Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Erin Saldin
Faculty Mentor’s Department
English
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Honors faculty often engage students in service-learning and community-engaged courses to help them learn curricular concepts, develop skills in responsible citizenship, and positively impact their community. In fall 2020 and spring 2021, the Davidson Honors College worked with the Free Verse Writing Project, a nonprofit organization serving incarcerated youth, with the primary goal of bringing the writing and voices of young, incarcerated authors into the college classroom to give their stories a wider audience. Our presentation will explore a case study of this successful partnership and its ongoing development, with a particular focus on our perspective as honors students. We will discuss the partnership itself, its impact on students, and the ongoing scholarship and community leadership that emerged from it. Finally, we will explore the value this project has as a service learning experience and the theoretical implications of developing such a partnership in an honors setting. The success of this partnership speaks to the benefits of reading as a form of service learning in which students in the classroom bear witness to the lives and struggles of marginalized voices, which in this case positively impacted both students in the classroom and the community partner.
Category
Humanities
Reading as Bearing Witness: Incorporating the Voices of Incarcerated Youth in Honors Education
UC 327
Honors faculty often engage students in service-learning and community-engaged courses to help them learn curricular concepts, develop skills in responsible citizenship, and positively impact their community. In fall 2020 and spring 2021, the Davidson Honors College worked with the Free Verse Writing Project, a nonprofit organization serving incarcerated youth, with the primary goal of bringing the writing and voices of young, incarcerated authors into the college classroom to give their stories a wider audience. Our presentation will explore a case study of this successful partnership and its ongoing development, with a particular focus on our perspective as honors students. We will discuss the partnership itself, its impact on students, and the ongoing scholarship and community leadership that emerged from it. Finally, we will explore the value this project has as a service learning experience and the theoretical implications of developing such a partnership in an honors setting. The success of this partnership speaks to the benefits of reading as a form of service learning in which students in the classroom bear witness to the lives and struggles of marginalized voices, which in this case positively impacted both students in the classroom and the community partner.