Experiential Learning and Autoethnography

For the final project, students will identify an urban agriculture initiative in their community and arrange to contribute at least 8 volunteer hours over the semester. The purpose is to gain practical experience while contributing to the ongoing work of an initiative and learning reciprocally from the people involved. Examples and possible organizations will be discussed in class, including projects Erik is directly involved in (e.g., CultivAction Solidarity Cooperative, Lachine Farms), but students are responsible for contacting an initiative and arranging their own volunteer placement.

Following their volunteer experience, students will write a critical autoethnographic reflection that connects their own participation with course concepts and readings. Rather than researching or evaluating the organization or the people involved, students should critically examine their own situated experience: what they did and learned, how the experience related to their previous assumptions about urban agriculture, what they learned from practitioners, and how practice reinforced, challenged, or complicated ideas encountered in the course.