Searching for the American Dream : How a Sense of Place Shapes the Study of History [1 ed.] 9781443850988, 9781443848114

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Searching for the American Dream

Searching for the American Dream: How a Sense of Place Shapes the Study of History

Edited by

Glenn Moore

Searching for the American Dream: How a Sense of Place Shapes the Study of History, Edited by Glenn Moore This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Glenn Moore and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4811-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4811-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I: Study Tour Theory and Practice Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 John Dewey’s Legacy Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20 The Five Essential Elements Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 39 Planning and Organization Part II: Insider Perspectives Jim Cullen and the American Dream......................................................... 58 A Journey from Home ............................................................................... 60 Jim Cullen Alec Ross and the State Department ......................................................... 66 There is too Much Passivity in Our Modern Lives .................................... 69 Alec Ross Felicity Ross and Teach for America ........................................................ 74 The World as Your Classroom .................................................................. 77 Felicity Ross Kristina Stevick and Cry Innocent ............................................................. 84 History as Ensemble-made Theatre: Cry Innocent in Salem, Massachusetts ............................................................................................ 86 Kristina Stevick

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Table of Contents

Miriam Bader and the Tenement Museum ................................................ 92 Place-Based Education at the Tenement Museum ..................................... 94 Miriam Bader Michelle LeBlanc and the Old South Meeting House ............................. 100 Making History Personal ......................................................................... 102 Michelle LeBlanc Joan Schaffner and Animal Law.............................................................. 108 Americans Working on Behalf of the UnderDOGS ................................ 110 Joan Schaffner Allie Phillips and King Street Cats .......................................................... 116 Australia Meets and Embraces American Animal Protection ................. 118 Allie Phillips and King Street Cats Stephen Cunniff and the New England Center for Homeless Veterans...... 124 A Workshop in Homelessness ..................................................................... 127 Stephen Cunniff Tahir Duckett and Organized Labor ........................................................ 132 Giving Life to the Words in Textbooks Tahir Duckett and Organized Labor ........................................................ 135 Alice Peisch, Alli O’Leary and the Massachusetts State House .............. 140 Alice Peisch and Alli O’Leary The Importance of Staying Connected, or Why Too Much Time in theState House Office May Lead to Defeat at the Polls ...................... 143 Alice Peisch It’s a Pleasure to go to Word Each Day ................................................... 147 Alli O’Leary

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Cassandra Atherton, Kat Ellinghaus and the University ......................... 149 ‘All the World’s a Stage’: The Production of the Overseas Intensive ..... 152 Cassandra Atherton Getting There ........................................................................................... 160 Kat Ellinghaus Jen Barton, Jessica McCrum, Vanessa Condemi and the Student Experience ............................................................................................... 167 From UWA to Cambridge ....................................................................... 170 Jen Barton A Students’ Perspective ........................................................................... 172 Jessica McCrum We did it as a Group ................................................................................ 174 Vanessa Condemi Contributors ............................................................................................. 176 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 180

INTRODUCTION

This book grew out of a Melbourne University study tour. Such tours are commonplace in Australian universities now, but this was one of the first. It began as a response to the increasing realization that something was wrong with the way we were teaching our students. This situation wasn’t as dramatic as the educational horror stories depicted in American movies like Dangerous Minds or in books like Waiting for Superman.1 Our university was an elite institution, to some extent shielded from the funding problems that prompted a Senate Committee to announce in 2001 that Australian universities were in crisis.2 We had good students, a good library, and new computers. Nevertheless, there was a nagging feeling that we could do better. Even our best students weren’t as enthusiastic and motivated as they should have been. The first response was to question the subject matter in our courses. All teachers know that there are topics that aren’t going to light up the imagination. I admit to once devoting a lecture to canals and railways in 19th century America, and although the students dutifully took notes, the economic impact of the Erie Canal was just so distant from their lives, they didn’t feel any great enthusiasm for the topic. Well, we all make mistakes, but I felt that I was on more solid ground when I was talking to the students about 9/11. The students were instantly more engaged. After all, they had seen the drama play out on their television screens just a year before, and it had introduced the threat of terrorism into their lives. And yet, when I saw the students look awkward and embarrassed while I choked back the emotion as I talked about the courage of the firemen in the Towers, I realized that even with this topic, their connection was shallow. 1

Karl Weber (ed.) Waiting for Superman: How We Can Save America’s Failing Public Schools (New York: Public Affairs, 2010.) This is typical of a large American literature addressing what Weber calls “the unfolding tragedy of a dysfunctional educational system.” 3. 2 Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Educations References Committee, “Universities in Crisis,” (Canberra: The Committee, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2001) http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1729151 Accessed on December 15, 2012.

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Introduction

Things were different in New York itself. When my colleague Cassandra Atherton interviewed the Bronx-based teacher and writer Jim Cullen, he explained that teaching about 9/11 in a school which lost people on that day “adds a powerful dimension to things.”3 Jim, in other words, had to manage his students’ raw feelings, while I struggled to ignite a connection. The study tour was an attempt to bridge this gap. Of course, transporting Australian students to New York did not magically give them the sensibilities of people who lived through the attacks. However, seeing my students walk slowly and silently around Ground Zero, then openly weep when we talked later with a fireman, showed me the potential for experiential learning to change the way they thought about a topic. Taking students out of the classroom and giving them real life experiences is called experiential or place-based learning. In the last twenty years this idea has grown in popularity as educators, particularly in the United States, try to reinvigorate their schools and universities and inspire students to learn. The idea, however, is not a new one. It can be traced back to the American philosopher and educator John Dewey who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, argued that the student in the classroom felt that his lessons and books were too far removed from everyday life. Dewey did not for a moment suggest that lessons and books were not of value, but he did want to connect them more explicitly to real life experiences. 4 Chapter One discusses the theory of experiential and place-based education that has been developed out of Dewey’s ideas, and the ways in which it is even more relevant today than it was one hundred years ago. As Anthony and Jan Herrington put it, the challenge university teachers face is to “align teaching and learning more substantially with the way learning is achieved in real-life settings, and to base instructional methods on more authentic approaches, such as situated learning.”5 Chapter Two lays out a blueprint for a successful study tour. Any subject in any university needs to be carefully thought out and planned. The reading list, lectures and the assessment should all complement oneanother. A study tour needs even more meticulous planning. If the classroom that was booked by the lecturer at his/her home university isn’t available it is annoying, but it isn’t the end of the world. The lecturer can see an administrator and book another one. But things aren’t quite so 3

Cassandra Atherton, “My History Is a Tile in a Mosaic: An Interview With Jim Cullen,” in the Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol 26, No. 1, July 2007, 65 4 John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Collier Books, 1938), 40. 5 Anthony and Jan Herrington, Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education (Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2006), 3.

