Money money money and schedules and. . .

Hi all,

I thought that title might get your attention. On Friday after several phone calls, I finally received word that the check was in the mail from John Mullin. So, for those of you (grad students) who have been with the group since April, please contact Kathy Ready about making up a contract so that you can get your $200. For others of you, I ask that you wait until October for your request for funds. I am also in the process of writing a proposal for a research grant and if i receive some funds from that will be hiring a video person and some interviewers so more money might be in your future. For faculty, paying you is more complicated, so we might have to do some bartering or perhaps I could buy you some school supplies. . . :0)

Regarding protocol for the dialogues. As I have mentioned to you all, there are a few things i will ask that you do for each session: put up the sheets @ learning community, goals for the sessions and difference between dialogue and debate. I also would like for you to have the students spend one or two minutes at the end of the session writing a brief reflection paper. This is important, both to our research and to their teachers, so please don't forget. I am still working on room assignments.

Information sessions begin tomorrow at noon. You are more than welcome to attend--especially Thursday because i can't be there. Lily will be in charge but she could use the help--and company. We will also go into the classes with which we are working, so there might not be too many folks who show up, but please spread the word.

Practice sessions will be held on October 9 at 2 and on October 11. I know of only one person who can make the latter date, so please let me know if anyone else can make it on the 11th. The session on the 9th will be in the conference room on the third floor of Machmer, unless you hear otherwise :0)

Schedules for co-facilitation. Mariama developed a chart listing the schedules for herself, Hari, Danette and Brittni. I did another chart for the Ellen, Theresa, Liz, Molly and Wren group. There are few overlapping times, but there are some. Which means that some of you may have to facilitate with other folks. If you can do your own group chart, that'd be great; otherwise, I'll keep working on the charts, and you please send me your schedules. I can't seem to figure out how to publish PDFs to the blog, but once i get all schedules I'll send them to you all.

best,

Leda

Answering some Questions

Hi

Rather than attach comments to Liz's post I thought it might be better to address concerns and make some general remarks here. I appreciate the questions posted; they are very important at this point in terms of our overall goals and organization.

First, my thought was that there would be overall content and process goals for the group to be posted on the wall for each dialogue. The ones I had mentioned in our last meeting were almost identical to the ones Liz posted via Ellen. That is, a content goal is to raise awareness of our own and others' racial identities and the role these identities play in larger contexts of privilege and inequality.

Another stated by the IGD folks that I like is to: explore similarities and differences within and across social group memberships.

our teams' goals do not have to be identical to these but some similarities are necessary for continuity purposes. Also, I wouldn't want too many content goals--2 or 3 is plenty.

You might identify process goals in terms of skills to promote action for self and others toward achieving a more just campus and society:

1. developing skills for listening to others to promote better understanding and widen our perspectives

2. developing skills in working through and and actually valuing discomfort and conflict for its potential for our personal and collective growth.

My wordy words. These can have a bit more variation but something along these lines.

II. E-reserves/Readings lists

I had planned last week to post a list of readings to suggest for students. There is an e-reserve account set up from which I had asked you all to read for our meetings this summer. I asked them to re-activate the account and it does appear to be working. I have added some readings and can add more. I suggest that you draw from what is there, but not more than two or three.

I suggest the Harro reading, the Tatum reading, the Johnson reading and one I just recently added from Myles Horton's autobio called "Islands of decency." All but one are short and to the point. The downside is that none deal complexly with race and whiteness, but these are good starting points.

III. Room issues. As we take on even more students (depending on who actually shows up we could have as many as 400 in small groups), there will no doubt be snafus with rooms on campus. I am having a terrible time getting rooms for the thursday dialogues, so if any of you know of available rooms for 10/22, 11/19, 12/3 and 12/4 PLEASE LET ME kNOW

IV. I have not posted facilitator assignments b/c I have not received everyone's available dates, and because we might have more sessions at one time and less at others. It depends on when the students can come as well. I don't yet have their availability. I could use your help both in sending me your info and for when i get the student sign up sheets. I need to match all that with rooms I don't yet have. Any help here is much appreciated.

V. I on;y have one person who has said that they could come to the practice session on Friday and one wo might come to the alternative Sunday. I will not hold them if more of you do not respond, so please, if you want the practice, let me know.

