The “street” occupies a literal and figurative place in contemporary composition pedagogies. Increasingly, teachers of college writing ask their students to “take to the streets,” providing learning opportunities that range beyond the boundaries of the college classroom. The call for compositionists to engage with the “streets” is not a new one. In fact, the 2002 Conference on College Composition and Communication theme “Connecting the Text and the Street” issued a bold and unabashed call: “We must teach students to use the texts they already own and to compose new texts in ways that affect the quality of lives in the “street,” in all those sites beyond the classroom-offices, hospitals, daycare centers, workplaces, prisons, homes, and homeless shelters” (CCCC Call for Papers qtd in Mathieu 1).
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric