Civic Reflection News Update — February 2009

News & Notes

Civic Reflection with Nevada Volunteers

More and more, state service commissions are discovering the value of civic reflection for their staff and constituents. At the request of Nevada Volunteers, formerly the Nevada Commission for National and Community Service, Project on Civic Reflection trainer Ryan Lewis led a facilitation training workshop for AmeriCorps program directors, independent scholars, and Nevada Volunteers staff on January 16 in Reno. After an opening discussion of Pablo Neruda's "The Lamb and the Pinecone", members of the group practiced leading discussions of Henri Barbusse's "The Eleventh" and two poems, Gary Snyder's "Axe Handles," and Julia Kasdorf's "What I Learned from My Mother". Said one participant, "I forgot how much I enjoy discussing literature… [The training] reminded me how much I've been caught up in the day-to-day practicalities of my profession. Participating in the practice is a good chance to feed the soul and get some hands-on practice with the PCR method, which allows for a different and more nuanced conversation."

The training was supported with funding from the Nevada Humanities Council and attended by Christina Barr, the council's new executive director. "Though we packed a ton of work into a single day, we made a lot of progress," says Ryan. "The participants were eager and able, and spent a good amount of time wrestling with how best to utilize the practice for their diverse constituencies—corporate volunteers, AmeriCorps members, and at-risk youth engaged in community building."

New Resources for MLK Day and Inauguration Day

The New York Council for the Humanities launched a new Community Conversation initiative to encourage discussions about Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 19th) and Inauguration Day (January 20th). The Project on Civic Reflection provided resources for the initiative's webpage, which includes links to the texts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's "The Drum Major Instinct," President Obama's inaugural address, and Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Praise Song for the Day," along with discussion questions and tips for organizing a community conversation.

Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address" has been used to launch many civic reflection discussions over the years. We think the speech on race that Obama gave during the primary season last year, "A More Perfect Union", and Lincoln's address would complement each other effectively, either as paired readings in a single conversation or as separate conversations in a series focused on leadership or race.

For further thoughts on the relationship between Presidents Lincoln and Obama, see this Inauguration Day post on Valparaiso University English professor Ed Byrne's blog, One Poet's Notes. Byrne recounts a visit that Obama made to the Lincoln Memorial, where the text of Lincoln's speech is etched. Included are a photograph of Lincoln making his address and reproductions of the manuscript pages.

Chicago Facilitation Training and Train-the-Trainer

What do a Chicago Public Schools teacher, a physician who directs a hospital's palliative care service, members of the Interfaith Youth Core, the leader of an advocacy group for immigrant rights, the director of a college service-learning program, AmeriCorps members, and staff of the Guam Humanities Council have in common?

All participated in the Project on Civic Reflection's facilitation training workshop at The Feltre School in downtown Chicago on January 29-30. These training workshops, begun in January 2006, have always featured participants from various fields. But director Elizabeth Lynn, who co-led the workshop with Adam Davis, describes this group as "extraordinarily diverse" in their knowledge, skills and experience. The Guam Humanities Council members are interested in using civic reflection in a "We the People" initiative to open conversation on military expansion in Guam.

Members of the group co-facilitated civic reflection discussions of Rumi's poem "Say Yes Quickly", Jane Addams' essay "Earliest Impressions", Julia Kasdorf's poem "What I Learned from My Mother", and Toni Cade Bambara's story "The Lesson". They also participated in plenary sessions on leading and planning conversations and selecting readings. The workshop concluded with a debriefing session, followed by participants sharing their plans for using civic reflection in their work.

The training workshop was preceded by a pre-workshop Train-the-Trainer meeting, attended by experienced facilitators who "shadowed" the lead trainers during the workshop. We are pleased to have more and more trainers available to help us spread the practice of civic reflection.

