Civic Reflection News Update — May 2010

SPOTLIGHT

Environmental Foundation Launches Leadership Program

The Aldo Leopold Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering a land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold, will be using civic reflection in its upcoming Land Ethic Leaders program. The program is designed to go along with the release this fall of the film Green Fire, which re-examines Leopold's life and legacy in the context of 21st-century ecological challenges. The film is being produced by the Aldo Leopold Foundation in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service.

In March, Adam Davis helped Aldo Leopold staff prepare for the launch of the new program by leading a two-day reflective planning and visioning session. He facilitated an in-depth discussion of Frost's "The Most of It" that turned on the question of what we are looking for when we go out in the woods. Adam then consulted with four staff members on developing the Land Ethic Leaders program, identifying possible readings and also addressing basic issues like "What is the change you hope to make in the world with this program?" Aldo Leopold's Communications Coordinator, Jeannine Richards, explains that civic reflection "fit naturally for us because reflection was already part of Leopold's vision." She described the practice of civic reflection as "a really valuable exercise that allows people to talk more about environmental issues, and at a greater level of depth, than usually happens."

The first cohort of Land Ethic Leaders will be trained in mid-June, in a two-day pilot session at the Leopold Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Richards, who will co-lead the training with colleague Jennifer Kobylecky, explains that Land Ethic Leaders grew out of a 2004 program that had communities across Wisconsin hosting events based around Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. The program soon expanded to include other kinds of events—from cooking classes to nature walks—centered on the theme of getting people more engaged with nature and connected to the land. Once trained, the Land Ethic Leaders will be hosting community events of various kinds, depending on their own interests and the needs of their communities. Ultimately, the Foundation plans to train 500 Land Ethic Leaders to run community programs nationwide.

• Learn more about the Land Ethic Leaders program.
• Read the introduction to "The Land Ethic" from A Sand County Almanac in our Resource Library. A link to the full text is included.
• Download a list, with links, of our Resource Library texts on nature and the environment.

NEWS & NOTES

In April the Chicago Cultural Alliance hosted a two-day facilitation training at the Polish Museum of America and the Cambodian American Heritage Museum. Tonya Matthews, Adam Davis and Kelli Covey co-led the training, whose participants included staff from several museums and heritage centers around Chicago. Discussions focused on pairs of poems and images: Langston Hughes' "Theme for English B" was juxtaposed with Gordon Parks' photograph Children with Doll; Rhina Espaillat's "Bilingual/Bilingue" with Jamie Wyeth's painting Kalounna in Frogtown; and Imtiaz Dharker's "They'll say, 'she must be from another country'" with selected images from Kip Fulbeck's The Hapa Project. Fulbeck is an artist whose work addresses multiracial identity. For The Hapa Project, a series of photographic portraits, Fulbeck asked people of mixed race to answer the question "Who are you?" kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa is a temporary exhibit at The Field Museum in downtown Chicago through September 6.

• Check out some great photos from the CCA training.

Adam Davis led an intensive one-day facilitation workshop on May 10 for faculty and staff at the Center for Faith and Vocation at Butler University in Indianapolis. The mission of the Center for Faith and Vocation is to provide a place where students at Butler University can discover lives of purpose, meaning, and contribution (vocation) by using tools of reflection and engaging in spiritual questions. On May 14 the Center's director, Judith Cebula, facilitated a civic reflection discussion of Rumi's "Say Yes Quickly" as part of the final retreat for a year-long faculty/staff workshop on "Faith and the Vocation of Education."

Twenty-two participants gathered in Chicago at the end of April for our second General Facilitation Training of 2010. Columbia College generously donated the use of its Faculty Center at 600 S. Michigan for the third time, and the backdrop of hyacinths, tulips, and an active Buckingham Fountain reminded participants how brave the January participants had been to weather the cold. Adam Davis led the group in an opening discussion of Alden Nowlan's "He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded". (See "NEW RESOURCES," below, for a new discussion guide on Nowlan's poem, which is becoming more and more popular for civic reflection.) In a Thursday afternoon session, participants also discussed an image of a civil rights march (Selma to Montgomery, 1965) alongside Langston Hughes' "Theme for English B". At PCR we've been exploring the use of images as texts, and we welcome the opportunity to help you plan a discussion on an image or film.

• View photos from the training on our Facebook page.
• In the words of a participant: I felt incredibly refocused and rejuvenated after I left the training. To be honest, I participated in this workshop not only to learn how to be a facilitator but for personal reasons as well. It's not often I am in situations where I can participate in thought provoking discussions with like-minded people. It was something I needed to do for myself to reaffirm I am in the right field and in the right path in life.

On April 14th at Columbia College Chicago, Adam Davis, Dimitra Tasiouras of the Illinois Humanities Council, and several other facilitators from a range of community organizations co-led a Critical Encounters book salon focusing on faith, service and difference. Discussions used selections from Hearing the Call across Traditions: Readings on Faith and Service, including Orwell's "Reflections on Gandhi" and Taoist philosopher Chuang-Tzu's "Action and Non-Action." Participants explored the relationship between what they believe and what they feel called to do in the world. The program was co-sponsored by the Project on Civic Reflection, Interfaith Youth Core, Illinois Humanities Council, Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, and Critical Encounters: Fact & Faith.

PCR leaders Elizabeth Lynn and Kelli Covey attended a Kettering Foundation workshop on higher education on March 31. Convened as part of Kettering's Multinational Workshop Week, this conversation brought together researchers from Russia, Brazil, Israel, South Africa, the United States and other countries to present and discuss research on student engagement. Elizabeth and Kelli identified key findings from PCR's recent report "Growing Citizens Inside and Out: How Sustained Group Reflection in the Context of Service can Deepen Civic Identity and Engagement" and engaged in lively discussion with foundation staff and participants on the relationship between the service movement and political engagement on campuses.

