Okay, so it’s been a pretty long time since I’ve sit down to write to this blog. Life keeps happening, and that’s a good thing, but sometimes it happens so quickly and with such intensity that it’s hard to find the time to pause for reflection–even though it is so very important. Historically, this time of year is always busy for me–finishing up the spring semester, trying to keep on top of work, enjoying the distractions of spring, and so on. This year is not much different, except that I have a few new interests and preoccupations–and maybe a challenge or two–that are keeping me busy and away from the glow of my computer screen–again, a good thing.
They were overwhelmed (or maybe lazy and immature), didn’t know where to start, and ultimately let their inertia get the best of them.
Work has been very challenging and fun this semester, as I’m giving this whole “service learning” thing another whirl. I tried it last spring with disappointing results. Students lacked motivation and interest; they never got past their own inertia and generally had an attitude of indifference that sucked the life right from me. I remember joking with my office mates, saying, “This is the semester I have finally lost faith in humanity.” I was joking, but truly I felt demoralized in a way I had never felt before in my teaching career. It was a hard semester.
One year later, I’m taking my lessons learned and enjoying a much better experience. This semester I’m doing a much better job of “scaffolding” to use a bit of pedagogical parlance. Last year, I threw the students into the thick of it, asked them right from the start to begin designing and implementing service–and to a larger degree–”activism” projects of their own. They were overwhelmed (or maybe lazy and immature), didn’t know where to start, and ultimately let their inertia get the best of them. It was a miserable failure in most instances. The success I am enjoying so far this year is due to an adjusted strategy that incorporates the following:
- Embracing “service” rather than “activism” (which proved too scary for most students last time)
- Leading by example and having a boatload of fun myself (while pulling the students along for the ride)
- Setting goals bigger than the traditional academic experience and trusting that learning will come from it
- Ensuring these “bigger” goals are met (even if a lot of the students flake out)
maybe “service” first, and “activism” later
The first adjustment I made this semester was to focus on “service” before “activism.” Last time, I really pushed this idea of activism–of making important changes to the structures in place that create or perpetuate the problems to begin with–rather than just attending to the symptoms of the problem through service. I believe both service and activism are important (and, in many ways, service is a kind of activism), but most students weren’t quite ready for the level of initiative and the resistance faced by the outside world when doing “activist-learning.”
Service comes from a place of kindness and responsibility, rather than from resistance and upheaval.
Service-learning is easier (but still not easy). Service feels better than activism in many ways because nobody fights one’s desire to serve. In fact, in most cases, people welcome you and thank you for the work you’ve done. It feels good to serve–unlike “-isms” which are hard pills to swallow. Even the word “activism” carries a connotation that doesn’t sit well with some students. They don’t fully understand the nuance of the term and generally have negative associations with the word. Again, this is where service feels very different for students. It comes from a place of kindness and responsibility, rather than from resistance and upheaval. I still want to push on toward greater activism in my classes, but for now I’ll settle for service. Good things are getting done. That’s what I wanted more than anything.
leading by example
Service and overall civic engagement is important to me. This is why I’ve made it a focus in my classes; however, I’d fallen out of the habit of getting involved in these activities as much as I would like. This semester, I vowed to show my students how it’s done. For the first half of the semester, I put together a handful of service-learning outings–each of which I would attend and participate in–and asked students to plan to attend at least one of these experiences. If their schedules didn’t allow them to attend any of the several events I arranged, they would have to plan and follow-through with a service-learning field trip of their own. (Most found a way to go to one that I had arranged.) The idea here was to pave the way for the students. All they had to do was show up, participate in the service experience, and write the critical reflection that followed. Ideally, in a service-learning setting, students would design their own experiences based on their own interests and areas of concern. That would come later.
Teacher/student roles fell away and we were working together on a single mission to help people in dire need.