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simple if the bus that was booked to meet the study tour group at the airport isn’t there. The teacher simply has less control in the field than in the classroom. Indeed, that is part of the point of experiential learning; students are encouraged to ask questions and to explore the subject themselves. However, although the study tour might appear chaotic at times, it has to be controlled chaos. If the tour itinerary isn’t carefully thought out in advance and activities aren’t making sense, it is extremely difficult to retrieve the situation. Moreover, the planning itself needs to be structured and focused, and Chapter Two lays out five guiding principles that need to be kept in mind. These are: 1. The study tour activities need to be linked around a central theme. Activities and visits should be chosen so that they relate to one-another, and allow the students to see the way in which they are building an understanding of the subject. 2. Just as the study tour removes the students from the physical comfort of the classroom, it also needs to remove them from their intellectual comfort zones. It must be challenging and occasionally unsettling. 3. Sense of place is a powerful thing and it needs to be maximized. The places visited need to be vivid and need to have clear links to the central theme of the tour. 4. The students need to be excited by what they are doing. They have to understand that they are meeting special people and doing special things that they could not do in the classroom nor on the internet. 5. The students need to feel that they are part of a team. In the traditional classroom setting there is a barrier between teacher and student, and also a barrier between students. They sit silently, work alone, and are assessed as individuals. One way that experiential learning connects them with real life, where businesses increasingly demand teamwork, is to allow and encourage them to collaborate and work together. With these five guiding principles in place, the next step is to plan and organize the study tour. In Chapter Three there is practical advice about how to carry this out. This advice draws partly on the available literature – for instance, books like Learning Outside the Classroom, which talk about the nuts and bolts of things like risk management. However, it is anchored mostly in my own experience. 6 It gives the prospective study tour coordinator the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, and to profit from 6

Simon Beams, Peter Higgins and Robbie Nichol, Learning Outside the Classroom: Theory and Guidelines for Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012.)

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Introduction

my successes. The overarching message is to be thorough, and the chapter takes the reader through all of the necessary steps. These steps are: 1. Getting permission to run the study tour: The coordinator of the study tour will need the approval and support of his/her department. 2. Having background knowledge: The group can’t visit places without the coordinator having scouted them beforehand. It is important to know what is worthwhile and what is not, and how to get to each place. 3. Putting together a brochure that describes the study tour for students: A study tour requires a special commitment from students, and they need to know what they are getting themselves into. 4. Selecting students: There is a practical limit to how many students can go on an overseas study tour, and given the popularity of these tours, hard choices need to be made. Grades are one deciding factor, but human qualities are also important, and the only way to assess these is to conduct interviews. 5. Booking accommodation, transport and visits: A study tour like mine, which involves taking sixty students to America for three weeks, is a massive undertaking and needs to be handled in a methodical way. 6. Assessment: As Scott Wurdinger and Julie Carlson explain, “with experiential learning, remembering information long enough to score well on a test is not the goal.”7 The assessment has to take into account the way that students go about learning, the way they interact with their fellow students, and the way they synthesize the things they learn. My solution was to have the students keep a journal on the tour, and I developed essay questions that relied on the students’ sense of place. 7. Risk Management: For practical and legal reasons, the risk of students getting lost or injured needs to be minimized. However, things can always go wrong, and contingency plans need to be in place. 8. Background Reading: Experiential or place-based learning doesn’t mean that the students don’t read books. As this section points out, without some background knowledge, visits and meetings are aimless and don’t achieve the desired results. 9. Pre-Trip Meetings: The idea of taking sixty students to America without them having met one-another (or the lecturer in charge) runs against the aim of having everyone work as a team. Going through the risk management strategy, and giving the students a chance to ask questions that are worrying them are also essential.

7

Scott Wurdinger and Julie Carlson, Teaching for Experiential Learning: Five Approaches That Work (Latham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010, 160.

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The remainder of the book consists of essays written by the people who have participated in the trip over the years. For teachers thinking about starting their own study tour, the two essays of most interest will, no doubt, be the ones by my colleagues Cassandra Atherton and Katherine Ellinghaus. They helped ensure the study tour succeeded and their insights helped me understand why a study tour succeeds. Both essays highlight the need for meticulous planning. As Ellinghaus points out, there is no worse feeling than emerging from a subway station and not knowing in which direction to walk. In her essay, Atherton compares planning a study tour with staging a theatrical production. She makes the point that just as the audience at a successful play or musical is unaware of the “commotion backstage,” so the study tour coordinators’ efforts should go largely unseen and unrecognized. In effect, a taken-for-granted attitude from the students is not a sign that they are being ungrateful, but rather an endorsement of the coordinator’s planning and organizational skills. Teachers will also be interested in three short essays from students who participated in the study tour. Their happy memories and the feeling the study tour was beneficial, leading them somewhere better in their studies and their lives, endorse the value of experiential and place-based learning. The factors the students identify as important in their essays also help teachers in their planning for a successful study tour. The sense that they were part of a group, and their teachers were part of the group too, is particularly revealing, and highlights the need to promote team spirit in the planning and execution of the study tour. The heart and soul of a study tour, however, are the places the students visit and the people they meet. The remaining essays are written by these people. Their essays reveal the vast range of topics the students explore in the three weeks of the tour. There are essays from the director of a homeless shelter, a museum curator, a teacher, a union leader, a writer, a law professor, and an animal rights activist. This diversity reinforces the need to have a linking theme in place, in order for students to make sense of potentially random and disconnected activities and meetings, and see them as part of a coherent program. It also points to the need to hold briefings every morning of the study tour and occasional de-briefings, where the students as a group can discuss and reflect on the day’s activities. All of the contributors’ essays implicitly show the importance of getting out of the classroom and visiting a place or talking to an expert in situ. Some of the writers also address this in more explicit terms. Alec Ross is a good example. As Hilary Clinton’s Senior Advisor on Innovation and Technology, Alec uses the Internet as a tool, sometimes in ways that

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Introduction

dazzle our students. However, he admits in his essay that, “to really be able to approach a situation with the appropriate level of depth and knowledge, it’s necessary that I get on a plane and get out into the field.” Similarly, Joan Schaffner, a law professor at George Washington University, uses experiential learning, “to develop students’ research, writing, oral advocacy, and management skills needed in the real world.” As well as coming from a wide range of backgrounds, the contributors each have their own distinctive writing styles. For the sake of authenticity I have chosen to leave their essays in the style they were written, so their personality can come through and the reader can get a glimpse of what the students on the study tour experienced. However, it is just a glimpse – after all, the point of experiential learning is that everything is more vivid and has more impact when it is experienced in person.

PART I STUDY TOUR THEORY AND PRACTICE

CHAPTER ONE JOHN DEWEY’S LEGACY

It was the final night of the study tour, and the group was celebrating in a chic Dupont Circle restaurant. For the students, this was a nice contrast to college cafeteria meals and a chance to get dressed up and relax after three weeks of intensive work. The occasion was also bittersweet, because it meant saying goodbye to people they had gone through so much with and now counted as friends. The teaching staff had similar feelings. For us, it was also a chance to reflect on a smoothly executed tour that had been many months in the planning. It was, in short, a wonderful end to a wonderful three weeks. It hadn’t always been that way. In 1997, when I had the idea of a study tour for course credit, there was no guarantee that it would even run. I had little understanding of how experiential learning worked and what its benefits were, so when I presented my idea to the History Department at the University of Melbourne all I could say was that students would see it as an exciting option, and that it would make them feel like “real” historians. After all, historians take it almost as an act of faith that one does one’s research on site. This principle had never been applied to undergraduate study, but there wasn’t any strong reason not to let me run a study tour, and I was given permission to trial it. With the benefit of hindsight, I know that I made a million novice mistakes. On that first study tour I had arranged for us to stay at a Boston community college with a wonderfully central Back Bay address, but whose dorms had no air conditioning. After a week of hot, sleepless nights, stuck to our plastic mattresses, we were all exhausted. In New York we stayed at the more salubrious Columbia University, where we slept in comfort but started each morning with a 40 minute walk and subway ride to whatever museum we were visiting (they were all downtown, or even worse, in Brooklyn.) This already lengthy commute time was even longer if I got lost, which happened with depressing regularity. The problem was, I simply didn’t have the accumulated knowledge which now makes these trips so much easier to organize and run. Somehow, though, I stumbled through the first tour without any major

