Resources from Episode 4 with Steve Parks

Earlier, I wrote about how I wanted to use this blog space to reflect on possible resources and strategies teachers could use in their own classrooms. I've written about resources in Episode 1 & 2 with Mike Rose and resources in Episode 3 with Stephanie Vie. Some resource posts are going to be filled with book and article recommendations, while others will offer strategies and tips for pedagogical practices and activities.  

In Episode 4, Steve Parks talks about his commitment to community partnerships and establishing relationships with local organizations. He also shares how he attempts to create a classroom community that is democratic and dialogic. I decided to separate those two threads and identify key points in hopes of providing resources for teachers interested in this type of work.  

On establishing and developing community partnerships 

• "You shouldn't do partnership work where you don't have long-standing partnership beforehand."
• "Spend some time really knowing the people, understand the organization, what their needs actually are. Because then, when you build your class, you can make sure it fits that actual need."
• "Don't say you're going to come for a semester and leave. It teaches your students bad politics, it's unfair to the community, and it's not how change happens."
• "I think programs should have two or three long term partnerships that their students return to throughout their career. You have a partner, you find the need, you develop your class."
• "You should match what you're going to do to the resources you have. If you can only devote 10 hours of your class to this project, and they can only give two or three meetings, then what you do might be a brochure, it might be just an event that people come and talk about an issue, but it'll actually happen."
  
• "Teach very pragmatic skills like, how do you run a meeting, how do you listen, how do you interview, how do you do these things."

On building a classroom community that is democratic and dialogic 

• "One of the exercises is the story of self. The challenge of the story of self, when you're in a basement with community groups, is you say, 'You could've been anywhere but you chose to be here. What led you to this room today?' I ask students that question early in their class, like, 'You could have gone to other universities, you could have taken other sections, what brought you here?' So, they kind of narrativize their journey that brought them here, which gives a fuller sense of who they are as a person because then they tell it to class."
• "I say we're going to create a covenant of behavior, like I do in a community organizing space. We write down what has made us feel safe and intellectually curious in the class, and what has hurt that. We write that on the board, I pass it out at the beginning of every class for several weeks. We use it as a way to monitor our own conversations."
• "I do this thing I learned from Ira Shor, I end class early for the first, I don't know, month or so. I have students stay behind, and I say to them, 'How's class going for you? Whatever issue you have with the class, everyone is having with the class, and you can't offend me. I want to fix this.'"
• "I think [the first-year writing class is] a place to validate the concerns of this generation around economic mobility, around the purpose of literacy, around what identity means, around what coalition means. I think, particularly in a first-year writing classroom, when it's their first introduction to the university, it can really create a marker of what's possible for you to do in the academy, and what you should expect of all your other classes."
• "I actively ask them to bring their whole set of life experiences into a classroom."

Steve also mentioned Raymond Williams' "Cultures is Ordinary." You can read that here. And please feel free to read the whole episode transcript to learn more about both these threads.

I hope this helps.

-S