VI. I will post more details regarding dialogue logistics and guidelines but I would prefer to address you all in person before we start. It's much easier for me to answer questions in person, although I understand the usefulness of posting it for the group.

Take care,

Leda

Small Group Meeting and Questions for Follow-up

Hi Everyone,

Ellen, Theresa, Molly and I met yesterday to begin discussing our small group's plan for the dialogues. In that meeting, we decided to post the notes on the blog in the hope that they would be of interest to others, spur conversation, and that Leda would respond to some of our questions. So, here is a summary of our conversation with specific questions at the end.
Thanks
Liz

Process and Content Goals
Our conversation began with a discussion of what our process and content goals might be. This quickly brought us to the question of whether each group with have their own goals or we will have goals that are the same as the overall project goals. Ellen mentioned that she worked on some goals for a grant that will used in dialoguing with social workers for CEUs. Perhaps these goals may be the same overall goals for the dialogue project on-campus as well? The goals are:

1. To practice listening, speaking and asking questions with the purpose of developing shared understanding;

2. To explore personal racial and ethnic identities and how they impact experiences in the workplace [for campus groups substitute "on campus" or "in our lives" for "in the workplace"?};

3. To demonstrate effective use of invitational communication as a means of ethical engagement with the subject matter, audience, and occasion.

We decided to postpone our goal setting until we knew whether or not the entire group would have overall goals.

Icebreakers
Next we discussed the use of introductions and icebreakers in the dialogue groups and talked about ones that we've used in the past including:

1. Name and a story about your name
2. Name and something about you that you can't tell by looking at me (this one we spent considerable time talking about and expanded to alternatives).
3. Alternatives for #2 included: Name and "you can't tell by looking at me, but I can ..."; Name and "you can't tell by looking at me, but I don't ..."; Name and "you can't tell by looking at me, but I want ..." etc.**

**In doing the second icebreaker and its alternatives, we thought a transition could be then made into assumptions people have made about you or we make about others.

4. Name and something you took away or stood out for you from the first dialogue group (we thought this would be away to reconnect especially with different people in the groups).

Visual, Media, Text Aids
We spent some time talking about the use of a video clip or document or text (such as Peggy McIntosh's Backpack) within the context of the group. Positives to starting with some clip or piece for us included a common group for the group to start discussing their personal stories from, a way to validate people's experiences as more than one individual experience, and a means to expand the conversation to institutional racism and issues of race in a bigger picture.

A suggestion out of this was to perhaps have an e-reserve for participants that have other resources or information if they want to know more, read more, etc. after the dialogues.

Ending, Concluding
Finally, we talked about questions that would help wrap up the conversation including: "what are you taking away from this conversation" and "what is one thing you want to think more about" as both a means of reflecting and concluding but also trying to prompt or encourage actions after or outside of the dialogue.

Summary/Questions
That was the gist of our conversation. Hopefully the group will add/edit as they see fit. To summarize though, the questions we had for Leda and others are:

1. Can we start an e-reserve for students wanting to know more?
2. Will there be process and content goals for the overall project and what will they be?
3. Should our content/process goals then be the same as or reflect these?
4. Plans for orientation:
Are students going to get an introduction to the differences between dialogue and discussion?
Are students going to get an introduction to ground rules and guidelines for the dialogue?
Are students going to be introduced to the goals of the overall project?
And finally, how many students are we planning to have in each session?

Practice sessions and update

Hi and thanks to those who have posted your availability,

I have been running around trying to find slots on campus for 300+ bodies. Our scheduling officer in the dept cannot find regular rooms and so now i am going to individual departments. It's time consuming and when I think about matching names to rooms, etc for each sessions. . . Well, it's a bit of a nightmare. So, if you know of seminar rooms with availability on October 22 and 23, November 19 and 20 and December 3 and 4, please let me know. . . I am also concerned about getting food and drink to each room, but hopefully, we'll have some assistance on that end.

Scheduling facilitators and sessions. Thus far, there are a lot of folks offering to do the 12-2 and 2-4 slots and only Hari from 6-8. Dee and I can handle this if no one else can, but please let us know if you are able. Remember, we need to assess your availability and will then match it with students availability. If no students want to do 6-8 it won't be an issue.

So, practice sessions. My schedule is full, as I assume are yours. I am proposing two dates for practice sessions. Come when/if you can. October 9, 2-4:30 and October 16 noon to 2:30. I could also do either the 11th or the 18th if Sundays work best for people. These sessions are optional, but let me know your intentions, so that I can plan accordingly.

thanks for your assistance. happy fall semester!

