Ed Studies Senior Seminar 2014 Blog

For this week’s blog posts, I’d like for your group to reflect on your work on your project (if you’re in a group of two, you can have one post per group). If you took photos to document your work, I encourage you to post photos (you can create a new blog post if that’s easier). Since I would like for you all to discuss these questions as a group (you will use these answers to plan your presentations), you can have until MONDAY, 5 PM, TO POST YOUR ANSWERS.

Reflection questions (you don’t have to answer all of these questions; these questions are some suggestions/guidelines):

For those of you who planned specific “actions” on campus, how did it go?

How successful was the action based on the criteria that your group developed?

What were you able to accomplish? What were you not?

What were some of the obstacles you faced in planning this action? What were resources you drew on?

If you were to plan an action around your issue in the future, what would you do the same? What would you do differently?

How did your identities as Carleton College students matter in this work?

Some changes and instructions before I get to this week’s questions.

1. Given that some groups are bigger than other groups, I’m going to reduce the required number of INDIVIDUAL posts to FOUR.
2. You should be able to base your group presentations (~10-15 minutes) on the blog posts you have done so far about your projects. Your presentations should address the following:

• Brief description and history of the issue
• Describe one national, state, or local group’s work on this issue.
• Describe what your project entailed, why you chose this particular strategy/action, your intended audience, and how your group defined “success.”
• Describe how your project went.
• What would you do differently the next time based on what you learned from this project and how your project was received by the intended audience?  [Week 8 blog posts will help you answer this question and the previous one.]

QUESTIONS FOR THE WEEKLY POSTS (If your group has already answered question 2, you only need ONE post for this week. Faribault groups should answer Question 1 and also post an update on how their Faribault groups are going.)

1. In Freedom’s Web, Rhoads argues that ideology—including a vision of how one thinks about oneself in relation to the larger society—is crucial in advancing a social movement. He notes that the vision of a socially just society put forth by the various campus activists groups and actions imagined a society where there was equal participation by people of diverse racial, gender, and sexual identities as well as an incorporation of various cultures through organizational life (pp. 227-8). Similarly, many of the groups we have studied in this course and the groups you have researched as part of the final project have implicit or explicit definitions of a socially just society. What is your group’s definition of a socially just society and how does your specific project part of moving towards that vision of a socially just society?
2. If you haven’t done so already in last week’s posts, please describe in as much detail as possible the logistics of your planned project—when, where, what? Please also describe what methods you’ll be using to publicize your event.

DEVELOPING CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING SUCCESS OF PLANNED ACTION

1. We’ve discussed various ways that organizations can define the goals and the “success” of a particular campaign or action. Sometimes there are concrete policy or practice changes that organizations have—for example, PSU organized along with other groups in 2001 to prevent the takeover of the Philadelphia schools by Edison. Other times, it’s about changing discursive practices—for example, FIERCE’s attempts to shift the discourse about queer youth of color as “problems” to legitimate community members who have a right to use public spaces, such as the Christopher Street Pier. It’s a bit harder, of course, to determine success with the latter kind of goals.

For this week’s blog post, your group should come with some measures by which you will judge whether your planned action is successful or not. For example, if you are planning an event where you are hoping to attract members of the Carleton community to participate, how many people would have to come to the event for you to consider it “successful”? [Again, I’m not going to be evaluating you on whether or not your event is successful but I do want you to have a way to evaluate the success of your action so that you can reflect on its success]. Be as specific as possible in coming with your criteria for determining whether your action is successful.

FARIBAULT GROUPS: I’d like for you to come up with some measures of “success” in terms of your interactions with the high school students as well as possibly measures of success generated by the students you’re working with.

2. This answer should be in an email to me. Since we’re about halfway through the term, I would like for one group member to reflect on how well the group has been doing in terms of following the group social contract as laid out by your group at the beginning of the term. Please be specific as possible in describing how you have been following the terms of your contract and what are some difficulties or obstacles you’ve had to face as a group and how you’ve managed to work through those difficulties/obstacles.

REMINDER THAT YOUR GROUP’S ACTION MUST BE COMPLETED BY THE END OF EIGHTH WEEK (NOT APPICABLE TO FARIBAULT GROUPS). ONE OF THE BLOG POSTS FOR NEXT WEEK WILL BE TO PROVIDE LOGISTICAL DETAILS OF THE PLANNED ACTIONS. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT THE SPACE FOR THIS PLANNED ACTION AND WHOSE PERMISSION YOU MIGHT NEED TO USE THAT SPACE. THINK ABOUT OTHER LOGISTICAL DETAILS AS WELL AND LET ME KNOW WHETHER YOU WANT ME TO MAKE COPIES OF FLYERS OR HANDOUTS (UP TO 50 COPIES).

