Community Action Assignments Project, #1

I am gathering notes for a collection I want to write on community action projects, focusing on assignments and classroom activities. I came up with the idea in mid-June.

I thought I could start with the "writing about/for community action/social justice" things I’ve done recently and then pull in revision of older stuff to fit. I’ve gathered 60+ pages in a Google Doc. Just copy/paste from originals with no revision, but still a large collection of notes.

ATTW’s Works-in-Progress Session

I attended a works-in-progress session during the ATTW Conference, for which I wrote this abstract:

I’m focusing on "writing about/for community action/social justice" in a collection of composing assignments and classroom activities. The collection will include various technical communication genres (e.g., technical description, instructions, white paper, correspondence, press releases). Composing media will include video, images, illustrations, and audio.

I’m working on a sort of mini booklet, PDF-ish, bigger than a pamphlet but smaller than a real book (I think). My practical approach to writing probably won’t work for a “real” press, so I’m guessing that this will be short and self-published. I am committed to an open access format and digital publication.

I realized later that I left out the fact that I am thinking of the audience to be writing teachers but also community organizers, if possible. I’m thinking of a collection that has multiple paths. There’d be one way to work through the collection if you were a writing teacher and a different way if you were a community organizer.

I had three questions for the session:

• How much pedagogical framing is enough?
• What would you look for in such a resource?
• Any ideas on outlier places to place such a resource?

My group suggested that I might break things out so there are paths for learning objectives, genres, and kinds of social justice projects. For pedagogical framing, the group suggested that I could keep the intro brief and then follow it with an annotated bibliography where readers could find more information.

They also suggested some useful resources, including “Hashtag narrative: Emergent storytelling and affective publics in the digital age” by Paul Dawson.

More notes soon.