When I say this has been a semester….whew. I am not exaggerating. I have missed writing but in the great scheme of survival, writing has taken a back seat. (I have big wrting plans for the summer. We will see if they come to fruition.)
Today I have my last final session of Spring 2024, and it is with our BSW seniors. This cohort has been together for the last two years in core social work classes, and many of them have known each other all 4 years of college. Our final session isn’t an exam; it is more of a final reflection and celebration. They have turned in their portfolios last week and all their other assignments, so here at the end we do some final sharing and then we have our traditional ice cream party and “goodbye for now”.
One of the things I do in this course at some point is have them reflect, in small groups, on their strengths, especially ones they have seen emerge this year in their field placement or personal relationships. I ask each person to name their strengths, and then invite the members of the small group to affirm ways they have seen those strengths play out, as well as share with the person other strengths they have observed about them. We haven’t had a chance to do that this semester so it is one of the things we are doing today. I thought it would be nice to share with them strengths we as faculty have observed in each of them as well. I asked my colleagues to share their ideas and the result is this: 9 strengths for everyone (20 graduating seniors), captured in my best penmanship on cardstock. (I am taking markers to class in case people want to add the strengths named by their peers as well.)
I wanted to take this extra step (putting it on paper) because of seeing the benefits of my Lenten practice this year, which was to speak encouragement to others daily. It is something that I have continued beyond Lent, because I was reminded of the simple grace that speaking life to others brings to them and to me. Speaking encouragement to others also helped me to remember to speak encouragement to myself as well, and this was a very necessary reminder that I needed.
This semester I am teaching in an interdisciplinary learning community (ILC), which is part of our university’s general education curriculum. The ILC is called “Introduction to Trauma Studies” and the two courses are the human behavior across the lifespan course that I teach and a literature/writing course which is taught by a colleague in the English department. In each of these courses, we look at how trauma affects development at different stages in life, and we explore what resilience looks like and how resilience is built. In my class we explore these concepts through social work theories, research and case studies and in the other class students explore these concepts through writing and reading a variety of things: memoirs, poetry, fiction, essays, and more.
Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com
This semester I am also continuing my work in the community, and last week we had a “lunch and learn” where the focus was on journaling and self-compassion. This “lunch and learn” happens monthly, though sometimes the attendees are different, and writing/storytelling was one of the things they identified last fall that they would like to do more of in the coming months.
The participants in these events live in a public housing community near campus and I am about two years into relationship building with them. When I was looking for writing prompts to share with them, I wanted to be mindful of their experiences (what I know of them), and have the prompts be as inclusive as possible. Of the stories I know, I know they include some trauma.
I shared with them elements of Chapter 1 from a book Called Writing True. I learned about this book from my colleague who I teach with in the integrated learning community referenced above. She uses this book with students in her course.
This first chapter introduces the style of creative nonfiction. I shared with the women at the lunch and learn that in this writing style, you are opening up about real things, true things that have happened and you are using your personal voice. At the same time, writing in this style doesn’t limit you to “only the facts” that we might associate with good journalism or other forms of nonfiction. There is an emphasis on including strong sensory detail and a subjective interpretation or reflection on the events that happened as you now understand them. I shared with them how one of the prompts, reflecting on a photo that was taken when I was a child, helped me to reflect on some family dynamics in a way I had not consciously thought about before. These women were interested in the brief part of my story that I shared, just as I am always interested in the slices of their lives that they share with me.
As Maya Angelou said, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”. I shared this quote with them, and we talked about how even though “memoir” is a fancy sounding word, the fact is, we all have a story and there is power, and hopefully community, in sharing them.
Toward the end of our time together, I scattered lists of writing prompts and pens on the tables and invited people to pick a journal from a selection of journals on a table. I told them I hoped they each found one that “spoke to them”. We had some time to write before having our lunch, and a couple of the women asked if we could get together another time as a group and share some of what we had written. Another person asked if she could bring some poetry that she had written, to share. I am hopeful for our future times together.
In the past times that we have taught this ILC, my colleague and I have seen the same community building processes unfold. Students take risks with their writing and sharing their voices, and they encourage others to do the same. By their example, they have also encouraged me to do this. It has been a long time since I have done anything other than academic writing or academic adjacent writing, and I am excited (and curious) to see what unfolds!
Every fall semester for the past 10 years I have taught a social welfare policy course. This is a course where social work majors and occasionally some social justice minors take a dive into a broad array of policy topics. This is a class where we discuss so many policy topics (child welfare, housing, food and nutrition, education, health and mental health, etc) that we are really just surveying the major policies that shape social work practice and life in the US today. Throughout the semester students identify a policy that they want to write their individual analysis papers on, so they do get a chance to take a deeper look at a particular issue that is interesting to them.
