And more thoughts from the retreat and "Active Hope"

In reading Active Hope this morning, I was reminded of a few other principles from the retreat I would like to implement in class.  It is important in discussing the problems of the world to remember that all is both infinitely hopeful and depressing at the same time.  For instance, present conditions for LGBT folks remain challenging at best and yet we are closer than I ever thought possible in my lifetime to receiving full marriage equality.  Likewise, conditions must be remembered as fluid and not static.  As mentioned in Active Hope, there is no static "this is how it is and will always be" but rather a process of noting where we are now, what we want to create, and what actions we must take in order to do so.  The authors remind that there can be subtle events that trigger massive shifts in the world ("discontinuous change") and also that almost all significant change goes through the process of first being treated as a joke before being considered a threat and finally as "normal" (this is certainly the case for marriage equality).

In addition to having students (especially in Introduction to Sociology) keep notebooks with their daily examples, questions, and reflections on the text readings, I would like to have Intro. and Social Problems students doing weekly, typed reports that incorporate interviews or experiences with the material.


Students would view problems in a step-wise manner and complete the following for each problem studied:

1. What is the present situation according to the text?
2. What would you like to be different?
3. When in the course of history and/or in a different location has it been different (research or interviews here)?
4. What is your role in making the changes you would like to see (think small in terms of life changes, e-mail, etc.)?
5. Choose one of the options you identified in question 4 and make the change.  Make a vow to do the change for a particular period of time as decided during class.  Record your progress, the impact you observed, and share your successes/challenges with others in the class (changes are more easily made with social support!).
6. Summarize the impact of the change and the feedback you received from others in class.  Identify next steps to complete this change (or talk about how you would modify it to be more successful based on feedback) and/or identify your next action step for completion (if you already successfully completed your first action).

Social Problems students would also complete "service learning profiles" of local agencies as done for national/global ones in their text as well as individual/group personal change projects as described above.