Counselor advocacy helps others and ourselves

Professional counselors might accept a larger advocacy role in representing clients’ interests on public policy initiatives with enthusiasm.  Benefits can accrue not only to individuals but also to families, schools, neighborhoods, and the workplace. Counselors can promote stigma reduction, improve health care outcomes, shape healthier institutions, and enjoy a sense of joint purpose with likeminded professionals. In addition, reaching out actively can help counselors themselves live more meaningful lives.

Stigma reduction has far to go. Some mental health consumers – high profile celebrities or otherwise – take risks when sharing their personal stories. Counselors might do more to help demystify mental health issues and treatment, demonstrate listening and coaching skills in public forums. They can advocate to reduce fears and prejudices about mental illness further. It should not take tragedies to get mental health promotion in the popular consciousness. Therapy can work and transform lives. The stigma of seeking counseling can be further reduced, and its benefits more clearly explained. With greater awareness, legislators and others may then draft more comprehensive policies better able to serve all.

Health of mind and body are integrated. Sadly, statistics have shown that the lives of those with schizophrenia and other emotional conditions are often shortened. Some clients lack medical help or self-care -- or may be underemployed or unemployed. Many could benefit from a team-approach to treatment for emotional and physical problems. President Obama’s call for greater access to health care can prompt counselors to join forces with legislators, administrators, insurers, and the public to create programs and policies supporting disease prevention, not just treatment. By speaking up within the community, writing op-eds, and being visible, counselors can stimulate a healthier society -- head to toe -- across the lifespan.

Interdisciplinary training of counselors positions the profession well to work within cities, counties, states, the nation, and the global community for wise stewardship of public funds. Active within schools, law enforcement, and government, counselors can speak to the power of communication, pro-social behavior, and dimensions of emotional intelligence. Good policies need clear vision. There is relevant research about how to reduce crime and recidivism and build bridges between generations. Elders, mature adults, teens, and children can blossom with healthier agencies and institutions; fiscal diligence plus counselor creativity can, together, yield sound policies.

Counselors working shoulder-to-shoulder on advocacy with peers in social work, medicine, nursing, psychology, and psychiatry can bring down walls of misunderstanding among the professions and build powerful common ground. Though professional learning or career trajectories may differ, shared values in the public good can prevail. Counselor advocacy can promote collegiality.

What difference can one voice make? That voice might encourage others to speak up. Trained advocates for personal change, counselors can espouse ethical and inspired policies. They can take on advocacy roles to infuse the profession with a new sense of collective purpose along with a deepened source of personal meaning. In helping others, counselors ultimately help themselves and those who will follow.

#etmooc Reflections on IHE Intellectual Affairs "Before the E-Text"

"...squiggles into meaning..." is a lovely phrase in Scott McLemee’s thoughtful Intellectual Affairs contribution to Inside Higher Ed on 1/23/13.

It’s at the end of paragraph four – for you rapid skimmers out there! The phrase perfectly describes how I wanted to write even before I knew how. School papers of my older siblings were strewn around the oak dining room table, our collective desk, and I wanted to decode and create that wavelike motion. I was likewise bonded to books, like glue. A family story has me bursting into tears as a neighbor attempted to take her book back home.

Early today, I read a student's essay describing how he wanted to create a book even before he was able to read much.

All our tools – past, present, and future -- for capturing meaning are intriguing. What we feel wonder for is very important. But we shouldn’t always give away the “old” hammer for the old one. My dad had some great tools in the basement. I learned early that there’s power in the old tools, too.

Our danger as a digital-hooked-culture is losing something gained rather than adding tools on. One can lose the rapidity, immediacy, and self-expressive capability of cursive writing, for example…despite real struggles those of us who remember learning it with some pains despite our desire. Fewer than one third of my current students opt to write in cursive; their challenge to read it, too, reminds me of my struggle to read what-I-called Gothic script of my European forbears. Will my script marginalia to them be unread? I can’t risk that. I suspect that soon only one or two will be able to write cursive at all.

Andrew Piper's Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (University of Chicago Press) sounds worthwhile, as McLemee described it. (And wow: the reviews.)

Since toddlerhood, I have been hooked on the sensory/emotional/intellectual experience of books. I keep stuffing/packing them wherever they fit, not as disciplined as McLemee in dusting and arranging them and even turning the shelves. I just figured they'd bend and buckle indefinitely.
They must support all that comes back when I handle the books. "This one! I remember when I bought it!” “That one: Used the first time I taught freshman comp!" "That one! Lifted my spirits at a difficult time...."

