Fwd: Yesterday
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Baruch Warren
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 10:07:54 -0800
Subject: Re: Yesterday
To: campus_connections@lists.wwu.edu


Dear Betsy,
I think that the Community Partner / Faculty Luncheon went really
well! Did you get that congratulatory email from Executive Dean
Leatherbarrow?
I don't know if it was the table placement, our brilliant "social
engineering" in the guest seating, the "Thinking about Service
Learning" activity, or just our ridiculous charm, (which is totally
the talk of the campus, by the way) but even Kim, who almost didn't
come based on how little she got out of previous years, seemed to walk
away with ideas and connections to grow an SL program at her center.
I was worried that Brian would leave empty handed, but he announced
that he had an internet development class, and agencies all FLOCKED to
him! I was worried about making that class work, now, with our
luncheon, this quarter is that much closer to a success for him!
The cross section of attendees was great. We were hoping for 25, we
got 50, and with the threat of snow no less! The guy from the teen
center with the skinny tie and asymmetrical hair, Cynthia, who's very
grace seems sometimes to make her seem out of place, the intense lady
from the library, the seemingly endless line of bright eyed
AmeriCorps, the people from all of the agencies with whom we had been
in contact, and the interdisciplinary smorgasbord of faculty members
all carefully shuffled to break out of their traditional cliques
facilitated connections that couldn't have happened through our office
alone.
Oh, and Steph and I presented to Donna's class last night, and it went
unexpectedly well. Neither of us had ever worked with an ESL class,
so it was an awkward start, finding the right way to talk in a way
that the students understood what we were saying, but that we weren't
talking down to them. I kind of wish we had discussed it with you
beforehand. It is an interesting class in that it is all adults with
families, and for the most part multiple jobs. As much as Stephanie
tells them that the students in her Soc. class had to really work to
fit S/L in to their "already-busy-lives" it seems hard, sometimes, to
compare the "Part Time Job / Full Time Class / Dating / Getting Rock
Band or Political Movement or Zine off the ground" already-busy-life
of a 19 year old day student with these ESL night students' "2 Full
Time Jobs / Part Time Student / Full Time Parent / Full Time Language
Student / Full Time Culture Student etc." already-busy-lives. But
instead of a straight presentation, it turned in to a discussion that
I think went really well. They know how excited we are about their
class. At least one student expressed interest in us helping her find
volunteer opportunities, which I said we were available to do.
As well as it went, though, I am glad yesterday is over. The 12 and
half hours, doorstep to doorstep workday really can be tiring, just as
selling all of one's daylight hours can be depressing. Still, I hope
more days like yesterday happen.
Also, Betsy, I am not sure if you have noticed this, but the last
couple of days have provided a slough of personal emails sent to the
whole group. I know that you are occasionally shaky with the
computer, so if you are worried when sending an email out that it will
accidentally go to the list serve instead of the person to whom you
are writing, let me know. I'm pretty good at that kind of thing.
Don't worry though, computers are tricky.
Your cubicle partner,
Joseph Warren


--
Would you like to see Some Interesting Things?
http://home.earthlink.net/~notatyrant

- posted by Joseph Baruch @ 11:01 PM 0 comments

 
FIELD TRIP!!!

- posted by Joseph Baruch @ 11:15 AM 0 comments

 
Reflective? I'm a F*#king MIRROR!
I have just returned from my weekend in Reno, my former home, the region of my first Americorps year, and I am now in the office trying to remember what my job consists of. As I remember, at least part of it is reflection, so I am taking this opportunity to share with you, the rockin'-ist Ameri-team anywhere! During my trip, I was going to visit my old work, the Ron Wood Family Resource Center, to see how things are going. They have grown in the months since I completed my VISTA term, adding staff members and desperately needed services to a semi-rural Nevada community. They have even incorporated the local WIC clinic.

Sadly, several feet of snow prevented my drive from Reno to Carson City, (actually the snow didn't prevent it. The road was open but my personal phobia of sliding off in to a ditch on highway 395 and being frozen in 8 feet of ice until spring did most of the actual Carson-City-visit-prevention.) Despite not being able to actually visit the newly expanded facilities, I did get the chance to talk with my former coworkers. One of the pieces of information that I was just now able to gather was the fact that the person who replaced me as the Service Learning Coordinator VISTA at RWFRC had quit. This took me a bit off guard. I know that a lot of VISTAs do leave. A smaller, but not insignificant number of non-VISTA Ameri-corpses quit too.

Our own team has withered in our first term. Still, I am a little upset, not because someone had the audacity to leave an Americorps position. Damn, that happens. My distress comes from the fact that her leaving marks the near-certain end of projects and programs that I started. As an Americorps, there is a real "if I help one person" mentality. "If Sarah is reading at grade level at the end of the year" or "If I help Beatrice figure out her food stamps so that she has enough to eat" or, "if I can help the McFarland family really prepare for an earthquake" or even in this Campus Connections program, "If I can get Dr. Truehart to include a Service Learning project in her environmental biology class, mine will not be time wasted."

I admit that this is an unfair description of Americorps. There is an element of achieving sustainability in all of our work. But as a VISTA sustainability isn't just an element of the job, it is THE job. So if, six months after leaving the service learning youth team which I created, the team no longer exists, my last year was really a terrible failure.

So what can I take from this?

It was only one wasted year, and I have a shiny new Education Award to show for it, not to mention a resume full of skills in exchange for this 12 month excursion in to dubiously successful do-good-ery.

One option for me would be to just pass blame. I mean, she did quit. It wasn't my fault. I left a "legacy binder" full of "how - to" manuals about further developing the programs I had inherited, maintaining, developing and even redefining those that I had started, and starting new projects as the agency / community needs and her interest arose.

Alternately I could go in to a fit of flagellatory self blame for the unsustainable programs to which I dedicated a year of my life. Or I could just sort of let go of it and be glad that I am currently in a job where I think that my work WILL have a lasting effect and try to convince myself that my disappointment about my work at Ron Wood isn't that big of a deal. I don't really know.

At Pre Service Orientation in Provo, Utah, oh so, so, so long ago, I vaguely remember one of the sessions we took focused on "letting go" of our projects when we left them. Considering the number of VISTAs who do two terms at the same site, or who are hired on to their sites after their terms end, I think that very few of us took that session too seriously. But I think that the point of the session was to allow us to accept the directions that our programs went when we left them, even if they seemed to be executed through methods other than those which we would have used. I wish I had raised my hand to ask, "So what if our program dies after we leave?"

- posted by Joseph Baruch @ 3:12 PM 0 comments