A Mad Tea Party Part II

Our year of Public Achievement came to a close officially two Fridays ago when the students put on their project during lunch at Manual High School. Only Fransheska and I were able to go in early to help the students set up, but a team lead from another school, Laura, was able to join us and provide valuable help as well. Anita, Sarah, and our boss Cara came later. At first, we had a hard time finding students and were unsure where we should begin setting up, but then Fransheska was able to find some of our students and then jumped in as we set up two tables to hand out cake and pop and hold the raffle. We set up the Drug Free banner and several of the students immediately volunteered to videotape, while more and more students kept showing up to help. I felt like I had nothing to do at times, because everything was being taken care off.

In short, the project was a great success, a success driven by student efforts and coach determination, even though this whole year we were uncertain if it could happen, because we were constantly facing difficulties in organizing and motivating our students. But when it came down to the end, they were there for us, and I felt so proud of them! After chaos, came peace. So the mad tea party turned out not to be so mad after all, though we did serve 120 plus students three giant cakes, while they signed the banner to commit at least in theory to being drug free. They also made 55 short video clips which will be combined and edited into a single video that can be given to Manual administrators to use in the future. While I am doubtful that our project will cause a paradigm shift in how drugs affect Manual high school, at least our project put the issue back on the radar for students. And I am confident that what the students have gained from the year is far greater than what they might have gained in this final project. The capabilities, skills, knowledge, and awareness to come together through all the steps leading up to the project will serve them well in the future.

Sorry to any readers that come across this post for it being so short and dull, but I have decided to fit my closing thoughts in one more post that should come out this Thursday! さようなら-Sayoonara!

A Mad Tea Party Part I

Today we begin a two day marathon of PA events, first the PA Summit and then our last PA day at Manual where we are implementing our project. The PA Summit brings our PA students to the University of Denver to meet other students from other schools and celebrate the various different projects that each group are working on. Hopefully, our students from Manual will actually be able to come and participate in this event and meet the other students from KIPP and South High Schools. The exciting part about the Summit, is that it will expose the students to some of the opportunities of higher education that are available to them. They will learn about normal things like college food, dorms, and life, but also will encounter a culture of empowerment and privilege vastly different from at least Manual High School. That is not the say that these students should be pulled away from a high school environment and want to rush off to college, as many aspects of our college campus are sickly sweet, naive, and indicative of an unequal privilege in society, of a fragmentation of America by class, culture, race, heritage, and circumstances, and a hundred other different divisors. But college, fundamentally, is a place of opportunity and as I mentioned before empowerment where students from any background can develop an awareness of how they can change the world. College is a place where the empowerment we talk about in Public Achievement is visibly demonstrated. Hopefully, the Summit will provide the students with a chance to see that.

Before the Tea Party

This last Thursday, Fransheska, my fellow coach, and Sarah, our team lead met with our PA students and began hammering out the details of our project and the grant proposal for funding. On Friday, we worked out the rest of the details with the students and had them type up the grant proposal so we could submit the project. This was accomplished by only a handful of the students as many others were involved in planning and preparing for their Prom. The students chose to incorporate several elements that they had thought about previously into one project, by hosting a booth in their lobby to attract students to participate in a student video where each student could tell why they did not do drugs or provide other testimonies about how and why drugs affect students at Manual High School. This event will take place on Friday, May 11 and will feature food and decorations in addition to the video and the table.

So far I have been merely descriptive of our students' plans. I guess, that this is in part because I feel an immense sense of relief to have a project, a singular goal, after weeks of feeling constantly disorganized and behind schedule. It is a good feeling to have, even though I wrote last week about the process being more important than the project. Why? Well... I believe that having a project, gives the students something to engage in and work toward. In the long run, the greatest benefit comes to the students from the skills that they gain and the confidence they earn about changing and affecting things around them, but in the short run they need something to rally around, something to accomplish.

