Writing Bridges: Ecocomposition and the Liberation of Student Voice

From the overview: \ud \ud The relatively new field of ecocomposition offers both the theorist and the\ud writing instructor the opportunity to explore the writing process from a perspective\ud that is at once student-centered and conscious of the space in which writing takes\ud place. For this study, I've chosen to illuminate some of the key aspects of\ud ecocomposition, and then to apply them to the discrepancy that exists between\ud student performance in the high school language arts classroom and the composition\ud classroom at the university level. In short, students are not succeeding as writers in\ud the university classroom, whereas they did well in high school.\ud As ecocomposition stresses place above all else, I found it necessary to\ud analyze the central components of the high school and university writing\ud environments. In doing this, I explored not only composition theory and pedagogy,\ud but also California Department of Education documents that help to shape the type of\ud writing that is expected of students in high school. This part of the inquiry revealed\ud that the two environments differ in terms of the overt expectations for student writing.\ud While the university composition classroom stresses preparing all students to write\ud effectively for numerous types of courses, the type of writing that high school English\ud classes in California privilege limits student response to a premeditated analysis of\ud literature. \ud In the tradition of radical pedagogies, ecocomposition emphasizes the\ud construction of the classroom space as democratic, where the instructor is not the sole\ud distributor of knowledge. By exploring this notion as it is practiced in the institution\ud and through an analysis of contemporary theory, the study illuminates some of the\ud core discrepancies between learning places. Coupling this with an analysis of the role\ud of the instructor as activist, I hope in the first part of the paper to create a clear\ud theoretical lens to examine the student work.\ud Without a doubt, the writing of students from both the high school and\ud university levels forms the core of this paper. By responding to nearly 400 student\ud papers written on two topics at two distinct points in a semester, I was able to see the\ud growth in the students as writers, readers, and thinkers. Rather than choose text bytes\ud from many essays, I decided to look closely at six complete compositions (three from\ud each student) from three students in order to test how ecocomposition applies to real\ud classroom scenarios. In this section of the study, I apply the ecocomposition lens to\ud the form and content of student work. As a result of this process, much of\ud ecocomposition becomes concretized in real student writing. This allowed me to\ud examine the central problem of student performance, and to extend ecocomposition in\ud the realm of pedagogical application. Additionally, my own pedagogies changed\ud during this process, and I have no doubt that I am a better instructor due to this study.\ud Ultimately, this study reveals that regardless of the level of the course, both\ud composition and language arts classrooms need to be about writing. While texts are\ud used to drive the argument and analysis in the classrooms, the instructor cannot hold\ud them sacred (beyond student inquiry). Likewise, when students are expected to limit\ud their analysis to a single, teacher-centered reading of text, the student suffers as both a\ud thinker and a writer.Literature and Writing Studie