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Cassidy Locke

ENGL 801

Dr. Reiff

23 October 2020

Teaching Activism and Social Justice in First-Year Composition

It’s a longstanding controversy among educators whether or not to bring politics into the

classroom in any regard. However, many composition scholars argue that there is merit in

bringing social justice and politics into a first-year composition course in order to train students

to be active participants in society through an understanding of social injustice and how to play a

role in combatting that injustice.

For many of the naysayers, politics in the classroom is a slippery slope, as the concern

often lies in teaching students to sway a certain way politically or to adopt a certain ideology. A

crucial foundation of this practice is to understand that the goal is to teach student how to think,

rather than what to think. In some instances, lesson can sneakily incorporate this pedagogy, and

in others, the teacher can outright explain that students will be learning about social justice. This

project includes key tenets, an infographic, three lesson plans for implementation, and an

annotated bibliography of sources that cover this topic.

Key Tenets:

- Students cannot escape their own world and the politics that affect them individually. It’s

beneficial to give them critical and analytical tools to interpret the world around them.

- It teaches students the importance of being politically aware.

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- It incorporates feminist pedagogy when done correctly, seeing that all students would

have equal opportunities to voice their opinions (whether that be in group discussion or

just in their own writing).

- It empowers students to have agency in social issues.

- Teaching the term “activist” as an accessible, everyday job, rather than an intimidating,

out-of-reach position only meant for well-known people and/or celebrities.

For the key tenets portion, I’ve also created an infographic as a resource that, in a perfect world,

could be handed to teachers at a conference and/or workshop. It contains the main takeaways and

arguments for implementing this in a classroom, specifically in first-year composition.

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Annotated Bibliography

Dadas, Caroline, & Justin Jory. "Toward an Economy of Activist Literacies in Composition

Studies: Possibilities for Political Disruption." Literacy in Composition Studies [Online],

3.1 (2015): 143-155. Web. 10 Oct. 2020.

Finn, Sarah, "Writing for Social Action: Affect, Activism, and the Composition Classroom"

(2013). Open Access Dissertations. 791. https://doi.org/10.7275/dd90-6337.

Gries, Laura. “Writing to Assemble Publics: Making Writing Activate, Making Writing

Matter.” College Composition and Communication, no. 70, ser. 3, Feb. 2019, pp. 327–

355. 3.

In this article, Laura Gries develops an argument for pedagogies that use writing to

assemble publics to create and organize campaigns. She uses new materialist theories that cover

community, agency, and rhetorical responsibility. She examines and describes three various

student activist campaigns. She notes that as the number of writing studies majors increases, the

question we should ask is how can we use writing courses to better educate students in the

“techne” of social activism. She recognizes that most students will not come to university feeling

prepared to organize action, so in turn, the educators’ responsibility to give direct rhetorical

training comes into play. She compares the pedagogy she offers in to service-learning, as it gives

students the opportunity to collaborate with others as well as identify community-specific goals.

In the section about assemblage, agency, and responsibility, she discusses the principle of

Ancient Greece “ecclesia,” where citizens gathered to discuss and debate issues that were

important to the community. It emphasizes her point, as the act of assembly has been around for

a while and has always been important. She provides multiple frameworks throughout the article:
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mobilizing alliances through rhetorical design, attracting publics through creative activism, and

embracing metanoia to assemble publics. She concludes by saying that through these methods,

there is evidence that as a result, students can be responsible, politically and ethically, and arouse

public engagement.

Haley, Darryl E. "A Response to Arguments for Teaching Social Issues in the Freshman

Composition Classroom." (1997): 1-13. ProQuest. Web. 10 Oct. 2020.

In this essay, the author takes arguments for teaching activism, specifically in the Freshman

Composition classroom, and attempts to refute them. He addresses that often, the instructors are

graduate teaching assistants with little to no teaching experience. He presents two ideas as

incompatible: instructors are encouraged to promote social activism, and second, that instructors

can only go so far in promoting social action, as students are mature and capable of rejecting an

instructor’s political agenda. He focuses on one scholar, Ellen Cushman, and outlines her

position, but claims that the outcome is opposite of her goal. He says that identity politics come

into play here, and in turn, the instructor’s authority can be skewed to project various oppression

and marginalization onto their students. He writes with an intimidated tone, as though he does

not want to accept the responsibility to incorporate social activism into his syllabus. He, in short,

argues that the only focus of a first-year composition course should be writing and only writing.

Hairston, Maxine. “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing.” College Composition and

Communication, vol. 43, no. 2, May 1992, pp. 179–193.

McCoy, Shane A. “Writing for Justice in First-Year Composition (FYC).” Radical Teacher, vol.

116, 3 Mar. 2020, pp. 26–36., doi:https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2020.747.

