Civic Reflection News Update — September 2008

Civic Reflection News & Notes

New Service-Learning Resource

A great resource for service-learning, a new edition of Talking Service, has just been published by the Great Books Foundation. Edited by Adam Davis and Elizabeth Lynn and produced by the GBF in partnership with the Project on Civic Reflection, Talking Service contains seven short readings selected to spur reflection on the experience of service. In addition to readings by Pablo Neruda, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, the 28-page booklet contains author biographies, reflection exercises, and questions for discussion.

Michigan Campus Compact Leadership Camp

Youth leaders of service-learning programs in colleges and universities throughout Michigan gathered in Augusta on Saturday, September 20, when Michigan Campus Compact held its annual Service Leadership Camp. Civic reflection was among the session topics at this year's camp. Michigan Campus Compact hosts the annual weekend retreat to allow student leaders and advisors to exchange ideas and develop community service plans and goals for the coming academic year.

At the civic reflection session, Project associate Deva Woodly facilitated a discussion of Bertolt Brecht's "A Bed for the Night" with a diverse group of youth leaders. Deva describes the youth leaders as "very open to the process of civic reflection, moving seamlessly between the text and their own lives." One participant—the team leader of a college's "alternative breaks" program—found the issues raised by Brecht's poem especially urgent: she had just returned from a week in Houston, where she led a group of students working with victims of Hurricane Ike. As the students helped displaced residents move into temporary housing, she had found herself asking precisely Brecht's question: "Is it enough to give a bed for the night?" Brecht's poem, says Deva, provided a way for the group "to explore the tension between direct service and system changing."

One Maryland, One Book

This year the Maryland Humanities Council initiated a program to encourage Maryland residents to read and discuss the same book. The selected book serves as a common experience and shared framework for community dialogue. The program, One Maryland One Book, is Maryland's first community reading project. The book selected for this year is A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind. The book tells the story of Cedric Jennings, a gifted and ambitious African American teen who attends one of the worst public high schools in Washington, D.C. As a Wall Street Journal reporter, Suskind followed Jennings through the second half of high school and his first year at Brown University.

Maryland Humanities council staff explained the choice: "This title was selected not only because it offers the opportunity to discuss important and highly relevant topics such as education and socioeconomics, but also because it presents the opportunity to talk about race and race relations in Maryland and in America—a common theme running through the Maryland Humanities Council's programming in 2008." Facilitators in the One Maryland One Book program were trained by the Project on Civic Reflection.

• Read a calendar of events related to One Maryland One Book.

• Read about the Maryland Center for the Book, the MHC program that sponsors One Maryland One Book and other celebrations of books, reading, and writers.

New York Humanities Council Facilitation Training

The Project held a facilitation workshop at the request of the New York Council for the Humanities on July 24-25. Participants included staff of the NYHC and service organizations. NYHC will run six civic reflection series in 2008-2009, up from a single series in 2007-2008.

The Project provides facilitation workshops tailored to the particular needs and interests of state humanities councils. If you are interested in setting up a workshop for your own council, please contact us.

Facilitation Workshop



The Project on Civic Reflection held a general facilitation workshop at The Feltre School in downtown Chicago on September 18-19. Participants from seven states attended the workshop, which introduced the practice of civic reflection through a mixed format of brief presentations, small group discussion, and hands-on practice. The purpose of our facilitation workshops is to prepare people to lead text-based discussions for a broad variety of civic groups and organizations. Among the groups represented at last week's workshop were youth service programs, a state community service commission, an urban hospital's palliative and hospice care department, and a family literacy center.

If you would like to know more about our facilitation workshops, please contact us.

Train-the-Trainer Workshop

In response to the growing demand for facilitation trainings, we have begun training experienced facilitators to lead them. The Project on Civic Reflection held a pilot Train-the-Trainer workshop at The Feltre School in Chicago on August 21-22. The workshop was attended by civic reflection facilitators from around the country who previously attended at least one of our trainings, and who will be leading facilitation workshops with Project support during the coming year.

Participants engaged in civic reflection conversations on texts by Gary Snyder, Howard Nemerov and Charles Chesnutt, and led practice sessions on introducing civic reflection, planning and leading conversations, selecting readings, and providing feedback to facilitators. We are excited to have these master facilitators available to help us meet the increasing need for trainings.

Museum on Main Street

On August 13, Project senior research associate Adam Davis led a civic reflection discussion at a planning meeting in Chicago of Museum on Main Street. Funded by the U.S. Congress, Museum on Main Street joins the Smithsonian, state humanities councils (in this case, the Illinois Humanities Council), and rural museums across America in partnership. The planning meeting was attended by twenty participants from museums throughout Illinois who will be putting together exhibitions on the theme "Journey Stories". Participants discussed two poems on this theme, "Poetry of Departures" by Philip Larkin and "A Journey" by Edward Field. The exhibitions are scheduled to debut in 2009. For Museum on Main St. tour dates and locations in Illinois and other states, click here.

