Core 2010
The Format
During the event, faculty from different Graduate School programs will share ways the our core values of have impacted their professional lives through a panel discussion in Agnes Flanagan Chapel. Following these presentations, there will be small group discussions around a shared reading. Prior to convocation, each student should choose three readings of faculty-authored writing and come prepared to discuss them.
Required for Convocation
Participation in Convocation is a requirement for all full-time master’s-degree-seeking students. If you have any questions regarding your Convocation requirement, please contact your advisor.
Please read the summaries of the the following articles, then choose three to read in full. Please be prepared to discuss any articles or passages that you found particularly meaningful.
Once an elementary school teacher with a degree in history, Charles “Kip” Ault earned his doctorate in Science & Environmental Education. His dissertation on children’s grasp of geological time continues to influence his career—most recently in collaborating with scientists designing a “Trail of Time” along the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
At Lewis & Clark’s Graduate School, Kip teaches courses in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program that emphasize how interpreting landscapes may integrate several fields of inquiry. His interests include the biodiversity of Costa Rica where he has worked with Proyecto Campanario to promote local conservation initiatives.
Article Abstract
For many decades science educators have embraced the quest for generic abstractions or common themes and habits of mind (”˜”˜the’’ method, process, or nature of science) that might subsume the sciences and guide science teaching. However, the over-generalization of process and de-contextualization of content in school science misrepresents what different scientists in different disciplines do in solving particular problems. As a consequence, science standards (whether national, state, or district) tend to bifurcate between depicting science as generalized processes and science as content in three, traditional domains (earth/space, physical, and life science). In teaching science-as-process different content areas function as interchangeable parts. This approach discounts how knowledge of particular phenomena functions as a tool of inquiry, molding and shaping appropriate methodology. The quest for universal aspects of science—for the one size that fits all—obscures how methods of investigation and conceptual understandings mutually interact in productive and distinct ways. [Full Article]
Kimberly Campbell began her teaching career at Estacada Junior High in 1979. Like 50% of beginning teachers, she left the profession after just three years. Her liberal arts background and desire to make the world a better place led her to law school. Kimberly was fortunate to find her way back to teaching. She taught high school English for eight years, sustained by the research she conducted on her classroom practice and students’ learning. In 1995, Kimberly had the unique opportunity to serve as the founding principal for a high school based on the Coalition of Essential Schools. She served in this capacity for four years. Since 1999, Kimberly has been at Lewis & Clark College where she teaches and serves as Language Arts Advisor as well as one of the Cohort Coordinators in the Middle Level/High School Preservice Program.
Although she grew up under the sunny skies of Colorado, Kimberly finds the rain of Oregon the perfect weather for reading, writing, and thinking.
Article Abstract
Contemporary essays provide an opportunity for engaging in the story of another. In the process, we can expand our perspectives and find connections to our own stories. Essays remind us that ” our voices matter to each other.” [Full Article]
Alejandra Favela teaches a variety of courses for in-service teachers that lead to the ESOL/Bilingual Endorsement. In addition, she works closely with pre-service teachers and faculty members to infuse the curriculum in ways that benefit culturally and linguistically diverse students. Before coming to Lewis & Clark College, Alejandra was a lead member of the Teacher Education Faculty at Claremont Graduate University in California. Her interest in social justice and education for marginalized children began in Bosnia-Hercegovina where she worked in refugee camps and in various nonprofit organizations throughout Eastern Europe. Her work in U.S. schools as a supervisor, consultant, and researcher have all been guided by her own experiences as an immigrant student and as a bilingual teacher in various urban and rural settings. Her teaching and research focuses on culturally responsive pedagogy, immigrant social networks, and in applying communities’ funds of knowledge in schools.
Article Abstract
On June 14, 2009 thousands of people marched through the streets of Oaxaca to commemorate the third anniversary of the violent repression of the teachers’ movement of 2006. Federal police troops once again stormed the teacher’s encampment, and one teacher is left dead left dead. Although the world’s attention is no longer focused on Oaxaca, the reasons for the strike remain the same, and the lessons from that struggle are more relevant than ever.
