I’ve failed at both of these in a particularly telling way. I continue to think of things I might post, only to stop myself in the process, thinking it is “not quite read yet.” Therefore, there aren’t fragments of my production or fragments of my process of becoming and self-representation. There is only an occasional post of things moving toward “completion.”

I’d like to disrupt that trend here and now with a first fragment. It is a mini-project rooted in my readings of several introductions to commentaries on Gilles Deleuze (who I plan to grapple with in detail this summer). In each of these introductions, some attention was paid to the ways that he wrote and talked about his writing. I was struck, in particular, about Deleuze making the claim that his work on other philosophers was an act of grabbing them “by the middle.” This was striking as a way of reading, contrasting with analytic (which I might characterize as searching for a string of more or less logical arguments) and continental (a search for hidden, absent, present signifiers through close readings) modes of engaging a text or work. Another example I borrow from scholar Eve Tuck, who writes about Deleuze in education, talking about Deleuze being “relentlessly scalar” — an idea that also captured my imagination.

So I began thinking it would be useful to have a list of the different modifiers you can use on ideas, to twist out nuances in your readings and writings. The points where I write “vs.” below are a pretty simplistic approximation trying to articulate that there is some tensionality between these two positions. One way to articulate the purpose of this mini-project is that it works at some of the phenomenological experiences associated with ideas and our experiencing of ideas.

Without further delay, here is the beginning of my list. I welcome suggestions.

• Harden v soften
• Clarity v stuttering
• Scaling
• Translating
• By the middle (Deleuze) vs. hidden signifiers vs. analytic.
• Spatial
• Territorial vs deterritorial
• Regional
• Smooth vs striated
• Tree vs rhizome
• Normative vs resistant
• Conscious vs unconscious
• Empty vs full
• Firm solid vs unstable
• Connective v disconnective
• Opacity
• Singularity
• Multiplicity
• Active vs reactive
• Rigid vs malleable
• Texture
• Complex vs simplify
• Pitch – flat vs sharp
• Crunchy, chewy, soft
• Alive v dead
• Attractive vs ugly
• Abstract vs sensual
• Engaging vs distant
• Revealing vs obfuscating
• Light vs heavy
• Light vs. dark
• Clean v messy
• Internal v external
• Inside v outside
• Intellectual vs lived / experienced
• degrees of Pressure
• Being v. doing
• Speed up vs. slow down
• Bulleting
• Countour, line, point

Social work practice and research are divided, contested spaces. There are many divisions in social work, and in my education at both the masters and Ph.D. level, these divisions occupy an incredible amount of our time and energy. In the arena of practice, we construct arguments between micro and macro practice; between different models of case work, individual, and group therapy. In research, we argue about qualitative and quantitative research, about our values, and about Evidence-Based Practice. In fact, we are so wrapped up in these conversations that I think we often forget (or maybe even choose to forget) that all of these debates are based on a lot of assumptions. We argue about research based on social work values and practitioner’s wisdom versus evidence-based practice, but we forget in both of these frames, social work is still most often about working for people, rather than working with them. Working for is a synonym for “working on behalf of.” It can be seen structurally in the relationship between practitioner and client, where the practitioner is in a position of power over someone else, regardless the ways they attempt to mediate that power in their relationship. Working with is a way of struggling with other members of the human race to create a society that is more just, peaceful, and healthy. This is not simply a distinction between micro and macro level social work. Many community organizers work for people when they go to oppressed communities and try to mobilize them (this is common with union organizers). While some social workers might be comfortable with the idea of working for people, I see working for as another way of living out the hegemony of wealth and social class. I’m not the first to make this argument, in fact it is an argument deeply embedded within the history of the pre-profession and profession of social work (Reisch and Andrews, 2002).

The purpose of the social work profession I’d like to be a part of is to create transformational social change toward the co-creation of a just and compassionate society. This view contrasts those that declare the profession and purpose of social work as the institution that enacts social welfare policy. If we are willing to accept my purpose for social work (which is commensurate with a great deal of our professional and pre-professional history — see Reisch and Andrews, 2002), I think a few things are necessary. In particular, a deep commitment to democracy is necessary. And I mean democracy in an everyday sense: self-determination, real choices and the right and ability to make those choices, and spaces that embody collective and co-creative decision-making practices, rather than authoritarian ones (Tuck, 2008). For the social workers nodding along as you read this, I ask you to think hard about the institutions and work you are involved in. I frequently hear stories of clients “in charge” of therapy or case management sessions. This is a great step, but we need to ask ourselves: who is framing the problems? The people that frame the problems are the people with power (Chambers and Wedel, 2008; Szasz, 1997). And in most cases, this is not our clients. We’ll really embody democracy when we are framing the problems with our clients. This means unpacking a lot of assumptions about what is mental health and mental illness, who is helpless and who has gifts and services to offer, and who and how people are capable of what. Most of the time I believe we frame the problems (or the organization we work for, or the policy or funder that drives the organization we work for). Most of the time, therefore, we are working on behalf of people, but we aren’t really working with them. This isn’t, fundamentally, democratic. Nor is it just, or about creating justice, which can only begin when we start to embody justice (Block, 2009).

