Are we a quilombo?

I have been listening to a book by Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, and this morning I heard this page and it made me think of SUSTAIN and the process we have been going through -- both good and bad and the possible trajectories that could result. Rather than explain it, I will just post the page (forgive the length). See if it speaks to you or you can simply wonder what the hell I was thinking and just forget it.

(from Ch. 9: Forest Fugitives, pp. 329-330)

Christian de Jesus Santana could see the secret city from his window. Known as Calabar, it was at the edge of Salvador da Bahia, in northeast Brazil, on the inland side of a ridge, invisible from Calabar, was the great Bay of All Saints, the second-biggest slave harbor in the world, the first glimpse of the Americas for more than 1.5million captive Africans. The slaves were supposed to spend the rest of their days in Brazil’s sugar plantations and mills. Most did, but countless thousands escaped their bondage, and many of these established fugitive communities – quilombos, as Brazilians called them – in the nation’s forests. Almost always they were joined by Indians, who were also targeted by European slavers. Protected by steep terrain, thickly packed trees, treacherous rivers, and lethal booby traps, these illicit hybrid settlements endured for decades, even centuries. The great majority were small, but some grew to amazing size.

…

In Liberdade I met a local historian who told me the city actually originated … when slaves had escaped from Salvador down a native path in the forest. The Bay of All Saints is bordered by high, forested bluffs; escapees climbed the bluffs and took over land on the other side, creating a ring of encampments between the colonial port and the indigenous interior. Sometimes their homes were just a few hundred yards away from European farms as the crow flies, but the forest and hills were impenetrable enough to conceal their location. The Portuguese constantly hunted the runaways, but they also traded with them—Calabar’s residents, four miles from the center of Salvador, exchanged dried fish, manioc (cassava), rice, and palm oil for knives, guns, and cloth. In 1888 Brazil finally abolished slavery, yet life in its quilombos showed little improvement. They were still regarded as illegal squatters’ settlements. But the government was too weak to do much about them.

In the 1950s and 1960s Salvador grew enormously. Urban pseudopods reached over the ridges, engulfing Calabar, Liberdade, and half a dozen other quilombos. But these fugitive settlements never fully became part of the city—nobody had legal title to the land. Few roads entered Calabar. Sewer lines were routed around its borders. People had to steal electric power with jury-rigged hookups. By 1985, when Christian was born, the former hideaway was completely surrounded by high-rise apartments.

E-portfolio papers

I wanted to share the articles that were forwarded to me regarding e-portfolios. Thought you might be interested in checking them out. This selection of articles came out of a conversation that Helen and I had prior to the start of fall concerning my use of e-portfolios with my students. Our conversation focused more of software options. If I recall correctly, Moodle does not have a wiki function or if it does, it is rather poor.

I also have a copy of Ruth Rominger's 25 minute presentation on e-portfolios. Ruth's presentation focuses on the function that e-portfolios serve in a learning environment. I attempted to post that as well, however, the file is too large. I will burn a copy and put it in the SUSTAIN office. (Probably won't be there before finals week.) If interested, you may view it. Ruth is known nationally (if not worldwide) for her work in open source education and e-portfolios.


https://eportfolio.pace.edu/ - using Mahara

http://www.aaeebl.org/eport-webinar
http://www.aaeebl.org/digication-forum

SUNY Stony Brook -- see example given by Jeff Yan to Molecular Biophotonics Lab
http://www.aaeebl.org/digication-forum?mode=MessageList&eid=699992

More about SUNY Stony Brook's ePortfolio initiative:
https://stonybrook.digication.com/sbu_eportfolio_news/Home//

Virginia Tech ePortfolios: http://eportfolio.vt.edu/

Salt Lake Community College's ePortfolio program
http://www.slcc.edu/gened/eportfolio/index.asp
tools: http://www.slcc.edu/gened/eportfolio/Faculty.asp

Chen, H.L., & Black, T.C. (2010). Using e-portfolios to support an undergraduate learning career: An experiment with academic advising . Educause Quarterly Magazine, 33(4). Available for download from: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/UsingEPortfoliostoSupportanUnd/219102

Chen, H.L., Williams, R., & Thomas, B. (2011). Piloting ePortfolios to support assessment FOR learning . Poster presented at the 2011 Assessment and Evaluation Poster Fair, Office of the Vice Provost for Student Affairs, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Available at: https://stanford.digication.com/readfile.digi?localfile=1%2Fa%2F3%2FM1a346d3aa21d820196b6520ff9962755&filename=2011+VPSA+eportfolios+Chen+Williams+Thomas.pdf

Florida State's Career ePortfolio
http://www.career.fsu.edu/portfolio/

And the ePortfolio community of practice I co-facilitate is called EPAC and is a listserv that is free to join --
http://epac.pbworks.com/
join listserv here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/epaccoplist

Time and our relationship with it

So this morning in a quiet moment, I reflected on an email sent by a former student. The student had attended an alternative, sustainable live-in high school. They grew their own food, caught rain water, used grey water for dish washing, structures were constructed from recycled tires, etc. About two years ago, I told him about sustain-slo and that he should participate in it. He was a freshmen then.

