Students in the Wild -- Rhetoric Students Addressing a Local School Board

"School Board" sounds quaint, but the Aldine Independent School District can't be described as quaint. It's about 110 square miles of variously developed and undeveloped suburbia north of Houston.

Aldine -- Largely Latino, 2012

In my second semester course, students choose a local "concern" -- local being limited to sub-county level administration -- and perform various rhetorical analyses on their peer stakeholders (similar community members; not the government entities), the "state" (gov), and texts the "state" produces to address the concern. Plenty of reading genres they've never seen, talking to neighbors they've never spoken to, understanding local political structures they've never heard of. Ironically, Texas insists on multiple exposures to state government and history through secondary and higher education, but apparently little education is provided to actually empower citizens in their local ecology -- where they might have the most advantage. That's for another post.

But it's been a long semester, and I could tell the students were becoming inured with my own cynicism and decided to discuss strategies to engage each other through alliance-building instead of each student working on building her own public sphere. This lead last week to a discussion in one class about student pedestrian safety and the gross lack of sidewalks in Aldine ISD. Quickly, a student proposed that they actually address the Board of Trustees, but when we checked the calendar, I was disappointed to discover that the Board met only five days away -- 18 November. I really didn't expect us to pull this together so quickly.

I asked a colleague in History and colleagues from the writing courses to come to my class on Tuesday morning to act as Trustees-wannabe and give students practice time reading their persuasive comments. One writing colleague brought her class in to watch and participate and three of those students ended up showing up to the Board meeting later that night. I'm especially grateful to those colleagues who gave supportive, constructive feedback. Within an hour, I knew that 13 weeks of reading, writing, rhetorical analysis had strongly prepared these students even about a subject that wasn't their project for public comment. Logos, pathos, ethos were appropriately used artfully and characteristically of community college students -- experts in their communities, bringing that expertise into the college.

I had another obligation Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. while the Aldine ISD Board meeting began at the same time. I left my own duty early, rushed through freeways to get to the administration building at 8:00 and was relieved to find the students had not been invited to speak yet.

Eventually public comments opened up and one by one the Board President slaughtered their names -- partly because of the diversity of names, partly because of poor penmanship -- and one by one they nervously approached a microphone in front of a hundred strangers. Their voices were shaky at times and sometimes they stood too far from (or too tall above) the microphone. But before the first student had finished his comments, I started to hear tittering behind me in the audience: "That's a good point ... I hadn't thought of that ..." and more. Here we had former students from the several Aldine high schools now in college, coming back to the school district that did the best they can in a state that doesn't much value education. Now the students have become the teachers.

Long story short. They were stars. Accolades from the Board before the meeting ended, then dozens of people holding them up in the hallway, shaking hands instead of shaking legs; congratulations and thanks; exchange of contact information, gratitude and admiration. I wanted to be just an observer, letting the students have their spot, but some folks insisted on finding the professor who had much less to do with the evening than did the courageous, intelligent, concerned community college students, bringing the college back to the community.

I promised to take the students to a local taco shop, but we couldn't find it. We drove several miles into Aldine until we found a small Mexican restaurant about to close. The kind owner permitted us to come in anyway, and we kept her and her staff busy for another hour.

Lone Star College -- North Harris Rhetoricians

We have more to do. Today we debriefed our preparation, actions, and follow-up items. To be effective, they'll need to address the same concerns to East Aldine Management District, Airline Improvement District, Harris County, and the City of Houston -- Harris County is complicated. But it's a start. And it took the curriculum out of the classroom, where community college students do their best work.

Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
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