There are models of people doing this work. In social work, we tend to look toward Jane Addams and the Settlement House movements. This is certainly a viable example (problematic in its own ways, but nevertheless relevant) (Addams, 2012). The Highlander Folk School is one such example. Now called the Highlander Research and Education Center, the school was founded by Myles Horton, a resident of Appalachian Tennessee. It was founded during the labor movements of the 1920s, but was most effective as a school for organizers in the south during the Civil Rights movement. Highlander, in partnership with Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, founded and supported the first Citizenship School (Horton, Kohl, & Kohl, 1997). The Citizenship Schools were born out of the interest of the people of John’s Island in passing citizenship tests and learning to vote. To pass the tests, most poor, black folks needed first to learn to read–a skill that they were mostly denied by local governments. The Citizenship Schools taught reading and civic skills through untrained teachers like Bernice Robinson, who worked at the level of everyday people (Clark, 1986). The first Citizenship School was one of many experiments that Highlander funded. As it was successful, other communities began requesting Citizenship Schools of their own and Highlander began training lay, community teachers for the schools. The Citizenship Schools were in many ways the backbone of the Civil Rights movement, and were eventually handed off to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) because the Highlander School wanted to continue to do local work and preferred not to run a large program (Horton, et al., 1997).

Highlander was incredible in many ways. It was one of the only places in the south where black people and white people worked together, ate together, and slept in common quarters. It used methods of popular education and focused on the knowledge people already possessed and could share with each other. In other words, it valued the everyday experiences and expertise of all the people who came, regardless of their level of education or socioeconomic class. It modeled and embodied new ways of coming together that were just and equal (and was significantly more progressive in terms of issues like gender equality than movements like the SCLC). Further, it developed practice models that were used by lay people to make significant social change. There were no professionals or experts, only everyday people in local communities committed to making a difference. Highlander lived the idea of working with people.

I believe we can build a new profession of social work, one focused on working with people, rather than for them. This will not be exclusive to macro practice social work, where participatory models of community organizing and participatory action research provide powerful examples of working with. One example in direct practice is lay therapy, where community members are trained in a brief period of time and with little resources to be community therapists (Neuner, Onyut, Ertl, Odenwald, Schauer, & Elbert, 2008). While licensed professionals may argue that this results in lower qualities of care, studies like those by Neuner, et al. indicate that lay therapists can reach outcomes with clients that are within statistically significant range of services provided by professionals. These lay therapists can be members of communities, trained by communities, and treating members of their community. Further, these therapists can be trained quickly and cheaply, and could even work part time. Training community members in this way means that therapists are working with members of their own community to create broad and deep changes within a community. This can began to address major issues, community violence being one example, where massive numbers of individuals living in urban communities face undiagnosed mental health issues like complex post-traumatic stress disorder that affect their ability to love, learn, work, and live physically and mentally healthy lives in dramatic ways (Garbarino, 1999; Geronimus, Hicken, Keene, & Bound, 2006).

I propose that the only way social work will be a radical profession, changing society to become more peaceful, just, and healthy, will be to empower everyone to be a “social worker.” We need many more therapists, case workers, community organizers, and educators. Furthermore, we need them to be part of our everyday lives, with each individual taking some responsibility for shaping the health of our communities and the individuals and families that live within them. We also need citizens who take ownership over creating social policies that involve communities in a process of self-determination over their futures (Boyte, 2008; Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993).

I think we have the tools, technology, and human capacity in a way we may never have had it before. One of the challenges with implementing a model of lay social work is in certifying practitioners in a diverse range of skills. The internet, online teaching and learning specifically, provides one solution to this problem. A new system of certification called “badges” is being used by a number of training firms, educational institutions (brick and mortar as well as e-learning), and corporations to certify people in single, often discrete skills. Individuals can collect and display badges as a way of proving certification. One example of this technology is being developed by open-source organization Mozilla: http://www.openbadges.org. We could begin to certify people in a diverse range of skills from “relationship building” to narrative exposure therapy. Of course, there are many challenges that we will need to overcome, like insurance, liability, and social work’s commitment to licensure and professionalization.

If we choose to move forward with such a model, the major question for the profession of social work is: Where does this leave social workers? If we begin to certify community practitioners in the way I’ve envisioned here, will this destroy the profession of social work? In part, I believe it could. And maybe it should. The belief held by many radical social workers is that the profession serves to prevent radical social change by keeping the poor and excluded just enough above water to avoid rebellion and revolution (Cloward & Piven, 1966; Reisch & Andrews, 2002). This isn’t to say that on a day-to-day basis the work that social workers are doing is meaningless. Far from it. How could anyone argue that helping people in need–whether it be keeping a home, helping a family function in a healthier way, or learning to live with mental illness–is a bad thing? However, if we don’t see the need to change, to do something bigger and truer to our values, I think we’ll always be stuck reproducing the kinds of solutions to the same kinds of problems that we’ve always been searching for. In other words, these kinds of research and solutions will only take us where we already are. Maybe just doing what we’re already doing a little bit better. But they will always be limited by the resources and practitioners available, because in the current model, there will always be the belief that the kinds of services social workers provide are only needed by some members of society and can only be delivered by experts. The Highlander Folk School and models of lay therapy demonstrate that something different is possible.

