"Connecting Community and Academic Activism Workshop Series"

Now that you have come up with ways to collaborate, there are a whole host of issues that should be addressed in order to make your partnerships most effective. One of the most significant reasons I have put together this project is because there are problems and dangers to how community-education collaborations happen. The first problem is that higher education has institutional constraints that limits actual contacts and connections. We have to some extent addressed that obstacle through the first workshop and the contact list, etc. The second problem is that relationships between higher education (instructors, researchers, and students) and community organizations are often fraught with issues of differences in power, differences in goals, assumptions, and a host of other dynamics that create obstacles to continued working relationships. The articles I have included in the workbook discuss and attempt to articulate responses to those issues. In addition to those readings, however, I would like all participants in this workshop to have thought through and drafted their own guidelines for addressing the potential problems that could come up as we operationalize our partnerships. This worksheet is designed to begin that process. We will fill this sheet out during and after the second session. I would like to include copies of some of your worksheets in the final methodology, so please email or provide me with a copy if you can.
 

Briefly describe your project partnership with emphasis on how you will be collaborating. For example, will you be sending students to work with organizations? Or will you be accepting student volunteers with your organization? How? Will you be doing collaborative research with an organization or with a researcher from the university? Will you be asking a community leader into your classroom as an advisor? Will you be presenting to students? That is, identify the ways you expect to be interacting in this partnership.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If you are sending students into the community, is your assumption that the students will be learners or teachers? How will you communicate to students the nature of their relationship to the community?
 
 
 

If you are inviting students or researchers into your community organizations, what are your assumptions about how they can participate? Do you view them as part of the community and participants in the projects, or do you view them as "researchers"-outsiders that must remain somewhat separate from the project? How do you plan to communicate with your partner(s) the nature of that relationship?
 
 
 

If you are creating community assignments for students, or if you are allowing instructors to have students do assignments around your community projects, what will the assignments be? Will they be "products" for the community issue (like a proposal or newsletter article or flyer)? Or will they be associated research more for the class and shared with the community organization?
 
 
 

If you are having students create a "product" for a community issue, how will these assignments be evaluated by both the community and the instructor? Will you be consulting with the instructor or community leader? Will you create shared criteria?
 
 
 

If you are having students create a product, how might you (both community leader and instructor) deal with a student who writes something oppositional or writes something that they don't actually believe? Is this an issue that concerns you?
 
 
 

If you are dealing with students, what are some of the assumptions that students might have about the issues you are dealing with? What do you think students might assume about activism in general? What do you think students' reaction to "political" instruction might be?
 
 
 

What specifically are your goals in including community activism in your curricula or research? What specifically are your goals in including partnerships with higher education?
 
 
 
 
 

How do you plan to share the results of your work with your partner? How do you plan to evaluate your experience in this partnership? (We will cover this in the third workshop as well, but this is a question that needs to be considered from the outset.)
 
 
 
 
 

What issues have we missed in these discussions and how can we address and include them in the future?