There is a great tension in life between the here and now and the far-off future, between preparing in the long term and living in the moment. At a young age, we live in the moment, unconcerned about the future beyond what will I do for fun today. Part of our education within primary and secondary school, is to learn about preparing for the future, about giving future days the same weight of importance that we give today and tomorrow. We learn of the consequences of sacrificing tomorrow for today, of the need for moderation, of how to live in a sustainable manner, emotionally and socially. As we age, we are continually reminded of these lessons, but there is an urge to return to the carefree moments of childhood, when we do not have to plan or prepare, but can just be, be ourselves, be anyone we wanted to be. Simultaneously, we learn of the rewards of a long term investment, of the benefits of preparation, though it is a subtler lesson, one easily missed amid the chaos.

Political goals, changes in the dynamics of power, and realizations of equality can not be achieved in the short term. Real change takes time. But it must be organized through the day to day actions of committed individuals, by the exercise of power here and there, steadily building toward a larger goal. But the balance between now and later carries significant risks and dangers, two of which I will elucidate here. One, we can get caught in the form, in the day to day gathering of forces and proclaiming of goals, in the politicking. It seems our politicians are often captured in this track. The form favors the moment, the rhetoric and the emotion, but sacrifices the substance and the tangible change that can benefit a community. The form is mobilizing, rallying, striking, and when the day is done, shifting back into the comfortable patterns of life. The second danger, is that of being consumed by the substance, by the ideas and plans for the future, for a better world. When we become wrapped up in the substance, we become armchair philosophers, who forget to take the steps to enact change, who make themselves impotent by caution, and sacrifice the form and the moment for dreams and wistful imaginings. I feel that many visionaries do just this and fail to share their ideas for change with the world. The Public Achievement Program is also prone to the second error, but makes that sacrifice with the hope that it can empower students and coaches in the future by providing them with a foundation of skills, confidence, and awareness about their own ability to make change. But ultimately, balancing between the two extremes is best.

And that is why the project at the end is important. It reminds the students of the importance of the moment, of accomplishments. It gives the students a place to anchor what they have learned in their memory. And when we can transfer the present to the past and use it as a foundation to build our new world, then neither present nor future need be sacrificed.

As for the Mad Tea Party? That comes this Friday!

A Caucus Race and A Long Tale

After our Community Panel, the main task facing our group of students is identifying exactly what project they want to work on. The community panelists provided several recommendations on the ideas that the students presented, but our group is running out of time to plan and implement any project. Our time was shortened even more when our PA coaches went to MHS this last Friday and found that our students had the rest of the day off. Fortunately we ran into a few of our students and were able to give them some instructions for what to do during the week to prepare for the next two Fridays, our last two Fridays to meet with them before most of our students graduate! It is crazy to think that all of our time with the students at Manual has boiled done to two short days of 43 minute periods to finish our project.

From the start of my involvement in the Public Achievement program at DU in the fall of last year, my supervisors and other PA coaches have told me that the process of PA is more important than the result. They have said that it is more important to provide the students with an awareness about what they can do, then to actually conduct a fantastic project. When we are down to the last two weeks, with no idea still about what our project will be, it is hard to feel as if the process is more important than the result. It is hard not to feel as if our efforts have been somewhat incomplete and that we have only grazed the surface of the potential of our students.

In Alice in Wonderland, after Alice exits the pool of tears with a slew of various animals, they hold a race. This caucus race has no start or finish, and everyone begins and stops at their own initiative. It is easy to claim that such a race, with no obvious goal is meaningless. After all, why race if you cannot win? But the whole incident has another purpose altogether. The animals and Alice just emerged soaking from the pool of tears and the race provides them a way to dry off. I believe for PA the difference between process and project is much the same. While everyone likes to win the race or complete the project, maybe our real goal should be just to dry off and to step into the world with new clear eyes. So just what does the drying off equate to in PA? What benefit do we get from running without there being a finish line?