The 2010 National Service-Learning Conference, held March 24-27 in San Jose, featured a civic reflection session on the theme of "Talking across Difference." Kelli Covey and Adam Davis led participants—mainly teachers and directors of high school service-learning programs—in a discussion of "Theme for English B", using the opening exercise, When in service have you become aware of yourself as different from those you serve or work with? Kelli and Adam also enjoyed talking with many interested, and interesting, conference-goers at the PCR booth in the exhibition hall. The NSLC is the largest gathering of youth and practitioners engaged in service-learning, drawing 2,500 participants each year from throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Humanities Montana hosted a two-part civic reflection workshop in April. In the first part, civic leaders gathered in Helena to learn about Humanities Montana's Reflect initiative. Dean McGovern talked about how Montana Campus Compact uses civic reflection, and Adam Davis led a discussion of Mary Oliver's "The Buddha's Last Instruction". In the second phase of the workshop, last year's Reflect facilitators re-convened on the theme of "Making It Happen." Participants broke into small groups and shared their experiences with leading discussions and implementing programs. Said Humanities Montana ED Ken Egan, "We're proceeding full steam ahead with arranging Reflect sessions around the state." Associate Director for Programs Kim Anderson noted, "We made some important connections that will result in a number of programs," calling the workshop "both inspirational and practical."

VISTA members from across the country gathered in Indianapolis on March 25th for a civic reflection discussion sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary and led by Ryan Lewis. Participants read "Fellowship" and "Dry Dock" and used the readings to discuss group cohesion and the challenges of beginning capacity-building enterprises with uncertain futures.

Warm congratulations from all of us at PCR to our friends and colleagues at the Illinois Humanities Council, which recently received $350,000 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project "The Meaning of Service: Building the Practice of Humanities-Based Reflection at the Core of Volunteer Service." The Meaning of Service was begun as a pilot program in Chicago in 2003 and later spread to twelve other states through a previous NEH grant. In addition to running its own Meaning of Service programs at sites in Chicago and downstate, the IHC will provide funds to seven other state humanities councils to run reading and conversation programs in their own communities. As we have in the past, PCR will be leading the Meaning of Service facilitation trainings.

• Read the IHC press release on the grant.

UPCOMING TRAININGS

Our next public facilitation training workshop will be held at Columbia College Chicago from noon on Thursday, October 21 through 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 22. Join us for two days of presentations, discussions, networking opportunities and hands-on practice in facilitating civic reflection discussions. Though the registration deadline is not until September 17, don't wait too long—it looks as if this training will fill early.

• Click here for an informational flyer and registration form.

The week of November 2, the Project will be breaking with Chicago tradition and taking our general facilitation trainings West, to sunny California. On November 2-3 we will offer a training at UC Berkeley, and November 3-4 we'll lead a training at the California Campus Compact offices in San Francisco. So save the dates! Registration information will be available soon, on civicreflection.org and in Civic Reflection News Update.

NEW RESOURCES

Our new publication, Talking Giving: Readings for Civic Reflection, contains six popular readings to spur conversation on the complexities and challenges of giving. Readings are designed to tie into core operational activities—like strategic planning or guideline revision—and are accompanied by reflection exercises and discussion questions.

• Order your copy of Talking Giving: Readings for Civic Reflection.

Check out these new resources on civicreflection.org:

• New Humanities Councils page.
• New Clients and Partners page
• Discussion guide on Alden Nowlan's "He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded"

New in the Resource Library

"The Most of It" by Robert Frost.

• What do we expect from nature?
• What does it mean to be alone?
• What is our responsibility to the natural world?

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Breughel the Elder.

• How are we connected to others?
• How do we respond to the suffering of others?
• What is success? What is failure?

Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden.

• How do we respond to the suffering of others?
• Should we try to identify with the people we want to serve?
• What does it mean to be alone?

Our warm thanks to PCR trainer and facilitator Emily Archer of New Hampshire for suggesting the Breughel painting and the Auden poem. She says, "I almost always use them together, but I like to let people encounter the art first, so that they look at it for awhile, see it their way and ask the painting questions. Then they can have some authority as 'gazers' alongside Auden, instead of making his perspective the authority, and thereby ask better questions in general."

Have you come across a new reading or visual text for civic reflection? Share your suggestion with us—we'd love to hear from you.

New in the Facilitators' Forum

• Youth service volunteers use "The Minister's Black Veil" and "The Eleventh" to talk about the difficulty of turning away people who ask for help.
• A first-time facilitator shares the experience of leading public interest interns in a discussion of difference and otherness, using the poem "He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded."
• William Carlos Williams' "The Use of Force" allows a group of community mental health interns to explore the question, How do we reconcile the use of force with the desire to care for and serve?

Facilitator Survey

A heartfelt THANK YOU from all of us at the PCR to the more than 120 facilitators who participated in our follow-up survey in April. We are extremely grateful for the care and thoughtfulness with which the surveys were completed. We are synthesizing the data and will be sharing what we've learned from you about the impact of our trainings.

STAFF NOTES

• Liz Granger, who so ably coordinates the Project's facilitation trainings, will be headed to Uganda in January 2011 for 10 months on a Fulbright research grant from the U.S. Department of State. She will research and write about the impact of donated sanitary napkins on local consumers, NGOs, businesses and landfills.
• Catherine Tufariello, coordinator of communications for the Project, had her poem "Useful Advice" read by Garrison Keillor on his daily radio program The Writer's Almanac on April 19th.