Today’s "engagement with text" takes many forms; I'm thrilled to access text on a phone ... quite some time after others got that magical power. Technology drives the culture, and it does feel like magic. That’s the part I think we might strive to note, balance, straddle, control. Each day I wake up behind (in my eyes? in your eyes?) even as I try to advance.

In #etmooc I have felt profoundly overloaded. Everyone I access seems exhilarated and really into the groove (old slang). I asked a MOOC "dropout" question on Twitter and learned there is no such thing! So there's the joy that participants (well, those I click on) are feeling. And their quickness at pressing buttons (after all...it's educational technology...which I do use, but perhaps with a steeper initial learning curve).

I do want to grasp it all  in a course -- not just a segment of the sky through the window. Of course that vastness is impossible to grasp. I know that as a counseling student now, as a writing teacher, as a lifelong student. The context of the whole is impossible.

To help me span the then of the old tools and the now of the new ones: I have taken to keeping paper near the computer so I can write a bit by hand and use those muscles…just as I keep the phone near a book in case I want to stop to text a friend, preferably about the book – but maybe not, maybe just to say hello. Few people in my age group text at all. What will today's teens be doing to connect with others in their 50s? I wonder.

Favorite #etmooc mooc jokes



Teaching community memoir writing

 I was reading that now is already a good time to show some evidence of  #etmooc learning. I'm afraid to reveal how far behind I am. With the beginning of the semester teaching and taking classes ... on ground ... and then wrenching my neck and back: I'm swamped. In some ways, I'm such a private learner. I'm reminded of the trouble I had learning to swim. For some reason, in my once-thin body, I could not float. And all the others in the class were reveling in the deep end, having so much fun in the pool! And the
teacher, more or less, gave up on me.
I learn through asking questions and making silent connections in my head.

And when all else fails, I wrap my mind around humor. That does loosen some of my knots, and I've noticed that it helps students, too.


Q. Why did the blogger cross the road?



A. Because his server crashed and he had to make a friend fast!



Q. How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?



A. What’s a light bulb?



A blog, a wiki, and a hashtag walk into a nightclub. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” asked the chat. (I have no snappy comeback.)



If a blog is created in the blogosphere and is removed by its owner, does it make a sound?



Two trolls met on the information highway. They took out their thumbs and began to duel violently. This sad tale ends when they both suffered tendonitis and had to stop.



For more, see my confessions of a digital immigrant at Inside Higher Ed, 16 December 2008, "Sighing in Cyberspace." Or, if you are divided on the issue, consider reading, "Thumbs Up for a Balanced Life, " 21 October 2011. Or even the meditation, "Netiquette, Shmetiquette" published 13 April 2012.


Comments?

Who am I? Hello etmooc and others ...

http://www.insidehighered.com/career-advice/kinder-campus

You can get a half-way recognizable picture of me if you click on the above. You will also learn about some topics I am passionate about.

If you get any ideas for future columns by skimming or reading, please share with me!

I make mistakes when I take a course; that is worrisome. Read about the "sprite" of technology here:

http://wordsanctuaryrevisited.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=10

Enjoy.

Professional Practices in Online Education

Session #794 at #MLA13 on Sunday, January 6 (2013) in Boston was exciting for me for many reasons, not the least of which was serving as a respondent on an academic panel on a hot and timely topic: Professional Practices in Online Education. It was among the last panels in a whirlwind of great events, and I hope it went well in the eyes of those who attended. You can offer your views at www.mla.org, by the way, of this panel or any others. I was very grateful for the panelists and attendees, particularly those who stayed afterwards to share their thoughts. The discussion spilled over into coffee at Starbucks for a few of us.

Thank you, Sandra Baringer of the University of California, Riverside, for coordinating and planning --and a tip of the hat to the Modern Language Association's CLIP (Contingent Labor in the Profession) committee for hosting it.

Here are my remarks with a few likely editorial changes, as the introduction and conclusion were written ahead of time and the rest was reconstructed from notes and memory.

Online teaching offers promise and peril, as our panelists have so well described. On the one hand, there is freedom from the constraints of classes gathered in a particular time and place. On the other hand, there is the possible loss of academic freedom and that delightful thing I call chemistry, which we can experience in real time, problems and all.