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disasters. Luckily, when my department reviewed the results, they had the bar set low: So long as I didn’t lose any students (I didn’t), nobody embarrassed the university by getting themselves arrested (they didn’t), and provided the students gave reasonable scores in the subject evaluations (they did), then the subject would survive. It went into a second year, then a third, and with each year it got better and more popular. The evolution in the itinerary and the way I conducted the study tour came about gradually, partly from experience, but also through a developing understanding of the theory of experiential learning. Most of this theory came from the United States. Although taking students out of the classroom and into the “real world” was a novel concept in Australia, the idea had a long history across the Pacific. Indeed, it can be traced back almost a century, to the Progressive era philosopher and educator John Dewey. Dewey came of age when college curriculums consisted of Greek, Latin, ancient history and literary classics. He knew first hand how classroom learning could seem irrelevant to life. The situation improved somewhat after Harvard president Charles Elliott instigated a reform movement by introducing student electives including modern languages, economics and hard sciences, but Dewey believed that the problem ran deeper.1 He argued that it wasn’t just the subjects taught in the classroom that were holding students back, but also the entire classroom experience, where the students were passive consumers of knowledge given to them through lectures and books. The problem, said Dewey, was that the classroom was isolated from life. In a lecture delivered in 1899, then in a book published the following year, he explained how: From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school. That is the isolation of the school – its isolation from life.2

Dewey wasn’t suggesting that classrooms and books should be scrapped, but he did think they could be made more effective if students were shown how traditional, classroom learning connected with their own, everyday lives. At the University of Chicago Dewey and his colleagues created a model to put this philosophy into practice. It involved students

 1

John Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States Since 1865 (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 572. 2 John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1900), 67.

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Chapter One

going out into their communities and doing gardening, cooking and carpentry projects. Not surprisingly, the students saw how these practical activities connected with their lives and their intended careers. Importantly, they also saw more clearly how mathematics, physics and art – subjects they used in the completion of their projects – connected with the real world.3 In other words, sending students out of the classroom and into their communities energized the classroom as well as the students. According to David Kolb, Dewey, who “best articulated the guiding principles of experiential education in higher education,” is “without doubt the most influential educational theorist of the twentieth century.”4 In spite of this, his ideas encountered resistance from teachers and university professors; the problems with traditional classroom learning were hard to ignore. As Gregory Smith explained, “Although educators were often quick to say that schools are as much the real world as any place else, there is truth to the judgment that what happens in classrooms is qualitatively different from what happens elsewhere.”5 Smith was one of a number of forward thinking scholars who agreed with Dewey that the answer was “real world problem solving.”6 More recently, David Sobel built on this by contending that place-based education has become “an antidote to one of the most serious but generally unspoken dilemmas in American education: the alienation of children and youth from the real world right outside their classrooms.”7 In time, educators also saw experiential learning as a potential cure to the way lessons were partitioned off in increasingly specialized disciplines. This partitioning is entirely understandable. University lecturers go through a specialized graduate program, write a specialized thesis, and keeping up with the scholarship in their narrow field is almost a full-time job. By and of necessity, they are specialists. Their curricular reflect this, and so when students take science classes, art classes, and literature classes, they find there is very little overlap. Unfortunately, the real world is just not that neat and tidy, and students feel their lessons are impractical and disconnected from their everyday lives. In the last quarter of the

 3

Gregory Smith and David Sobel, Place and Community Based Education in Schools (New York: Routledge, 2010), 26. 4 David Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983), 5. 5 Gregory Smith, “Place-Based Education: Learning to be Where We Are,” in The Phi Delta Kappan, (Vol 83 No. 8, April 2002), 586. 6 Smith, “Place-Based Education,” The Phi Delta Kappan, (April 2002), 589. 7 Gregory Smith and David Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education in Schools (New York: Routledge, 2010), Preface viii.

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twentieth century American universities responded by trying to implement interdisciplinary programs, but all too often this ignited territorial disputes over who “owned” a certain topic, and even in the case of American Studies, where politics, history and literature complement one-another in very obvious ways, there were squabbles over petty things like which set of conventions would prevail in essay referencing.8 Removing the students from the classroom, however, simultaneously removes these artificial barriers. In one example from my study tour, when the students visited the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, they weren’t worried about whether they were studying the history of the Vietnam War or the politics of social welfare, they simply wanted to learn how the situation of homeless veterans came about and what could be done to help these men. Validation of Dewey’s ideas didn’t just come from within the academy – it also came from the wider community. For Dewey the advantages of place-based and experiential education were more than just better grades. He believed it would make students into better citizens who would contribute to a more robust democracy. This made sense to the great many Americans who believed in the myth of a nation held together by community spirit, and that schools were at the heart of American towns and neighborhoods. For many years, the myth was very real. The high school football team represented the town, teenagers were socialized through events like the prom, and parents belonged to the PTA. Starting with the turbulence of the sixties, this sense of community started to erode and by the 1990s the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam made the startling announcement that things had become so bad that Americans, who once bowled in teams and family groups, now bowled alone. According to Putnam, one of the problems was the weakening of the “reciprocal relationship” between school and community. He advocated that parents re-engage with their local schools, and for students to be given “opportunities and encouragement to engage with one-another in face-toface extracurricular activities.”9 When Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, there was general agreement that the American school system was failing, but there was no consensus about how to respond. At one end of the spectrum there was a movement to restore a standard curriculum that allowed measurement of schools and

 8

See Dick Ellis, “Problems May Cut Across Borders: Why We Cannot Do Without Interdisciplinarity,” in Balasubramanyam Chandramohan and Steven Fallows, Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (New York: Routledge, 2009), 6-8. 9 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 301-304.

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Chapter One

students through testing. The “Core Knowledge” schools that sprang up in response were marked by a return to traditional, teacher centered learning. But many schools went in the opposite direction. These “Progressive Schools” were based on the idea that in “a world where information was constantly changing…schools should teach children skills as opposed to knowledge.” 10 Grounded in Dewey’s ideas, Progressive Schools gave students real world problems to solve, in the hope they would use their mathematics, economics or botany in practical ways. Both methods had their supporters in Washington, but the progressive learning philosophy led to the creation of an actual government organization called Learn and Serve. Created in 1993, Learn and Serve promoted and helped fund “service learning.” This involved students using the knowledge they acquired in the classroom to help their communities. The projects were taken for credit, but had the larger aim of allowing students to “learn about democracy and citizenship.”11 In Australia, where schools are administered by the state rather than at a local level, the connection between school and community is weaker than in the United States. Because of this, service learning never translated into the Australian school system in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, the overseas study program I set up at Melbourne University was in the same spirit, with one critical difference: Rather than sending students into their own communities, we were sending them half way around the world into American communities. The idea of history being anchored in fieldwork has its own theoretical framework that derives from cultural anthropology. This began in the 1890s. Until then, anthropologists, sociologists and ethnographers were happy to rely on second hand descriptions of their subjects. Victorian-era British anthropologists made the first tentative breaks with this tradition, but the real pioneer of fieldwork-based research was the American Franz Boas. He believed that the only way to gain an understanding of Native American culture was to live amongst Native Americans. Boas and other iconic anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski saw fieldwork as a way into “primitive” societies, but by the 1930s sociologists at the University of Chicago were producing fieldwork-based studies of “Jewish ghettos, taxi-dance halls, professional thieves, hobos, boy’s gangs

 10

Georgann Reeves, “A Nation at Risk?”, in David Tyack, ed., School: The Story of American Public Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 209. 11 For a full explanation of service learning, see the Learn and Serve website: http://www.learnandserve.gov/about/service_learning/index.asp (Accessed on September 10, 2012.)

