VIRTUAL New Schools of Thought

Abstract

This presentation explores innovative pedagogies that encourage students in the college writing experience to think critically about the rhetorical situation of the urban and/or natural outside space that surrounds them, and thereby discover agency to effect social/environmental change through writing (Madanipour, 2019. Wilson, 1995). Students seem overwhelmed by feelings of inequity and powerlessness as they confront various global environmental crises and detachment from nature – “‘species loneliness’—estrangement from the rest of Creation” (Kimmerer 2013). For example, students attending the College of Southern Nevada navigate rising temperatures and severe drought, while coping with academic demands. This paper suggests that we – as college educators – should think about alternative texts/pedagogies that dismantle classroom boarders. Our assignments/activities can make students aware they have the right to engage in global conversations relevant to their cultural backgrounds and world experiences: social/racial impacts of climate change, food deserts, and ecological deserts, ecofeminism. We can empower students through assignments that encourage reclaiming nature in cityscapes in order to reclaim power for student populations that have been historically marginalized by the colonization of the academy/classroom: community service projects in gardens/parks that comment on exigence/audience; projects that analyse authors of urban spaces that influence their socioeconomic reality; writing as activism that utilizes social media to wonder about global contexts; writing that welcomes the use of AI to craft solutions to climate issues (Mintz, 2021. Parker, et al, 2017. Bodnar, 2015). Encouraging students to move beyond traditional classroom boarders through environmental consciousness may empower students with meaning, agency, and hope.