Rx for Reading Detroit: Place-Based Social Justice Pedagogy

Abstract

While social justice models of service-learning improve on volunteerism that ignores structural inequality, they often neglect the critical role of local environments in which the service occurs. I argue that a place-based model of service-learning enables a diverse student body to move beyond compassionate service to social justice activism. In 2014, I founded Rx for Reading Detroit, a service-learning program at University of Detroit Mercy that works to promote children's literacy in Detroit. Augmenting critical service-learning models with a place-based approach offers students a theoretical frame with which to interrogate the complex intersections of geography and justice. Examining Rx for Reading Detroit as a case study in place-based social justice pedagogy, I argue that this paradigm is particularly useful for service-learning in Detroit and other urban contexts because it calls attention to, rather than effaces, the power dynamics inherent with service, including students' diverse relationships to the environments in which they serve.