In a Dec. 21, 2012 article by Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed, online learning pioneer Ann Kirschner was quoted as using the word “magical” as a common occurrence in the face-to-face classroom. And as I like to play with words, perhaps education can become e-ducation too, with the right magic.

Adding to the ambiguity of a brave new e-world is the role of the teacher. What is an online teacher? Merely a mechanic offering a quick skills-fix, as Batya Weinbaum suggested…or an intellectual traversing new ground as Cynthia Eaton and Joshua Fenton described…or in Aaron Plasek’s darker envisioning: a mere servant of sinister, mouse-pushing administrators? I wonder about it all.

And wonder is a start. And curiosity. Curiosity led feminist literary scholar, dean emerita and former MLA leader Catharine Stimpson to “become” a Phoenix for a time. Stimpson affirms in that same IHE article that teaching requires "dignity." We don't want to risk losing that.

So dignity was a word that reverberated as I listened to these papers. And creativity. And parity. And peril$, with a dollar sign struck through that final S.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the sixth and seventh letters of the word “humanities” are “I.T.” And it is part of our mission as scholars and educators to make sure that the unique human needs and strengths (of both student and teacher) are not lost under the many demands of it.

Let me move from last to first panelist in summarizing.

“Academic” and “freedom” should not be at separate ends of a continuum, as Aaron warned in his “hypothetical villain administrator.” My colleague Mike Piero gave me permission to quote from an email in which he shared that the online world “embodies the same problem of academic freedom that every adjunct faces when teaching with a semester-to-semester contract, the only difference being that web-based courses leave ‘the evidence’ of the so-called ‘offensive’ material…[T]he humanities, in particular, should guard against this kind of conservatism and extremism.” Aaron first offered the word “complacent” and then “silent” to describe adjunct faculty facing online demands. I will add a word: “stunned.” Aaron said he could ad lib if he tired of reading his paper here; that is a liberty not given to online teachers. Can moments of such flexibility be woven in? Isn’t the creative ad lib a time when we learn, too?

Cynthia, with two decades of online and onground experience, has created an impressive website that I looked at over the weekend, and I encourage you to do so. Ten contract dimensions are clearly delineated, and whether or not your institution is unionized, these dimensions are worth examining. I’ll read them again: Methods of delivery? Intellectual property ownership? Compensation? Course development? Class size? Course assignment? Training and technical support? Online office hours? Privacy and surveillance? Course observation and evaluation? These areas are all so important … and can be formulated as questions to ask ourselves and our institutions. The word that echoes again is “parity” and from Cynthia’s comments I also value the wonderful suggestion of peer mentors for distant educators – for best practices, for guidance. “Both FT and PT faculty and [if applicable] their unions need to carefully monitor the spread of MOOCs, interrogate their effectiveness carefully, and resist efforts at displacing faculty with technology,” Cynthia advised.

Josh’s intricate paper of a “pilot project” – anecdotal, yes, but we learn from creative risks like this – took place at UCR, University of California, Riverside. I’m struck by the letters in common of UCR and the word “uncertainty.” There is a lot of uncertainty in this new form of education. Is hybrid better? It certainly isn’t less complicated, from Josh’s detailed description. Intricate technological interface, intricate planning – all so important. And it’s crucial that institutions make the requisite investment in faculty training, not just covering technical costs. Josh said: “Watch out for a techno-fantasy of cyborg subjectivity in learning, where information is accessed from a database and ‘stored on human minds.’” I wish I had a model of the brain in here! Learning takes place in creating new, delicate connections between neurons! It’s not a linear process! The fantasy that just developing a course and having students follow it without emotional engagement and somehow that yields learning is just that, a fantasy. Learning is magical and multifaceted. It is multisensory and involves our whole body and brain. Let’s hope that online learning movements do not forget that.

Batya lives the life of a “true interdisciplinary scholar”; she is a creative person who “lives a life of passionate engagement.” I first wrote down that creative people are especially hamstrung by rigid policies but reconsidered: All people are hindered by such policies despite our need for some routine. Teaching is an art, and outreach to a worldwide audience for someone with global consciousness is great. My thought upon hearing Batya speak: We should use what teachers have to give. She describes the downside of e-ducation: “I have a white space that used to be my mind…” That shouldn’t have to happen. Yes, there is often a discrepancy between educational theory and practice; there is the potential of an online brave new e-world and its peril. If something is not working for students online and there is a lock-step curriculum in place, she may feel stuck whereas in her own classroom, she would change what wasn't working and adapt to suit the students in each situation.