For every issue, I try to have students do some sort of application to practice translating policy language into real-world understanding. This can include things like having conversations with older family members about Social Security, talking with co-workers about finding insurance on the marketplace, planning a meal that fits the financial parameters of SNAP benefits, and more.
Toward the end of the semester is when we discuss policies related to housing and homelessness, including redlining, gentrification, vouchers, etc. In the fall semester, for the application part of this, I asked students to do a social media post or graphic that could be used to tell their friends/followers what they had learned. There were so many awesome responses to this mini-assignment, and I loved seeing how they were translating this information to others. We also had good discussion in the sense that doing these had raised additional questions for many of the students about things they didn’t fully understand, and also because they were getting questions and comments from their posts about them.
I asked one of my students for permission to share hers in a more public way, and she graciously agreed. This assignment was a good reminder for me that it is worth it to stress over the assignments, even the “little” ones, to make them as authentic and engaging as possible.
Last semester felt very long, as I discussed in my last post. I have friends who teach in various institutions across the country and so many of them expressed these same feelings about last semester. Whew.
One day in a particular class, when I could tell that people were stressed, I shifted gears early on into the class session. I crossed off the agenda items we had planned for the day and gave them some exercises/questions to do to help them think about their final paper. After that, we talked some about an upcoming holiday and listened to a bit of a podcast episode that had connections to the class.
I told them it is like preventative maintenance on your car, you have to be intentional to take care of it when it isn’t broken, so that you don’t find yourself in danger on the side of the road someday. I didn’t want them to be even more stressed in a few weeks when they realized this assignment was looming over them.
That little “re-set” in the second half of the semester didn’t work a miracle, but it did give us a chance to breathe a bit on a day we all seemed to need it. It was also a day that my students, most of whom I had not had in class before, deepened their trust in me because they could see I cared. That was a gentle but palpable shift.
As we finished last semester and then moved into the break, I continued to reflect on that day. For a social worker, I have always been not great at what we call “self-care”. Self-care has always seemed abstract to me. But in the past couple of years I have gotten better, finally, at what some people call “boring self-care” or what I referred to as “preventative maintenance” for my students. Taking care of things, and me, before breaking down is the very least I can do. (I still have room to grow.)
Hopefully you have some planned “preventative maintenance” days for yourself, and if not, I hope you consider it. Whether in your work or in your personal life, some space to breathe and the message to yourself that you are worth the rest is invaluable.
Woof. This is feeling like the longest semester ever. It has been feeling like that for several weeks now. A few weeks ago I broke a bone in my right foot. Boot life doesn’t lend itself well to campus life, even on a relatively compact campus. This past week I have had bronchitis…still have it. I don’t feel inspirational in any sense of the word. I barely even feel articulate enough to teach.
College students are struggling nationwide. I know this, and I want to be there for my students. This also hits closer to home these days as I have a high school senior who will be leaving for college next fall. How will she do? How can I support her?
It is hard to feel like I am complaining or whining about work when truly, it is a job I love. I have really amazing and supportive coworkers. I just can’t figure out why this semester seems so long and like an uphill slog because nothing is qualitatively different than other semesters with similar challenges (except for the age of my own child).
Some semesters just be like that, I guess. I have just never felt one so profoundly hard (and for that I am grateful). If you are feeling the same way, know that you are not alone. If you are having a great semester….send encouragement!
In social work education, we often have difficult conversations in the classroom as we grapple with teaching and learning about systemic racism, other forms of discrimination, and oppression. These discussions are relevant to the course and student learning, so I can’t “duck” them, but even though I have been in the classroom for 20 years, there are still times that facilitating a discussion on hard topics leaves me exhausted and questioning how it went.
Many times, I am the one who introduces the “hard topic”, either by the reading I assign or the discussion questions I open class with. However, sometimes students bring up the topics themselves, especially if the topics we are discussing in class relate to current issues evolving in the world around us. Either way, these discussions can be fruitful, and they can be exhausting.
When not done thoughtfully, these discussions can also be hurtful and exhausting, which is why so many of us dread them.
Many times over the years I have said “if I only taught math or science, I wouldn’t have to deal with having conversations like this.” That could be somewhat true, though I still think it is important to look at any discipline and see how inequities persist.
Given the current situation in the Middle East, I think it is likely that professors in all disciplines may be facing the need to figure out how to facilitate these difficult conversations, especially ones that may emerge organically (i.e. unplanned by the professor).
One of the biggest things I have learned over the years is that it is important to remember to tell students up front that I am not an expert on the difficult topic, and it is quite likely they could ask a question that needs some context for an answer that I just don’t have at the moment. I am comfortable with students hearing me say “I don’t know”.