I propose an alternative to this kind of work, a role for the profession of social worker in a world moving toward micro certifications in the form of badges. I believe there is a deep need for people that can serve as capacity builders. As Freire discovered in his work around literacy education, people need to be awakened to the realities of difference, exclusion and oppression as they play themselves out in their everyday realities. Myles Horton and Septima Clark saw that they could not create change themselves, but needed to be part of embodying what was possible, so that people could learn to creatively intervene in their own communities. In this new world, the social worker can be an educator and capacity builder, awakening communities to the possibilities and potentials available to them, then providing access to those possibilities. Professional social workers can be trained to bring about this new model of social work, and then to hold it in place and continue to grow it.

In this model, social workers serving as capacity builders will empower communities to take control of their own needs, with the skills and resources necessary to solve the problems that are important to them. This will more holistically address the issues we face. And social work will no longer be caught in most of the debilitating conundrums it currently faces. This way forward will require a great deal of courage. But we have a number of role models and access to new technology that can help us bring these dreams to reality. I invite you to join me in determining our future as a profession and the future of our communities together.

References

• Block, P. (2009). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
• Boyte, H.C. (2008). The citizen solution: How you can make a difference. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press.
• Chambers, D.E., & Wedel, K.C. (2008). Social policy and social programs: A method for the practical public policy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Clark, S. (1986). Ready from within. Navarro, CA: Wild Trees Press.
• Cloward, Richard; Piven, Frances (May 2, 1966). The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty. (Originally published in The Nation).
• Garbarino, J. (1999). Raising children in a socially toxic environment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Geronimus, A.T., Hicken, M., Keene, D., & Bound, J. (2006). “Weathering” and Age Patterns of Allostatic Load Scores Among Blacks and Whites in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 96(5), 826-833.
• Horton, M., Kohl, J., & Kohl, H. (1997). The long haul: An autobiography. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
• Kretzmann, J.P., & McKnight, J.L. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research.
• Neuner, F., Onyut, P.L., Ertl, V., Odenwald, M., Schauer, E., Elbert, T. (2008). Treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder by trained lay counselors in an African refugee settlement. A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(4), 686-694.
• Reisch, M., & Andrews, J. (2002). The road not taken: A history of radical social work in the United States. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
• Schön, D., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. New York, NY: Basic Books.
• Szasz, T. (1997). The manufacture of madness: A comparative study of the inquisition and the mental health movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. (Original publication in 1970).
• Tuck, E. (2009). Re-visioning action: Participatory action research and indigenous theories of change. Urban Review, 41, 47-65.

 

“So, what did you learn?”

I asked this recently of a former student become a friend as we were sitting together in my office. She was catching me up on her previous semester, specifically an interesting class on the history of science.

“You know, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton… How science changed through all of those things.”

“Sounds interesting. Did you learn about eugenics?” I ask.

This question has been present on my mind as soon as she started talking about the course. Maybe it was growing up Jewish that made me particularly attentive to this question, or maybe it was my education in ethics. Either way, it felt like an important thing to learn about in a course purportedly training our future scientists about their historical roots.

“No, what’s that?”

“The scientific movement that provided the ammunition for Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jews and the forced sterilization of mentally ill people in the United States and indigenous people in Australia.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Did you learn about IQ? How it was used to justify racism?”

“No…”

“Social Darwinism?”

“No… We probably should have learned these things, huh?”

Yeah. Probably.

My student’s description of the course she had taken struck me as full of missed opportunities. What if the professor had talked about some of these historical blunders? What could the effect have been? I think it could have served a number of purposes, including:

1. making her aware that science has done a great deal of good, and has also enabled a great deal of evil;
2. recognizing that scientists deal in complex worlds in which their findings have effects beyond their control; and
3. helping her learn to think about how blunders like these might inform the way she works as a practicing scientist who will also be faced with tough, important ethical decisions.

And my student’s story reminded to consider other missed opportunities – whether ours in higher education generally, or my own in the classes I teach.

Of course, my student’s ignorance of some of the most tragic blunders in scientific history is concerning. At the same time, she’s a top-notch student, destined for social and academic success, wherever her life takes her. I worry less about her because her education has included learning about racism, sexism, and other manifestations of the way our society systematically gives and withholds opportunities, the ways it – sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly – endangers the lives of those not straight, male, white, able-bodied, middle or upper class. Overall, she has learned to think critically, to analyze situations from several different perspectives and to know how to intervene in situations she feels are unethical or unjust. But learning how to think in this way cannot be limited to a few classrooms on campus. I think, if we are to be effective in training skilled, competent professionals and citizens, this kind of thinking needs to be integrated into all our classrooms.

I wish I could say I thought omissions like the ones I describe at the opening were a fluke, that perhaps this class was poorly orchestrated, and that most history of science courses around the country made sure students got a full history–the amazing, life-giving, revolutionizing breakthroughs, and horrifying missteps all included.

