Challenging more limited approaches to service learning, this book examines writing instruction in the context of universities fully engaged in community partnerships. In Making Writing Matter, Ann M. Feldman explores how changing scholarship at engaged metropolitan universities offers an opportunity to redesign first-year writing classes in ways that make students better writers. An engaged university commits to a relationship with its surrounding metropolitan area, with faculty members undertaking collaborative research with community partners. The more vibrant, participatory role of an engaged university allows students to link their academic studies to important public issues and gain real-world writing experience, such as writing press releases and letters to organizations. This newly focused and contextualized research and scholarship at engaged universities shows students how discourse and writing matter in new ways.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Making Writing Matter What Is Engaged Scholarship? Making Writing Matter for First-Year Students Writing for Civic Engagement How I Came to Write This Book The Organization of This Book Part I: The Place of Writing in the University 1. Engaged Scholarship at the University Changing The Kind of Thing We Do Around Here Important Work, But Not University Partnership How Discourse Drives Engagement The New Learner Writes Educating Citizens to Write When Students "Walk" the City 2. Writing as Participation The Purloined Petition Institution, Genre, and Social Action This Container Isn’t Big Enough Writing About What Others Have Written Writing for Participation Revision or Social Action Writing in a Community of Practice 3. Telling Tales Out of School When Is a Diary Not a Diary? Down the Elevator Both Ends Against the Middle The University in Ruins What’s a Writing Program For? The Mountain Makes It’s Own Weather Learning to Spell Rescission The Grammar Sessions Getting What You Wish For Reflecting on Experience? Part II: Designing Instruction to Make Writing Matter 4. Rethinking Reflection in Community-Based Writing A New Space for Teaching and Learning Tales of Becoming a Writer Performing in Writing The Memoir and Its Truth or Consequences On Not Assigning Literacy Narratives Against Reflection Recruiting Students for CCLCP Developing Community-Based Partnerships Designing a First-Year Curriculum for CCLCP Recapping the Argument 5.   Assessing Writing and Learning in Community-Based Courses (with Candice Rai and Megan Marie) Entering a New Situation Situated Writing and Learning Complicating Assessment Developing an Assessment Matrix Conducting Assessment 6. Teaching the Teachers Writing About Essays The Syllabus as Genre Against First-Year Writing The Paradox of Transferability Designing Situated Writing Projects A Manifesto for First-Year Writing Notes Works Cited Index