At core, this historic movement was motivated by economic desperation, educational and social inequality, and a tremendous pressure to migrate. It is estimated that a quarter of Oaxaca’s population has been forced to migrate out of state. Some will go to other parts of Mexico, but many eventually end up in the U.S. where approximately 500,000 Oaxacans will look for work and educate their children. Oaxacan teacher Juan Gutierrez Cortez points out that for many families migration is a necessity rather than a choice: “It is disheartening to see a student go through many hardships to get an education here in Mexico to become professional, and then later in the United States do manual labor.”
In this article, we analyze the social forces that displace people, forcing them to migrate to survive and why it matters for teachers on both side of the border. The events which took place in 2006 are narrated here through excerpts from a first hand account by teacher and key union delegate, “Laura Martinez.” Discussions with Martinez (translated from Spanish) provides us with a closer look at the unique perspective and preparation that positioned Oaxacan teachers to take on the vanguard role in this historic movement, and help us to analyze the larger issues impacting progressive teachers in Mexico and beyond. [Full Article]
In my teaching, I attempt to create collaborative learning communities where learners can act as critical thinkers, value their own voices, see themselves as knowledge creators, and engage in dialogues of difference. I encourage participants in the learning process to become aware of the origins of their world views in ways that empower them to consider their preferred assumptions within a framework of power, privilege and liberation.
Article Abstract
In this paper we offer a framework for supporting decolonizing practices in family therapy and counseling that reflect values of human diversity, collaboration and participation, distributive justice, and self-determination. To this end, we propose a vision of social justice involving at least three foundational elements of professional development and organizational leadership: intersectional, participation, and accountability. We include case examples throughout to illustrate our points and offer practical suggestions for decolonizing praxis in the academy. We conclude by revealing dilemmas we have encountered as a result of these efforts. [Full Article]
Peter Mortola is an associate professor of counseling psychology and coordinator of the school psychology program. He specializes in school psychology, narrative approaches to understanding children’s problems, Gestalt theory, child development, and developmentally appropriate methods of child and adolescent counselor education.
Article Excerpt
“For the past eight years, we have been leading counseling groups in schools for 12-year-old boys. We call these gathering “BAM! Groups”-Boys Advocacy and Mentoring Groups. We have become aware through this work of the difficulty boys often face in making good contact not only with their own emotional states, but also with others as they try to communicate those emotions verbally. While it may be easy to frame this as a “boy problem,” we have come to think of it differently. Though we do acknowledge that boys face challenges in easily and directly communicating their emotions to others-especially emotions that reflect vulnerability-we have come to appreciate that, on average, boys have a different kind of contact and relational style that must be honored and addressed if we want to work more effectively with them in educational and counseling contexts.” [Full Article]
Joanne B. Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction, ethnographic writing and humanities CORE classes at the NW Writing Institute. Her academic credentials include degrees in Comparative Literature, Folklore and Folklife, and Cultural Anthropology. Mulcahy’s writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. She conducted field research with Native Alutiiq women for over a decade on Kodiak Island, Alaska. After two years with the Smithsonian’s Office of Folklife Programs, she moved to Oregon to direct the Oregon Folk Arts Program from 1988-91. She documented cultural traditions, wrote articles and created exhibits to bring vernacular traditions to public attention. Her commitment to collaborative models of writing and public presentation includes local people and communities in the representation of their own cultures. Her book about the life of Mexicana healer and traditional artist, Eva Castellanoz of Nyssa, Oregon is forthcoming.
