An Educational Oasis In An Urban Food Desert: Service Learning In Expository English

Elyse Zucker

In the fall of 2013, I structured my Expository Writing class to become a venue for bringing together many people and divisions of the college and beyond in new and productive ways and combinations, and turned this section of English 110 into a paradigm of interdisciplinarity. My construction of the course proved conducive for getting students to be more deeply engaged with their studies, and discover much about themselves in the process. What I put into place to achieve these ends was a Service Learning component and, with the backing of the Grassroots Environmental Education organization (plus donations gathered from The Golden Earthworm Organic Farm, Orient Organics and two Whole Foods Markers) an on-campus farmers' market I called The Hostos Garden Marker (HGM). Linking the Service Learning and the HGM was the theme of the course: agriculture and food justice.

The Hostos Garden Market (HGM) was piloted during Thanksgiving week, but my students spent the months that led up to what event doing research on the phenomenon of farmers' markers in relation to the topics they were assigned to explore. The students then shared key concepts they had learned with the Hostos and local communities.

Although the central focus of the class was agriculture and food justice, I assigned essays, articles and other materials that reflected different disciplines and perspectives in relation to char theme so that I could help to prepare my students co handle the variety of subjects they would need to take on their educational journeys. For instance, I assigned a chapter from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to touch upon some fundamental ecological precepts (while teaching students about and how to write cause/effect essays), and an Alfonso Morales' article, "Growing Food and Justice: Dismantling Racism through Sustainable Food Systems,'' to direct students to consider how politics and racial subtexts can shape neighborhoods and food systems (while illustrating how to quote MLA style). Students also read such essays as Derrick Jensen's " Beyond Hope," Cathrine Sneed's "These Green Things" and an excerpt from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, to examine critical chinking and argumentation in linguistic, philosophical, psychological and political-science spheres and m make connections between these pieces, which all challenge oppressive societal conventions, prompting students to question food conventions and culture.

My desire to include a Service Learning component in my English 110 classes was initiated by a realization I had after teaching an extended curriculum unit on Environmentalism in relation to the self. What dawned on me was that teaching students about the dangers of environmental destruction did render them cognizant about the health of our planet but often, ironically, feeling too defeated to take action. I hoped that by incorporating Service Learning into my 110 classes, I might enable students to believe they could take control and make a difference for the better in our deteriorating milieu: a belief I feel the youth of today need to have to be proactive in handling global challenges. I had also hoped that perhaps the students could learn writing skills more effectively since most likely would become deeply involved with the content being studied. Service learning encourages involvement by extending the perimeters of the classroom and eliciting empathy, and I believed interest in pertinent content might inspire them to want to find more accurate ways to explore and express their thoughts. I know chat interest in content is what had inspired me, during my own college years, to learn co improve my writing.

Of all the copies pertaining to Environmentalism that were of interest to me, I felt that agriculture in relation to food justice was of prime concern and accessible and would lend itself well to service learning. Coupled with the advent of a farmers' market, an exploration of the topic could provide opportunities to promote student empowerment. I was certain that I wanted to continue to reach Environmentalism in some capacity since feel strongly that everything we do and pursue is predicated upon the foundation we call earth, which must be cleaning up and taken care of to continue to provide for us so that we can continue. Focusing on the topic of agriculture and food justice provided a window to show our students ways they could "chink globally, act locally." since Hostos is located in a food desert, which is a geographic location, usually impoverished and inner city or rural, in which fresh, healthy foods are difficult or impossible to co me by. The students visited the local milieu, took notes on it and questioned its residents about their awareness of food­ related issues. Afterwards they followed up by "educating" chose interviewed about food deserts, and suggested alternatives to patronizing them, such as shopping at The Hostos Garden Market or other farmers' markers.

After reading selections such as those mentioned above, and writing - at least two rimes per class-in response to the readings, students were ready to transition to their Service Learning research projects. This section of Expository Writing, however, was nor an officially designated Service Learning section, so students had the option to work individually on a more traditional research project (giving assignment options is, in general, something I like to do since people learn in a variety of styles). If students chose to commit to the Service Learning research project, they would have to work in groups and do primary as well as secondary research and give a class presentation for which they would be assigned a group grade. That aspect of the project had to include a Works Cited page, MLA formatted, as well as a hard­ copy submission of the presentation. In addition, these students were also responsible for writing a Reflective Piece for an individual grade. Finally, students were required to help organize and operate The Hostos Garden Marker, which counted as part of their Service Learning. In spite of knowing that the Service Learning project could encompass what might appear to be considerably more work than its counterpart option, every student in chis class decided to partake in it, which right away said something to me about the appeal of both group and experiential learning, an appeal stronger than avoiding the amount of work that the Service Learning option intimated had robe accomplished.

For the Service Learning project, I offered a choice of five research topic. And assigned one to five student groups. To determine which students would be assigned to which group, I asked all the students to list their first, second and third choices, and luckily was able to give everyone his or her first or second choice. For balance, l cried to make sure that each was comprised of both male and female as well as strong a and weaker students, and was able to accomplish this goal as well. These projects in place started things off on a good footing for everyone. The copies on the table for exploration were: food deserts; processed vs. un processed food, agriculture vs. agroindustry; farmers' markets; and urban as well as community food projects.

