Reviews for Composition and sustainability

The average rating for Composition and sustainability based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-25 00:00:00 Josef Peyer “For me the challenge becomes how to create a classroom environment where students have the freedom to pursue writing projects that matter to them, and yet where, as an instructor, I not only remain energized by their questions and pursuits but also consider the ongoing conversations to be of paramount importance to my students’ short-and long-term survival.” (7) “If the writing teacher has the power to make students write and read about practically anything, what then are the most important things for them to write and read?” (7). This is a book that got me excited about teaching composition. The book advocates composition as a realm of flexibility, where you have the opportunity to engage freshmen in a wide variety of topics. This book proposes ways of integrating sustainability more clearly into composition courses. It defines sustainability and then offers 6 tenets for a pedagogy of sustainability. The book offers suggestions for engaging students and examples from the writing done by his students. Reading what the students produce is motivating to encourage such reflection in my own students. Although the book wasn’t quite what I was looking for it was useful to read a piece of writing by someone so obviously committed to a sustainable (both ecologically and economically) future and to respecting the ideas and contributions of his students. By far, my favorite part of the book was Appendix B: Sustainability in a Composition Course. This appendix included a full listing of his syllabus and assignments for a composition course.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-06-14 00:00:00 Joseph Tapia While the message may seem obvious in our post Inconvenient Truth age, Owens' book reminds me how important and possible it is to make sustainability the primary lens/focus of a college comp course. His argument is compelling, and the appendix contains a facts section and assignments from his own course.