These questions strike at the purpose of Public Achievement and the goal of attempting to develop political relationships in a non-hierarchical structure. On one hand, our awareness as college students of our own ability to build up our community and engage in public democracy building should encourage within our students a similar awareness. In another sense, the process of building and organizing a community provides the students with a template that they can apply to their future engagements with politics in their communities. In this, learning the process of putting together a project is as important as the project, because the project itself cannot and should not be replicated in other circumstances exactly, but the process can. The process and all the skills associated with it become the empowering force that provide the PA students with both awareness and individual power to make tangible change in their communities, whether that change occurs today or ten years from now.

Prioritizing the capabilities earned over the singular goals accomplished seems to me to be a revolutionary departure from the usual trend in our society. We provide ribbons and awards through all of primary and secondary school and continue the race into college and our careers, constantly competing with one another for status, recognition, and glory. I watch college students in classes, whose sole purpose is to receive a grade to gain a degree to get a job to have what they want in life, never caring much for the what they actually learn, what skills they actually gain, and what power actually becomes invested in them. I even find myself doing the same at times, running the race for the finish line, rather than for the journey. But ultimately the consequence of living that way, of being solely goal-oriented instead of balanced between accomplishing goals and gaining capabilities, is that our life becomes dependent on the races, and we determine success by where we finish.

But can we live another way? Even when we devote time to developing capabilities and awareness, are we not doomed to reenter the flow of competition, to bend our will to achieve our interests and to beat out our competitors? Here is where I feel the PA model fails to escape tradition. After all, it is based around the self-interest of the participating individuals and when self-interests do not coincide then there is little incentive to work together. The PA model misses out on the unconditional aspects of friendship and advocates a solely political relationship between coach and student, though I doubt that in practice the relationships ever turn out so clearly cut one way or another.

I have never been a fan of communitarian ideals when they are forced on a group, but nevertheless I believe that the greatest thing we as humans can do is to unconditionally invest ourselves in the building up and empowering of other human beings. This is the primary reason why I admire teachers and one day hope to teach at the college level. But as to how to spread those values without force, while allowing each individual to still enjoy the individual freedoms that are the cherished heritage of this society and expanding upon the equality among groups in enjoying those freedoms, I have no answer now. Ultimately, I can thank the PA process and experience for awakening these questions and thoughts within me, even as I agonize over what shape these final few weeks will take.

The Pool of Tears

As I am sure you (the reader) have noticed, my post titles make allusions to Lewis Carroll's work "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." That work, along with its companion "Through the Looking Glass" have fundamentally framed my understanding of the absurd, of making sense out of nonsense. As such, I draw on them heavily to understand situations and events outside my normal realm of experience and considering the degree to which my PA experience at Manual has been well outside the 'realm of normal,' I feel that Alice's adventures provide a nice parallel to my own. As I will continue to use allusions to those works in further posts, feel free to ask me about the connections in the comments section, though at times I will make them explicit within the post itself.

The Pool of Tears is literally a pool of tears formed by Alice's crying. In the particular section of the book that the pool is created, Alice is going through a period of rapid shrinking and growth inspired by a series of cakes and small drinks that respectively are labelled "eat me" and "drink me" as she struggles to find a way through a door into a garden in Wonderland. After eating a cake that causes her to grow to "nine feet high," her tears leave a pool that covers a significant part of the hall in the White Rabbit's House. While "nine feet high" the tears are inconsequential, but when Alice shrinks again, they become much more significant. In the pool of tears, Alice has her first encounter with a rather tremulous mouse, along with various other denizens of Wonderland.