But I don’t think it’s true. I think, in most disciplines I’ve encountered, I’ve noticed this same tendency to avoid the difficult stories, past and present.

My own discipline, social work, is guilty of the same kinds of omissions. For example, we often cite the atrocious Indian Adoption Project, where Native children were taken from their parents and “adopted” into white families. However, we often fail to mention that one of our profession’s heroines, Jane Addams, was most heavily repressed and critiqued by other social workers. In other words, we tend to talk selectively about our mistakes. Especially, the mistakes that challenge the stories we like to tell about ourselves now, in the present day – in our textbooks and classrooms, are often swept under the rug.

I think, in a general sense, that this is a very successful attempt to pretend that we are in control. If we can admit that we made some mistakes in the past (usually due to the fault of people outside of our profession–as in the house arrest of Galileo), we don’t have to talk about the really nasty blunders and missteps, and we can effectively pretend like we had very little to do with them. And, as I hope to show below, what’s worse than erasing parts of history is the danger of never learning how to make better, more ethical decisions in the present.

This danger was highlighted by educator Herb Kohl in an essay (now a book) about how we teach the history of Rosa Parks in school. His conclusion is that, as teachers and textbook writers, we effectively nullify her as a political presence. We tend to tell the story of Rosa Parks, the tired old lady whose refusal to move started a revolution.

In truth, Rosa Parks was a brave community activist, community organizer and trainer in non-violent resistance: By removing her development as an activist and the intentionality behind her decision to stay in her seat on that bus in 1955, we deny the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. To intentionally make extraordinary decisions. To care about something enough to take risks and to challenge authority – even if it stands outside of what’s “acceptable” in the current context (historical moments of civil disobedience were never acceptable by law or society).

Further, we mask that courage, risk-taking, and a belief in justice are the kinds of things that we need to learn.

Why we need our education to teach us how to think

I was reminded recently of my conversation with my former student when I visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The memorial was wonderfully done. I began walking through it and quickly lost track of my traveling companions. I walked up and down the hilly stone ground, hands outstretched, lightly brushing both sides of the grave-like pillars to either side of me. Everything else disappeared as I walked for a while, turned, and walked down another row of pillars. The pillars pulled me slowly, graciously out of intellectual conversations from the moments before and into a steady stream of tears.

Eventually we drifted away from the memorial. As we walked away, I noticed that the memorial-bordering street we were walking on was called Hannah-Arendt Straße. Hannah Arendt – who survived the Holocaust and became a philosopher famous for examining the conditions under which the Holocaust was made possible in Eichmann in Jerusalem – has a street named after her bordering the Holocaust memorial. At first glance, this makes a great deal of sense, given the broad topic of her research, but at least in my interpretation, it appeared to be an oxymoron.

Hannah Arendt’s philosophical work was focused on how something like the Holocaust could occur, and how it could be prevented from occurring again. Her conclusion, in brief, directly contradicts the commonly held belief that we study history in order to prevent ourselves from repeating the same mistakes over and over. Were this maxim true, continuing to bring history into our public consciousness might help us avoid falling into situations like the Holocaust.

However, Arendt believed that studying history would likely make no difference were an individual in Nazi Germany faced with the decision of resisting Hitler’s regime or going along for the ride.

The only thing that would truly make a difference is if people were able to think, in the moment; to reflect on their actions and make decisions for themselves.

If we believe Arendt, the main problem with ignoring the hard parts of our disciplinary histories is not that we forget our history. That is a problem. But the bigger problem is that if we pretend that major decisions weren’t made along the way by ordinary, local, everyday people, and instead read history only as the unfolding of the events that eventually occurred, we forget that we still have to and will have to make decisions.

And here I mean ethical decisions. Every day, as a scientist, as a social worker – no matter what discipline we enter – we will be confronted with major ethical decisions. As scientists we need to know how to make these decisions. We will need to know when to let something go, when to stand and fight, or when to pick up and leave. And we don’t just get that ability from nowhere (even though we seem to believe we acquire it everywhere else but our classrooms). We have to develop it.

What is possible when we think about what our students are learning?

As Lisa Delpit writes in her book OtherPeople’sChildren: “Seldom are students encouraged to tackle the deep moral issues they must tussle with in this complex time, nor are they led to think about themselves as agents responsible for a larger world” (Delpit, Loc 141).

I’d like to suggest that, as educators, we need to make it possible for our students to tackle the deep moral issues that shape their lives and work. To do so, they need to know that they are and will be faced these kinds of decisions all the time. They must also think of themselves as people able to affect change in the world, as people who regularly make decisions that matter.

I’m struck by this quote of Holocaust survivor and school principal Haim Ginott in Delpit’s book: ”[He] included in Teacher and Child, given to all of his teachers on the first day of the new school year:

Dear Teacher:

I am the survivor of a concentration camp.

My eyes saw what no person should witness:

Gas chambers built by learned engineers.

Children poisoned by educated physicians.

Infants killed by trained nurses.

Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

So I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they were to make our children more humane.”

Ideas for Learning and Teaching

I believe that the future of the world depends as much on how we teach our histories as on the history we teach.

