Resources for evaluating power, privilege, values, and status

In Good Work: Ethics and Community Cultural Development with Children and Youth, Stephani Etheridge Woodson examines what it means to do "good work" with kids. I found the below resources valuable. I've done status mapping and value mapping, but I thought the matchstick autobiography was cool.

A few activities I use to tackle this ethical responsibility include:

1. Status mapping
   
   

   Social Indentity	Membership	Status
   Primary Cultural affiliation
   Gender
   Appearance
   Class
   Physical Ability/Disability
   Sexual Orientation
   Religion
   Age

   
   
2. Field work observing the performance of power and status
   
   Observe diverse sites, for example, the ASU gym and pool, a preschool playground, or a high-school basketball game. In each location, look for how social identities are performed and maintained. Look for status as related to those membership categories.
   
   
3. Writing your own obituary
   
   Write your own obituary, putting into it all of your life‘s accomplishments, and include why you are proud of these accomplishments
   
   
4. Matchstick autobiography
   
   In the space of time provided by one lit match (before you burn your fingers) give your autobiography to the class. What is most important that we know about you?
   
   
5. Value mapping activities
   
   
   1. Design a crest and motto for yourself.
   2. Create digital “I am” poems.
   3. As I read each of the below statements, vote with your body, ranking your values on a continuum of “agree” on one side of the room and “disagree” on the other.
      • Spending time with my family is important.
      • It is more important to save money than it is to buy things I want, but don’t necessarily need.
      • Being physically fit is an important part of my life.
      • Creative time is important to me.
      • It is more important to be honest than to spare someone’s feelings.

Becoming competent culturally is a process of self-reflexive pondering, questioning and awareness of how power dynamics operate. I believe that CCD youth-focused practitioners have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge power, to understand how their own status operates in any given situation, and to be able to honestly address difference with children and youth.

Speaking of Communities

Interesting piece on Community Arts Network: The Choices We Have and Our Privilege To Move On.

By Laura D. Cohen

The ability to choose to enter a community, to make art and to leave once a project or session is complete or things get “too hard” is a privilege of the outsider community artist. When working in a community that is different from our own, it is essential to reflect, address and confront our own privilege in order to become conscious and committed to the work and to the community.

Tea Time with Dr. Greg

I recently had the chance to meet with Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, and founder of the Central Asia Institute. You can find a full reflection on The NYU Reynolds Program blog.

With a meek, modest, humble nature, Greg Mortenson radiates with a passion for education that bubbles just below the surface. Perhaps it's this mild and humble manner that allows Mortenson to so gently observe and respect the communities with which he has worked.

Mortenson's Central Asia Institute has the unique posture of working with communities to build ideal schools where much of the educational philosophy can be imagined, rather than fitted within an existing bureaucratic structure. While Mortenson could have taken any approach to education, CAI appears to have done the opposite of what is happening in the U.S. As hyper-standardization and rigid structure appear to be at the forefront of "education reform" in the States, Mortenson's organization builds community-owned schools in which communities have actual decision-making power, where spending is transparent. There is a contract with communities in which they decide how the schools will be governed.

Mortenson knows about the importance of listening. Asking: What are your community's priorities? Acknowledging the lived expertise of community members. While we privilege certain types of education and expression--for example written expression--these don't define education, knowledge, or intelligence. The ability to "read the world" can be just as powerful. Community members are experts in their lived experiences and can contribute to prioritizing and planning.

Why can't education be like this in the States? Do we think we are too advanced for an education that promotes community and peace? How can we re-imagine education?