This last Friday, our Public Achievement group presented to a community panel. The presentation is designed to give the PA students a chance to articulate their thoughts, plans, and ideas for their PA project. Then the panel can provide them with feedback on the viability and feasibility of the project, suggestions on how to improve, and information on potential community partnerships. While the panel did provide some of these things for our students, it was hampered by a series of factors. First of all, due to a multitude of reasons, our students had not picked a single project idea and had a series of ideas that they were willing to put forward to the panel, but no one concrete idea on which the panelists could latch on. Secondly, the students were not prepared to present to the panel in the first place. While we had worked on ideas to present to the panel during the week and had sent the students a power point outline and other resources during the week prior to the panel, they had not taken any time to work on their presentation and in this sense, came in cold and unready. Nevertheless, they went ahead and presented their issue (drugs and their affect on the school), their research, and their project ideas, quite effectively. Even though two students dominated the conversation, many others contributed, even a few that we had not seen in a while in addition to a student that has never showed up to our PA classes before. But just as when Alice's transformations in size had unintended consequences for the rest of her adventures, I wonder what pool of tears has been left by our students having to mature in their ideas in such a public and emotional manner.

The students were brutally honest in sharing some of their own experiences with drugs, and while I value such honesty, I understand that that such investment requires a significant level of emotional involvement. For those students that have not been there from a while, I question if they will have the commitment to come back for the less formal task of implementing a project. For those that have been committed throughout our journey, I am simply grateful and feel a need to make the last few weeks of PA worthwhile for them. But throughout these weeks, what is the 'pool of tears' that we have left, that we might slip into when we come back to earth? Might it be the dreams and ideas that they poured out at the panel, that we have to find a way to channel into a single concrete project? Might it be the emotions that they have previously kept veiled from us, their coaches? Might it be the expectations that come from such a formal situation? While I have no answers for these questions, I am confident that the 'pool of tears' where ever we might encounter it will be another essential part of the journey for our students, something to traverse, somewhere to meet new people, solidify old relationships, and potentially make new ones. So I leave you, my reader, with hope.

Down the Rabbit Hole Part II

When we came back after winter break we were given the opportunity to have our PA day during the last period of the Friday school day during a student leadership class for juniors and seniors. While the new semester brought stability in terms of giving us a set time and place to meet with the students, it did not solve all our problems related to student attendance or miscommunication between us and the school. The first PA day of the year solidified this reality in our mind when our contact at the school gave us another project to work on with the students outside of the lesson plan that we had prepared for the students. While we actually were able to accomplish something in that day in terms of helping the students put together a proposal for off campus lunch, it disrupted the flow of our planning and my own confidence even though it later days we were able to return to fully controlling our use of the time. A further difficulty came when Christi announced that she would not be able to continue coaching with us.

As the days of January and February passed a greater challenge emerged out of the gap between the capabilities and understanding of our students and the theoretical knowledge we attempted to provide in our lessons. They never fully bought into the PA language of self-interest, identity, and oppression that we utilized and seemed to long for something more tangible. Nor did they buy in to the variety of activities and methods by which we attempted to bring the knowledge to bear, I believe in part because they were doubtful of the meaningfulness within our plans and in part because they believed we were holding them back. There was likely a serious incongruity between the experiences they had week to week in their normal leadership classes versus our hour with them on Friday. The students did not communicate their feelings to us, though, and responded to the circumstances by not showing up to classes or being less than serious when they were in the classroom. As a result, we found it increasingly difficult to accomplish anything in our lesson plans. Simultaneously, we were spending too much time on the early stages of PA.

We dealt with the circumstances by taking one week to have a heart to heart discussion with the students about expectations and respect before leaping into the selection of an issue to work on. I am not completely sure which aspect did the trick, but for a while there was a significant attitude change in the classroom. We selected an issue--how the use of drugs by students affected their attendance, academic achievement, and graduation--and beginning conducting research. This research process was disrupted by a series of conflicts with the senior schedule ranging from their spring break, to senior ditch day, to sports, to community events that required the participation of the student leadership to set up. Nevertheless, the students were able to conduct a series of interviews with school administration and gather student information through a survey. Both research activities were very successful in gathering information, and though the students as of yet do not have a way to apply that information, they at least seem excited about the possibilities.

And this brings us to the present day, where this Friday the students will present their plans and research to a community panel from which they could potentially receive advice or assistance in moving their project forward. Because of the chaos that is Manual, we do not know for sure if the students will be prepared or if they will even show up. But we have given them an outline through a power point, provided them with the data from their surveys and links to their videos, given them advice, and pushed them out of the nest and off the cliff. Now, we only hope that they can fly.