History and media

1. Many of the readings for the course discuss the historical context for the specific campaign or organization that they are examining. For example, McAdam’s (1988) Freedom Summer explores the historical context and contingencies that lead to the development of Freedom Summer as well as the historical context that explains why the summer had the impact that it did on the volunteers and no-shows, as well as on other social movements and the organization (SNCC) itself. Provide some historical context for your project—you can do provide such context in multiple ways: you can describe the historical context in which one of the groups you’ve explored came into being; you can describe how particular terms that are now taken for granted within the field of your issue came into popular use (for example, when did the term “zero tolerance” in the context of school discipline become relevant?); how will the particular project you are planning fit into the history of how the issue has been present or relevant to the Carleton context).
2. McAdam (1988) discusses how the role of the media and the desire to attract media attention shaped fundamentally the design of Freedom Summer. He notes, “The fundamental goal of the project was to focus national attention on Mississippi as a means of forcing federal intervention in the state. For the project to be successful, then, it had to attract national media attention…the SNCC high command [had learned] that nothing attracted the media quite like scenes of white college kids helping ‘the downtrodden Negroes of Mississippi” (p. 39). Explore what role traditional (print newspapers, journals, TV, radio) and new media (internet-based news sites, social media) played in one of the campaigns you have explored so far. How have groups courted media attention and how have they used/exploited media attention to further their cause? OR what role will traditional and new forms of media play in the action that your group is planning?

FAIRBAULT GROUPS: I’d like you to answer the same questions as the rest of the groups as it’s relevant to your projects. If you have a meeting or a further update with your work with Faribault students, an update blog post can substitute for one of the questions.

HISTORY: For example, when did GSAs start to be present in public schools? Was there a particular legislative or historical event that led to the creation of the initial GSAs? What is the discursive history of the term “diversity” and how it is related to terms such as “multiculturalism” or “race” or “difference” [you can think of Kwon’s exploration of the discursive category of ‘youth’ as an example]?

MEDIA: What role have traditional and social media played in how GSAs or diversity clubs have operated? How have these groups been portrayed in the media?

WORKS CITED

Kwon, S. A. (2013). Uncivil youth: Race, activism, and affirmative governmentality. Durham: DukeUniversity Press.

McAdam, D. (1988). Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.

Purpose and goals, target audience, and strategies 

Conner, Zaino, and Scarola (2013) argue that the PSU’s power in shaping the educational policy discourse and practice in Philadelphia comes “from a wide range of strategies, carefully deployed at the right moment with specific targets and goals in mind” (p. 582). Others readings we have done also describe a range of strategies used by youth organizing groups to attempt to change policies and practices.

For this week’s blog posts, answer EITHER questions 1 or 2. Every group should also answer Question 3.

1. Choose one particular action or campaign undertaken by one of the groups you have investigated in the past two weeks. What goals did that particular action or campaign have? What was the action or campaign’s target audience? What strategies of engagement/protest were used? How successful was the action or campaign in reaching the goals?
2. Using the Global Non-violent Action Database, investigate one case study. You can browse by type of action or choose a particular area of the world you are interested in. Discuss briefly the case study, what strategies of “nonviolent action” were used, the target audience, and how successful the action was in achieving the set goals.
3. Describe your group’s goals and purpose and the target audience for your potential action or campaign (e.g. Carleton students, a particular office on campus, Northfield, etc.). Describe possible strategies you might be using and how you hope to achieve your goals through those strategies.

FARIBAULT GROUPS (You can answer questions 1 or 2, and 3.)

1. From your research findings so far about GSAs/diversity clubs, what strategies and actions have these kinds of groups used to achieve their goals? How successful have they been?
2. Using the Global Non-violent Action Database, investigate one case study. You can search by keywords related to your club (for example, “gay rights” and “diversity” seemed to lead to cases of possible interest). Discuss briefly the case study, what strategies of “nonviolent action” were used, the target audience, and how successful the action was in achieving the set goals.
3. Some of your previous posts have touched on this issue, but summarize here the “target audience” for the clubs. Describe what might be resources in the community that students have access to and can utilize, what might be some obstacles, and what might be some possible strategies they can use to achieve their goals [I realize some of this might be very tentative because the Faribault students are still figuring out their goals but you can draw on what you know so far about Faribault’s context as well as similar groups in other locations].

Works cited

Conner, J., Zaino, K., & Scarola, E. (2013). “Very Powerful Voices”: The Influence of Youth Organizing on Educational Policy in Philadelphia. Educational Policy, 27(3), 560-588.