Leda

My Availability

Greetings all,

I'm new to the team. I hope I'll be able to meet you all at some point this semester!

My availability is as follows:
Thursday, Oct. 22nd (12-2 or 2-4)*
Friday, Oct. 23rd (12-2 or 2-4)*
Friday, Nov. 20th (12-2 or 2-4)
Friday, Dec. 4th (12-2 or 2-4)

*I'm not sure about my availability for the month of October. I have a conference to attend, so once I make travel plans, I'll know which day, Thursday or Friday, is better. Right now, I'm leaning toward Friday, from 12-2.

As you can see, generally Fridays work best for me. I'd also be interested in doing a practic session before the first dialogue in October.

Leda, where can we find the facilitator form?

I look forward to participating in these dialogue sessions!
--Kabria

Some good resources for Dialogue

Hello all,

I talked to John Gerber (who runs a PSIS Dialogue course on Sustainability issues) and he forwarded along these resources for our group to explore and use.

http://www.metta.org/practices/id02-introducingTheGuidelines.htm
http://courses.umass.edu/plnt397s/gettingstarted.htm
http://www.david-bohm.net/dialogue/

If anyone can get a hold of the David Bohm book, On Dialogue, I would highly recommend reading it.

If anyone has questions about Insight Dialogue, which is the form of dialogue I have experience with, I would be happy to give more information relating to my personal experiences with the practice.

Most importantly, though: Pause, Relax, Open are the main points to always remember in dialogue.

See ya'll soon,
Brittni Reilly

my availability

Hi everyone, and happy start-of-semester :-)

I have a class on Thursdays from 1 to 3.30, so my Thursday availability is somewhat restricted. Here are my availabilities:

Thursday, October 22: 4-6 or 6-8
Friday, October 23: 2-4 or 4-6 or 6-8
Thursday, November 19: 4-6
Thursday, December 3: 4-6
Friday, December 4: 2-4

Looking forward to our sessions! Take care,
hari :-)

Hi All,
Happy new school year to everyone! I've just completed my first full week of graduate classes and a work schedule comprised of two part-time positions. After briefly reflecting on the week, it quickly became apparent that this semester will provide new opportunities for growth and development, and present a variety of challenges. ;-)
I certainly look forward to getting our initiative underway, and I'm available the following dates and times: September 24th for information session, Oct. 22nd, Nov. 19th and Dec. 3rd, to facilitate from 12-2 p.m.
Mariama, Hari, Brittni and I have been in contact. We're trying to coordinate our practice and facilitation schedule. In fact, Mariama kindly created a graphic organizer to get us started. We'll keep you updated on our progress.
Peace,
~Danette

my availability

Hi everyone,

I have no classes on Thursdays and Fridays so at this point I could do any of the days/times Leda has identified. But I anticipate things coming up so I'll indicate my preferences and keep those dates/times free. But Leda, if you need someone to plug in somewhere let me know as it looks like I can be flexible.
October 22, 12-2
November 19, 12-2
December 3, 12-2

Also, I don't think I've filled out the facilitator forms. What are they?

It occurs to me that this kind of message may not be what you had in mind when you asked us to post on the blog. I'll try to get back to it with something profound (-;

Ellen

Dialogue times and your schedules, etc

Hi all,

There has been little activity on the blog, and with the semester starting I know it will be difficult to keep in touch. Please bookmark this page and let's keep connected.

I am posting here the dialogue schedule so that you might plug into times that fit your schedule. Please let me know asap what works for you.

For those of you who have not filled out the facilitator forms, I've can send you the KASP inventory. It should be helpful to share with your group. I also am looking for a volunteer (Hari?) to go to Claudio Moreira's large lecture course (Democracy and discourse) to give an overview of the dialogues and administ the brief survey and informed consent. Should take no more than a half hour to 45 minutes. The class meets MWF.

Dialogues:

October 22 and 23, blocks of 12-2, 2-4, 4-6 and 6-8

November 19 and 20, "

December 3 and 4, "

I'll send more info about what I'll need from you all on the dates when you facilitate soon. In the meantime, I'm passing along the e-reserves link so that you might access the reading, assessments, etc. the password is '"dialogue"

take care

Leda