Down the Rabbit Hole Part I

As a brief summary of the purpose of this blog and the following post: I have been meaning to blog about my experiences in college since I graduated from high school as a way to reflect about them. However, I have previously lacked the impetus and motivation to begin and continue such a blog. Now, I have both. For the past six months, I have been working within the University of Denver's Public Achievement program which is coordinated by the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL). The Public Achievement program connects college coaches with high school or middle school students to work through the framework of Public Achievement to make tangible change in those students communities. Often this change comes in form of working on social justice issues or bringing programs and services into the schools that were formerly absent. The Public Achievement (PA) framework is based on models of community organizing that rose out of the work of Saul Alinsky and others from the Midwest and East Coast. Community organizing as opposed to activism works on empowering communities to make the changes they desire rather than simply mobilizing raw support for a cause.

My involvement in the PA program at the University of Denver has radically changed my perspective on what politics can mean while simultaneously unearthing doubts that I have about the democratic nature of the United States, the capability of everyone to engage fully in politics, and the social ramifications of the forming of purely political relationships. There is no doubt in my mind that my political understanding has undergone a metamorphosis, but I am unsure of the extent and nature of the change. Unraveling the meaning of my PA experience and finding the nuggets of certainty within it all that I can grasp a hold of will take quite some time. As I undertake that introspective journey I hope to record some small piece of my experience and contemplation here. To begin, I will provide a brief narrative of that experience so far.

At the start of my sophomore year of college, I faced a search to find a work study job on campus. The previous year, I had worked in a psychology lab as a research assistant, but as I had decided I did not want to be a psychologist I declined my supervisor's offer to return to the lab the next year. Instead, I searched for a job related to my newly decided upon majors of international studies and geography, or failing in that, one within the library or in some process of education. I had heard about the work of CCESL and the PA program from my friend, Anita (see her blog here http://neetachange.blogspot.com/) and decided to apply for a tutoring position within the Center. I was called in for an interview within the week and during my interview, the former coordinator of the PA program convinced me that I should work as a PA coach rather than as a tutor. Anita had beguiled me of the wonders, challenges, and benefits of working with high school students in the program and though I had doubts about my own capabilities, I acquiesced. Within two weeks we had our first training which introduced me to the community organizing model, followed by a retreat for PA coaches to provide us a crash course in our duties and responsibilities for the PA program.

The University of Denver PA program had partnerships with three local high schools for the 2011-2012 school year: South, KIPP, and Manual. Each school had a team lead or two, a graduate student to work with school officials and coordinate the coaching groups. I was placed in the Manual coaching group with Christi, Fransheska, and Anita. Our team lead's name is Sarah. The PA programs go into the schools on Fridays to work with the students for approximately an hour on a lesson plan within one of the PA model's four stages, briefly, building relationships, identifying issues, conducting community research, and implementing a project/program to deal with the issue (problem) identified and researched. Our start date was October 14th, but the coordination with the school did not work out and the official date was moved to the 21st, when I would be gone for a Model UN competition in Washington DC. Our contact at the school did encourage us to come in prior to the starting date to meet the students, which we did, though almost none of the students we met ended up coming regularly to our PA days.

Those first few days of PA were a journey through a real-life performance of the theater of the absurd. Our PA program was set as an after school program which students had to voluntarily come to when normally the program works through a during school time slot. As a result of the after school timing, we never were certain which students would be coming to the program nor where we would be at. Some days we would have 12 students, other days we would have 2. Some days we would be in a large room with space for activities and others we would be crammed into an office space within a single table and barely any chairs. The chaotic nature of the onsite circumstances led us to give Manual the nickname Narnia, as we never knew where we would be or what we would do once we stepped through the wardrobe. Poor communication and the circumstances of our situation prevented us from accomplishing anything tangible outside getting to know some of the students until after the end of the semester when we switched to an in-school time slot.

To be Continued...