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and the like.”12 By the 1970s and 1980s historians began to take this on board and eventually it was assumed that any credible dissertation or book would be anchored in a sense of place. As William Leuchtenburg put it, “there is no question that we understand history in a different way when we encounter it on the ground.”13 None of my colleagues in the Melbourne University History Department would have disagreed with Leuchtenburg, but the idea of fieldwork had never seriously been considered as an undergraduate teaching tool. In part, this was a simple recognition of the logistic nightmare involved in taking a group of students off the campus, let alone taking them to America for three weeks. If that wasn’t enough, conceiving and planning any new subject is a lot of work, and a fieldwork-based subject would mean learning a totally new way of teaching. As Simon Beams noted, “Many teachers are overworked, and quite rightly see changes to learning content and approaches to delivery as an additional burden in their limited time.”14 Many academics opposed experiential learning on intellectual grounds. According to David Kolb, “it often appears too pragmatic for the academic mind, dangerously associated with anti-intellectual and vocational trends.” 15 Of course, the feeling that education was disconnected from work was one of the things that bothered students. In addition to this, the emotional attachment professors and other academics had to lectures and traditional classroom teaching made it hard for them to see the need to try something new. I can fully understand this thinking. We all have fond memories of our student years and we can all recall an inspiring lecturer or a vibrant tutorial. It was natural to teach our students in the same way that we were taught. Essentially, professors are steeped in a craft, and they are proud and protective of it. However, by the late 1990s, when I was beginning my American experiment, there were worrying signs something was wrong with Australian universities. The starkest evidence of this was that one in five



12 Jeffrey Sluka and Antonius Robben, Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 12. 13 William Leuchtenburg, ed., American Places: Encounters With History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), xvii. In a similar way, Delores Hayden argues that “”The historian who confronts urban landscapes needs to explore their physical shapes along with social and political meanings.” The Power of Place: Urban landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 13. 14 Simon Beams, Peter Higgins and Robbie Nichol, Learning Outside the Classroom: Theory and Guidelines for Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012) 107. 15 David Kolb, Experiential Learning (1983), 3.

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Chapter One

students were dropping out without finishing their degree. This was a financial disaster, costing the Australian higher education sector $1.4 billion dollars a year, which equated to an annual average of $36 million for each university. There was also a human cost. As Marcia Devlin, a professor of higher education at Deakin University explained, “a student who drops out often sees the decision as indicative of failure, and this can have long-lasting negative psychological and emotional costs.”16 We were reminded of this often enough at departmental meetings, but admitting that our much loved classes were part of the problem was a difficult step for many to take. Education experts who were far enough removed to see things dispassionately were more blunt. Anthony and Jan Herrington led the way. In their book Authentic Learning they argued that the students found the traditional teaching format, where they received information “passively” from the lecturer or from books, unfulfilling. 17 More broadly, although our university doggedly asserted, “Melbourne Arts graduates enjoy challenging and rewarding careers,” students saw things differently.18 We had all heard them question the usefulness of an Arts degree, and similar doubts were routinely raised in the media. As a Melbourne writer in The Age put it, “How many job vacancies do you see advertised for an historian? Currently on MyCareer: None.”19 Just as these problems were surfacing in Australian universities, the internet appeared as a possible solution. This took two forms. First, online resources were used to enhance traditional teaching. American history was a special beneficiary here, with the Library of Congress and many university libraries putting newspapers, speeches and documents online. Students also had access to a wide range on journals and e-books. In Australia we were initially caught up in the excitement of this new technology, believing, or at least hoping, it would end the need for expensive, Northern hemisphere field trips. However, disappointment quickly followed. As many of the contributors to this book argue, virtual



16 “High University Drop Out Rates Cast $1.4 Billion,” in The Australian, October 20, 2010. Attrition rates in Australian universities range from a low of 9.7% to a high of 24.2%, with an average of 17%. 17 Anthony Herrington and Jan Herrington, Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education (Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2006), 2. 18 University of Melbourne Bachelor of Arts Pathways and Careers, http://ba.unimelb.edu.au/pathways/careers.html. Accessed on September 3, 2012. 19 “Uni Degrees: Who Needs Them?” in the Melbourne Age, May 14, 2010. http://blogs.theage.com.au/small-business/workinprogress/2010/05/14/unidegrees who.html accessed on September 5, 2012.

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reality is just a pale imitation of the real thing. A virtual tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum doesn’t convey the close, stuffy atmosphere in a cramped apartment, and as Joan Schaffner observes in her essay, “a virtual experience does not duplicate the experience of meeting, in person, experts in a given field, and hearing first-hand their stories of their lives and work.” Online research and virtual tours also failed to address the disconnectedness that students felt, and indeed, to the extent that it kept them away from the library and the physical campus, it actual increased their feeling of isolation. The danger was even greater with the second application of online learning: the virtual classroom. Online learning – sometimes called distance learning in Australia – opens up many possibilities, but almost by definition it is isolating. As Sorin Gudea has admitted, “the loss of personal contact concerns students and teachers alike.”20 This has certainly been the experience in American Universities, where, for example, the University of Illinois found that if the online class comprises any more than twenty students the “synergy level” falls away.21 Although in a strange, sad way the dislocation of the virtual classroom does mirror the real world for today’s students, this was not the classroom experience Dewey advocated. In fact, sitting alone in front of a computer to take classes with low synergy levels is the antithesis of what educators call collaborative learning. The loneliness felt by online students and the sterility of their lessons is sometimes hard to recognize because it is not so different from the traditional university experience where “many courses promote individual endeavor and cognition rather than collaboration, and students’ activities are largely solitary.”22 That is, students sit together in a lecture theatre taking notes and never uttering a word, and they are assessed on essays that they write alone. Indeed, in essay writing, collaboration so easily becomes plagiarism that students are scared of it. Obviously, this is not a congenial nor enjoyable way to learn. More importantly, it provides a less effective learning environment than taking students out of the classroom and letting them support one-another and interact with their teacher, who has the opportunity to explain the relevance and application of what they are doing. Supporting one-another

 20

Sorin Gudea, Expectations and Demands in Online Teaching: Practical Experiences (Hershey: Information Science Publishing, 2008), 138. 21 University of Illinois “Weaknesses of Online Learning,” http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/overview/weaknesses.asp, accessed on September 21, 2012. 22 Anthony Herrington and Jan Herrington, Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education (2006), 6.

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informally, as well as working in groups to tackle structured activities, is itself more connected to real life situations than the isolation of the traditional classroom. As Di Challis has explained, “if tertiary study is seen as a preparation for professional life…collaboration is important because it mirrors the dynamics of doing business in the real world.”23 While the short-term benefits of experiential and place-based learning are now well accepted by educators, longitudinal studies have not yet been conducted. As Smith and Sobel have noted, these learning strategies are still so new that “studies tracking their impact on students, teachers and communities remain more preliminary and suggestive than definitive.”24 Nevertheless, the early signs are overwhelmingly positive, and my experience at Melbourne University shows that students not only achieve at a higher level in the study tour subject itself, but their subsequent grades also improve and they are more likely to go on to graduate study. Indeed, after travelling to America, studying on-site and experiencing college life, a number of our students went on to Masters programs in America, at Columbia, NYU and Duke. One caution here is that high-achieving students are more likely to take a study tour subject in the first place. With the luxury of having more students apply than I could take from this already elite group, I tended to choose students with the strongest grades and who impressed me most in interviews. These students want to learn. They want the trip to be rigorous. I recall cutting back what had been a four-hour walking tour of the Washington Mall monuments, thinking that it was too much for the students to handle. At the end of the shortened tour, the students expressed disappointment. Apparently, three hours just wasn’t enough! Of course, if the aim is to narrow the achievement gap, a teacher might prefer to choose students from troubled backgrounds whose grades are lower, or might see the study tour as an opportunity to expose low-income students to travel and new experiences. However, American studies show that although all students benefit from experiential learning, high-achieving students’ grades get a disproportionately bigger boost.25 Early results at Melbourne University validate these studies, with low to medium achieving students’ grades improving a little, and high achievers rising more decisively.