The email that I was thinking about came last month. I had updated him on the status of sustain, asking if he wanted to help. The first line of his email went something like, "I am so stoked that sustain is happening . . ." In that moment, I reflected on us two years ago. Sustain, in its form, at that time, had much work to be done. For me, I simply wanted it to start. In hindsight, sustain had a form lacking lines of clarity around what it might look like. Too many questions were unanswerable. Too much vagueness, except for a simple desire for it to happen for the students and for me (yes, I will label that selfish).

Reflecting on what has happened over that time, I realize how unready I was for sustain to begin last year. I recognize the commitment that faculty have made to add clarity to the project. I am grateful that answers to questions don't simply sound like an answer with a question intonation. I am thoughtful about the vagueness we must talk through so that the first two weeks and the last two weeks have a richness and a fullness and a rigor that I desire from sustain for myself and the students and the other faculty members. In these last few quarters, I have taken small risks in the classroom to test out ideas that might work for sustain. Prior to that, I wasn't willing to "give up" my lecture time for fear of the student not learning the material.

In reflection, I am thankful about the time given to me to try something new with my students. I don't know how I would feel if I tried out new teaching/learning modalities with sustain students without receiving feedback first. My fear would be that I caused a calamity or learning failure. That makes me feel incompetent.

Friday's design time

It was a glorious time together on Friday. We started by remembering why each of us was there (on a holiday) together. I don't remember everyone's reason, but mine was because this, the SUSTAIN community, is my life. I am not sure if I could continue without working with these people (Remember I tend towards the dramatic). I expect that I am giving you all too much credit, and I think if it wasn't SUSTAIN, there would be other engaging work, but this is truly life-giving for me.

I did take notes at the end and I am not sure where to record these, so here they are:

1) The first week or two might look different than week 2 through 9. During the first week we want to

- spend sometime on capacity building for team success

- have structured face-to-face time so faculty can set the culture in their courses

- have students encounter the projects

- discuss sustainability (we thought of this afterwards)

2) in weeks 2 through 9, we want to start each week with a "checkin" at the beginning of the week and a "check-out" at the end of the week. We have this scheduled for 1 hour blocks, but this could be flexible.

3) We want to have some time set aside for faculty to meet as a group or in triads to plan the weeks ahead. This should occur both inside and outside our blocks of time (M-R 4-6, F 1-4)

4) We haven't developed it yet, but we want to have a general framework for class time. We want to make sure we have a feedback system so we can be flexible

5) we recognize the need to engage community members and students in this whole design process, but haven't discussed how to do that

6) We are committed to the "student prep model" that Linda and Pete are using this quarter in physics and we are committed to supporting that. (it looks something like: Students prepare (watch video or do learning modules or read)-----> students work on something independently -----> students come to class for help and coaching -------> assessment)

7) we don't want to dramatically increase faculty time in class. If we each are to be in class 4 hours with one or two office hours, we want to attempt to honor that.

8) We will try to incorporate portfolios into our work

9) we need to schedule at least two more (3 hour) group meetings before Winter quarter begins.

how it feels right now to "hold it"

Dear friends,  you would laugh at me if you could see the kind of personal drama I am creating about our design time together tomorrow.

The Problem with Hysteresis

hysteresis (hst-rss) The dependence of the state of a system on the history of its state.

Linda and I recently were allowed to give a brief presentation and take questions regarding SUSTAIN SLO to a group of faculty in a Cal Poly department that had initial reservations about our contacting students to attend information sessions regarding SUSTAIN. [We encountered the usual problem of many faculty/administration confusing our request to contact students with a request for approval of SUSTAIN.] The faculty were respectful to us and had some good (if the usual) questions. Linda was transparent and respectful -- as a person who is maybe a little too astute politically, I have an initial worry about admitting to others about the possibility of failure but I am slowly being healed of this.

