Choices

Interesting.

This summer, I offered my service-learning students some options for their final project. They could write the traditional researched assignment, or they could develop an action plan, or they could create their own assignment.

During the last third of the course we walked a lot about continuous and discontinuous structures, and narratives, and based on what I was hearing I was expecting that most of the students would be creating action plans or creating significantly different self-directed assignments.

To my surprise, most completed the traditionally structured assignment.

True, many of thiese were influenced by the call for continuity and discontinuity. You could see traces of their thinking.

But many seemed cautious about playing with form and style.

So they were willing to open up their thinking, but were a bit shy about investing themselves as writers in a new kind of structure.

I can understand that. How does one experiment, break from the mold, when one is rarely given the opportunity to play?

But several did, and they really punched through the same old tired structures. They busted through the rigidity of thesis statements and topic sentences and created powerful meditations.

And their presentations were structured differently. In both thir final projects and their presentations they took control. They stopped doing things dutifully, safely. They took ownserhip of their work. they created their own voices. They made the assignments theirs. And when there were instances of vapidly mechanistic, assignment-satisfying thinking, they seemed to implode.

I was impressed by the students' fierce desire to make their thinking real, complicated, complex. I was thrilled at how they connected their thinking to their experience. These were instances of refreshing ownership. Accounting for what they think and know and experienced, without being white-washed or candy-coated to fit my expectations. The quality of thinkiong revealed through the final projects and presentations and self-assessments was rich, smart, aggressive, challening. Real.

This summer's class was a rich and powerful and frustrating experience.

I shall miss meeting with them.

We challenged each other, and grew together. We cared for each other.

That's hard to experience in a semester.

We should expect it more.