V Is for Voices: Engaging Student Interest, Sustaining Student Thinking and Writing in Today's Writing Classrooms with Fountainhead Press's V Series.
Year: 2012

Higher education has become increasingly concerned in recent years with its role in sustainability studies, both in the sustainability of the physical environments of its institutions and in the education of students as citizens and experts in a world facing complex environmental, economic, and social challenges. This review essay discusses the importance of sustainabilityminded pedagogies in the writing classroom through an examination of Fountainhead Press's new V (Voices) composition reader series [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/ The essay discusses ways to integrate the V series themed readers and their assignments into a sustainability minded writing classroom, and it concludes by suggesting important links between sustainability pedagogy and writing transfer. A recent study conducted by GUNI (Global University Network for Innovation) has shown that while institutions of higher education around the globe are greening their facilities and operations, sustainability literacy is not rising among our graduates (Granados, Tilbury, and Wright) As James J. Farrell explains in the prelude to The Nature of College (2010) "students learn a lot in college, but most students aren't learning what they need to create a restorative society. A college that wants to remain relevant to its students will teach them how to be leaders in the ecological transition of the twenty first century" (xii xiii) Our curricula are not preparing our students adequately to navigate the complex relationships among environment, society, economy, and technology that they face (and will face) in their roles as citizens and experts. Institutions of higher education are in the business of educating students who will take on this century's challenges; writing classes are at the heart of that education when our students are honing their critical thinking, reading, and writing skills in our classrooms. According to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) the five main societal challenges of the twenty first century are food security, food safety, nutrition and health, bioenergy, and climate change (Beachy) Each of these challenges encompasses a complex system of relationships among the environment, the economy, society, and technology. How do we begin to educate our students about the complexities of climate change? How do we equip them to navigate the challenges and feasibilities of bioenergy? How do we prepare them to participate in policy formation and personal decision making and to be innovators who contribute to solving some of these problems? I was recently reminded of something David Orr has pointed out: these problems of food security, food safety, nutrition and health, bioenergy, and climate change were not created by the impoverished and the illiterate. They were created by individuals with higher education degrees who became movers and shakers in their global and local communities (Orr 7) So what are we teaching our students? Public discourse today and perhaps rightly so is full of crisis rhetoric: the economic crisis, the environmental crisis, the energy crisis, not to mention concerns with healthcare and health issues, terrorism and violence, and national security. When we teach our students about writing, we are also, ideally, preparing them with the skills and knowledge to communicate, innovate, and, hopefully, move us beyond crisis. This preparation begins with an understanding of the complexities of the crises facing human communities and the complexities of those communities themselves. Addressing the issue of sustainability literacy and higher education, Farrell discusses the power of the exploratory essay to be a model for the critical inquiry our students must be prepared to engage: "Exploring links between personal life, cultural patterns, and the natural world, this essay leaves space for readers to reflect on their own experience, and invites them into a conversation about the meaning of college, and the personal and institutional possibilities of a culture of permanence" (10) Fountainhead Press's V (Voices) series fosters this kind of exploration through readings and assignments that can help students develop critical thinking and writing skills to effectively navigate and shape our path through contemporary crises what biologist Edward O. Wilson might call "bottlenecks." Each composition reader in the series is focused around one theme. Green [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/green.html] and Food [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/food.html] came out in 2010, followed by (E)dentity [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/edentity.html] Money [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/money.html] and Borders [http:/www.fountainheadpress.com/vseries/borders.html] in 2011. Five titles are planned for the future, including Terror, Sports, Death, Monsters, and Tolerance. The series arranges readers around single topics to help students find their own voices as they explore a variety of perspectives within a particular discourse. In each reader students and faculty will find the topic explored across multiple genres, from song lyrics and poetry to memoirs, Page 1 of 4 CF 25: "V is for Voices" by Amy Patrick Mossman http:/compositionforum.com/issue/25/v series sustainability.php editorials, and a variety of visual and new media texts. The V series includes assignment prompts but is primarily a reader series, not a rhetoric, leaving the choice of a rhetoric, if desired, up to individual faculty. While the readers can be adapted to any course seeking to engage a particular theme, I am particularly interested in how they might serve writing teachers interested in sustainability theory and pedagogy. By examining a particular topic through multiple perspectives and genres, these readers help students to develop a multi layered conception of one issue, tied to their own histories and experiences. Nedra Reynolds in Geographies of Writing (2004) argues that a multi layered understanding of place is key to theories of writing. Because we respond to any discourse or topic from a grounding in a particular personal and social even physical place, fostering an exploration of those layers is key to empowering students not only to find their own voices, but also to articulate themselves effectively as they write in any given discourse or discipline. Students, faculty, and staff: as a university community, we are all "learners struggling to learn how the world works so that we can make the world better" (Farrell 11) The V series reinforces the connections in the classroom community through topics that inescapably intersect with all of our lives. To that end, the texts in the V series each ask students to focus on layered topics, whether it is the concept of green, (e)dentity, or borders, or the seemingly more tangible food or money. Although it is never explicitly stated, many of the topics the series addresses are directly related to economic, social, environmental, and technological aspects of sustainability. The current economic crisis, climate change, food security these are messy issues to tackle. In their essay on complexity and systems thinking, Morris and Martin explain, "Dealing with sustainability means dealing with a mess, and most people avoid messes because they feel illequipped to cope" (156) The V series makes such issues more accessible by focusing on one particular theme in each reader. Faculty interested in sustainable pedagogies can then work with students to discover where, for example, the topic of food intersects with social, economic, and environmental issues as well as any number of other topics, thereby helping students to understand not only their own relationship to the topic, but also the multi layered relationships between themselves and other aspects of the complex systems through which we construct our worlds. In short, the content presented in the readers can aid faculty who want to help their students not only to write better, but also to cope rather than disengage. For composition instructors who prefer to organize their courses around particular thematic content, any of these readers would work well for a full course. They are similar enough in structure and conception that programs requiring shared readers might consider adopting the series but leaving the choice of topical reader up to individual instructors. After a short introduction, each book contains a series of readings representing a range of perspectives on the topic, presented in a variety of genres. Readings are followed by a combination of shorter prompts and assignments classified as explore, compose, invent, or collaborate, aimed at helping students develop their own thinking on the topic based on what they've read, researched, and discussed in class. Five to seven major assignments, a filmography list, and a works cited follow the readings in each text. Again, while the texts themselves don't explicitly identify a sustainability agenda, instructors with a sustainable pedagogy in mind would find them appropriate in ways that move beyond content. For example, choosing a textbook that is produced mindful of affordability, environmental impact, and accessibility reflects a level of accountability to sustainable practice in the writing classroom. Fountainhead Press seeks to make their publications economically and socially accessible to students through affordability and alternative formats. Their textbooks are available in print or electronic form, and institutions' disability services can request electronic files to adapt for students who require alternative formats. Fountainhead is also committed to environmental responsibility by offering alternatives to print through electronic formats and downloadable exam copies, using recycled paper when possible, and donating to environmental causes. I mention these things because from a sustainability perspective, tracing the textbook from incept