Another thing I have worked at over the years is balancing participation and centering voices who might be closer to the problem (without “othering” them or singling them out). Asking students in advance if they would be willing to contribute to class discussion is useful, but in a scenario where discussion on a difficult topic emerges spontaneously, I do not specifically call on a student just because I think they have a connection to the issue.
Depending on the class topic and the learning goals, the students in the class, and whether or not the discussion was planned by me or was student initiated, I have used strategies that I have learned from a couple of different teaching centers, namely IU Bloomington and Vanderbilt. Here’ is IU’s page of resources for managing difficult conversations in the classroom and here is the one from Vanderbilt.
Just as I dropped my daughter off at dance class this morning, I heard the beginning of This American Life. I rarely feel compelled to listen to an entire podcast episode, (of any podcast), often listening a bit and then reading the transcript if I want to finish the story. It is more efficient and usually I am pressed for time. Today’s episode was a story I couldn’t stop hearing, or whatever the audio equivalent is to “I couldn’t put it down”. I kept the radio playing during a few errands and then when I got inside the dance studio I put in headphones and listened to the rest.
“The Call” is episode 809 of This American Life. It was a sobering, sometimes frightening, and very realistic portrayal of substance use, overdose, the challenges of treatment, and the all the ways drug use can devastate your life and well-being.
And also, at the end, it was a little bit hopeful.
I am going to think more about how I might use this is in a class. I could see it being used in policy class to help teach about programs of harm reduction. I could see it being used in courses teaching foundational content on substance use and practice in this field. I also think this is a podcast I would be careful about where and to whom I assigned it. I would definitely give some “trigger warnings” and give people some space and time to listen to it in a way that would not be triggering if they are personally close to these issues.
I don’t have personal connection in any close friend or family way to this issue, but I have many “looser” connections to it. Even with my degrees of separation, I was crying at several points during this episode at how raw and honest it was. So, do be mindful of how you use it in your work if you choose to. I think the power of the episode is worth the investment of time in figuring out how to use it well.
Last night I was trying to settle down for sleep, which is always challenging the night before the semester starts. I was tossing and turning, and then it hit me: I was about to embark on my 20th year of full- time teaching.
Earlier yesterday I read a post by my friend David Hutchens, who specializes in helping companies and organizations tell their stories. He posted on his social media sites about it being time to abandon the hero’s journey. He said that while it is fascinating and deserves our attention, the best uses of the hero’s journey as a storytelling tool take 2 hours or more. He went on to say that storytelling is best done in micro narratives, and that “Those small moments can say everything about who we are, and why we are here.” That really resonated with me, and I tucked the post away in my brain to think about more at a later time.
That time came sooner than I expected, as I realized last night about it being a big anniversary for me in terms of teaching. I thought about how my pedagogy had shifted over the years in small ways, but honestly the things that were important to me then are what drive my teaching now. I want students to be able to experience community in class. I want them to be able to translate theory and other concepts into practice in order to work effectively with people. I want them to think critically and act with integrity. I want them to remember the importance of relationship.
I was a good teacher 20 years ago, and I am a good teacher now. It isn’t bragging to say that, when in the same breath I can tell you ways I fall short.
In terms of a hero’s journey: I will never win a big teaching award or be famous for my teaching. I won’t have an epic period of revelation or transformation. This isn’t my story.
But I have about a million micro narratives, some of which have occurred in class and some of which have happened outside of class. I think about the night a student gave a spoken word about her fears that her brother, a biracial teen, would experience violence at the hands of police. I think about the same class the following week, where a student gave a spoken word about Blue Lives Matter. I think about the tension of having to hold space for both of those students, and to simultaneously support both students in the ways they needed while encouraging growth. I think about the days and nights students have shared part of their stories, and their family stories, as a way of making sense of who they are and what has called them into a profession of service and advocacy.
I think about the number of students who have come into my office over the past 19 years to tell me they had gotten engaged or eloped! I think about the number of people who have come to my office to tell me they were pregnant, and sometimes their parents didn’t yet know. (To the best of my memory there is no Venn diagram overlap in that group of people.) I think about the number of people I have walked over to student counseling services, knowing that they needed to be there but not wanting to send them out alone. We all need someone to come along with us in some times and spaces.
I think about the number of times a Marvel character has entered my classroom. Okay, so it is only one time but…..how many of you can say Spiderman appeared in your classroom? (Still unclear why this happened but it was fall of 2020 and who was really questioning anything?)