During this initial experience, students got the chance to feel what it’s like to participate in a service project and to enjoy the sense of classroom community that comes from working together. It was kind of neat to work side-by-side with students outside of the classroom. Whether we were packing food in teams at Feed My Starving Children, boxing pasta at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, or problem solving most efficient ways to sort shoes at the Share Your Soles Foundation, teacher/student roles fell away and we were working together. It was humbling for me as we set our focus not on grades and lesson-plans but rather on a single mission to help people in dire need.
setting bigger goals
With each passing year, I inch closer and closer to a teaching/learning experience that has very little to do with grades, evaluation, “products” exclusive to classroom, carrot-and-stick tactics, and anything that resembles traditional notions of school. The step I took this semester might have been more mental on my part than much else, but it is making a big difference. Since taking on this service-learning thing, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of “action.” About a year and a half ago, I became really frustrated thinking about all the time and energy spent in classrooms across college campuses (and schools) everywhere. And for what? Students shuffle about, take their tests, get their grades, and–if they are lucky–graduate. Filling in bubbles with number two pencils (or writing essays that no one but a teacher would ever read) struck me as a short-sighted waste of time. With the world in such crisis, I felt incredibly irresponsible sipping my coffee in front of my classes leading discussions that never got beyond the hypothetical. It was time for a change. I wanted our time together to result in more. I wanted it to be immediately useful not just to those in the classroom, but to people in our communities–people in need. At the heart of service-learning is the idea that we can both learn (and meet curricular goals) and act in ways that are truly meaningful and helpful to others all at once. So this is what I had set out to do.
Filling in bubbles with number two pencils struck me as a short-sighted waste of time.
This shift that I most recently made in my approach is a significant mental shift further toward the immediate action. My early experiments with service learning kept teaching goals at the forefront of my mind. Honestly, this semester, I am keeping the service goals at the forefront of my mind instead. I want our class to accomplish something of importance for our community. I want the results to be measurable and real–and not worry about the “school” stuff so much. The result? Students are engaged, scurrying to keep up, and honestly I believe they are learning and performing well academically even though the focus is now on other, bigger things. When you’re in the world, working with others, doing important work–the learning just happens.
meeting those goals with or without the students
There are three structural components to the service-learning work we are doing as a class this semester. During the first half of the semester, as I mentioned above, I arranged service-learning experiences for the students to sign-up for and attend. Easy-peasy. For the second half of the semester, it was the students’ turn. I offered resources and support, but ultimately, they had to identify or create service-learning opportunities of their own and follow-through with them. (The idea was after seeing me set things up during the first half of the semester, they could do it for themselves during the second half.) The final capstone to this semester is a service-learning/volunteer fair called “ACT OUT: Education through Action.” At this event, students showcase their service-learning experiences and research through a poster session. The community organizations they worked with are also invited to exhibit their organizations at information tables adjacent the students’ displays. The event will be further bolstered by having a small set of “spotlight” speakers–service leaders from our community–present at the fair. The entire college community is invited to attend. This event is a big deal, and I made up my mind from the beginning that it would succeed with or without my students.
The event must succeed, and I want my students to be a part of that–but I will not allow the event to bomb in the name of “learning through one’s mistakes.”
Making this project a success with or without my students? Does that sound like something a teacher should say? Maybe not. In fact, it’s not something I would have said last year. I have tried student-designed and student-run events in the past with very mixed results. I’ve always believed in taking a hands-off approach to these kinds of events–letting the students run with them for better or for worse. I figured that learning through these experiences didn’t always result in a quality event, but the learning is what mattered. This semester, my thought process is just a little bit different. My approach this semester is that I want the event to be a success no matter what. If it is a great success, I want my students to believe it was because of what they did and to feel the rewards of that. If my students totally flake out and drop the ball on the whole thing, I want the event to be a success anyway. That’s my thinking. The event must succeed, and I want my students to be a part of that–but I will not allow the event to bomb in the name of “learning through one’s mistakes.” This shift, I think, has really amped up the intensity of the planning for the event and students are feeling it. This is a good thing. They know a lot is on the line.
as for me?