In conclusion: If we can keep online teaching human, if we can keep it fair, if we can compensate it adequately, foster creativity, and not erode further the tenuous working conditions of adjuncts, online education may offer the potential to keep the ripples of knowledge reverberating ever outward and that rare gift, wisdom, swirling inward.


Revised 1/10/13

Post-Election Stress Disorder

Have you made it through this election cycle? Almost? Well, start early on your self care. Now is the time to take a break from federal dollars stretching into 18 digits and local problems that could keep even the soundest sleeper up all night. There is a very good reason why calculators stop where they do and our bodies are programmed for breaks every 24 hours. Catch the warning signs of Post Election Stress Disorder.

1. Adrenalin Surplus.

If the music they play on campaign ads is running through your head during the day, stop watching TV or YouTube campaign spots immediately. That suggests adrenalin-surplus, which can lead to adrenal drain, blockage, even backlog. There is no plumber or therapist (and their costs are about the same) who can rescue you if you don’t stop now to address these serious symptoms.

Rx: Play any other music – even tunes to children’s shows. Calm down.

2. Blog Fog.

What were “they” thinking when the internet became a reality? Any freshman English teacher could have warned that reading page after page after page of hastily-written, uneven prose induces bodily fatigue, eye strain, cognitive overload, and all-around stress. And the words blog and fog rhyme. Coincidence? I think not.

Rx: If your thinking grows foggy from too much that is soggy and bloggy, curl up with a 19th century novel. Human nature is there, intact, and it won’t obstruct your writing style (too much).

3. Civility Insufficiency.

If you are weary of hearing political commentary in the workplace, you may be deficient on your necessary daily dose of Civility. You don’t want that person over in the next cubicle, let’s say to the left, have his candidate elected to public office, but you also don’t want the preferred candidate of that person over the next cubicle, let’s say to the right, elected, considering what she said …. (If you don’t like my directions: Invert them. I’ve always had difficulty distinguishing left from right anyway.)

Rx: It’s time to take down cubicles, sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya. All must agree on something – and use civil language -- before heading to lunch.

4. Dysvotia.

If you are becoming cynical and feel yourself thinking: “what’s the point?” or even considering not casting a ballot at all, recognize these as danger signs of encroaching dysvotia. Like dyslexia and dysthymia, there is help. And yes: There is a point to it all.

Rx: Back to basics. Read the Constitution.

5, Jousting Fantasies.

You’re thinking: “Maria, surely you jest. You can’t mean that candidates should joust instead of talk?” That is what I propose. Tired of warmed-over bromides, platitudes, outtakes from stump speeches? Even the word “stump” suggests something cut off, not viable …

Rx: Joust away. If that’s too active, envision something tamer. A spelling bee, perhaps. Just choose words that are really hard for the candidates.

6. Kids-r-them.

If your stress is high observing candidate families, imagine your own kids in a high-stakes election. Would they pout? Contradict you? Embarrass themselves? Text without stopping? Maybe our obsession with candidates’ kids is their ideal personae. Maybe it’s the relief that our own kids have been spared the ordeal of scrutiny.

Rx: There is something redemptive about our ability to have hope for the next generation. Hold on to that.

Money Cravings.

Full disclosure: I have not enjoyed handling money since the sunny days of childhood when I played Monopoly, with crisp, colorful money in neat stacks with rubber bands. Everything since then has been gritty, hard to get, easy to lose. Money worries don’t cease for most during an election.

Rx: Try a new game. Divide estimated two billion spent on presidential election alone. Share with every man, woman, and child so all can buy a book on logical fallacies to study thoroughly before the next election.

Neutrectomy.

You are very weary because you pretend to be neutral so you don’t have to go head-to-head with your decidely partisan friend, co-worker, colleague, and so on. You may wonder as your pulse races and your hands get clammy, if you can maintain this stance in the final days of the election.

Rx: Do maintain classic Carl Rogers or Bob Newhart stance with nod and “tell me more.” Just add a powerful visualization: “My fingers are in my ears and I can’t hear you!”

Shredder.

Campaign mail stacking up? Heal, don’t hoard.

