English 121 Manual Table of Contents 2010-11
Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neill, English 121 Faculty Mentor,
English 121 Resources, Guidelines and Policies
Welcome to English 121 1
English 121 Contact Information and Resources
English 121 Overview: Course Description, EWP Outcomes, Assignments and 2
Assessment, and the Impact of Service Learning Pedagogy and Engaged Scholarship
English 121 and the “public turn” in composition
Overview of English 121 Outcomes, Textbook, Assignments and Assessment
The impact of effective service learning
The crucial importance of integrating service and learning
Writing as a mode of inquiry and action
Service-learning (‘experiential education’) and engaged scholarship
Assigning, Supporting and Assessing Student Writing in English 1215
Defining your course theme and student placements
Designing service-learning assignment sequences in 121: accounting for hours,
confidentiality, reflection and integration, logs and journals, assignment sequences,
and re-seeing our ways of seeing
Some basic models for service-learning composition courses: writing about, with and
for the community
The Ethical Obligations and High Stakes of Public Writing and the EWP-121 Public 12
Writing Policy and recommended social networking policy
Working with UW Librarians in English 121
Expository Writing Program Policies for English 121 (see also Public Writing Policy)
Responsibilities of (and benefits to) English 121 TAs include communication with
the CarlsonCenter
Works Cited15
Outcomes for 100-Level Composition Courses18
English 121 Job Description Letter19
English 121 Course Portfolios
NOTE: English 121 course materials in this portfolio may precede the EWP Public
Writing Policy Guidelines, which are outlined in this manual. Note that English 121
TAs and students are responsible for following the EWP Public Writing Policy.
Additional English 121 portfolios are available at the 121 homepage and in the English
121 files in Padelford A-11. All portfolios in this manual begin with the TA’s reflection
on the course (in the form of a TA-designed survey), and may also include information
about students’ community placements, TAs’ syllabi and assignments, “one pagers,” and
sample student work.
“Education: Access and Expectation” (Allison Gross Autumn 2007; Honors; includes TA 21
survey, student placements, syllabus, assignments, and sample student work.)
“Educational Democracy” (Vinnie Oliveri, Autumn 2008; includes TA survey, one page
sequence overview; all assignments, sample student work MP1).55
“Environmentalism in Seattle” (Gianna Craig, Autumn 2009; includes TA survey, 97
syllabus, all SP and MP assignments)
“The Roots of Homelessness: An Exploration of Life on the Margins” (Binh Nguyen, 117
Autumn 2009; includes TA survey, syllabus, assignments and sample student writing)
“Food Access, Food Marketing, Food Security” (Jennifer LeMesurier, Autumn 2009; 142
includes TA survey, one pager, assignments and sample student writing)
“Service, or, what does it mean to work for justice?” (Alice Pedersen, Autumn 2009; 158
includes TA survey, list of community placements, one pager, syllabus, assignments,
“Tools for Close Reading Theory,” sample student writing MP2)
“Critical Approaches to Community and Service” (Elizabeth Brown, Autumn 2009; 186
includes TA survey, one page overview of sequences, one pager, syllabus, all assignments)
Selected Service Learning Composition Textbooks
Note: Several English 121 TAs have used Thomas Deans’ Writing and Community Action as
a course text. Among the many other service-learning composition textbooks on the
market, three are available for review in A-11, and selections from twoare included here:
Berndt, Michael and Amy Muse. Composing a Civic Life: A Rhetoric and Readings210
for Inquiry and Action (Longman, second edition 2007). Sections on “Writing in
Civic Communities” and “Student Participation in Public Life” are included here.
Deans, Thomas. Writing and Community Action: A Service-Learning Rhetoric 218
With Readings(Longman 2003). Table of contents (see review by Scott Melanson
in Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Fall 2003) . Chapters on “Writing
About the Community” and “Writing With the Community,” with assignment
suggestions and discussion of ethical considerations, are included here.
Ford, Marjorie and Elizabeth Schave. Community Matters: A Reader for Writers 232
(Longman 2002). Table of contents (see review by Scott Melanson in Michigan
Journal of Community Service Learning Fall 2002)
Some Service-Learning Work from Recent 4Cs
List of 2010 4C’s sessions on “Community, Civic and Public” 239
Abstracts of some service-learning sessions at 2008 4Cs:241
Driskill, Linda. “Reconciling Disparate Cultural realities through Service
Learning Communication Instruction.”