Each group had to take its topic and identify a problem in relation to it. It then had to seek content that would answer, resolve and/or explain the problem. The groups could not choose a no-brainer thesis such as "Processed foods are bad for health" and had to research their topic in the context of its impact on local communities. The students had to frame their findings in a sociological, political, cultural or environmental context, which my lessons from the first half of the semester helped prepare them to do. For instance, in discovering char people who live in food deserts often do not know that they do, one group did research supporting the premise that the engines behind food desert construction target people too disempowered to challenge chem. My goal was to have students take ownership of their projects and empower those in the community as well as themselves. They were instructed to take note, in their reflective journals, of the processes they partook in, as well as their responses to those processes. No matter the topic or findings, each group had to relate its topic in some way to the benefits and/or functions of farmers' markets and lee people know about the upcoming Hostos Garden Marker. This lase requirement made the students feel connected to The Hostos Garden Marker and inspired to organize and operate it, which they did help to do- along with students, faculty and staff from across the college. Connecting their topics of study to the HGM also facilitated their integrating the various pieces of the class into a cohesive whole.

For the primary research pare of the project, each group decided -collectively- which questions its members would ask interviewees both ac and outside of Hostos, and the group members self-identified by wearing their Hostos IDs in visible places and the tee-shirrs bearing the Hostos logo Mr. Jerry Rosa kindly donated for them. The secondary, scholarly research each group did was based on the primary research they discovered, so they could best "educate" those in the Hostos and local communities about agriculture and food justice issues. To help students research their topics I provided articles and names of or links to articles and lent them relevant books from my own "environmental'' library. Student shared their research by contributing pithy points to the class brochure, which they then distributed at the HGM and in some cases, emailed co community members who indicated they would not the able to come to the HGM.

I frequently consulted about chis class with Professor Sandy Figueroa, chair of The Service Learning Committee, and our conversations led to collaborative efforts between her Business Communications students and my English 110 students. Professor Figueroa also divided her 200-level class into five groups, so that the Business Communications students could "mentor" my students by commencing on the accuracy of my students' writing and efficacy of their claims. Professor Figueroa and I shuffled the student work and feedback back and forth -via email-and after checking the comments myself, dispensed it to the right groups. Some students in each of our classes also visited the other's class, and students from both classes met again at the debut of The Hostos Garden Market, where they all partook in Service Learning.

Fate had it that the days the Hostos Garden Market ran were two of the worse weather days of the year; the first day the market was open was near unendurably cold and the second day was dominated by a gloomy and sleeping sky. Yet not one student complained about working in the inclement weather and all the students were eager to rake their assigned places at the market and help run it. They sold, among other items, the organic soups and fresh vegetables char comprised the soups' ingredients, and they distributed the brochure co the Hostos and local community members who stopped by. The students were eager to sell the food and "sell" what they had studied all semester. Hours before it was scheduled to close, the HGM had, on both days, sold out of everything (to this day, custodians, officers and ocher Hostos people come up to me and ask when they can expect the return of the market).

After returning from Thanksgiving break (during which many students and their families ace HGM food), the students presented their group projects to the class. All the groups chose to create and narrate Power point presentations and all the groups relayed how much they had learned about their topic. "fl1ey also revealed, inadvertently, how critically and contextually they had begun to think. Many of the students' Reflective Pieces and verbalizations indicated how impassioned they had become about the topics they studied, how much they had changed as a result of studying them and how frequently they were imparting what they had learned co ochers. One, for instance, wrote that she would no longer allow her three-year-old co ear junk food. Another said she now can caste "chemicals" in McDonald's dishes and a third wrote that she decided to become a vegetarian (something I never promoted). Many students mentioned how good they felt about themselves by educating others and gaining awareness of how alienated from themselves food culture has made them, and some expressed surprise by how much compassion they had for food desert inhabitants. Several students had written that they felt they learned best by reading rexes in combination with experiencing first-hand what they were reading about. Ochers bad indicated that they learned a lot by working in a group with their peers. All of the students indicated that they either "liked" or "loved" doing Service Learning and, clearly, all the students learned something new about themselves.

I cannot say that the student writing in this class improved more dramatically than in ocher English 110 classes I've taught. Furthermore, to expect my Service Learning course to be a magic bullet would mean chat I've been seduced by the very conventions promoting and promising, at the cost of wholeness and integration,

expedited results: aspirations I structured this course to question. However, I believe that the engagement students experienced with the course positively impacted their desire to express themselves in writing, since they discovered they have many thoughts and feelings about the copies so relevant to their lives. Improving one's writing is an ongoing process and, as made clear by many of the selections we read throughout the semester, our culture, impatient, is produce rather than process oriented. The gains my students garnered included a comforting awareness of the stages inherent to the writing process and the importance of embracing processes rather than eschewing them -something advocated, they learned, by such people as Wendell Berry and Karl Marx. Students' incipient cognizance of these notions may prove robe a tool to help their writing continue to improve.