[Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona

Mon Apr 13 11:05:19 PDT 2020

OK, I’ll speak up!

I’m responding to Greg’s question, "So I'm wondering if anyone has had any success or even just suggestions regarding how to create online activities that can realize the possibilities and potential for connection and community in online spaces?”

I taught online for U of Illinois for well, 3 or 4 years at least after they started offering a minor in Labor Studies. I also taught on line for the National Labor College, a small college physically located in Silver Spring MD and founded by the AFL CIO but mostly supported by major unions. It went under in about 2014. 

Labor education is very applied; there’s theory, history and “facts” to learn, but the test of the education program itself is what the students/learners can and actually go out and do with it. Teaching on-line really weakened any chance that students would do anything together except read and write and, best case scenario, make friends with each other off-line.  So in the for-credit minor program at U of Illinois, our labor education classes lost their “applied” aspect and became learn-to-pass-the test classes. For the NLC, because some students were members of the same union or in some other labor formation (like a city labor federation), what they learned could actually be taken out and applied in practice. When they showed up at their union meeting with a proposal for some new approach, they would be able to explain the idea bouncing it back and forth together and had a chance of getting it across.

But the situation in a regular face-to-face classroom, where the whole group learns something together and then undergoes discontinuous change (I think that’s a term from Bateson) - a leap - and goes out and does some action that the teacher had not envisioned — that sure would be next to impossible to cook up on line.  Unless it was in the context of a social movement, which actually might be what’s happening right now, come to think of it.

Realistically, I think that on line education at its best can set up an each-one-teach-one situation, where all the learners take on so much of the responsibility for managing their own learning that they can be conceived of as in training to go teach the content themselves to someone not in the class. The mind boggles. Would this mean high school kids teaching their parents?  Of course, kids went into the mountains in Cuba and Nicaragua - and Vietnam, actually - to teach adults during the literacy campaigns.

Good luck!!!  

Helena
helenaworthen.wordpress.com

Helena Worthen
h <http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com/>elenaworthen@gmail.com

> On Apr 13, 2020, at 10:17 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Lois and others,
> 
> Inspiring to see all that you and ESI are doing there in the midst of this whirlwind - and in the eye of the storm no less!
> 
> This comment of yours seemed to resonate with Liz' and Annalie's comments about mental health:
> "people are realizing how they feel is not inside them".
> 
> That seems to me to be a revolutionary thought.
> 
> Also, I'd ask this to you but don't want to distract you from your important work, so perhaps others can talk about how activities can be transformed in these times to adapt to this new era (I'd like to call it a "moment" but it feels bigger than that). 
> 
> What got me thinking of this were the Zoom sessions that Lois mentioned on Creating Connection and Building Community. The fact is that there will be new possibilities to do these things (e.g., the possibility of truly GLOBAL communities and connections - perhaps to Andy's world-perezhivanie), but the activities that enable these things will also need to be transformed and different. 
> 
> [I'm a bit of an idiot about these things so I'm just realizing that online classes can't just be in-person activities that are taken online. They need online activities that can build connection and community among students. Still working on that.]
> 
> So I'm wondering if anyone has had any success or even just suggestions regarding how to create online activities that can realize the possibilities and potential for connection and community in online spaces? 
> 
> [I'm thinking really practically/locally here in terms of what can be done in my classes to build connection and community in online spaces, but the answer will, of course, be relevant to forms of cross-national solidarity, granting that there may be other challenges as well - e.g., language].
> 
> -greg
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Lois Holzman <lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org <mailto:lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org>> wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> Following the lead of others, I'll jump in. While NYC and state are in serious crisis and all its cultural and economic conflicts even more glaring, the vibrancy and energy has not disappeared. It's just different.
> 
> As Vygotsky is purported to have said, "A revolution solves only those tasks raised by history..." History has thrown us a monster.
> 
> Different too are the forces working to shape this extraordinary historical moment. Much of that shaping by those who are in positions of political and economic, etc. authority—and the pandemic itself—are creating fear and despair, both for now and the future. At the same time, the shaping being done by so many thousands of people and organizations that inspire and organize people to exercise their power and creativity for connectedness are generating hope and possibility.
> I feel that palpably all day long.
> 
> We in the global development community are re-tooling and/or stepping up our virtual activities, many of which involve play, performance and ensemble building, not to take people's minds off what's happening, but to involve them in some "non-knowing growing" and participation in creating positive responses to what's happening that have the possibility to continue to be transformative of individuals and communities. A few examples— 
>      establishing a Global Play Brigade working across borders of nation state, culture and economy (so far performance activists from about 40 countries involved)
>      offering Creating Connection and Building Community  <https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Play-Sessions-via-Zoom-Opened-Up--Free-online-social-gatherings.html?soid=1101246158194&aid=qweSrQdaUGo>free play sessions via Zoom, each one originating in a different part of the world (about 150 people per session so far)
>      taking our Creating Our Mental Health conversation/workshop series national and international in a moment when people are realizing how they feel is not inside them, not merely socially produced and organized, but social in its potential transformativity
>       taking All Stars Project programs for poor youth and their communities in NYC, NJ, Dallas, Chicago and the Bay Area virtual
> 
> If you're interested in any of this and more, let me know. And you can always check out the social media listed in my signature.
> 
> Stay safe,
> Lois
> 
> -- 
> Access my latest article—Why be Half-Human? How Play, Performance and Practical Philosophy Make Us Whole (written with Cathy Salit)—and read the rest of this marvelous book, Social Construction in Action <https://www.taosinstitute.net/product/social-construction-in-action-contributions-from-the-taos-institutes-25th-anniversary-conference>, which you can download for free!
> 
> 
> Lois Holzman
> Director, East Side Institute for Group & Short Term Psychotherapy
> Chair, Global Outreach, All Stars Project, UX
> Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Vygotskian Practice and Performance, Lloyd International Honors College at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Address: East Side Institute, Attn:Lois Holzman
> 119 West 23 St, suite 902
> New York, NY 10011
> Telephone  +1.212.941.8906 x324 
> Mobile 1-917-815-2664
> 
> lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org <mailto:lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org>
> Social Media
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> Blogs
> Psychology Today <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/conceptual-revolution>| Psychology of Becoming <http://loisholzman.org/> | Mad in America <http://www.madinamerica.com/author/lois/>
> Websites
> Lois Holzman <http://loisholzman.org/> | East Side Institute <http://eastsideinstitute.org/> | Performing the World <http://www.performingtheworld.org/>
> All Stars Project
>  <http://allstars.org/>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> WEBSITE: https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson <https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson> 
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>
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