After leaving the meeting, I followed up with an email to a friend in the department asking if we had covered the bases and if there was any additional information that was needed. Prior to receiving an answer form the friend, I got the email saying that the department would withhold its imprimatur for a year to see if SUSTAIN was successful. Later, I got a phone call from the friend saying that part of the discussion after Linda and I left focused on the our personalities and "history" at Cal Poly. I was characterized as always wanting to go off and do my own thing (not being a team player) and Linda was described as not really caring about GE, that as an engineer all she wanted to do was to get engineers out of the usual GE classes. The friend was a bit dispirited because the department was becoming a group of naysayers.

I learned about the term hysteresis in grad school and it revolved around the idea of a backward rigidity after an event. The application is often around labor hiring after a recession. After so many cutbacks, even when things improve in general, hiring does not bounce back to previous levels. My sense is that the hysteresis here is that part of our current state with SUSTAIN -- that portion over which we have so little control -- is tethered to these ideas about the individuals involved and our (perceived) history that has little to do with the particulars of the current initiative.

It seems as though the path to success is to have been invisible in the past -- but then being invisible could open someone up to not having sufficient experience. This "no win"-"no win" situation is just another issue to deal with.

I'm drawn to my peers

and so are the students.  this is what i discovered by attempting to hang out and attract applicants at the liberal arts dorm.  students wanted to talk with students.

i realize that i occur to them like their parents.  hmm.  we really do need the students if this is to happen.

the pain, the pain...

(not to be confused with "the plane! the plane!" from that bad '70s TV show intro ...Fantasy Island).

After Roger's workshop, I found myself faced with the fact that all my complaining about other people who are "getting in our way" was really a more sophisticated form of me doing the same thing to them that I am accusing them of.

What upset me about the physics advisor is that she didn't take the time to understand what was going on...that she didn't inquire into it, but had a knee-jerk reaction to the thing she didn't understand.  Of course, I did the same to her...had a knee-jerk reaction to her knee-jerk reaction. So I approached her with what I wished for from her...an inquiry, "what are you seeing that we are not seeing?"  It turned out that she totally misunderstood what the initiative was all about and was advising people from that place of misunderstanding.

Then today, I went an offered an apology to the advisor woman who left an angry, swearing voice mail on my machine.  I realized I was criticizing her for being impatient, just as I was impatient with her impatience.  I apologized and she was perfectly nice.  She gave me some advice as to how to approach the CLA students.

It turns out that they save their science courses for last because they believe they are difficult and find that they lack meaning. Funny...engineering students feel nearly the same way about their general education courses in the liberal arts.  So she advised me to market it as a way to do more applied work in the sciences (which are the general ed to the liberal arts students).  Funny...that is what engineering students want...a more applied and relevant liberal arts experience.

the pain is about the dissolution of my own ego.  it doesn't really hurt, it's just humbling.

Some Ideas--No Theme.

1) I have come across a book at the city library that I just love--and it's made me think of our team and the way that we are aiming to build community in our efforts. Or, actually that our efforts ARE to build community and that whatever we do will emerge from this commitment. The book is IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Peter Lovenheim. It could turn out to be something worth offering to students. Writing it down here so I don't forget.

And also to say that I see us everywhere I look.

2) Also started IMAGINE DESIGN CREATE and am reading the thing like a novel. It's gorgeous and inspiring and so wonderfully big picture in its talk about design that I feel included in its definition of "designer."

Reading the book has been a nice echo to a realization I made last week. It popped out of my mouth in the experimental film that I made last week when I said, "We are allowed, uh [hesitation at the boldness of what I was about to blurt], I think [and then I paused and looked up--which was me stopping myself to see if I really meant with completely conviction what I was about to say out loud and also to reflect at the speed of light that I do, in fact, believe what I was about to say] We're allowed to call this design [and I was nodding in celebration of what I'd just said AND because I felt relieved to believe it.]

Here is the trailer for the movie, which includes the moment (about 1 minutes in) that I'm talking about here:

I am invigorated to feel included in the word "design."

Applications

First of all, October 28th, 5PM is our self-imposed deadline. If I think about it, we have until January 1, or 4th, before we know for sure we don't have enough students. There are a lot of other artificial deadlines before then also. For instance, registration begins 11/8, freshman (without special priorities) start registration 11/17, registration ends right before Winter quarter begins January 4. Let's not give up yet. I know we might not want to wait until the last minute to make a decision in order to be responsible to the students we have already recruited, but we need to be deliberate and not afraid.

Yesterday I spoke to a student who came to my office because of an assignment from the instructor of the introduction to Industrial engineering course for her to see her faculty advisor. I spoke with her for a few minutes about her courses, and then realized she could participate in SUSTAIN. She talked and listened and asked a lot of questions. Then she filled out an application right there.

This is a really great opportunity and I actually believe we will get 75 students to join us in the adventure. Today I have hope and patience.