Malesh, Patricia, Thomas Miller, John Ackerman, David Coogan, and Roxanne
Mountford. “The New Civics: Community Engagement and Rhetorical Activism.”
Mediratta, Sangeeta, Donna Hunter, Carolyn Ross, Melisa Leavitte and Alisa
Tantraphol. “Why We Do It: Negotiating responsibilities and Authorities in the
Service-Learning Contact Zone.”
Schell, Eileen, Adrienne Lamberti, Cynthia Vagnetti, Dianna Winslow and Kim
Caldicott. “Writing Voices that Change Realities: Tracing the Unheard Rhetorics
and Discourses of the American Alternative Agrifood Movement.”
Shaw, Margaret, Gerry Winter, Beverly Neiderman and Marilyn Sequin. “Digital
Delivery, Learning Communities and Service-Learning: Components of a Course Transformation Process.”
Additional Service Learning Resources
Alcoff, Linda Martin. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Originally 249
published in Cultural Critique (Winter 1991-92). 5-32. Widely anthologized,
and available at
Ash, S.L. and P.H. Clayton, “Schematic Overview of the DEAL Model for 265
Critical Reflection,” from Teaching and Learning through Critical Reflection:
An Instructor’s Guide. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing. Under Development.
Brown, David, interview with Don Rothman, “The Writing Classroom as a Laboratory 275
for Democracy.” Higher Education Exchange2005. Dayton, Ohio: The Kettering
Foundation, 2005.
Cress, Christine M. and Peter J. Collier, Vicki L. Reitenauer and Associates. “What is 282
Service-Learning?” and “Creating Cultural Connections,” from Learning Through
Serving: A Student Guidebook for Service-Learning Across the Disciplines. Sterling,
Virginia: Stylus Press, 2005.
Cruz, Nadinne. “How do you define community service?” reflection exercise, 305
“Exercise: Reasons for Service Learning,” and “Reflection Exercise: Purpose(s)
of Service-Learning,” from QuinnipiacUniversity Student Session on Service
Learning, October 10, 2007.
Deans, Thomas and Nora Bacon. “Three Paradigms for Community Writing,” 308
from Writing partnerships: service-learning in composition. NCTE, 2000.
Deans, Thomas and Megan Marie. “Composition as Community Action: Writing 309
and Service Learning,” from Teaching the Neglected “R” Rethinking Writing
Instruction in Secondary Classrooms. Heinemann: 2007: 186-197.
DuquesneUniversity Office of Service-Learning, “Integrating Reflection into 315
Your Course Design.” 30 April 2007
Feldman, Ann Merle, with Candice Rai and Megan Marie. “Assessing Writing 319
and learning in Community-Based Courses,” Making Writing Matter: Composition
in the Engaged University. SUNY press, 2008. 135-162.
Feldman, Ann M. and Tom Moss, Diane Chin, Megan Marie, Candice Rai and 334
Rebecca Graham. “The Impact of Partnership-Centered, Community-Based Learning
on First-Year Students’ Academic Research Papers.” Michigan Journal of Community
Service Learning, (Fall 2006), 16-29.
Flower, Linda. “Intercultural Inquiry: A Brief Guide,” from Community Literacy and the 348
Rhetoric of Public Engagement. Southern IllinoisUniversity Press: 2008: 230-240.
Illich, Ivan. “To Hell with Good Intentions,” and address to the Conference on Inter-355
American Student Projects in Guernavaca, Mexico on April 20, 1968. Widely
anthologized and available at
Kretzmann, John P. and John L. McKnight. "Building Communities from the Inside 359
Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets.” Reprinted with
permission of John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, Building Communities from
the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, Evanston,
Illinois: Institute for Policy Research (1993). 1-11.
Parker, Walter C. “Teaching Against Idiocy.” Phi Delta Kappan (January 2005):366
344-351.
Mathieu, Paula. “Composition in the Streets,” from Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn 374
in English Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. 1-23.
Washington, Pat. “Community-Based Service Learning: Actively Engaging the Other”387
in Johns, Ann. M and Maureen Kelley Sipp, Diversity in College Classrooms. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 209-231.
