The Power of an Incredible Human Being: Stefania Vendrella. Phew! What a Kid!

This semester, my ENW 311 course: Composition and the Teaching of Writing offered 17 students an opportunity to think about the teaching of writing, but also the power of service learning. As a result, Stefania was assigned to me as a student-learning associate (SLA --- if she was cold, it would be cold SLA, which is always good with fish on Fridays).

Stefania is heading on a path to become an elementary school teacher and, to put it bluntly, she is simply amazing. Her energy matches my head in the clouds (cumulous Crandall) and she puts the weights on my helium balloons to keep me grounded and focused. "Crandall," she said. "Look. You and I both have ridiculous schedules and we need to get on top of the service-learning gift we want to give to Columbus K-8 this semester."

Since January, my ENW 311 students have hosted almost 200 middle school students in a service learning project for developing a writing community. We have covered poetic, argumentative, poetic, and informative writing since we began, and even doubled up on occasion because of snow days. The young people from Bridgeport have done a tremendous job providing services to my undergraduates thinking about careers in teaching, especially in relation to writing pedagogy.

One of my students, Shannon, even wrote a poem she dedicated to the Columbus School students and Stefania and I thought it would be a perfect catalyst for a 'gift' to give the school. The trouble was, "What should we also include?" We decided to build upon a bumper sticker activity we did in class and had each of our students create the actual bumper sticker. It collaged nicely and will be a wonderful addition to last year's Columbus School poem.

I need to stop for a second to celebrate Stefania, however, because she is one of the most up-beat, enthused, focused, task-mastering young people I've worked at Fairfield and I'm grateful to the Great Whatever for having her assigned to this class (so much so, that I wrote a grant so I could hire her this summer to help me with all our CWP-Fairfield activities!).

I should also point out that Stefania is a graduate of West Haven Public Schools where I did professional development a few years ago. She gets it! She has an eye, an authority, a creativity, and a zest for life and I couldn't be more pleased to have an opportunity to collaborate with anyone else.

What a great semester it has been! I owe this soon-to-be-teacher so much more than a blog post. She's thorough, targeted, funny, innovative, and 100% focused. We're both extremely pleased with the artwork!

Boom!