 23

Di Challis, “The Music Room: Translating Curricula into Real-World Professional Experience,” in Anthony Herrington and Jan Herrington, Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education (2006), 39. 24 Gregory Smith and David Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education in Schools (New York: Routledge, 2010), 74. 25 Smith and Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education (2010), 78.

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One of the reasons that experiential learning leads to these improved results is that the lessons learnt stay with the students far longer than those learnt in traditional classes. Mel Silberman calls this “stickiness.” “Experiential learning is sticky,” he explained. “When done well it adheres to you. Participants usually forget a great presentation, but they never forget a great experience.”26 For today’s students, who also have to battle with the Teflon slipperiness of online learning, this stickiness is a revelation. The essays contributed to this book by former students illustrate this. Years on, they remember Sunday Service in a Brooklyn Gospel Church or a meeting at the AFL-CIO headquarters. They did not have to remember details of these experiences to pass an exam, but they remembered them all the same. The students’ essays also show that the study tour was a hugely enjoyable experience for them. At the same time, they were enthusiastic and motivated, and as David Sobel has observed, “it is not surprising that test scores increase as a function of increased enthusiasm for learning.”27 Making friends and learning to become a team player are two intangible, hard to measure outcomes that are nevertheless important. As Chapter Two illustrates, students who undertake the study tour forge relationships that last long after the study tour ends. At a time when isolation and alienation drive some students to drop out of university and many more to find it a grim experience, this is also surely a good thing. Moreover, with teamwork now a requirement in most workplaces, learning to work productively with others is a useful and marketable skill. But it wasn’t just the students who benefitted from study tour. As Kathleen Hunzer has observed, “collaborative learning, when done well, is highly beneficial for everyone, both students and instructors.”28 (Emphasis mine.) Getting out of the classroom and seeing how students reacted when they were connected with the real world, with me and with one-another, made me more aware of the problems with traditional teaching methods. We also learnt from one-another. According to Dan Brilhart, “teachers do

 26

Melvin Silberman, The Handbook of Experiential Learning (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2007), 4. 27 David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities (Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society, 2005), 26. As discussed in Chapter Three, we use student journals and essays in place of tests and exams, but we found that students approached them with the same additional enthusiasm. 28 Kathleen Hunzer, Collaborative Learning and Writing: Essays on Using Small Groups in Teaching English and Composition (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2012), 3.

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Chapter One

not work in isolation, but are a part of a practicing community.”29 The reality, however, is that teachers in Australian universities work in almost total isolation. We devise courses, write and deliver lectures, take discussion classes and grade essays, and we do all of this alone. We interact with colleagues at meetings, over morning coffee, or perhaps through a chance encounter at the photocopy machine, but not through teaching. Taking a study tour is very different. This is team teaching in its truest sense. As Chapter Two demonstrates, each aspect of the tour has to be totally integrated around a central theme, and for that to work, the teachers need to work together in the planning of the tour, and support one-another in moments of stress. At the same time, however, we have our own personalities and our own delivery methods, and watching and learning from one-another made us all better teachers. For example, in her essay in this book, Cassandra Atherton writes about the importance of giving students some “unstructured time away from the group.” In the early years of our study tour I didn’t understand this, and tried to fill the students’ time with as many organized activities as possible, including a trivia night and a group viewing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where I donated the sodas and popcorn. Both of these nights were great fun, but as Cassandra predicted in her essay, the students eventually started to flag. The pressure of being sociable and considerate wore them down, and it affected their work. As I realized this, I left the students alone more often, including occasional free days. Gradually, in small ways, I incorporated the strategy in my discussion classes back in Melbourne. In spite of all this mutual support I made plenty of mistakes and the sometimes-painful process of learning from these mistakes helped me to better understand how to make the study tour work. The five principles I developed are outlined in the next chapter, and although something like “Maximizing Sense of Place” is only applicable to field work, understanding the importance of giving a subject a strong theme and of occasionally taking the students out of their comfort zone improved my traditional classes. This much could be expected, or at least hoped for. But one completely unanticipated outcome was that in teaching history on-site I somehow derived a better feel for the subject matter, which again translated into improved outcomes in my classroom teaching back in Melbourne. Of course, I could simply travel to Boston and incorporate the experience in my lessons, but there is something about actual teaching

 29

Dan Brilhart, “Teacher Conceptualizing of Teaching: Integrating the Personal and the Professional,” in The Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, 2010, Vol 4, 175.

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experience on-site that connects better with classroom teaching. Barely a lecture goes by where I don’t draw on our student trips either explicitly or implicitly. 30 This manifested itself in a slightly different way for my colleague Katherine Ellinghaus. She describes in her essay in this book how, as a young female academic with very little real life experience in the United States, she always felt vulnerable lecturing about poverty or crime, but after doing things like working in a soup kitchen in the Bronx, she felt much authentic and assured. The benefits of experiential and place-based learning for teachers, students and the wider community are becoming hard to ignore, and as a result, fieldwork subjects are becoming more common. As Colin Beard and John Watson argue, “Learning is literally and metaphorically breaking out of the traditional classroom.”31 My study tour showed that this doesn’t just have to happen on a local level. Taking sixty students to the United States was a massive undertaking, but using the methods set out in Chapters Two and Three, I made it work. Those sixty students who went each year learnt American history in a more vivid way than they ever could in a Melbourne classroom. The experience also changed them. They learnt how to work together, and when they came home they believed their most secret ambitions were suddenly attainable. One of those students, Vanessa Condemi, wrote in the essay she contributed to this book, “As a group we did not just search for the American Dream, we learnt the value of having own dreams as well.”



30 For a discussion of the special instructive role of teaching, see Pamela Markus, “Drawing on Experience,” in the Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers on Art Education, Volume 2004, Issue 1. http://ir.uiowa.edu/mzwp/vol2004/iss1/1. Accessed on January 15, 2013. As Markus put it, “I became an art teacher by teaching art.” 31 Colin Beard & John Watson, Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers (Philadelphia: Kroger Page, 2006), 6.

CHAPTER TWO THE FIVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS

There is nothing like having to speak in public to focus the mind. For me, being asked to address a seminar organized by Deakin University on best practice in place-based education was the moment I really started to understand how to make a study tour subject work. My own subject survived its first year in large part because of the fundamental soundness of place-based education as a concept. The subject was self-selecting, attracting motivated students, and those students responded in the right way to the freedom of leaving the classroom. I also benefited from a healthy dose of beginner’s luck, and over the years, through a process of trial and error, I improved the itinerary and made the trip work better logistically. But I could hardly offer this up as a blueprint for others to follow, and so I decided to talk about the importance of planning. This fine detail of planning a trip subject is discussed in detail in Chapter Three, but as I pieced together my talk, I realized that I needed to take a step back and first talk about how to plan. The need for planning to be focused is not new. As the Roman philosopher Seneca observed two thousand years ago, “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” In other words, to plan for a successful study tour subject, it is firstly, essential to know what makes it successful. In this chapter, I have broken this down into five essential elements. These are: 1. Giving the subject a strong linking theme 2. Taking the students out of their comfort zone 3. Maximizing the impact of sense of place 4. Helping the students understand they are meeting special people and doing something special 5. Making the students feel they are part of a team.

