WRITING for REAL:
Writing in the Service-Learning Contact Zone

Leap of Faith/"Contact Zone" Essays

In personal narratives relating their experiences in various social, cultural, educational, or other kinds of "contact zones," students not only tell their stories but they also consider the crucial question "so what?". How do their experiences as travelers in the "contact zone" relate to broader political trends, social issues, or personal values? How does all of this connect and relate to our course readings?

Allison McCarty	Fall 2002	Ignoring and Embracing Culture
Matt Tuong	Fall 2002	Revelations from the Contact Zone
Yuriy Teslyar	Fall 2002	A Tale of Two Cities
Leslie Liang	Fall 2002	untitled
Jonathan Pearlstein	Fall 2002	My Conversion to Judaism
Vanessa Baker	Spring 2002	¿Entiendes? The Necessity of Accepting Inversions of Authority in Contact Zones

Community Writing Projects

Click here to learn more about the Community Writing Program

Click here to view students' past Community Writing Projects

Research Papers

Students' multiple-source research essays address many aspects of the broadest questions of their PWR classes. In "Writing for Real," students wonder about the nature of "communities" and explore a broad range of issues that impact communities of all kinds. In "Writing Nature," students explore issues of human identity and the various roles that human beings serve in nature.

Maggie Smith		Olympic Wolves?
Albert Lin	Human Cloning: What Will We Become? (draft)	Human Cloning: What Will We Become? (revised essay)
Mark Hammer		The Economics of Genetically Modified Foods (revised essay)

Reading Presentations

Some students use PowerPoint to help them make their their presentations of readings during the course of the quarter.

Mark Hammer	David Quammen's "The Face of a Spider" (Powerpoint presentation)
Albert Lin	Stephen Jay Gould, "On the Origin of Specious Critics"

Multimedia Oral Presentations

Students' multimedia oral presentations at quarter's end address specific aspects of their research papers or their Community Writing Projects.

Andrew Buck	2001-2002	Conservation VS Restoration
Dave Borrelli	2001-2002	Jaws
Tiffany Early	2001-2002	Navajo Creation Mythology
Albert Lin	Fall 2002	Human Cloning
Doug Allen	Fall 2002	What Are We Going to Do with All the Old People? Preparing for the Baby Boomers