On one hand, we can teach history as a series of events that occurred in sequential order, leading to the world we inhabit today. I believe this is what we do in most of our classrooms.

On the other hand, we can make history available to our students in such a way that they understand the real decisions that have to be made, the decisions that will mean real things in the lives of real people. They will understand the complex and persistent pressures that lead to terrible decisions, as well as the courage and commitment that everyday individuals took to battle injustice. Moreover, they will know how to think, first in our discipline, and then as citizens of a broader world in which we are all responsible for the injustices perpetrated on others.

Finally, I think we and our students need to see ourselves as change agents, responsible for taking courageous action to improve the world we inhabit together.

There are some broader changes that need to take place.

• As educators, in general, I believe we need to start making the details of our disciplinary and cultural histories readily available to our students. Especially the ones that are difficult to discuss, that make us feel vulnerable, that involve admitting mistakes.
• I think we need to change our textbooks so that they tell our histories in a way that opens up for analysis the difficult decisions our predecessors had to make. In the very least, we can change what we teach as individual instructors or departments, making our histories more rich and complex.
• I also believe that we can supplement these histories with alternate histories, with stories in which people made decisions that took courage, that were resistant to injustice. Telling the real story of Rosa Parks, for example, offers a different model that students can actively choose to follow.

I think we can make changes in our individual classrooms as well.

• If we are paying attention to what are students are learning (rather than what we are teaching), we can push toward the types of learning that involve analysis and synthesis, rather than only knowledge and understanding.
• We can bring complexity and ambiguity into our classrooms so that our students learn how to deal with it in climate that supports risk in thinking and reflecting before they enter future lives and careers.
• We can get students outside of our classes and into the community (as in service-learning or courses that maintain community partnerships) where they can see their textbooks in action real, meaningful, and complex ways.

Closing the Story, for Now

Returning to my conversation with my student. My response was probably only the beginning of what an effective learning moment could have been. I took the first step of making the complexities of our general scientific history available to her. But had I been paying more attention, I could have also shared stories about people who made courageous decisions in those historical circumstances. I could have presented an alternate model for dealing with her discipline’s history. We could have reflected on experiences from her life that inform the way she makes difficult decisions.

I believe that these are the kind of changes we need to make – in our practice as educators and in our broader education system – if we want to create a society that can think more clearly about the complex ethical decisions of our time. If we do, we will be more prepared to respond with courage to acts of injustice. And that would be a very different society than the one I think we are creating now.

References

• Arendt, Hannah. (2006). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
• Delpit, Lisa. (2006). Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.
• Kohl, Herb. (2007). She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. New York, NY: The New Press.

Cloud Storage — The Backbone of My Workflow

Cloud storage serves as the backbone of my workflow. For Cloud storage, I variously use Google Drive, SugarSync, Dropbox, iCloud, and Box.net. These applications are on my home MacBook, work MacBook, iPad, and phone. They keep all of my relevant files synchronized. My primary computer is my home MacBook, so it is host to many more documents than my other devices. As such, it is backed up regularly to an external hard drive using Mac OS X’s Time Machine. This way, I ensure that all of my files are backed up, and all relevant working files are synchronized across all of my devices.

I use iCloud for Apple’s iCloud based services: Notes, Reminders, Contacts, Documents (Pages, Keynote, Numbers), Photos & Photo Stream, and backup for the iPhone and iPad. When you upgrade to iOS 5 (or soon iOS 6), iCloud should be part of the setup process. Using up to 5GB of space on iCloud is free, but more than that will cost you (though it is cheap). iCloud does not yet have a general file storage feature, so I can’t use it for most of my other needs.

SugarSync is my cloud storage application of choice. It runs on all devices folks commonly use. And it is relatively cheap compared to apps like Dropbox. It is also (or was at least when I started using it) one of the few cloud storage devices that allows you to keep your current computer file structure, rather than having to move your documents over to a special Dropbox or Google Drive folder. I use SugarSync to synchronize working papers, my library, and documents for work.

Dropbox and Box.net I use less regularly. Loads of people use Dropbox, so I have an account to allow people to share with me. This is, as far as I can tell, the only advantage of Dropbox. Box.net allowed me to get 50GB of free storage when I first started using it, which I hope will some day come in handy.

Google Drive is the replacement for Google Docs. It stores and can create/edit documents just like Microsoft Office. But your documents are available anywhere you can log in to an Internet-enabled device. And you can share documents with others, as well as edit collaboratively. I use Google Drive for any collaborative projects I work on. Google also recently updated the app to be able to edit Google Docs on the fly on iOS, which is a great new feature.

Summary: SugarSync and Google Docs are two excellent cloud storage services. Both have Mac and iOS apps that will sync with each other over the Internet. Cloud storage services are the backbone of my workflow, allowing me to keep the same files consistent across multiple devices.

Reading

I read a lot. I use a number of tools to help me do so. This is where my workflow gets rather complicated. Here’s how I read and organize various types of information:

Academic Papers

I do most of my academic reading on my iPad. I use the app GoodReader for this purpose. GoodReader allows you to synchronize your iPad with various cloud services, including all those listed above. I generally only use SugarSync here. I synchronize my entire library of articles, so I can read whatever I want when I’m on the road. GoodReader does highlighting, drawing, and notes, so you can mark up your documents and save notes for later.