Rx: Get shredder for last-minute promotional material blitz. No funds to buy one? Organize a shredding party.

ZZZZ.

You know what that critical Vitamin Z is. a universal need. Catch some if you have been up too late, deciding. It’s the best way to circumvent Post Election Stress Disorder.

A Music Meditation

Birds dart about outside on this cloudy day, finding spots to rest on stretching power lines. In a burst of energy, they take off, then descend again quickly and make a new pattern. It seems an improvisation. The white sky contrasts with their dark shapes, reminding me of a musical score. Though I do not know the precise language of birds, I sense in their songs a lasting connection.

Inside, my house is also filled with music. My teenage son composes and plays violin. My husband enjoys CDs of jazz, blues, and country. My mother calls to share a few bars of another remembered German folk song. As her eyesight fails, her hearing and memory blossoms.

I put on my headset, for silence; I listen for rhythms within.

Whether a private song or a symphony in a concert hall, music has nourished my family of disparate backgrounds. I sometimes wonder if in the spaces between notes is also the key toward greater harmony for the world.

My mother sang with Catholic youth groups on hikes in Europe before World War II. My father, Jewish, was interred in the Lodz ghetto and later in a concentration camp. Recently I learned that songs of resilience and unlikely hope were sung in the ghetto. My parents met after the war and loved, among other things, music. Both had fine singing voices and found in music a penetrating power.

My son is growing up in a world that is both beautiful and marred by violence. Through his own example, he has shown me again that music helps us heal. When he was a premature bundle in late 1992, it was a long time before I thought of music.

On Christmas eve that year, my son was the smallest, frailest-looking child in the nursery, struggling with severe jaundice. "He has such a small mouth," a nurse said to me, and added quickly when she saw me start to panic: "My son had a mouth like that." Though carols echoed on the hospital radio. I had never heard them in a sad context before.

Just one year later, things shifted. My son was stronger; I had switched to a teaching career from a demanding public relations job. I discovered that the ups and downs of childhood and creativity go hand in hand—and that includes the parent’s creative process. There must be time to listen, to wait, to notice, to grow.

My son loved music boxes that we would wind up to entertain him—and keep him from squirming--when we changed his diapers. My engagement and wedding rings disappeared for a time. I found them months after I stopped looking. They were both tucked away safely, sidewise, in a favorite music box.

One day while cooking, I was puzzled to hear gentle notes being fingered on the piano. Could someone have broken into the house? Only my son—about eighteen months old--and I were at home. Entering the living room, I saw that he had gotten out of the playpen, pulled himself up and was playing the piano with his right hand.

The routine I had established--of putting him in the playpen so I could play--had created in him the irresistable urge to escape.

A few years later, a toy piano I gave him provided entertainment on car rides. And soon, he would start private lessons on piano and enjoy music at school.

My son now plays a violin that belonged to my aunt, who died five years ago. When my sister and mother crossed the ocean to see her in her final days, they were on a mission of love. A cousin insisted they take the violin, one of my aunt’s cherished possessions, back to the United States—though no one in our family played at that time.

One day in fifth grade, a “music day” was held at school. Students could handle and try any instrument. My son picked up a violin, drew the bow across its strings, and was told by his science teacher that he was “a natural.” We rented to own another violin. My aunt’s violin stayed in the box, unopened.

Slowly and steadily, my son’s technique developed…and then, with a private teacher, by leaps and bounds. As he prepared to go to a music camp this past summer, we had the old violin refurbished. It is light, flexible, and a good instrument for an emerging player.

I’ve sung in a choir or two and remember botching an audition and waiting a long time before daring to sing again. Part of expressing one's self is finding that courage to make mistakes and persevere. As I peel potatoes for dinner now, I hear a young man taller than me practice and hear his violin reach the pitch my heart would, if I could.

When a relative needs a lift, my son plays violin over the phone. When his private teacher suffered a stroke, my son took the violin to the convalescent facility to play for him. Music heals.

The album pages of memory stop at today. I do not know what my son’s future in music will hold. Whether it will be a vocation or lifelong hobby, I believe that it can be a powerful anchor--through soaring and plummeting rhythms of adolescence, young adulthood, midlife and beyond.

A mother's heart, from even the early weeks of a child’s life, is the first music he or she hears. No wonder that music reaches into the human heart to utter an enduring and universal language