Recommended Readings for Community Organizers

One of our trainers, Jerry Clarito of AFIRE (Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment), recently told us that Bambara's "The Lesson" worked particularly well with a group of community organizers. Like the teacher in Bambara's story, the organizer, coming in from outside, is trying to teach community residents that they are victims of injustice. Bambara's rich and complex portrayal of the children's relationship with Miss Moore helped to illuminate the challenges and potential pitfalls of the organizers' work.

Adam Davis also led a discussion recently with community organizers, using Rhina Espaillat's poem "Bilingual/Bilingüe". The theme of the conversation was division or separation and wholeness. Adam felt that the poem, which he used for the first time, sparked a lively exchange of ideas.

If you've discovered a reading that raises particularly fruitful themes and questions for your group, please let us know and we'll spread the word.

New Meaning of Service Evaluations from New York State

We just received a digest of mid-point feedback from AmeriCorps Project Directors in New York State who are participating in the Meaning of Service, a national reading and discussion program for AmeriCorps members. Available to any New York State AmeriCorps program free of charge through the New York Council for the Humanities, Meaning of Service is currently running at six sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Albany, Rochester and Westchester. This is what project directors had to say about the benefits of Meaning of Service:

To participants:

• I feel that they are gaining valuable communication and critical thinking skills which will aid them far beyond their term of service.
• (Meaning of Service) has helped them develop relationships with each other . . . They have drawn on these relationships outside their Meaning of Service sessions to help strengthen their service experience and address challenges.
• The readings have sparked discussion among our Members in ways that are different from any prior program year. The formal structure of the sessions has been helpful in framing the discussion and in engaging all participants to contribute. With communication and public speaking such important growth areas for members, the discussions contribute to the development of both objectives nicely.

To their programs:

• The readings and discussions broaden the horizons of Corpsmembers, which in turn positively impacts the program as a whole.
• The sessions also help develop relationships among members that can be useful in advancing service objectives among sites. As a Corps, it's important for strong relationships to be developed among members for service to be best accomplished.
• "The impact is tremendous, and it is positive. The Meaning of Service readings and discussions help the members become better citizens. They learn how to be a responsible member of society and to provide effective and meaningful service. For the program, it means that more members stay to the end of their year of service and earn their educational award. The retention rate goes up.

To themselves:

• Meaning of Service is very valuable because I want to know the thoughts and opinions of my members…I want to understand their experience so that I can aid them in getting the most out of their time with the AmeriCorps program.
• [Meaning of Service] gives me a chance to work through facilitation strategies that I enjoy, which is a large part of what AmeriCorps facilitation is all about.
• I greatly value the way in which the program allows me to better understand how my members think, and what they find challenging and meaningful about their service which in turn strengthens my ability to provide them with training, guidance and support.

Meaning of Service is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and administered by the Illinois Humanities Council, which piloted the program and spread it to thirteen state partners nationwide.

City Year Staff and Senior Corps Discuss Leadership

As part of a mid-year retreat for City Year Chicago Program Staff and Senior Corps members, Adam Davis led a civic reflection discussion of Franz Kafka's "The Helmsman" that focused on the theme of leadership. As an opening exercise, he asked participants to reflect on a time when they were part of a group that wasn't being led well, and then of a time when they were part of a group with effective leadership. During the whole-group discussion, participants talked about whether they ask themselves the question that Kafka's narrator asks at the start—"Am I the helmsman?"—and whether doing so is a good thing. Adam rounded off the conversation with a two-minute reflection, asking participants to write down questions about their own leadership as they move into the second half of the year.

The discussion at the mid-year retreat was the fourth in a five-part series that concluded on February 4, when an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Civil War memoir, Specimen Days, provided context for a conversation about how external pressures—specifically, economic pressures—impact the capacity of City Year to achieve its goals. Participants explored the parallels between their own challenges doing service in trying economic times and, in Adam's words, "Whitman's bedside presence and his status as a kind of filter between money-givers and suffering soldiers."