In addition to reading with GoodReader, I use Sente as a reference manager. There are many decent applications for reference management that are free, including Zotero and Mendeley. Papers2 is also a popular Mac app for reference management. I went back and forth for a long time before committing to using Sente. Sente is not the most polished (Papers2 wins that prize on Mac), nor the most feature-rich (Mendeley), nor open-source (Zotero). However, it has a decent number of features, has a pleasing aesthetic, and most importantly for me, allowed me to synchronize my files using my own cloud services. The others make you pay to synchronize your files over the cloud. You need to pay for Sente up front, but only once per major version.

Here’s where things get a little complicated, but the payoff for me is worth it. Sente can create synchronized libraries to work on multiple computers and your iPad. It is important not to store that library in one of your cloud synchronized folders. This will definitely mess up your library. Sente synchronizes itself. However, I wanted access to my Sente files through GoodReader on my iPad. The secret to doing this is to see that a Sente Library on your Mac is just a clever folder. You can therefore synchronize a subfolder of your Sente Library — the Attachments folder. In SugarSync, add the Attachments folder that is PART of your Sente Library to your synchronized files. Then, on your iPad in GoodReader, you can sync the Attachments folder. This lets you read and update your PDF files in GoodReader on your iPad, but have them still open as attachments in your Sente program. Awesome.

Personal Reading

I have more personal reading workflows as well. This includes reading Kindle books for pleasure (or because I needed them delivered quickly). However, it mainly is the large number of news sites and blogs I keep track of. For this purpose, I use a Google Reader account. I store all of my RSS feeds on this. On my Mac, I use Google Reader as my RSS reading app as well. On my iPad, I use MobileRSS, which simply loads my RSS feeds from Google Reader.

But, I don’t often actually read anything in my RSS readers. Typically, I browse my RSS feeds very quickly and save everything to Instapaper. I also use the Google Chrome browser plugin for Instapaper. This way, whenever I open Instapaper on my iPad, I have all the websites I wanted to “read later” in one place, and in one format. It makes for a very seamless and aesthetically delicious reading experience.

I use diigo to keep track of pages and bookmarks. Diigo is great because you can store all your bookmarks in the cloud, and return to them from anywhere. You can also highlight and leave notes on web pages, which will appear when you return to them. Diigo is a web browser plugin. There is also an iPad app called “Diigo browser” that I don’t use much.

I use Chrome as my web browser of choice. Chrome is on Mac, Windows, Android, and now iOS. If you “log in” to Chrome, it will synchronize your browsing history across all your devices. You can also open a tab on one device that is currently open on another device. This is a great feature for moving between multiple devices.

Writing

I do most of my note taking on my iPad. I use the default Notes application for quick notes. But primarily I use Evernote, a cloud-based note taking program. This lets you store notes and documents of all kinds. It also has a photograph app and a recording app built in. I have about 12 notebooks within Evernote and I store everything from Research to Inspirational quotes and videos. It helps me keep track of a great deal of information. Also, if I am reading in Instapaper and decide I want to keep something for good, I export it to Evernote.

For bigger writing projects, I often start out in Google Drive. This gives me the ability to collaborate with anyone at any time. From there, I may switch to Pages or Word, depending on my needs. On the iPad, I use Quickoffice. This app can open any Office documents and can sync with any of your cloud storage services. For very large writing projects that are not collaborative, I use Scrivener, which has a bit of a learning curve, but is well worth it.

Concluding Thoughts

That was a lot. A mind dump, really. But there it is. Thoughts? Responses of other workflows?

I find it extremely important to continuously develop and iterate my workflows. Technology changes extremely rapidly, and keeping up with it enables you to manage huge amounts of information faster and more efficiently. I also think it has another important benefit: continuing to look back at previous notes, writing, and reading gives you an ability to reflect on where you’ve come, which can inform where you are going. My recent commitment to using Sente has made me return to a number of old papers that I am now re-inspired by.

Learning from Early Childhood Educational Practices

My son has just turned three and, as a self-proclaimed pedagogy nerd it is not surprising that I currently geek-out by reading up on Magda Gerber or the Reggio Emilia approach to childhood education  or checking out similarly-minded counterparts in the blogosphere.

While reading a recent post by preschool blogger extraordinaire TeacherTom – who advocates for alternative, engaging educational practices that emphasize his status as a co-equal with his students – I was struck by parallels between his pedagogy and the kinds of things I teach my University-level ethics students about how human beings ought to be treated.

• valuing young people as equals regardless of age or experience,
• helping young people acquire an internal sense of accomplishment as opposed to responding to extrinsic rewards, and
• caring for young people as whole persons.

Recently, I began to wonder if Teacher Tom and other early childhood educators could help me create a classroom that was more true to the values I encourage my students to take seriously. I began reading his posts and other early-childhood material with a new eye and began asking myself:

What can higher education learn from early childhood educational practices?