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In this article, McCoy begins with a poignant quote: “There is no such thing as a neutral

education process.” Spoken by Richard Shaull, the quote gives the perfect snapshot of the

essay’s main argument. He begins by discussing the trending #FergusonSyllabus as a call to

educators to develop a syllabus that is more socially and racially aware. The idea, created by

Marcia Chatelain, faces critique by McCoy because it fails to address the importance of writing

to facilitate discussions about these topics with students. He also argues that writing in this

context enables students to transfer social justice knowledge outside of the classroom. He coins

the term “writing for justice,” as his goal is to advance social justice conversations in the first-

year composition classroom in order to grow students’ emotional and cognitive awareness of

social justice-related events. He outlines five key elements of his framework: affective

approaches to learning, demystifying the effects of colonialism and imperialism, developing

consciousness toward action, creating pathways for knowledge transfer, and using interrogative

approaches to material, rather than prescriptive approaches. Through critical writing practices,

writing for justice serves as a catalyst for reading and interrogating social injustice. He offers

more specific examples and activities throughout the article, and ultimately concludes by

explaining that this concept of writing for justice employs a pedagogy of empowerment, while

also giving students the tools to effectively learn in university as well as examine their own

position in social justice issues.

Self, Carina E. "Teaching, Activism, and the Purposes of Education: Toward an Integrated

Vision of Teachers' Work." 2010. ProQuest. Web. 12 Oct. 2020.

The purpose of this study was to consider the political dimensions of teachers' work

through a conceptual comparison to the work of social activists. The author developed a four-

part analysis of the work of activists through a reading of the social movement literature and
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compared that analysis to the work of teachers according to four contemporary approaches to

teachers' work (neo-conservative, caring, contemporary liberal, and critical theory). The result

was an integrated vision of teachers' work that brings together teachers' daily practices and their

educational commitments around four dimensions of teachers work: social critique, identity

formation/negotiation, affiliation, and institutional change. The author also identifies and

integrates the voices of teachers at the grassroots level into this holistic model of teachers' work

as part of a discussion of its strengths and possible uses for educators and teacher educators. This

study demonstrates that, regardless of their educational approach, the work of teachers forms an

inevitable political grounding for teaching and learning. An understanding of the work of social

critique helps focus the work of teachers and schools on issues of broad social importance.

Identity work connects curriculum, pedagogy, and school structures to the self-understanding of

individual teachers and to students' experience in the various social groupings that shape their

schooling. Affiliation helps educators focus on the complex connections and relationships that

enable groups within schools to raise questions and challenge commonly held assumptions.

Institutional change work, guided by this understanding of activism, becomes a dynamic series

of actions that allocates social and material resources within the school setting. Taken together,

these forms of work encompass nearly every activity in which teachers and school administrators

engage. Clarity about the purposes and intersections of these dimensions of work can serve to

focus human, material, and conceptual resources on the most critical aspects of schooling.

Rodas, Julia Miede. “Radical Lessons in the Wake of Black Lives Matter.” Radical Teacher, vol.

115, 2019, pp. 48–63., doi:10.5195/rt.2019.674.

Sundvall, Scott, and Katherine Fredlund. "The Writing on the Wall: Activist Rhetorics, Public
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Writing, and Responsible Pedagogy." Composition Forum 36 (2017): 1-

13. ProQuest. Web. 11 Oct. 2020.

Using their combined experience of two different writing courses in which they focused

on activism, the two authors discuss the benefits of activism-focused writing. It begins by giving

background of the ancient Greek philosophy, Paidea, that they use as a basis, which understands

education as an essential part of a democratic society. They argue that citizens need a rhetorical

education in order to effectively participate in society as people who are persuading by rhetoric.

While regarding the fear of “politicizing the classroom,” the authors take an approach that points

towards morality. They say that while rhetoric cannot be separated from ethics and politics, a

classroom should have emphasis on the virtue of the public good and well-being. An important

distinction they stress is that a student may have the option to withdraw from a course, they

cannot withdraw from the world in which they live. They believe it’s important to help students

understand that politics and social justice are infused in everyday life, whether they see that or

not. They address the concern that this could be an indoctrination of sorts; however, instead of

telling students what to think, educators should teach students how to think. The link between the

rhetorical situation and real-world impact is necessary in the classroom, breaking the barrier

between what’s taught “in here” (the classroom) and what happens “out there” (the real world).

Trimbur, John, et al. “Responses to Maxine Hairston, ‘Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching

Writing’ and Reply.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 44, no. 2, 1993, pp.

248–256. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/358843.

The authors in this article take Hairston’s argument and completely flip it. In short,

Hairston argues that social justice has no place in the writing classroom, as it only serves as a

distraction. She does not like the idea of radical teachers or radical classrooms. However, part of
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the counterstatement stresses that Hairston lacks the trust in her students to handle the social and

cultural difference that make up the reality of contemporary America. They say that Hairston

underestimates her students’ social and intellectual resources that they inherently bring into the

classroom. Paulo Freire’s work makes an important point to say that an educator’s role is not to

speak to people about our own view or impose that view on them, but to engage in dialogue

about their view and ours. The dialogue must also include a discussion about the contexts in

which our experiences live.