In evaluating the series, a participant wrote, "I really benefited from hearing from the members of our team on issues other than regular departmental reports… We have taken a part of what would have been boring staff meetings to engage in a deeper, more meaningful conversation."

Spotlight

Campus Compact New England Pilot Initiative

Campus Compact, a national coalition of college and university presidents, was founded in 1985 with four member institutions. Since then, Campus Compact has grown to nearly 1,200 members, comprising almost a quarter of all public institutions and reaching over 6 million students.

As the first phase of a pilot initiative with Campus Compact New England, the Project on Civic Reflection conducted a facilitation training workshop on January 5-6 at the offices of Campus Compact for New Hampshire in Concord, NH. The training was co-led by Elizabeth Lynn and Georgina Dodge, assistant vice provost of the Office of Minority Affairs at Ohio State University. It was attended by 24 faculty and staff from a wide array of colleges and universities that belong to Campus Compact in New England and Pennsylvania.

Participants attended presentations, engaged in civic reflection discussions and debriefs, practiced facilitating, and shared their plans for using civic reflection at their member institutions. Among the readings used to spark discussion were Ursula K. LeGuin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", Adam Davis's essay "What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Service", and "The Boy without a Flag" by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.

"Working as both participant and facilitator gave me a sense of being on both sides of the process," one participant said. "I think that the experience will help me identify or address the challenges of getting to know [my] group." Participants exchanged many different ideas for applying what they had learned. Among the plans they shared were using civic reflection in courses on service and citizenship, with AmeriCorps and VISTA alumni, with a women's reading group in a prison, with Campus Compact boards of trustees, with faculty and staff members in service-learning programs, and with the general public.

The pilot initiative, developed by the Project on Civic Reflection, in partnership with the New England and Pennsylvania Campus Compacts and supported by the Kettering Foundation, is designed to test out the practice of civic reflection with students, faculty, staff and other constituencies in higher education. The initiative will explore the various uses of civic reflection in post-secondary education, to gain insight into student understandings of citizenship, service and democracy, and ultimately to inform the larger national conversation about civic engagement.

New on Our Website

… in the Resource Library

• In Yosuf Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It", suggested by a visitor to our site, a veteran visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In the poem, how does this public memorial both unite and divide the visitors reading the names of the American soldiers who died in Vietnam? We think that Komunyakaa's poem would make an interesting pairing with a perennial favorite for civic reflection, "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost.

• The latest addition to our library is by Elizabeth Alexander, who read another of her poems, "Praise Song for the Day", at President Obama's inauguration. In "Race", a man and his siblings look similar but identify as different races. Alexander explores the paradoxes of race in America and its role in the formation of identity. The poem takes up some of the same themes as Toni Morrison's story "Recitatif".

… in the Facilitators' Forum

• Social services volunteers discuss Anna Akhmatova's poem "If All Who Have Begged for Help" and share their experiences with asking and being asked for help. "What kind of strength," asks the facilitator, "does it take to beg for help? In what appears to be obvious weakness, is there something to admire?"

• For a discussion with youth service volunteers, a facilitator pairs Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Lovers of the Poor" and Sogyal Rinpoche's "Compassion: The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel" to delve into the theme of motivation in service. Do motives for service matter, and if so, how?

• Henri Barbusse's story "The Eleventh" leads AmeriCorps members to talk about how they deal with the limits of their service. What happens when we cannot help someone who requests our service?

Have you led a civic reflection discussion recently? Please share your experiences with us!

How We Can Help

• Want to implement a civic reflection program?
• Need an expert facilitator to run your discussion?
• Need help selecting readings or ideas for a specific audience?
• Need training support or consultation?
• Have ideas for civic refection but don't know how to get started?
  
  We can help. Contact Beth Marco, Project Coordinator at the Project on Civic Reflection to learn how we can work with you to make your ideas a reality. You can email Beth at beth.marco@valpo.edu or call 312-750-1760 for more information. You can also contact us at civic.reflection@valpo.edu.