Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks

Abstract

This chapter focuses upon the pedagogical practice of writing marathons to engage students in writing and movement in any space outside a classroom and specifically outlines the step-by-step instructions for conducting a marathon. It highlights the process in an outdoor space in the Missouri Ozarks where students traveled to a university’s biology field station and wrote in and around the station and a lake. It highlights the author’s experience and select writing from the marathon. It describes how students shared their writing with each other in small groups, culminating in a community-building meal and read aloud from their writing. This chapter argues that immersion in nature through directed writing activities fosters a critical place conscious ethos and begins to develop an ecological literacy necessary for sustaining ecosystems through developing “an intimate, organic and mutually nurturing relationship with a place.” It also argues that the writing marathon can be interdisciplinary and practiced across P-16 grade levels.

Department(s)

English

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.4324/9781003409076-3

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Journal Title

Place Based Writing in Action Opportunities for Authentic Writing in the World Beyond the Classroom

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