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Application to Teaching

For the application to teaching, I have developed three activities to be done in order

(ideally would be one week’s worth of lesson plans). It includes a combination of synchronous

and asynchronous work, developed specifically for a hybrid model classroom, although it is

easily adaptable. The three assignments scaffold the idea of formulating an argument around a

social justice issue. This mini-unit would typically occur mid-semester or at least after one essay

has already been completed. The first assignment is an asynchronous discussion board post with

thought-provoking questions and formatted like a daily journal entry. The second assignment is

synchronous class debate in which students take on the position on either side a social injustice

issue. The third assignment is a short essay where students conduct their own research and take a

stance on a chosen social justice issue.

Objectives:

- Students will define injustice for themselves as an individual and in their community.

- Students will hone their research skills.

- Students will reflect on the potentials of activism in everyday life.

- Students will apply these principles to a newly created resource of their own about an

issue of their choice.

Schedule and plans:

Monday: online asynchronous session

At the start of class, students will watch a short video that illustrates social justice:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5uKJVDFHFw. Then, students will respond to a

discussion board prompt:

1.) In your own words, define injustice.

2.) What kind of experiences do you have with experiencing injustice, whether it was toward

you or someone else?

3.) What aspects of someone’s identity affect their potential to experience injustice?

4.) If you could snap your fingers and have one social injustice completely changed, what

would it be and why?

5.) What is an example of two social injustices that are interwoven?

6.) What is one social justice issue that you are/could be passionate about?

Responses will be posted by the end of class on Monday morning. This is a short and simple

assignment intended to get students thinking about what social justice looks like and how they

can see it in their own lives or in others’ lives. The final question, asking students what they’re

passionate about, will prompt the next class session. The teacher will read responses and choose

a topic that was mentioned more than once (hopefully there is one or two chosen by majority). If

not, the teacher can choose one of the student responses that they feel is prevalent.

Wednesday: in-person full class session

The topic most mentioned in Monday’s discussion board post is climate change. Many students

recognize this as a threat that affects various areas of social injustice. Using this topic, students

will be split in half and each side is responsible for researching one side of the issue and arguing
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for it. On the board, the teacher will write the claim, “Climate change is the biggest threat facing

humanity today.”

For 15 minutes, students will research with their side of the group. They are to read articles and

resources that provide factual and logical evidence to prove or disprove the claim in their

respective groups. There should be at least two scribes who write down their talking points.

After research, the debate will begin and aim to last around 15-20 minutes. The teacher will be

the moderator and will take note on the dry erase board of the main arguments from each side.

To begin, the teacher can ask for volunteers to start off and ask that students raise their hand

before speaking. The teacher should note that a timer system (30 seconds-1minute to speak) will

be put in place if it gets out of control and ask that students please respect everyone’s time.

After the debate, students will answer the following reflective questions in a group discussion for

about 10 minutes/the remainder of class.

- What did you like or dislike about preparing for the debate?

- Did you agree or disagree with the position you were given? If you disagreed with it, how

did it feel to have to research and argue for it?

- What was the most interesting argument presented overall?

- What was the most interesting idea to come from the other side?

This debate is intended to help students understand that no matter where they stand on an issue,

the other side feels just as passionately. A large tenet of social justice work is understanding how

to reach people, so this should help students understand how to formulate an argument that
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actually has potential to change their mind. It is semi low-stakes as they only receive a

participation grade, which helps their comfort level with discussing an issue before they go to

write an essay about it.

Friday: in-person full class session

The class will begin with the teacher introducing their next essay that will be due two weeks

from this day.

The essay requirements:

Students will choose a claim to argue, for or against, in a 3-5 page essay with at least 3 outside

sources cited. The teacher will provide eleven options of essay topics, covering three different

areas of issues. Students are able to choose something different with teacher approval. Once

students choose a topic, they will spend the remainder of class beginning research and asking the

teacher any initial questions that may arise.

Political issues:

- All people should have the right to own guns.

- The death penalty should be abolished.

- All people should receive Universal Basic Income.

- Healthcare should be free and universal for everyone.

Education issues:

- Standardized testing should be abolished.

- Sexual education should be mandatory in schools.

- Public college should be tuition free.

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Environmental issues:

- Single-use plastic should be banned.

- Nuclear energy should replace fossil fuels.

- Fracking should be banned.

- Everyone should be vegetarian and/or vegan.

Additional topics:

- https://blog.prepscholar.com/good-debate-topics

Additional resources and lesson plans:

- https://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-justice-projects-in-classroom-michael-hernandez

- https://letscultivategreatness.com/5-social-justice-projects-that-will-empower-your-

students/

- https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/social-justice-resources/