Holt Mettee

Professor Graves

Lang 120.013

Dick Foeken, et al. Urban School Farming to Improve School Feeding: The Case of

Nakuru Town, Kenya. Children, Youth and Environments, vol. 20, no. 1, 2010, pp. 276300.

JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.20.1.0276.

Urban School Farming to Improve School Feeding was published in 2010 in Children,

Youth, and Environments an online journal including peer reviewed research papers and reports

that focus on creating inclusive, sustainable, and healthy environments for children around the

world. This article was written by three different authors: Dick Foeken, a senior researcher at the

African Studies Center in Leiden, Netherlands, Samuel O. Owuor, a senior lecturer in the

Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and

Alice M. Mwangi, a lecturer at the Department of Food Science, Nutrition, and Technology at

the University of Nairobi, Kenya. This article draws evidence from a survey conducted by the

authors in the majority of the primary and secondary schools in Nakuru, Kenya. This survey and

article examines the extent of the benefits that school farming in urban settings has on school

feeding programs. The article argues the potential ways that school farming programs can be

improved within the constraints of land, water, support, and leadership in order to provide

sustainable and nutritional food for pupils at a low cost.

Dorris, Michael, Alexie, et al. Superman and Me. The Most Wonderful Books:

Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading, Milkweed Editions, 1997.

 In his 1998 essay published in The Joy of Reading and Writing , Superman and

Me, Sherman Alexie reflects on learning to read. Alexie contributes a unique voice to

the conversation by telling the story through his lense of a Native American growing up

on a reservation. Alexie uses coy humor, descriptive language, cultural references, and

carefully crafted beautiful sentences to convey the power that reading, writing, and books

have to save lives, specifically marginalized ones. Alexie encourages the literary world

to consider less privileged and new voices and encourages everyone despite their cultural

or financial background to read, to exceed the expectations and limitations put on us to

become smart, a little arrogant, and find something so inspiring beautiful, and liberating

that it saves your life. Reading and writing saved mine.

Thonney, Teresa. "Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse." Teaching English

in the Two Year College, vol. 38, no. 4, 2011, pp. 347-362

In her essay, Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse, Teresa Thonney,

writes about teaching writing specifically at introductory levels at two year institutions. The

English professor at Columbia Basin College addresses other English teachers and two opposing

sides of a debate. By referencing other professors, scholars, writers, and twenty-four research

articles from six different disciplines, Thonney argues that although the field of academic writing

is vast and is difficult to teach through generalizations, there are six rhetorical features that can

be taught to first year student writers to provide useful general knowledge about academic

writing in order to make them more successful scholars.

 Sommers, Nancy. Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult

Writers. College Composition and Communication, vol. 31, no. 4, 1980, pp. 378388.

JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/356588.

Nancy Sommers article, Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult

Writers was published in the academic journal College Composition and Communication, a

scholarly research journal with a focus on improving teaching, writing, and rhetorical practices.

Sommers article attempts to address academic student writers as well as teachers and is an

exploration and study of revision. Sommers writing style is strongly academic with the serious

scholarly tone of a research paper. By mixing the research paper genre with Strunk and White

like how-to content, the author explores the difference in revision styles between student writers

and experienced adult writers. The seasoned writing professors argument is well supported by

her study and interviews of the two levels of writers and she comes to the conclusion that It is a

sense of writing as discovery-a repeated process of beginning over again, starting out new-that

the students failed to have. Sommers notes that the revision process is unique in that it can not

occur in speech, only writing. She argues that revision is an essential part yet often

misunderstood, overlooked, or avoided step in the writing process. The author states that writing

is just that: a process, and that it should be a constant cycle of editing, refining, and rewriting.

She urges student writers to branch away from a linear writing approach.

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. National

Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

In his book, Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, Victor Villanueva Jr.,

a professor and chair of the department of english at Washington State University, tells the story
of his education. Villanueva uses a personal tone and descriptive language as is exemplified in

his description of a college campus before his entrance into academia: all carrying backpacks

over one shoulder. ...the trees shading modern monoliths of gray concrete he says to himself,

maybe in the next life. Villanuevas voice and style create an accessible and engaging

anecdote and illustrate a less commonly acknowledged educational experience and path. He

encourages his audience of students, scholars, and writers, specifically those of color, to have

perseverance, passion, and creativity in their academic fields, whatever they may be. The author

supports this claim by explaining that although writing came naturally to him, he began to

struggle at a higher level of education due to his background. Once he found a balance between

writing formulaically and for his intended audience of his professor, and finding a personal

connection with the material and incorporating his personal style and creativity, he was able to

succeed academically and hone in on his passion: rhetoric. Villanueva defines rhetoric as the art

of persuasion, the conscious use of language and the ability to have control over it, for example

through stylistic devices and tricks of language. He goes on to say that the study of rhetoric is the

study of humans, language, and ways humans have achieved things. By writing this

autobiographical piece about an American Academic of Color, Villanueva encourages all

students to search for their own passion and voice in order to master rhetoric.