the other sections:
Review these resources about Lots to Gardens/The Nutrition Center
And these resources about school and community gardens in Maine
Write Reflection 6:
What did you learn about the history of community gardens? What did you learn about the work of the Nutrition Center? What questions do you have about their work? How do you feel about partnering with them?
April 20th: Meet at 12:30 for to walk to the Nutrition Center.
Virtual Field Trip;
Watch this 10 minute TED talk about community gardens by Marissa Zarate
April 21st
Classwork
Check in via chat: Work with Nutrition Center + Virtual Field Trip
Review Public Project: Please post your questions as comments in the assignment sheet.
Breakout room discussion
Prepare for writing partnerships breakout room discussion.
Homework:
Prepare for our first writing workshop: Check the Creative Writing Sign Up Sheet.
Writers should post their work in the Sign Up Sheet.
Reviewers should see if they are in group A or B, read the writers' work, and prepare feedback.
April 22:
Classwork:
April 26th:
Preview next steps.
How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This by Hanif Abdurraqib
April 27th: Meet at Commons Garden at 12:30 to walk to Nutrition Center.
Virtual Field Trip 3 (This is also an extra labor option). If you cannot participate in our gardening work at the Nutrition Center today: Watch Growing Racial Equity & Food Justice Within School Gardens (about 1 hour) and complete a reflection of 600-800 words how these speakers connect racial equity, food justice, and school gardens.
Homework
Complete asynchronous discussion 3
Complete Reflection 7 Due prior to class April 28th
Take another walk and write about it.
This time, be sure to pass by at least three signs on campus or off campus.
If you are able to, include photos of the signs in your reflection.
In addition to using multisensorial details to describe your walk, analyze the purpose and audience of each sign as well as the elements of visual design that we discussed:
Layout
Colors
Images
Contrast
Size
Text
Font
Interactivity/Connections to webtexts
Other
April 28Th:
Classwork
April 29th: Gardening
Virtual Field Trip 4
Spending about 45 minutes visiting Wolf's Neck Farm Camp and Acta Non Verba
Write a reflection in which you compare and contrast what these organizations offer and pick a program or element that we might bring to the gardens at Bates or in Lewiston or in your home.
April 30th: Asynchronous discussion 4: Project Proposal
May 3rd: Creative writing workshop
Homework reflection 9: annotated bibliography: Due May 5th
May 4th: Gardening: Meet at Wood Street Garden at 12:45pm.
The Definition of Gardening by James Tate
May 5th: Creative writing workshop
Tom Mullin (former professor of forestry and tourism, current ED of the Waldo County Soil and Water Conservation District class visit)
May 6th
Continue Spark + POP
And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So by Wendy Xu
Homework for May 10th
Reflection 10: Draft of webtext for your Public Project.
Your webtext is an opportunity to educate people about the particular site where your sign will go as well as about some of the material we have reviewed this term, such as permaculture, rewilding, the importance of pollinator gardens and native species, food justice, ecological approaches to literacy, community writing, and creative writing.
You may use Adobe Spark, Wix, Weebly, WordPress, GoogleSites, or another platform.
You may create an entirely group page or individual pages connected via one home page.
For May 10th, please prepare a draft for peer review with a short cover note about your purpose, your audience, where you want feedback, and what is off limits. You can post this in your Reflection section of your eportfolio.
May 10th: Creative writing workshop
Grace Kendall and Tammy Carson (from BCO) class visit
Homework due May 12th:
Draft of sign for public project.
May 12th
Review final assignment options, expectations, and timeframe:
Creative writing: revised writing + cover memo
Public project: sign/poster, webtext, paper
Florence Davies (assistant director of the TAMU Writing Center) class visit
Please read "Been" The Semi-Annual State of Flow" and "Flo Doesn't Write"--all available here on her blog.
She also shared an excerpt of her novel in progress--which she will read from tomorrow.
Come up with 1-3 questions for our guest.
Monday, May 17th: Zoom
Tuesday, May 18th: In person 12:45pm Wood Street
Wednesday, May 19th: In person Hedge Hall 208. I will be there are 12:30pm if you have any questions. Class will start at 12:45pm. We will like continue class outside. You will want to have your laptop handy.
Thursday, May 20th: In person 12:45pm meet at Commons Garden.
Follow the link above to a digital suggestion box where you can post questions, comments, and/or suggestions.
Anna Mangum
amangum@bates.edu
Community Engagement Peer Educator
Writing + Academic Support
Nana Baffoe
Course aware writing tutor
nbaffoe@bates.edu
The ARC: Academic Resource Commons
Stephanie Wade
swade@bates.edu
Professor
207-505-0948