One cannot help but be changed when serving others. By participating in this work with my students at the start of this semester, I’ve gotten hooked. I’ve been getting more and more involved with some of the organizations I introduced my students to at the start of the semester. Also, in pushing my students (and sometimes dragging them behind me) toward this “Act Out” service-learning fair, I have been reaching out to more and more local non-profit organizations who are doing some amazing things right in our own backyard. I’m hoping that I can continue to build relationships, get more deeply involved, make this first of many “Act Out” events a success, and keep the momentum going. Things are happening. Things are getting done. We are acting now, and it’s just the beginning…
Tags: rationale · service-learning · social responsibility · teaching · volunteering
I teach the first year composition sequence at a community college. These are required writing courses for all transfer students–the majority of the students who pass through the institution. With very few exceptions, I would say that these two courses are probably the least looked-forward to by students of the entire gen-ed curriculum. Many just don’t want to do it and see the composition requirement as shear drudgery. Now, I love this course. Heck, I pursued graduate studies in composition in large part so that I could teach it, and I’ve always enjoyed writing and working with the power of language. So, needless to say, there is a bit of gulf between my and my students’ motivation when it comes to this course.
One complaint I’ve heard in the past–usually related to the more theoretical aspects or the critical readings of the course–is that it seems “irrelevant” to student lives. What teacher hasn’t heard this–you know, the proverbial “when-am-I-ever-gonna-use-this-stuff” argument? As cliché as this perennial student remark is, I am sensitive to it to a degree. Much of what is forced upon us in school is taught without context for our contemporary lives or without enough attention to practical application. Again, I can understand where these remarks come from, but I also find it demoralizing that many of my students see education as little more than practical application or a hoop to jump through to get to whatever is next. Curiosity and an openness to see a world beyond their own is severely lacking. But I digress…
As part of our personal education, theory is valuable as it is the conceptualized knowledge that informs our ongoing practice. It’s what prevents us from having to relearn the same lessons again and again and repeating the same mistakes again and again. It’s what allows us to live deliberate lives rather than merely accidental ones. This I believe. However, I also agree that sometimes in academia the balance tips a bit too far, and we end up with an educational experience that privileges thinking over doing. In a world rife with problems in dire need of immediate action, hundreds of my students sitting in desks listening to a pontificating professor (or gazing out the window) for hours each semester plus maybe three times that outside of class meeting time (approximately 25,000 person-hours each semester in all) seems downright irresponsible. We can and should do more with our time. At least that was my contention at the start of last semester.
i give you the real world
I kicked off the semester with an enthusiastic explanation of how this first-year writing course would be one of action–one where we all worked together to effect some real-world change; that’s right–real world work, the stuff my students had been asking for. As I explained how we would learn about research and writing by engaging in activism and service work, my energy was met with ennui; students sat there just as listless as always. I could feel the air rushing from my balloon.
I explained how students would work together in groups to figure out what was really important to each of them. Something they felt needed to get done in their community, something of interest and concern to them. I was wide open to all ideas from groups. There they sat. Not knowing how to proceed. Was no one, in fact, interested or concerned about anything? This was an authentic opportunity to get some important work done (to change the world, yes I said it), and no one could think of anything they felt like doing. I was starting to get depressed.
After some nudging and prodding and a week or two, groups turned in their project proposals. Great, I thought. Now, I’d see the commitment, the enthusiasm, the hope and willingness to work for change. My enthusiasm surged again as I began talking about next steps to move from ideas to action. Then the hand went up; “You mean we’re actually going to do this stuff?” It took me literally 20 minutes (and much longer for some) to help the class understand that each group, in fact, was expected to do what they proposed. The majority of the class thought it would end with the proposal. A small handful thought we would run a “simulation;” but not a one believed we would actually get our butts out of the chairs, go out into the community, and do the work that needed doing. Once I painstakingly got students to understand this simple concept, my classes got conspicuously smaller and smaller and smaller. Apparently this whole “doing” thing didn’t appeal much to these students clamoring for “real world” relevancy.
anti-intellectualism, selfishness, apathy, inertia
Despite the mass exodus the class experienced once the reality of the experience to come settled in, a few students stuck around. I couldn’t help but think, though, that a good portion of those who stuck around were simply too lazy to go through the trouble of dropping the class. I was witnessing in large part human inertia–bodies sitting still, unable to get moving. This really was the case for many of even the best intentioned students. Considering this carefully, I suppose it might have something to do with being overwhelmed with the challenges they set out for themselves. I suppose I can relate to this slowness in getting started when facing what might feel like an insurmountable task. Is it better to do nothing than try to and fail? I wonder if this is what stops most people from getting active and from working toward change–the fear of being ineffective in the face of big challenges. I tried to remind students that they only need to take small steps and make small changes–that this could make all the difference. It was tough. Feet were dragging.