 Asking Everyone

 Actually, I began asking everyone – including fellow pedagogy nerd and this post’s co-author, Alex Fink, who, as is his usual style, adopted the question and ran with it. Soon, we were full of questions:

• As we teach, do our teaching practices reflect the values we espouse – as educators? as institutions?
• If so, what are those teaching practices?
• If not, could early childhood education help us to accomplish this goal?
• What would adopting early childhood educational practices look like in a college or university classroom?
• Are we, as educators in higher education, missing an important and valuable resource by overlooking early childhood educational research?

Alex and I decided to choose practices from early childhood education that we felt might be unknown in higher education and to begin to imagine how we could translate these practices into our own teaching in college and university classrooms. Our interest in doing so came from two commitments:

First, that our teaching practices be consistent with our philosophical beliefs.

Second, that our teaching practices align with our social values of democracy and human equality.

We would like to invite you into this discussion as well. Below are three practices that we found particularly intriguing – and some early thoughts on how they might, and if they ought, appear in higher education.

“Loving them Just as They Are”- Treating Students as Human Equals

 It may seem strange, I suppose, for many of us to understand that we, at best, stand on the planet as equals with all other people, including young children. We are each fully formed, fully valid, fully functional human beings no matter our age. Naturally, we have different lots in life, different blessings and challenges, and are on our way to different places, but we always remain, most of all, worthy of being loved for being exactly who we are.   TeacherTom, LovingthemJustasTheyAre

If a preschool teacher can look to a group of four and five year-old children as equals, and can take pains to treat them as such – what might that tell us about our relationship with the young adults (and not-so-young adults) we find in our classrooms? Are there ways that we can present ourselves or organize our classrooms and materials that would better recognize our students as our human equals? What would this recognition look like and sound like in higher education classrooms?

We are concerned that some things accepted as standard practice in university teaching might make it difficult for instructors and students to experience one another as human equals. For example, the standard lecture model holds that teachers have information, and students receive it – the transfer of information and ideas is a one-way street. Likewise, classes and syllabi are often planned far in advance, minimizing the space for students to influence the direction of the course with their knowledge, experience, and interests. It is almost as if we make a deal with students: we will give you information if you leave your self, who you are and what you otherwise care about, at the door.

We know that efforts like these take a lot of work and encouragement – for ourselves and for our students – and willingness to break down barriers, especially the societal training we all receive to see teachers as authority figures and students as those learning from the authority.  But we also know that with college students, as with children, learning is about breaking barriers to come to new understandings, insights and discoveries.

Given the myriad challenges, what are other ways we could change our classrooms to better achieve our goal of holding students as human equals?

Praise v. Encouragement - Moving Beyond ‘Good’ and ‘Right’

Following the Praise v. Encouragement model used by the Montessori approach to early childhood education, my (Marisol) son’s teachers avoid evaluative statements and instead strive to use observation to engage with children about their work and to encourage them to be process rather than product minded. For example, rather than using praising language such as “What a beautiful drawing!” a teacher might observe, “I see you used three colors in your picture. Your lines go from the bottom of the page to the top, and some curl in a lot of different directions.”

Language of praise (e.g. great, beautiful, good job, etc.) focuses on an end product, and sets up external standards of success and failure.  

Language of encouragement focuses on acknowledging the creative or learning process, and reflecting back to the student what she or he has done.

For example, if a students adopts the notion, from experience of praise, that a picture only has value because it is beautiful (0r a student has value because she can create a beautiful picture), then it ay become difficult for the student to engage in an activity when he or she does not feel confident.  The experiential process of drawing a picture becomes – with the language of praise – a chance for success or failure based on perceptions of the end project.

How many of us struggle with students who take a class, write a paper or complete an assignment “to get an A” rather than valuing the content or learning process? Does this model of product-focused work hurt the learning process or, put conversely, help our classrooms in any way? What would a process-focused classroom look like? Sound like?

It has been difficult to wean myself from scrawling “good” or “great” down the margins of student papers. I still remember clearly how much I valued and felt validated by such comments from professors I admired. However, I am trying to move towards language both on papers and in the classroom that recognizes and reflects student process. Rather than saying “good” when a student makes a remark I find insightful, I might repeat what I understood the student to be saying, “Ah – So I hear you saying that because the second story gives us more information about Rosa Parks background and intentions, it more accurately portrays her as a rational agent.”

Along the same vein, if a student makes a comment I don’t understand, or disagree with, I will again try to rephrase what they are saying as I understand it, and if they agree with my interpretation, I will then give reasons (or allow other students to give reasons) as to why we may disagree or not follow the students thoughts. This allows us to engage in honest conversation without limiting the discussion to a particular set of right or wrong, good or bad answers.

We see using encouragement as one way of supporting what Carol Dweck calls a “growth” rather than a “fixed” mindset in students. However, we see a lot of challenges to this method. To begin, are students’ expectations of “praise” already so deeply embedded in their experience of school that to offer anything different is simply interpreted as a failure to completely succeed? Does the phrase “I see that thought connecting to this one” offer something less by way of encouraging further thoughts than “Great idea! Let’s connect that to…”?

Our hope is to find language that provokes students to take the risk to do something new, to explore new possibilities, to grow their thinking in order to grapple with course and work and life problems that require complex rather than right-wrong thinking.