Article Abstract
“Magical Thinking” is an excerpt from Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz, the biography of a Mexican traditional healer. In this chapter, Joanne Mulcahy explores some of the differences between western medicine and curanderismo. In particular, she details the holistic nature of a curandera’s work, which addresses the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of a client. The author describes healing sessions that she witnessed at the home of Eva Castellanoz in Nyssa, on the Oregon-Idaho border. She attempts to refute critiques of traditional healing, offering another view of “magical thinking,” and she addresses some possible future paths for curanderismo in the U.S. [Full Article]
Portland finally feels like home after moving here from New Hampshire 21 years ago. I used to be a middle school teacher and reading specialist, and now I work with new and veteran teachers in our master of arts in teaching program. I teach the three R’s: Reading, ”˜Riting, and Research (the good kind, Teacher Research). My passions are poetry, kids, New Orleans Jazz, Rock’n’Roll, chocolate, chai tea, and Jim Whitney. I’m trying to learn Spanish and practice whenever I can with the kids at Head Start, where I’m involved in a research project with early childhood educators. I’m also relearning what it means to be in middle school by volunteering at Ron Russell Middle School in David Douglas district one day a week.
Article Abstract
Ruth Shagoury spent four years embedded in a multilingual kindergarten classroom in which children typically spoke six different languages and for several more years observed in multilingual Head Start classrooms. In this article, she shares numerous examples of dual language learners actively figuring out the way written language works in their first and second languages. “When the two written language systems that children are learning are very different, children still draw on their knowledge of their home language as well as their growing understanding of English, testing out hypotheses just as they do in their oral language.” [Full Article]
I’m a native Oregonian strongly hooked to the Pacific Northwest. As an undergraduate, I attended Oberlin College and the University of Oregon. After working in a variety of different jobs, I decided to become an English teacher in my mid-twenties. After completing an MA at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland, I taught high school for nine years, most of them at a small Friends boarding school in Northern California. Convinced of the value of situating education in strong communities, I returned to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I tried to figure out ways to extend what I had learned while teaching in a small high school to the public education system. There, I had the chance to work as an educational researcher for five years. I got my first teaching job in higher education at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where I helped coordinate the Teachers for Alaska Program. When a job opening at Lewis & Clark in the early 1990s presented me with the opportunity to return to Oregon, I applied and I have been here ever since.
Article Abstract
Place- and community-based education provides learning experiences aimed at incorporating local issues or knowledge into the curriculum and offering students the chance to do valuable work. Teachers should concern themselves with the local to engage students, build social capital, reconnect students with the natural world, and build leaders. By taking on such problems as saving the local trout population or lending a hand to Haiti, students interact with adults and come to see themselves as fellow citizens with shared responsibilities. [Full Article]
The problems of our time are political, ecological, economic—but the solutions are cultural. How do people speak their truth? How do we listen eloquently? If communication is the fundamental alternative to violence and injustice, what is the work of each voice among us? At the Northwest Writing Institute, we answer word by word.
Article Abstract
An excerpt from The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. (University of Georgia Press, 2003) [Full Article]
“We live in an extremely troubling time. The majority of humanity is plagued by sickening poverty, disease, illiteracy, oppression and terror, while the minorities enjoy obscenely opulent and self-indulgent lives. Misery, oppression (and/or repression) reign even in so-called civilized democracies. Militarism, corporatism, consumerism and corruption dominate societies, leading to predatory individualism, narcissism, nihilism, ecocide and wars. Mindless materialism and ”˜progress’ have destabilized nations, ruptured communities and disturbed the natural order. Conventional education, politics, economics and culture are now part and perpetrators of the multiple crises we face. A new and different education could enable us to redirect, or arrest our collective march toward the abyss.”
Article Abstract
An excerpt from Dispatches from Afghanistan, where Professor Wahab blogs about conditions in Afghanistan, as he devotes six months of service each year to the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. [Full Article]
Graduate School of Education and Counseling is located in Rogers Hall.
MSC: 93
email graddean@lclark.edu
voice 503-768-6000
Dean Scott Fletcher
Graduate School of Education and Counseling
Lewis & Clark
615 S. Palatine Hill Road MSC 93
Portland OR 97219