Westheimer, Joel and Joseph Kahne, “Educating the “Good” Citizen: Political Choices 399
and Pedagogical Goals,” Political Science & Politics 38.2 (April 2004): 1-7.
2010-2011 Manual of English 121
Resources, Guidelines and Policies
Welcome to English 121
Welcome to English 121, the service-learning composition course offered through the University of Washington’s Expository Writing Program. This manual is designed to engage you in an ongoing conversation with English 121 TAs, the English 121 faculty mentor Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neill, staff at the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center, and scholarly and pedagogical work related to service-learning and composition. The manual includes contact information and resources; an overview of English 121 partnerships, policies and service-learning composition practices; English 121 teaching portfolios including assignment sequences, student writing, and TAs’ reflections on their courses; information regarding a few of the available service-learning composition textbooks; a brief selection of recent 4Cs service-learning composition abstracts; and a small selection of articles on service-learning practices, pedagogy and theory. This introduction and many teaching materials are also available at the English 121 homepage and in the English 121 Collect It Drop Box.
English 121 Contact Information and Resources
English 121 Faculty Mentor and EWP Associate Director: Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neill
, Padelford A-14, 685-3804
EWP Director: Anis Bawarshi 543-2190
EWP Program Coordinator: Diana Borrow 543-6104
EWP web site:
English 121 Homepage:
English 121 required textbook: Situating Inquiry: Brief Edition
English 121 Collect It Drop Box (feel free and encouraged to add to the drop box):
Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center email contact for English 121:
. Email sent to this address is archived, and is read daily
by Kathryn Pursch, Coordinator of Community Partnerships
(, 616-0784), Rachel Vaughn, Carlson Center Associate
Director (; 616-4359), and/or Michaelann Jundt, Carlson
Center Director (, 685-2705, 616-2885). Carlson staff may
be reached at Box 352803 and in Mary Gates 120 (Center for Experiential Education).
CarlsonCenter web site: (includes syllabi and other
Resources at
There are also many national resources for service learning, such as the National
Service-Learning Clearinghouse the Resource
Center at the Corporation for National and Community Service
and a range of resources at Campus
Compact, including syllabi in specific disciplines such as English
English 121 Overview: Course Description, EWP Outcomes, Assignments and Assessment, and the Impact of Service-Learning Pedagogy and Engaged Scholarship
English 121 and the “public turn” in composition: The “public turn” in composition recognizes the growth of service-learning (also known as experiential or community-based education), the relationship between education and engaged critical citizenship, and the need for our students to learn to write, and to use writing to understand themselves as engaged participants, in academic and non-academic situations. Paula Mathieu discusses this public turn in “Composition in the Streets,” and Feldman, Rai and Marie note that they are “deeply concerned with the ways that language can be used to facilitate social change in concrete situations” in their chapter “Assessing Writing and Learning in Community-Based Courses” from Making Writing Matter: Composition in the Engaged University (136; both pieces are included in the final section of this manual).
English 121 participates in this “public turn” in composition. 121 is a service-learning composition course in which one of your students’ central texts and methods of participation and inquiry is the time they spend-- typically 20-40 hours during the quarter -- at a service-learning partner organization relevant to your course theme. And there is a “public turn” for you as a teacher as well. As an English 121 instructor, you will collaborate with the University of Washington’s Carlson Leadership and PublicServiceCenter to identify a course theme of interest to you and relevant community-based volunteer placements that will work well for your students. You will design a writing course that provides a space for students to bring together and analyze experiential and academic learning as they develop their writing. To allow scheduling flexibility for students to work at their service-learning organizations, all sections of English 121 now meet during the day, twice weekly, for an hour and fifty minutes.
Overview of English 121 Outcomes, Textbook, Assignments and Assessment: While the service-learning component is specific to English 121 and English 121 instructors develop individual course themes, like all 100-level courses in the Expository Writing Program, English 121 is designed to help students meet a shared set of outcomes. Like all EWP instructors, 121 TAs are required to assign and provide time for the completion of sequences of student work, and to base assignments on activities that allow students to fulfill the learning outcomes for the course. All English 109-110, 111 and 121 TAs use as a course text Situating Inquiry: Brief Edition (the gold-bordered “rhetoric” section of the EWP’s 131 textbook.)