Is this a productive change? How could we improve on it? Are their other (perhaps larger, more systemic) changes that we might want to consider? For example, can we shift away from the praise model without also moving away from traditional grading systems?

Care - Students (Re-)Engage the Classroom

My son runs into his classroom and throws his arms around a favorite teacher. Another teacher is holding a child who softly cries for her mother. I watch a child crawl into a teacher’s lap for story time. Whether they are tired, hurt, scared, lonely, excited, proud or unfocused, the children know that the teachers are there to hold those feelings with them – to literally physically hold them until they are ready to re-engage independently with the classroom or playground.

In a college or university setting, discussion of such physical affection would immediately draw red flags. But, are there appropriate ways for us to – metaphorically – hold our students? Surely our students are not immune to being tired, hurt, excited and proud – and what’s more, often they are far from home. When they need it, how can we help our students regroup and be ready to engage or re-engage with their academic work? Further, should we? Is this the work of other on-campus organizations or staff?

Many of our students are used to seeing friends, family, and teachers on a regular basis. Transitioning to a college campus, they lose many of these social supports. Often times, as their teachers, we end up seeing them on a more regular basis than most other people in their lives. We also see their projects, presentations, papers and tests, and know when they are slipping. Though we may not be their counselors, we can take some responsibility for the connections we do have with our students, and might be able to find obvious, or even creative, ways to support them. Further, we might find ways to help them support each other; to create a space in our classrooms where students can offer one another support and connection.

One teacher I (Alex) admire never actually physically holds students. He does, however, attend to their deeper psychological needs. If they are in need of an ear, he will sit with them and listen. If they are in need of a job, he’ll help them find one. If they are quickly slipping out of school, he will appoint them as an undergraduate TA and keep an eye on them throughout the semester. He will also do a great deal of work throughout the semester to connect them to each other – if students seem to have common interests, he will make sure they meet. If one student is struggling, he will see if another can help. These all seem like appropriate ways teachers can “hold” their students.  Are there others? Can (and ought) we go further?

Conclusions

In this post, we’ve suggested thinking about ways we can better treat students as human equals, move students beyond extrinsic reward and toward an internal sense of success, and care about students as whole persons. Each of these ideas was drawn from, and is supported by research in early childhood education. We believe that these methods help us match our approach to teaching in higher education with the values we hold, and that the research shows these may also be more effective approaches to teaching generally (Svinicki, 2010; Dweck, 2008; Duncan-Andrade, 2010).

As pedagogy nerds we value these discussions and we welcome your thoughts:

What approaches from early childhood education can help us see teaching and learning in new ways? Which of these approaches can be adapted to higher education appropriately?

Resources

• Magda Gerber – http://www.magdagerber.org
• MN Reggio Emilia Network – http://www.mnreggio.org/
• Teacher Tom  – http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/
• Janet Lansbury – http://www.janetlansbury.com/
• Svinicki, M. & McKeachie, W.J. (2010). McKeachie’s teaching tips: strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
• Dweck, C.S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
• Duncan-Andrade, J.M.R. (2010). What a coach can teach a teacher: Lessons urban schools can learn from a successful sports program. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
• Praise vs. Encouragement, a table of distinctions:http://virtual.mjc.edu/prussol/Praisevs.pdf

At the time I wrote the paper, I recall feeling like something of an idealist. Yes, it was a great idea, but honestly, how could this ever happen? The simple logistics of having such a conversation are impossible, not to mention all the work that would be done to have to convince anyone that this was worthwhile. Impossible. Yet, here we were, doing just that. I quickly realized that this is what we do in our program generally. Once you are a student, you are welcomed into our community, and then each of us is looking out for your growth and development as much as possible.

So, why not do this more broadly? Maybe teachers should act less as instructors and more as conveners — bringing together the people necessary to move each person forward in their own learning trajectories. Certainly, there are many adults (and youth) interested in helping in our classrooms. Why not bring them in as learning mentors? Why not start building “educative committees” (though I suppose I like the term learning committees more).

I also find this inspiring because it puts everyone in the position of being an educator. If we are in someone’s life, we are also a part of their “learning committee”, and therefore are responsible for thinking about how they might grow, or what we might teach them.

Community – an attitude and orientation: Framed by cubicle walls and the front desk, the office I work in looks similar to any other at a university. What makes it a community is its residents’ attitudes. Every staff member is woven together, mutually indebted through help offered, requested, and received. Abundance, not scarcity— of time, energy, and compassion—is the operating default.

Community – a ritual and practice: Every Sunday morning, my housemate and I made breakfast and baked bread to share. This ritual allowed space and time to deepen our relationship. It also became an open invitation to welcome others into our space.

Community – an organization of inclusion and exclusion: All communities have boundaries, but some invite while others exclude. A good community is sustainable in the face of movement, but through openness, grows kinder, broader, and more compassionate.

Community – a location and place: Living on a farm, I experienced community of location: our lives centered around the land. Also a place: as a teenager learning to write creatively, my closest community was a message board that provided a welcoming, supportive place for growth.