To encourage and support local outreach during CCCC conventions, three Standing Groups have received funding from CCCC to host local outreach activities during the 2018 CCCC Annual Convention in Kansas City Please see the details of these events below.
W.11 – Isolated Languages and Out of Sync Labors: A Transformative Exchange between Military and Civilian Higher Education Faculty at the Army Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 – 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
The US military and higher education have a long history of deeply influencing each other. The end of World War II and the first GI Bill drove innovation and change across higher education, and led to a significant transformation of composition praxis and pedagogy. The social unrest of the 1960s and ‘70s caused a schism between the two institutions. One byproduct of this schism was the isolating of Professional Military Education (PME) from higher education. (The term PME describes the entirety of the military education and training system that includes vocational training, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate instruction.) This division hobbled collaborative research and limited exchanges between the two academic communities, butmost important,it constrained opportunities to prepare students for transitioning into or out of the military. Just as the aftermath of World War II and the GI Bill triggered an influx of students into higher education, however, the 9/11 attacks, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and post-9/11 GI Bill have renewed an interest in working with student veterans and students on active duty. Faculty in higher education and PME have begun to reexamine their areas of mutual interest and initiate the building of institutional relationships reflective of the vital role both higher education and PME play in shaping students and national culture.
This workshop aims to facilitate and hasten the transformative development of more systematic relationships between civilian specialists in writing studies and PME faculty by promoting an immersive exchange. The leadership of the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) has agreed to host the workshop and believes that the immersion of workshop participants in an academic military environment willpresent opportunities to find deeper, mutual connections, and allow participants of 4C18 to gain a more complete understanding of the goals and practices of the PME system. The need for this understanding is particularly urgent, given that most specialists in writing studies have little knowledge of, and even less access to, the PME system and its stakeholders despite a rise in students aspiring to join the military or veterans matriculating into civilian higher education. This workshop will serve as the initial scaffolding for greater future interaction and collaborative research by civilian specialists in writing sudies and PME faculty.
Visit the CCCC all-day workshop descriptions for further details. You can register for this workshop online via the CCCC Convention registration form.
Activist or Educator: Rethinking the Transformative Potential of Education in Prison
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 – 3:30-5:30 p.m.
Teaching in Prison: Pedagogy, Research, and Literacies Collective, a CCCC Standing Group, will facilitate a symposium at a Kansas City correctional facility with Leigh Lynch, executive director of Arts in Prison. Arts in Prison provides opportunities for inmates to prove that they are more than the sum of their crimes. By providing arts education and experiences—including a wide range of writing and literacy based activities—for inmates in Kansas state prisons and detention centers, these members of society, who have been locked away and often forgotten, are given a chance for self-reflection and an opportunity to create a range of writing for themselves and the public.
Approximately 5-6 Standing Group members will join Lynch and students in the Arts in Prison writing and poetry program for a dialogical symposium/workshop on the power of writing to build connections between writers behind bars and communities on the outside.
The goal is to create a space for incarcerated students to share and discuss their work. Students’ work will be featured on the CCCC Standing Group’s website, Prison Writing Networks. Such publications can be useful to educators and activists in cultivating connections both inside and outside of prison and might also prove useful in college classrooms as well as in secondary schools.
Each of the incarcerated students who participates in the workshop will receive books and writing materials.
Writing with Current, Former, and Future Members of the Military and Caregivers on the Homefront Workshop
Saturday, March 17, 2018 – 5:30-8:30 p.m. – The Kansas City, MO Police Academy
Members of the Writing with Current, Former, and Future Members of the Military, a CCCC Standing Group, will work with a nonprofit in Kansas City, Missouri, Caregivers on the Homefront, to offer a three-hour workshop for 20 military, veteran, and first responder caregivers focusing on building individual capacity for storytelling with applications to five areas:
- Admittance and scholarship essays/interviews for postsecondary or graduate programs;
- Employment cover letters and interviews;
- Media, fundraising, resources;
- Grant writing; and
- Blogs, vlogs, and social media.
Nearly 5.5 million people in the United States care for an injured, ill, or disabled military service member or veteran, and no study has calculated the number of those caring for injured, ill, or disabled first responders (Ramchand et al., 2014). Caregivers provide daily living support for care recipients, often in sacrifice of their own goals. Caregivers face distinct challenges in their pursuit of a postsecondary education, suitable employment, and adequate health care. Additionally, many caregivers suffer from caregiver fatigue and elevated stress levels, and they frequently lack supportive social and employment networks (Ramchand et al., 2014). To combat these concerns, most caregivers rely on the services and programs of veteran and caregiver nonprofit organizations. As they seek out resources or employment, caregivers face the daunting task of telling potential employers, media outlets, higher education administrators, or even the public their stories. The work of a caregiver is difficult, isolating, stressful, and nearly indescribable to those who haven’t experience it; however, caregivers can learn to leverage their stories to reach their goals.
Caregivers on the Homefront is a nonprofit organization founded by Shawn Moore (a military caregiver, Elizabeth Dole Foundation fellow, and Kansas City police officer) and her husband, Bryan Moore – an Army veteran. Uniquely, the organization brings together veteran and first responder caregivers. Caregivers on the Homefront is one of the few nonprofit organizations to support veteran families from any military service era.
