Monthly Archives: June 2014

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

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We hope you will take a moment to read about a great project that our organizational partners at Everyday Democracy are working on with a New Mexico youth organization called Generation Justice. Their new documentary is helping young people have the difficult but needed conversations about mental health in connection with the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative. We hope you’ll take a moment to read about their work or find the original post from EvDem here.

EvDem LogoWhen the Mask Comes Off, produced by the youth media organization Generation Justice, is a video documentary featuring young people from New Mexico discussing their experiences of living with mental illness. We hear stories of struggle on their journey from misperception and alienation toward self-acceptance and healing. The documentary comes with adaptable discussion guides for use in communities and schools.

Generation Justice Executive Director Roberta Rael said, “We want to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions about mental health and that young people contribute to the change that is needed.” View the video trailer here:

When the Mask Comes Off is a partnership between Generation Justice and Everyday Democracy, a national organization working with communities to create positive change by providing tools, advice and strategies that help make democracy real for everyone.

Everyday Democracy answered the call of President Barack Obama for a National Dialogue on Mental Health and helped establish Creating Community Solutions to help local communities enter the national conversation. In July 2013, Albuquerque became one of the first cities to launch a multi-year initiative to bring people into dialogue as part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health.

At the launch event on July 20, hundreds of residents across the community participated in dialogue and identified a priority to expand mental health resources for young people and to create opportunities for youth to talk about mental health. Subsequent neighborhood dialogues throughout the region have also identified that priority. The release of When the Mask Comes Off is a step in fulfilling that need.

Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, said, “Bringing young people’s voices into this critical conversation has surfaced as a priority in community dialogues across the United States. When the Mask Comes Off will open the door for that difficult conversation.”

See the full version of the film.

View and download the discussion guide for schools.

View and download the discussion guide for communities.

The original version of this post from Everyday Democracy can be found at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/young-people-talk-about-living-mental-illness-new-documentary-when-mask-comes#.U6HZaPldUlp.

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

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We hope you will take a moment to read about a great project that our organizational partners at Everyday Democracy are working on with a New Mexico youth organization called Generation Justice. Their new documentary is helping young people have the difficult but needed conversations about mental health in connection with the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative. We hope you’ll take a moment to read about their work or find the original post from EvDem here.

EvDem LogoWhen the Mask Comes Off, produced by the youth media organization Generation Justice, is a video documentary featuring young people from New Mexico discussing their experiences of living with mental illness. We hear stories of struggle on their journey from misperception and alienation toward self-acceptance and healing. The documentary comes with adaptable discussion guides for use in communities and schools.

Generation Justice Executive Director Roberta Rael said, “We want to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions about mental health and that young people contribute to the change that is needed.” View the video trailer here:

When the Mask Comes Off is a partnership between Generation Justice and Everyday Democracy, a national organization working with communities to create positive change by providing tools, advice and strategies that help make democracy real for everyone.

Everyday Democracy answered the call of President Barack Obama for a National Dialogue on Mental Health and helped establish Creating Community Solutions to help local communities enter the national conversation. In July 2013, Albuquerque became one of the first cities to launch a multi-year initiative to bring people into dialogue as part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health.

At the launch event on July 20, hundreds of residents across the community participated in dialogue and identified a priority to expand mental health resources for young people and to create opportunities for youth to talk about mental health. Subsequent neighborhood dialogues throughout the region have also identified that priority. The release of When the Mask Comes Off is a step in fulfilling that need.

Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, said, “Bringing young people’s voices into this critical conversation has surfaced as a priority in community dialogues across the United States. When the Mask Comes Off will open the door for that difficult conversation.”

See the full version of the film.

View and download the discussion guide for schools.

View and download the discussion guide for communities.

The original version of this post from Everyday Democracy can be found at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/young-people-talk-about-living-mental-illness-new-documentary-when-mask-comes#.U6HZaPldUlp.

June 2014 Confab Call with Peter Levine

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Last Thursady, NCDD hosted its June 2014 Confab Call with featured guest Peter Levine, the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

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Peter focused on his new book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, a primer for anyone motivated to help revive our fragile civic life and restore citizens’ public role.  If you missed the confab and are interested in learning more, you can now listen to the entire conversation — or look over the collaborative document participants created during the Confab Call — at the links below.

You can also learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and other events (including our upcoming National Conference in Reston, VA) in our Event Section.

June 2014 Confab Call with Peter Levine

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Last Thursady, NCDD hosted its June 2014 Confab Call with featured guest Peter Levine, the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

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Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

Peter focused on his new book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, a primer for anyone motivated to help revive our fragile civic life and restore citizens’ public role.  If you missed the confab and are interested in learning more, you can now listen to the entire conversation — or look over the collaborative document participants created during the Confab Call — at the links below.