The Five Essential Elements

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Sense of Mission: Giving the subject a linking theme It is easy to get excited by the possibilities when the three-week American itinerary is being composed. There are wonderful museums to visit, historic sites to see, cultural events to attend, and people to meet. However, these visits and meetings can’t be chosen in isolation from oneanother. As all lecturers discover, a subject needs coherence, with the weekly lectures like chapters in a book that tells a single story. A placebased subject is the same. The students have to see each visit or meeting as part of a whole, and the way to do this is to give the subject a strong and visible linking theme. The theme I chose for my subject was the American Dream, which Bill Clinton defined as the belief that “if you work hard and play by the rules then American will give you the chance to go as far as your God-given talents allow.”1 Put that way, it’s a simple concept, but it somehow unites Americans. On the trip we look at its history, we look at how people try to achieve it in different ways, and we look at the people who aren’t achieving their dreams, most obviously the poor and homeless, but also the great many people who go to work every day feeling unfulfilled. The underlying complexity of the American Dream means that the students can’t be left to make these links for themselves. The first step is to expose them to the critical literature on the subject. My way of doing this is to put together a collection of readings containing chapters from some of the more important books on the concept of the American Dream, as well as primers on the people and places on the itinerary. The students are given this book of readings three weeks before the group flies out for America. This is time enough for them to read it in a thoughtful way, but close enough to the trip that the ideas are still fresh in their minds when they arrive. Building on this foundation, I start each day with a 30-minute briefing. This is an opportunity to go over practical details like which subway we will be taking, and to remind the students about safety issues. However, the main purpose is to explain how the day’s activities link with the American Dream. Sometimes these links are more obvious than others. The visits where we look at the state of American schools, seen as the main pathway to a good job and the material expression of the American Dream, need little explanation. Similarly, our meeting with the police links very clearly with Bill Clinton’s caution that the American Dream should be pursued without breaking the rules. However, the visit to the Peace 1

Jennifer Hochschild., Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 8.

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Chapter Two

Corps leaves many students scratching their heads, and the prospect of a morning in a no-kill cat shelter has them absolutely baffled. Of course, the whole point of place-based education is that students are left with the possibility of making their own discoveries in situ, but gently pointing them in the right direction (in this case, introducing them to the idea that some Americans measure success in non-financial terms) facilitates the process. One unique opportunity I have in America is to build on the students’ reading about the American Dream by talking to authors in person. This begins in Boston where we meet Jennifer Hochschild, the Harvard professor whose book Facing Up to the American Dream started people asking why the Dream remained so potent when life chances and outcomes are so unequal.2 We follow this in New York by meeting Jim Cullen, the author of The American Dream: A Short History.3 Jim makes the point that dreams are dreams because they are ambitious and often unrealistic. Accordingly, people aren’t necessarily disillusioned when these dreams don’t come true. There is a different edge to these discussions compared to the classroom discussions that take place in Melbourne. The students file into the room nervously, many carrying their copy of the book being discussed, hoping to have it signed at the end of the session. Some are overawed at first, but as the discussion warms up many of them muster up the courage to ask a question. Afterwards they feel that they have somehow been included in a debate about America, and they approach the other meetings and visits with a heightened sense of engagement. Having introduced the students to the central theme, it is critical to make sure that the rest of the itinerary really does connect with it. If it doesn’t, then the enthusiasm and interest built up in the discussions with the experts quickly dissipates. To reinforce this link, I make sure that some visits explicitly connect with one-another, giving the students the opportunity to see the subject’s metanarrative develop. As this is such an important feature of the study tour, I prioritized talking about these connections in our morning briefings. As Mel Silberman advised, “Explaining the relationship between activities helps participants see the common thread in your program.”4

2

Jennifer Hochschild. 1995, Facing Up to the American Dream. Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 4 Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities: An Active Training Resource (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2010), 5. 3

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A good example of how I connect activities is the way I link the American Dream with community service. On face value, the two don’t connect at all. After all, Bill Clinton’s definition of the Dream talked about working hard to get ahead, not to help others. But on the trip we see how Americans understand how their own happiness is inextricably linked to the health of the community, and how there is a rich tradition of community service that is still alive today. It begins with the Puritans, and as we walk through the Boston Common on the first day, we discuss the very idea of a common, which involved a shared space for the good of all. Moving closer to the present, we visit the JFK Museum. This is a wonderful museum, and although the students are free to focus on the things that interest them – the Cuban missile crisis and Jacqueline Kennedy’s dresses are perennial favorites – I remind them not to forget Kennedy’s call to service, and how he created the Peace Corps just six weeks after he took office. Building on that foundation, the next day we visit the New England headquarters of the Peace Corps, where the students hear young people not much older than themselves explain why they would willingly give up two years of their life to dig a well in Central America or help build a school in an African village. In Washington I add another layer to this by visiting Americorps, the Federal body that funds organizations like the Peace Corps. This is a good example of how a visit’s timing is important. The Americorps people are friendly and informative, but listening to the mechanics of grant making, budgets and how outcomes are measured longitudinally is more than a bit dry. If the students heard it on the first day of the trip they would struggle with it. But two weeks in, after contextualizing visits to the JFK Museum and the Peace Corps, the statistics and financial details become meaningful and interesting. Because of this need for cohesion, it is important that the study tour coordinator retains creative control. As Cassandra Atherton explains in her essay in this book, “the coordinator is the auteur; he/she has artistic control over the subject and directs the entire trip from its conception of place and theme, through to the objectives and planning of each of the events on the itinerary.” This means resisting suggestions from colleagues on places to see and people to visit. Even if these well meaning colleagues know what the linking theme is, they won’t know the way it is being developed, with one visit linking to the next. So, while their suggestions might sound good individually, listening to them will result in a fragmented itinerary. However, while few academics need much persuading that they know their own subject best, the temptation to delegate responsibility for booking accommodation and transport to a travel agent is strong. Engaging a travel agent adds to the cost, but they portray themselves as

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Chapter Two

being experts, and even if they are not, they relieve the academic of having to study bus timetables, work through frighteningly complex contracts with university residential life departments, and many other time consuming tasks. There is no point in sugar coating this: Taking responsibility for the logistics of a study tour is a lot of hard work. The worry that the bus has been booked for the wrong day or that a contract has been misplaced, can cause sleepless nights. In the end, however, it is worth it. Travel agents might be appropriate for booking holidays, but this is a study tour. It is important to be staying in the right part of town, in the right type of accommodation. Visits and transport need to be arranged around the subject’s theme and in right order. It all comes back to the need for focused planning, and only the coordinator can do that.

Sense of Unease: Taking the students out of their comfort zone One of the most compelling arguments for place-based or experiential learning is that students tend to become complacent in their normal classroom settings. They cruise through lectures, knowing that they only need to write down the main points, they know they can miss the occasional class, they know the formula for writing a solid essay. They do well, but they aren’t pushed, and they never realize their full potential. The point, then, is not just to take students out of the classroom, but, as Nicholas Gair put it, to place them in “challenging situations.”5 Student complacence starts to fade the minute the group assembles at Melbourne airport and checks in. Many of the students won’t have travelled before, and even those who have will have done so with their families. Being part of a university trip is different. Everyone is immediately out of his or her comfort zone, and no one quite recovers. When the students arrive in Boston they check in at Emerson College, hoping that they will get along with their roommate. Next morning, they have to find the dining hall, then after breakfast, find the room where the briefing takes place. Then, when Emerson College starts to feel familiar, they check out and travel to New York, where the same thing happens at Fashion Institute of Technology, then again in Washington at American University. The visits themselves represent a different type of learning, and because each visit is different, the students never have the opportunity

5

Nicholas Gair, Outdoor Education: Theory and Practice (Washington: Cassell, 1997), 1.