Like all EWP TAs, English 121 TAs must use portfolio assessment, must assign 7500 words of which at least 3600 must be graded, and must keep the EWP outcomes central to the portfolio of selected writing, and to the students’ self-assessment in the portfolio cover letter. However, 121 TAs have flexibility in the nature and number of assignments included in the portfolio, and students’ portfolio cover letters will consider the integration of their service-learning into their written work for the quarter.
Like all EWP TAs, English 121 TAs should pace assignment sequences to allow students ample time to complete each one, to receive meaningful and timely peer and instructor feedback, to conference with the instructor at least twice during the quarter, and to revise for the final portfolio. However, community-based work may affect the timing of assignments in 121, particularly assignments relying on sustained experience at community sites, which may not be sufficient until late in the quarter. Because this may make it difficult to devote the final class sessions of the quarter entirely to revision, 121 TAs may choose to assign completed versions of some sections of the portfolio earlier in the quarter.
EWP Outcomes and the EWP custom textbook Situating Inquiry are particularly supportive of the community-based component of English 121, especially with regard to writing with an understanding of multiple audiences including those outside the university (Outcome 1), and the ability to read, analyze and synthesize multiple kinds of evidence, including interviews and observations, to generate and support writing (Outcome 2). Outcomes related to complex, analytic persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts (Outcome 3), and to the development of flexible strategies for revising, editing and proofreading (Outcome 4), are also central to English 121 assignments, and to the student writing included in this manual. EWP outcomes are included following this introduction, and are available on the EWP web site.
Texts for English 121: The only required text for English 121 is the EWP textbook Situating Inquiry: Brief Edition. Many 121 TAs have found the section on field work particularly useful. In addition, course materials in this manual cite a range of readings, some of which are included in the final section of this manual, which may be useful for your students to read as they theorize their service-learning. Many TAs define students’ experience at the service-learning organizations, and materials created for and about the organization (such as their web sites, brochures and press releases), as texts to be read and analyzed alongside other course texts. As several TAs note in their survey responses in this manual, a few carefully selected readings are sufficient to frame your theme and your assignment sequences. While most 121 TAs create their own collection of readings, Elizabeth Brown provides an example of English 121 taught using a service-learning composition textbook. In some years, the UW’s Common Book has also been a logical course text for English 121. For example, Elizabeth Brown’s and Alice Pedersen’s students read the “Chicago” section of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father in Autumn 2009 in preparation for their initial discussions of community-based work.
The impact for students of effective service learning: Service-Learning supports and extends the EWP outcomes. Recent research suggests that effective service-learning courses improve students’ ability to learn academic content and to achieve course goals in critical thinking and writing (Feldman et. al 2006). Service-learning has also been demonstrated to improve students’ social competency and perceived ability to work with diverse others, and their confidence in their “ability to identify issues, work with others, organize and take action and build a commitment to civic participation” (Tannenbaum and Berrett 198, Flower 230 ff.). The Higher Education Research Institute’s January 2000 study of over 22,000 undergraduates reported “significant positive effects on all 11 outcome measures” including academic performance, values, self-efficacy, leadership, choice of service career and plans to participate in service after college (2). In addition, a 2006 Campus Compact Research Brief, “The Positive Impact of Service-Learning on College Student Retention,” suggests that service-learning has a significant positive impact on retention. Characteristics of effective service-learning courses – all evident in the collaborative work of English 121 and the Carlson Center -- include instructor training, connecting service to curriculum, students’ choice of and training for community placement, student work in the community for more than 10 hours, ongoing reflection throughout the quarter, communication between faculty and service-learning partners, and recognition of student contributions (Tannenbaum and Berrett 198). Axlund and McWilliams’ 2009 “Washington Campus Compact Civic Engagement Survey Summary” found that over 80% of Students in Service surveyed reported increased ability to make connections between the classroom and learning outside the classroom and to develop and articulate educational goals, increased initiative to choose a career that will benefit the common good, improved ability to solve problems, increased involvement with people different from themselves, and increased ability to listen to and to consider alternative points of view, and to work cooperatively or collaboratively with others (19-20). Service-learning also affects faculty understanding: Pribbinow’s 2005 study of The Impact of Service-Learning Pedagogy on Faculty Teaching and Learning confirmed that service-learning teaching improves communication of theoretical concepts and enhances faculty knowledge of student learning.