Civic Reflection with RSVP

Santa Rosa Community Service hosted a five-session community discussion series from April through late August at the RSVP Santa Rosa senior center in Milton, Florida. The series, "Straight from the Heart", was supported by a grant from the Florida Humanities Council. Members of Santa Rosa county RSVP met to reflect on their experiences as volunteers, organizers, and community leaders. Among the texts they used as launching points for conversation were "Learning to Love America" by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, "In the Basement of the Goodwill Store" by Ted Kooser, "A More Perfect Union" by Barack Obama, and "The Bean Eaters" by Gwendolyn Brooks. Conversation was facilitated by Gregory Tomso, professor of American literature and culture at the University of Western Florida.

Brenda Roland, executive director of RSVP Santa Rosa, expressed her gratitude to Susan Lockwood of the Florida Humanities Council: "I would like to say I have never experienced a project like this before…I was told by the group it was the best thing we could have done for them. It really enhanced the meaning of volunteerism." RSVP volunteers expressed a desire to continue with the program, and another series is planned for the spring of 2009.

See a complete list of readings from the program here.

Social Work, Reflective Practice at the University of Chicago

Project senior research associate Adam Davis will be leading two civic reflection workshops in October at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. "Social Work, Reflective Practice: An Introduction to Civic Reflection" will be held on Friday, October 17 from 9:00 a.m. to noon in Hyde Park. A follow-up workshop, "Facilitating Civic Reflection," will take place on Friday, October 31 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The registration deadline is October 8.

For more information about these workshops, click here and scroll down.

Staff News

The Project on Civic Reflection is delighted to welcome our newest staff member, Kelli Covey, who joined us in mid-August as Director of Programs and Development. Her previous position was as senior development officer at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a statewide coalition of over 100 member organizations representing Latino, Asian, Arab, Muslim, Eastern European, and African immigrants. Kelli brings to the Project a wealth of experience in the nonprofit world and an abundance of energy and creativity. Welcome, Kelli!

Spotlight

Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership in Northeast Florida

Since June the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida has been holding a five-part civic reflection series on Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership, with a focus on supporting the "Next Generation" of nonprofit leaders. The Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida was launched in 2002 to support the local nonprofit community "by equipping nonprofit leadership, facilitating collective action, and enhancing public understanding" of the nonprofit sector. This is the fourth Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership series that the center has held in Jacksonville, with funding from the Florida Humanities Council. The program has since been replicated nationally.

Using readings from The Civically Engaged Reader by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jane Addams, Ursula K. LeGuin and others, twenty young leaders in the nonprofit community have been meeting for conversation around such questions as Why do we do this work? Does it matter whether we can prove we are doing good? Are we leaders of something larger than our own organizations? Most participants are presidents or executive directors of nonprofits in the Jacksonville area. Conversations are co-facilitated by Linda Howell, a humanities scholar and teacher of English at the University of North Florida, and Rena Coughlin, President and CEO of the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida and an experienced civic reflection facilitator.

In ongoing evaluations, participants have given the quality of the sessions an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. Wrote one participant, "Incredibly different views! I really like that everyone comes from a different background." Another said, "I love the open debate and conversation—what a great way to engage and connect us as young leaders!"

According to its overview of the Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership program, during the past five years the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida has found civic reflection to be "a powerful mechanism for uplifting the important work of nonprofit leaders, strengthening relationships among these leaders, and deepening individual and shared understanding of the nonprofit sector in a democratic society."

New on Our Website

… in the Resource Library

Looking for a new reading for civic reflection? Here are a few recent additions to our library you might try.

• "I'm Explaining a Few Things" by Pablo Neruda. The Chilean poet responds to the violence of the Spanish Civil War. The link in this reading's overview is an English translation of the poem side-by-side with the original Spanish.

• Close Encounters of the Human Kind by Abraham Verghese. A doctor reflects on his work with victims of Hurricane Katrina.

• What Happened During the Ice Storm by Jim Heynen. In this very short, lyrical story, a group of boys must decide whether to respond to helplessness with violence or compassion.

• The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges. One of Borges' most famous stories, narrated by a World War I spy, centers on two secrets—one the spy holds and one he hopes to unravel. For a hypertext version of the story, click here.

Have you come across a good reading for civic reflection? Please tell us about it!

… in the Facilitators' Forum

• "Self-Reliance" (excerpt) by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nonprofit board members wrestle with Emerson's provocative views on charitable giving.

• II Samuel (excerpt). This selection from the story of King David launches a group of social services volunteers in a discussion of how leaders should respond to injustice.

• "The Wife of His Youth" by Charles Chesnutt. Nonprofit staff members and facilitators use Chesnutt's story to talk about the value and most effective uses of civic reflection.

Have you led a civic reflection discussion lately? Please share your experience with us!