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to entirely relax. They are always wide-eyed, and because of that, more receptive. That receptiveness, brought on by a sense of unease, is the inherent advantage that a study tour subject has over a conventional lecture or tutorial, but with careful planning, it can be enhanced. The most obvious way I do this is by seeking out challenging or disturbing visits, sometimes with a hint of danger attached. In her essay in this book my colleague Katherine Ellinghaus wrote about the sense of unease our students felt when we were walking through Roxbury, which in Boston has a reputation for being poor, having high crime rates, and generally being a place to be avoided at all costs. The Bronx has the same effect on students. Normally, I am constantly urging them to keep up with the group, but as soon as we arrive in Hunts Point Avenue a different mood descends, and the walk towards the community organization we visit is brisk and purposeful. Visits to historic sites, museums or universities don’t have the same edge, but by injecting something challenging into these visits, it is possible to keep the students off balance. A good example of how I do this is our visit to Coney Island, in Brooklyn. Coney Island was the site of three magnificent amusement parks – Luna Park, Steeplechase Park and Dreamland. In the early 20th century, as many as a quarter of a million New Yorkers crammed into these amusement parks on Sundays, which were the only respite in their tough, six-day working weeks. After having visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and seen the hot and cramped conditions that immigrant families lived and worked in, the students are ready to understand the appeal of a day in one of these amusement parks. As the point of this subject is to understand everything better by actually experiencing the place, we take the same long subway ride through Brooklyn those tenement dwellers took a hundred years ago. As the train draws closer to the Stillwell Avenue Station and the students catch a glimpse of the sea, then the Wonder Wheel, they feel a growing sense of excitement, and although the current amusement park is much smaller than the originals, it is easy to imagine the sheer joy that these people felt when they walked through the turnstile. Coney Island shook people out of their workaday routines. It was fun, but it was fun in a scary kind of way. To capture this, and at the same time to take the students out of their own comfort zones, I make a point of arriving just as the sun is going down. The night disguises the amusement park’s age, and makes it feel just a little bit threatening. Then, when the students have sampled a Nathan’s hotdog and taken a ride on the very gentle Wonder Wheel, we move on to the not so gentle Cyclone Roller

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Coaster. The Cyclone terrified people when it was introduced, but now the ride has the added sting of being 80 years old; hurtling around the wooden tracks tests even the bravest soul. After this we sample a more sedate, but in some ways more frightening attraction: the Sideshow. Billed as a place to see “freaks, wonders and human curiosities,” this is entertainment from a different age and the students find it extremely unsettling. Even the fireeater, whose act is more familiar and who is dazzlingly good, manages to offend many of the students with his sexist patter. On the face of it, meetings with politicians, authors and academics allow the students some respite. After all, the settings might be different, but the students sit safely in a meeting room with the speaker out front, similar to a lecture. The one critical difference is that the speaker’s presentation is followed by a question and answer session, which is definitely not the relaxing, passive learning that the students know at home. Of course, students have different personalities, and some enjoy the challenge of being in the limelight. For them, raising their hand to ask a question of a State Department official or a Harvard professor is not daunting. But the trip isn’t just about a few extroverts, and so I put in place a limit of one question per student, which means that some of the shy, introverted ones have to muster up their courage. To the extent that they know they have to ask questions, the students are already out of their comfort zone in these meetings. However, they can still find themselves ambushed, and like any good ambush, it happens when they least expect it. Indeed, this is one of the essential characteristics of experiential learning. As Mel Silberman explained, “experiential activities often surprise, even jolt participants. The experience is not what they expect.”6 One memorable example of how effective an unexpected jolt can be was at stately, sedate Harvard University, where the students met a professor in a classroom. Many of the students admitted to thinking, ‘What could be less threatening than being back into a classroom?’ The professor, John Stauffer, was going to talk about his book Giants, which links the lives and the ideas of Abraham Lincoln with Frederick Douglass. Stauffer was a compelling speaker and although he pitched his talk at a high level, the students wanted that from a Harvard professor. I was hoping that their questions were going to be incisive, but then things took a surprising turn: The professor started asking the students questions. They were hard questions, and if he didn’t like an answer, he let them know. This was definitely out of everyone’s comfort zone. No amount of bravado could disguise a lack of knowledge about Lincoln’s early years or his thoughts on race. The questions kept coming, for some thirty minutes past 6

Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities (2010), 1.

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the time allotted for the meeting. When we finally emerged some of the students looked shaken, but their journal entries were thoughtful, and then later, when we were back in Australia, there were three wonderful Abraham Lincoln essays written by students who had been put through the wringer that day at Harvard. Museums, a core activity on any study tour, need some management. This is because, although, “museum-goers often experience a sense of inferiority [when they] encounter the unfamiliar,” it is easy for students in a large group situation to slip into a passive role when they are viewing exhibits.7 Of course, giving the students the chance to relax occasionally isn’t such a bad thing because if they are kept off-guard and unsettled all the time they get jaded. As Anita Rui Olds has pointed out, “fluctuations in stimulation level” can themselves be “frightening and stimulating.”8 But equally, it is important the students do not mentally switch off whenever a museum appears on the itinerary, and there are easy steps that can be taken to keep the visits interesting and challenging. I try to choose museums: 1. That link with other visits, so that the students understand their relevance. 2. Where the students are led through the exhibits by a guide rather than moving at their own pace. 3. Where the students are broken down into small groups. One museum that ticks all the boxes is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The Tenement Museum is an actual tenement that has been preserved to show how immigrants lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I set the visit up by taking the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Immigration Museum at Ellis Island the previous day, and then we effectively follow the immigrants’ tale to the Lower East Side to see how they went about chasing the American Dream. The walk from the Grand Street subway station to the museum, through streets crowded with the most recent immigrants to the city, primes the students even more, but the museum still has to deliver: If the students were allowed to switch off, then all the contextualizing would be wasted. At the Tenement Museum, however, there is no chance to relax. The staff ask me to split the sixty students into four groups of fifteen, then they wait expectantly on the sidewalk. Four guides then emerge from the museum and give students the museum guidelines: No eating or drinking, no leaning on the walls, no handling objects. Immediately, everyone is on edge. Then the guides lead 7

Anita Rui Olds, “Sending Them Home Alive,” in Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, ed., The Educational Role of the Museum (New York: Routledge, 1994), 334. 8 Anita Rui Olds, “Sending Them Home Alive,” (1994), 333.

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their groups into the museum, which is dark, close, and hot. It is physically testing, and some of the students start to flag, but they have to stay alert, because their guide asks questions, and in a small group in a small room, there is no place to hide. Already out of their comfort zone physically and mentally, the students are also challenged emotionally, and few of them emerge from the tenement unmoved by the hardship the immigrants endured and the sacrifices they made.