I like thinking of my teaching as an anti-hero’s journey. And I am thankful to my friend Dave for helping me see the value in remembering the micro stories. Not every class is going to be exciting or have a big win of some kind, but every day I teach there are moments where I can bring my best self (the one that exists in that moment, your mileage may vary from time to time) to students in order to listen deeply, to encourage them, and to meet them where they are in that moment. I get to help them think about things they may never have questioned before, like why poverty is so prevalent, and why aren’t we taught certain things in our typical history classes. I get to be in relationship with them as they are preparing to do good work in the world.
Today, before my first class, I took a picture of myself in my office, and then I happened to walk with a new colleague to our first classes and she asked for a pic of the two of us. In both pictures I am happy, and also hyped up on adrenaline and Coke (the legal kind bottled in Atlanta, not the other kind).
At the end of the day, I looked tired. Like really, really tired. Taylor Swift is right about this, as she is about many things: it is exhausting to always be rooting for the anti-hero. It is also exhausting to be one, especially in a semester with four different preps and my own children at developmentally significant stages.
But I promise to keep showing up. And whatever year of teaching (or community building or accounting or parenting or whatever) it is for you, I hope you have peace in remembering that there are scenes and moments in your work and your life that make a difference.
A couple of weeks ago I shared some of the resources I use when teaching my class on Poverty in the US. You can access part one here. I finished the course outline for the class earlier this evening and am ready to share the rest of my resources! If you are interested in seeing the whole syllabus, just comment on this post and we will connect.
In the various iterations of this course over the years, there have been two texts I have leaned on to provide a bulk of the structure. One of these is A People’s History of Poverty in the US (edited by Pimpare) and the other is One Nation, Underprivileged: How American Poverty Affects Us All (by Mark Rank). I love the Pimpare book because it is written in the tradition of Howard Zinn and because it covers aspects of history not usually taught in traditional US history courses. I have always valued the Rank book because of the way he breaks down research findings into usable ways, but the last time I taught this course the data was already a little “old”. I was so happy to see a new Rank book, published in 2020, and this is providing the structure for my course this semester. It is Confronting Poverty: Economic Hardship in the United States. I was so excited to see that the majority of chapters in the book fit with the way I usually structure the course (looking at urban and rural poverty, looking at individual/cultural explanations for the cause of poverty but putting more weight on the structural concerns, etc.) There were additional chapters that I cheerfully added to my syllabus, including the very welcome one on organizing for social change. I have been reading the book as I have been working on the syllabus, and if this is a topic you want to learn more about or are teaching about, I heartily recommend it!
Aside from the book, there are some additional readings and resources I use to round out the semester. Some of them I choose specifically because they help my students understand the Nashville context more, and/or because they can see a local and real example of something we have talked about, such as a Universal Basic Income demonstration and the report of a local affordable housing taskforce.
A topic I dive a bit deeper into is the juxtaposition of faith/religion and poverty and politics and poverty. (And heaven knows, many times all three are in the mix.) To explore faith-based responses to poverty historically and current, I found a really interesting text called Charitable Choice: Promise and Peril in the Post-Welfare Era. I was able to download this through my institution’s library, and there are unlimited downloads so my students should all be able to access it at the same time. I plan to use a couple of chapters from this text. For exploring the political piece, I assign students to read the party platform statements of the Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Libertarians. I ask them to reflect on what the party itself says about poverty (attributions, solutions, etc).
Finally, I also use some supplemental resources on class mobility in the US. Here is an informative open access article on how class mobility varies among different regions in the US and the Opportunity Insights portal will take you to more information on social mobility than you know what to do with (almost!). Particularly interesting here is the Opportunity Atlas where you can enter a zip code and get information on income, mobility, education, etc specific to your community. It is easier for me to navigate this than the Census website.
As you can tell, I am really passionate about teaching about this topic. It is so important for not just social workers but the general public to understand. We are all in this together.
Last fall semester, students and I tracked the Haaland v. Brackeen case being heard by the Supreme Court. We discussed the atrocities of the “boarding school” era, and the history of the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well as some of the challenges the law has faced in previous years.
Follow this group on Twitter! Image snapped from their Twitter feed.
One of the things we read toward the end of the semester that was really helpful was this blog post breaking down the then-current legal opinions on the case. In short, the prospect of ICWA being upheld at that point seemed grim.
But today there was good news in the policy world, and ICWA was upheld. You can read a breakdown of the Supreme Court decision here, written by the same person referenced above. It is interesting to see how some of the justices shifted their opinion over the course of the past 6 months, proof that advocacy is important and that we need to be able to link outcomes to policy. This article from Native News Online discussing the decision will be one I use in the coming fall semester. It is a good discussion and overview from the people who are the closest to the issue and a great reminder that policy shapes the lives of people, and a nation’s policy says who and what we care about (and who and what we don’t).
Teaching (toward) the Beloved Community 