Sarah Bramblett
Assignments & Activities Archive
Assignment Description
I’ve encountered several jarring writing submissions: an essay describing a student’s family member’s tragic death, an essay detailing a student’s battle with an eating disorder, an essay telling of a student’s loneliness in their first semester of college, and an essay recounting a student’s suicidal thoughts. These were important, and generally powerful essays, and I’m the first to tell my students that writing can offer an emotional release. But these essays also presented challenges in grading, in fulfilling learning outcomes, in responding to the students, and in some cases, reporting to my university. I have found that the following adapted ethnography assignment invites students to grapple with personal and emotional themes in a format that emphasizes focus on the appropriate audiences for academic writing while also allowing students to make a positive difference in their communities. University students continue to face unprecedented mental health challenges (Locke; “American College Health AssociationNational College Health Assessment II: Undergraduate Student Reference Group Executive Summary Spring 2016”; United Health Foundation). Writing can be a tool for combatting some of the challenges, but writing in an academic setting can also trigger vulnerable emotions, especially when students are asked to complete personal narratives. This micro-ethnography assignment is adapted from the Georgia State University Lower Division Studies standard syllabus. Teaching skills of primary research helps fulfill the balance between personal details and private mediation that is crucial to a critical expressivist pedagogy (Ramsey; Gaillet and Eble; Roeder and Gatto). Situating internal dialogues in external places prepares students to better process emotions in academic writing. Students select a location to study and produce an argument that has some level of personal meaning. However, instead of focusing on personal connections to the location, students highlight physical characteristics and write a narrative about their locations instead of, specifically, about their own lives. While language’s power can create internal and external change, counseling centers and trained professionals are vitally irreplaceable in times of mental health challenges and crises. Therefore, this assignment is not a be-all-end-all approach to mental health challenges. Rather, I believe that ethnography research gives students a method to approach emotional writing in a productive manner and effect positive change with their writing, a deeply rewarding process for both students and teachers.