OC Language and Literature Program receives a grant from Oklahoma Humanities 

Assistant Professor of English Nathan Shank’s Unaware Project allows students to advance their writing skills in a collaborative partnership.

February 10, 2021

One year ago, the Oklahoma Youth Academy charter school and Oklahoma Christian University’s Language and Literature Program began a collaborative creative writing initiative called the Unaware Project. Thanks to a $500 grant from the Oklahoma Humanities this semester, the Unaware Project has expanded to reach the Southwest Oklahoma Youth Academy Charter School in Manitou, OK. SOYACS serves the unique academic, physical, social and emotional needs of at-risk youth. 

OC Assistant Professor of English Nathan Shank works with SOYACS teachers to make the Unaware project come to life. Throughout the spring semester, Shank will receive anonymous submissions from SOYACS students, and he then will assign each submission to an OC student taking his Composition II English course. Both SOYACS and OC students receive feedback during the semester. 

Since there are two different levels of education, feedback looks different in this collaboration. While SOYACS students work on improving their writing skills, OC students will be asked to reflect, in writing, on their interactions. At the end of the spring semester, SOYACS students’ work will be combined with their reviewer’s reflective piece to create a printed anthology of writing. The final draft will be available in late April.

After a successful project last year, Shank is confident the project will continue to be beneficial to both groups of students. 

“The project is titled "Unaware" because we've found that this collaboration among different groups epitomizes our own naivete about the other,” he said. “How little I knew about these juvenile offenders and even less about their teachers who work heart and soul for them How little they knew about us. Even as the project accomplished pedagogical aims for my students---teaching them to improve their writing skills by editing the works of others---it even more so accomplishes OC's Christian mission to care for the brokenhearted.”

The collaborative project began on Jan. 25 and continues until April 28. Due to COVID-19, OC students won’t be able to visit the charter school like they had the previous year, but they plan to have a virtual meeting and to print a similar anthology collection. Both schools are extremely thankful for the grant from Oklahoma Humanities, as it made this project possible. 

Funding for the project is provided in part by a grant from Oklahoma Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the Unaware Project do not necessarily represent those of OH or NEH.