First-year Writing Is Real: Preparing to Engage the Death of Michael Brown and the Ferguson Protests

I remember in '06 and '07, the years after Hurricane Katrina, my sections of first-year college writing were full of young people who had traveled to New Orleans to work in the re-building efforts. Because of their engaged citizenship, my classroom became a site of real public exchange about real human values--individuals' stories, topics of social justice, global warming, civil engineering, American values, jazz, cajun food. At some point it dawned on me that I'm just one teacher at one school in Wisconsin; that same conversation must've been happening in Composition classes all over the United States, and the products of those conversations--essays of all sorts, posters, PowerPoint presentations, and just... moments of insight and exchange--were probably some of the best, most earnest and hopeful public exchanges happening anywhere. They weren't published in the Times, and they weren't anthologized, and in fact I've never seen it publicly acknowledged in any way, but Composition classes were producing "real world" discourse, interactions, conversations, in ways that media outlets and public service organizations could only dream of.

Fast forward to Fall of 2014, and I suspect that there are hundreds of teachers who are, like me, revising their course plans for their sections of freshman English in order to try and address the recent fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, the protests that have followed the event, the police response to those protests, the media coverage of the whole sequence of events, the incredibly complex historical contexts within which Brown's death is embedded, and all the big questions of what Ferguson should mean to us as a nation. Like me, I suspect that many of these teachers feel deeply conflicted about their decision to address Brown's death and Ferguson. They worry about presenting emotional, disturbing, controversial material in a way that is balanced and geared toward understanding. For most instructors, Freshman English is a course about the writing process: inquiry, analysis, critical thinking, and argumentation are often highlighted, practiced, developed, so that students leave the course with a better understanding of how to think for themselves about the claims they encounter in public discourse, and how to make their own claims ethically and effectively. Like me, I suspect that many teachers are wary of the public distrust of college and university instructors, who are often portrayed as indoctrinators, out to change the personal beliefs of students and not just help them expand their intellectual capacities. I suspect that many instructors share my fear that Brown's death and Ferguson are just too heavy to take on--most students are in their first semester of college--sometimes Freshman English is their very first class--and instructors like me often use some lighter media analysis or personal writing to open the semester on a slightly less fraught note.

At the same time, though, I expect that many instructors, like me, want their teaching to respond to our moment, and the shooting of Michael Brown has led to a blossoming of awareness across the nation--a new willingness to address America's long-standing questions of race, class, power, citizenship, the law, due process, civil rights, and responsibilities. To me, the hope of creating a public context for the open discussion of all of these issues, which are so crucial to our past, present, and future as a nation, is worth the attendant risks. I take comfort and courage in thinking about the larger community of First-year Writing classes that will make up one site of real public discourse about Ferguson in the weeks to come.