For some the challenge may have been inertia; for others, the problem had to do with qualities much less forgivable–anti-intellectualism, selfishness, and apathy. This is a strong indictment, I know. Maybe it’s unfair. Maybe what I was observing in my students as they complained about how they were too busy to make time for service work, how they just didn’t care much about the experience and would just prefer to write a couple of lame papers and get on with it, or how uncool they thought it was to show any real intellectual engagement in the work of our course, was really just immaturity. These kids (who I thought were young adults) were a childish bunch. I don’t mean that as an insult but an observation of how severely hampered they all seemed to be when it came to doing real work of real importance in the real world. The consensus was that I was expecting too much of them. At this point, I was really starting to lose faith.
social anxiety and communication incompetency
The students in this class had the option of collaborating in groups on their service/activism project, and while initially students jumped at this, they soon proved incapable of working in groups. Strangely enough they had the hardest time communicating with one another–most likely due to the self-imposed constraint of limiting all communications to texting. Seriously. I had one group with five students in it, and not once had they met in person, talked on the phone, or even e-mailed. They attempted all collaboration and group decision making through text messages. This, they told me, was how people their age communicated. It was the easiest and, get this, most effective way to communicate they thought. Well, based on the miserable failure of their collaboration and project overall, I would have to disagree with the statement that it’s the most effective way to communicate. I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon here, but I was once again shocked at the misguided beliefs my students had about working in the so called “real world.” I’m open to learning new ways (jeez, I’m not that old), but clearly effective communication is not something I was about to learn from my students.
tapping intrinsic motivation
Despite the challenges in getting many of my students on board with this activism/service learning project, it wasn’t all bad. Actually, I’m probably losing sight of the successes amidst all the failures. Several students did very well with this project. Interestingly, though, these successful students who embraced the project were non-traditional “returning adult” students and most of them were in my online sections of the course. These students were probably 25 years or older, most worked full time, and all had families and children of their own. These folks were legitimately busy people juggling many obligations. And yet they complained very little about what I was expecting of them. (The students who complained most of being busy were the 18 year olds students, living at home, and maybe working a part time job. I guess it’s all about perspective.)
The returning adult students who embraced and succeeded with this project worked really hard–beyond what I expected of them. They had organized community events, talked with classes of children in schools, participated in volunteer training courses in order to get more involved in their service projects, interviewed county officials, raised money and awareness for important causes, and committed a great deal of their time to getting the work done. It’s funny, one student who had proposed a multi-faceted action project mentioned to me how time consuming it all was. I reminded him that everything he proposed was not required–that perhaps his plans were a bit too involved for the requirement of the course. He thought about that, acknowledged how this was likely true, but then said he wanted to follow through with it anyway. This attitude emerged as a pattern amongst my older students as the semester progressed. Many proposed far more than was really required of them in terms of our course, and they spent many hours making good on their proposed actions–sometimes even at the expense of their other work and assignments in the course. It was as if suddenly the “real world” work became the driving priority for my students regardless of what the course asked for. It was as if the project succeeded in tapping a well of intrinsic motivation in these students–where they wanted to do this work because it was important to them and to others–work worth doing regardless of any course or grade. This was what I was hoping for–if only it was this way for all my students and not just those nearly my age.
scaffolding/hand-holding
The question is how can I get the level of involvement and engagement in this service project that I saw in my older students with all of my students–30-year-olds and 18-year-olds alike?
I’ll be giving this service/activism learning approach another whirl with my online classes this summer. I’m hoping that we will enjoy good successes given the usual summer online student–older, highly-motivated, reverse transfer. But for the fall, I’ll need to make some serious adjustments if I hope the course to finish with more than a small handful of students. Perhaps, I’ll need to “scaffold” more–set up ready-made service experiences to get my students interested in doing this kind of work without the initial shock of having to plan it all on their own. After a few shared brief experiences that I set up, maybe then they will be more ready to pursue service projects of their own design. I’ll also have to spend some time teaching collaboration, organizing and planning, and skills of social engagement, all of which seem severely lacking in today’s traditional-aged freshman college student.