You can also learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and other events (including our upcoming National Conference in Reston, VA) in our Event Section.

Minor miracles

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At a certain point yesterday, I decided I wasn’t going to accomplish anything today.

Not that I didn’t want to accomplish anything – I certainly have plenty to do – but as I mentally prepared myself for the day to come, a day full of back to back meetings seemed unlikely to culminate in feeling productive.

Too often back to back meetings result in running late and being unprepared. By the end, the whole day is a foggy blur of miscellaneous recollections.

So, I needed a lot of mental preparation to dive into today. What time did I need to walk out the door to get to my next location on time? What did I need to bring with me and when would I gather those materials? It requires a lot of thought.

But, I am so excited because today I managed to go to spin class, arrive on time to four different productive meetings, some of which required travel and some of which were over an hour, eat lunch (half at 1 and half at 3, but still), run an errand for a non-profit I work with, keep up with my (work) email, cross a few looming things off my to-do list, and get in a little reading.

I’ve still got one meeting to go, but, man, this day has been more productive than I thought.

…And this is how I take joy in the little things.

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Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

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Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

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Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

job openings for civic renewal (5)

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Here is the fifth in an occasional series on jobs in civic education, democratic reform, community organizing, and related fields:

  • Executive Vice President, Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.  The EMK Institute will be housed in a stunning new 68,000 square foot facility — the heart of which is a full reproduction of the Senate Chamber — which is scheduled to open to the public in March 2015 and is located on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus … Up to 100 students will take on the roles of senators as they research issues, debate, negotiate, and vote on current, historic and new legislative proposals. See Position Description.
  • Program Officer, Character Virtue Development, The John Templeton Foundation. See www.templetoncareers.org
  • Several positions at the Center for Community Change, whose mission is to build the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to have a significant impact in improving their communities and the policies and institutions that affect their lives. See http://www.communitychange.org/contact/careers/.
  • Program Director, FairVote, will supervise the communication, advocacy, research, and legal team.
  • President and Chief Executive Officer, Facing History and Ourselves. Facing History’s mission is to shape a humane, well-educated citizenry by helping adolescents build the habits, skills and knowledge to make responsible civic choices, grounded in ethical judgment, for the world in which they live. Position Announcement.
  • An open position in the Longhorn Center for Civic Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.  This position will primarily assist in the development of  student leadership programs rooted in community engagement. Position description.

The post job openings for civic renewal (5) appeared first on Peter Levine.

Wisdom never knows best

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There is, of course, wisdom which comes from knowledge and experience. Burning your hand on a hot stove teaches you something about the optimal way of interacting with stoves.

And yet, it seems, there are few things as dangerous as the belief of expertise.

That is – just because my knowledge and experience has led me to certain conclusions, doesn’t make those conclusions Truth or even best. My knowledge and experience still has value – but it doesn’t capture the whole story.

Think of this in terms of microagressions, for example – a white person, no harm intended, asks a non-white person where he’s from.

The asker thinks he’s making small talk. The person being asked thinks their identity as an American is being questioned. Both perspectives are valid.

In the case of microagressions, it’s important to educate those in positions of power about how such statements may be received. Even if no harm was intended – there’s a problem if harm was the result.

But thinking more broadly, it’s not always clear who’s behavior needs to be corrected.

I remember this great Christopher Durang play – Laughing Wild. A woman opens talking about buying fish in the grocery store. Another person was in her way. She waits. The person doesn’t move. She doesn’t know what to do. She gets increasingly frustrated. Eventually she punches the guy. Serves him right for being so terrible.

The next scene opens with a man – seemingly unrelated to the first monologue. Eventually, he ends up explaining how some creepy person was stalking him at the grocery store. They just wouldn’t go away. He thinks maybe if he stands really still, eventually they’ll leave him alone. They don’t. This person just stands behind him. Staring. He is a afraid. He doesn’t know what to do. Eventually, the woman screams and punches him. He has no idea what’s going on.

While one could certainly put a gender analysis to that interaction, I prefer to interpret it more generally.

Sometimes I feel like we’re all those characters. Some days we’re swinging the punches and some day we’re the ones being swung at. But at the heart of it, none of us really know what’s going on – we know our own lives and worlds and realities, but we don’t know anyone else’s experience.

And without that full picture of experience and reality – how could we ever presume to know best?

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West Chop poem in the Wampum Collection

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In lieu of a post today, here’s a link to my poem “West Chop,” which was just published in a Martha’s Vineyard literary magazine called the Wampum Collection. It begins:

Tethered sailboats hunched in a row.
A gull sails the diagonal, taut and low.
Wind and sinking sun scribble the bay
With fleeting streaks of blue, green, gray.

The post West Chop poem in the Wampum Collection appeared first on Peter Levine.