Tags: apathy · assignments · service-learning · student work · sustainability · teaching · volunteering
Over the past several years, my teaching has cultivated critical dialogue amongst students on social issues–education, gender, ethnic/racial conflict, classism, and so on. I raise questions; that’s what I do. Truth be told, my personal agenda is clearly a progressive one; although, I am very careful not to stack the deck against students with contrary world-views or inculcate them with my own views. I simply raise questions, qualify my own politics as necessary, and invite open and honest discussion and writing. We talk about things that are of great importance in our world, and yet I always end up dissatisfied at the end of the semester–as if nothing of any real value was accomplished. The thing is as much as I would like to think otherwise, the foundation of the course experience has been that conversation–in class and through reading and writing. Don’t get my wrong, I value conversation very highly. People don’t do it very well anymore, and I tend to believe that much of what’s wrong with our world could be traced back to a lack of conversation–on a fundamental level where people connect, share, listen, and seek mutual understanding. Conversation is key, but now I feel that in the 17 weeks I have each semester with my students, it’s not enough. This semester, I promised myself, would be based on ACTION. So, I’m moving forward clumsily with what one might call service/activist learning.
systems not machines; relationships not objects
To kick things off with my students, we read a piece by Fritjof Capra from his book The Web of Life where he talks about the importance of ecological literacy or systems thinking. This was shortly after we tossed a ball of yarn around the room (by way of cheesy ice breaker), creating our own human web to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the members in our class. (Yank one end of that string and we’d all feel it.) I wish I got a picture of my class all tangled up in this web of yarn. While the dean would likely disapprove of me tying my class up, the visual metaphor actually was pretty compelling by the time were done. Anyway, Capra distinguishes between a mechanistic or reductionist way of understanding the world where we tend to isolate what we want to study versus systems thinking where we recognize that we can best understand things by understanding their relationships to other things–by understanding the web of systems and processes in which all things are intertwined. He calls this understanding ecological literacy. Check out what he has to say in the video below.
Capra’s talking about much more than biological or environmental matters; he’s talking about matters of life itself. Life itself–social, cultural, economical, environmental–is interconnected. An action to one part affects the others. The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.
there are no others, there is only us
Another powerful metaphor for this concept of relationships that define life is a short film by Marc Silver entitled There Are No Others, There Is Only Us. It’s pretty amazing really if one can slow down long enough to watch the full ten minutes. The patterns are intricate and powerful. It’s a moving statement about crowds and what it means to be a part of the whole in the natural world of which we as human beings are integral part.
I played this film in the background as my students were working in small groups, discussing the Fritjof Capra essay and working to define the concept of sustainability. I said nothing, but before long everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen. They were amazed at what they were seeing. It offered opportunity for deeper conversation about our interconnections.
concern is not enough
So, it’s cool that we get we’re all connected. Bringing my students this far has been fun, but still just this understanding is not enough without action. This is why my students are presently in the midst of designing their own service or activism projects. The idea is that these projects will put us all into action so that we can make a very real and meaningful impact to an issue of great concern (as identified by the students themselves). Now, I’m new to this whole service/activist learning thing. Unlike many schools, my college does not have an office of service learning, so I’m a rogue here working with very little formal institutional support. So be it. We’ll get something done this semester. I am sure of that.
Dave Eggers wrote a story entitled “What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him From His Vehicle, and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust.” We read this in my class. It’s about a man who is deeply concerned about matters in his world, and yet he sits at home just thinking about it. He’s not apathetic. He cares. But he does not act. The final line of the story reads…
The man at home feels this way too often now. He feels tunneled, wrapped, desiccated. His eyes feel the strain of trying for too long to see in the dark. The man is watching the smoke from the factory, and though there are many things he could do that day, he will do none of them.
I don’t want to be that man. I don’t think any of us really want that. Today, we will do something.
Tags: activism · interconnectedness · service-learning · social responsibility · sustainability · teaching · video