Sense of Place: Maximizing the Impact of Visits The theoretical basis of the study tour subject is the idea that getting out of the classroom and seeing the place where an historical event happened, talking to a judge in his courtroom or working in a food bank makes the learning experience more vivid. As Mel Silberman argued, insitu experiences “are dramatic,” and “stir feelings of joy, wonder, and sometimes discomfort.” 9 Importantly, the lessons learnt “stick” and are reflected in the students written work, which is invariably informed by sense of place. Their essays feel authentic. However, sense of place works better if it is given a helping hand. The visits have to be chosen carefully. As Dewey noted, “the belief that genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are equally educative.” 10 There will be a pool of potential visits that link with subject’s central theme, but these need to be filtered for maximum impact. This can sometimes mean overlooking an historic site that ties in perfectly with the American Dream and has plenty of good books written about it, simply because it is visually unimpressive or lacking in emotional impact. There are also practical considerations. It might sound trivial, but a long and difficult subway ride, or a lengthy wait in line can dull the impact of the visit itself. The first step in maximizing the impact of the individual visits is to introduce the students to the city. After they are checked-in at their college dorm, I begin with an orientation walk that includes a taste of the local subway. This means purchasing sixty weekly subway passes before I meet the students. This can be a trial in New York, where ticket machines only issue four passes per transaction. However, it is worth the effort. Apart from the need to introduce students to the practicalities of the city, the orientation is also a chance to put them in touch with its character, and of course the subway is very much a part of the New York experience. 9

Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities (2010), 1. John Dewey, Experience and Education (1938), 25.

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Boston is a different city – more sedate than New York – and I approach the orientation in a different way. We walk from Emerson College through the Common and into the Public Garden, stopping for a ride on the Swan Boats, before proceeding down stately Commonwealth Avenue. Finally, we take the T from Copley Station back to Emerson. It is a gentle paced afternoon, but students find themselves falling in love with the city. In Washington we start by walking around the American University neighborhood, giving the students a sense of where they are staying, and then we take the Metro to the Mall, where we walk from monument to monument. Undertaking this tour by moonlight gives a stunning first impression of the nation’s capital. The visits themselves have to live up to these city primers. In the early years of this subject, the temptation was to rely heavily on museums. Invariably located close to a subway station and set up to receive groups, they are very practical, and they provide links to reference material making it easy for students wanting to do follow-up work. I learnt, however, to use museum visits more sparingly. Even though museums expose the students to artifacts and actual documents, the experience somehow feels second-hand. You can sense the students thinking, “did we travel half way around the world to visit a museum?” Some museums transcend this, and the ones that do are able to incorporate a sense of place into their exhibits. Museums located on an historic site have an obvious edge in this regard, although sometimes it takes some imagination to make the links. For example, the fact that the Patriots decided to stage the Boston Tea Party at Old South Meeting House gives Old South genuine credibility, but it is set up as the Puritan church that it was, and a student of the Revolution will probably walk away disappointed. Once again, however, the best example is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, in New York. Miriam Bader, the Education Officer at the Tenement Museum, discusses the way the museum takes students back to the world of the immigrant New Yorker a hundred years ago in her essay in this book, and I can attest to its effectiveness. I teach students about tenement life, but no matter how passionate my lectures and no matter how many books the students read, there is nothing like walking into the dimly lit hallway at 97 Orchard Street, climbing the narrow stairway and then standing in a small, cramped bedroom on a hot summer’s day to understand what it was really like. But the Tenement Museum’s effectiveness also owes something to its location. On leaving the museum, my group walks back to Grand Street Station, and although the immigrants there are Chinese and Korean now,

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the crowded street, the commerce and the ambition are just the same as they would have been in 1890. The other factor the Tenement Museum has in its favor is it the way it links to other immigration-related visits. To maximize this effect, I schedule our visit after the group has taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Statue is so iconic that there is a collective gasp when the students see it, and the thoughtful ones understand something of what a Russian immigrant must have felt when her ship sailed into New York Harbor at the turn of the century. The Immigration Museum at Ellis Island lets the students walk through the screening process those immigrants endured. After that visit, they start to understand how the Lower East Side could really seem like the Promised Land. The one caution here is, although the temptation is to schedule the Statue and the Tenement Museum together on a grand, immigration-themed day, the practicalities mean that they should be separated. The first problem is that the Museum can only take groups in the morning, before the public arrive, which means that the natural order has to be reversed. One year I decided to reverse the order, but by the time the group got to Battery Park the queues for the ferry were so long, the students were worn down by the time we got to the Statue, and it barely registered on them. In contrast to museums, some visits have a very obvious emotional impact. Sitting in a Boston courtroom hearing the final arguments in a murder trial is riveting, and the quiet hush that descends over the group after they watch the changing of the guard ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery speaks to its impact. But there are less dramatic visits that, if planned correctly, can still bring a subject to life. A good example is food. A lot has been written about the symbolic importance of food in American culture, from the first Thanksgiving feast, to the present celebration. We study this in Australia, with special emphasis on the way immigrants use food to hold onto their old identity, and the way immigrant food is incorporated into mainstream American cuisine. It doesn’t take any persuasion to get students interested in sampling American food. The old man selling fried dough near the Boston Common, the hot dog vendors in New York, and even Starbucks, all have a fascination. But as always, I strive to tackle the subject in a structured way, with carefully chosen visits building on one-another. The students first get the opportunity to talk with a writer or professor who specializes in food, and then I follow up with a visit where they experience food in situ. One of the writers we meet is Joyce White, whose books on soul food help explain the way food has been part of the African American church and community. White explains how soul food was poor people’s food,

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made with the left overs from the master’s table or vegetables grown in kitchen gardens, but made with care and love. The students listen, fascinated by descriptions of the cakes the women would make to take to Sunday Service. This prepares the students perfectly for Sunday Service at the Institutional Church of God in Christ, in Brooklyn. To be sure, food isn’t really on any student’s mind when they ride the subway to Brooklyn and then walk down De Kalb Avenue into their first experience of an African American neighborhood. As we enter the church everyone in the group feels out of place and a bit self-conscious, in spite of the warm welcome from Bishop Carl Williams’ wife, “First Lady” Alexis. The service begins with a gospel hymn, and the music continues. Its sheer energy draws the students in, while at the same time keeping them on edge. This is a world away from any Australian church service, and as if to emphasize the difference, the First Lady calls for volunteers from our group to join the choir and sing. Standing on the dais is a nerve wracking experience for the four students involved, but one that makes everyone in the group feel more genuinely part of the service. Everyone gradually relaxes and listens to the sermon and the announcements concerning the coming week’s events. These invariably include references to food. There might be a picnic the following Saturday, or women might be asked to bring cakes to choir practice, but we see clearly how shared food brings the congregation together. Unfortunately, my students can’t see any of this first hand, but they do get the chance to actually sit down and eat African American food in Washington. The venue for this tasting is Ben’s Chili Bowl, on U Street. Ben’s is more than just a restaurant. It was established in the 1950s, when Washington was still a segregated city and U Street was at the heart of the black community. U Street exploded following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, but the rioters valued Ben’s so much that it was spared, and in the difficult years ahead it served as a default community center. Today U Street is being gentrified, but Ben’s owners have carefully kept the restaurant true to its roots. Diners still sit on stools, shoulder to shoulder at the counter, and the menu is unchanged, still featuring chili dogs and little else. This strategy has been successful, because although Ben’s is now a celebrity destination, with Barack Obama famously dining there, it retains its status as a “third place” for locals. When my group visits for chili dogs and fries we are welcomed and told about the history of the place. All of this presents a challenge for salad eating, weight conscious Melbourne University students, but at the end of their meal they really feel they understand more about how a healthy community

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functions, and at least a little more about the history and meaning of the Civil Rights Movement.

Sense of Wonder: Helping the students understand they are doing something special. Ensuring the impact of sense of place is critical to the success of a trip subject. However, cities like Boston, New York and Washington are mainstream tourist destinations, and the students could easily visit them alone. Few would be foolhardy enough to walk around places like the Bronx, but they could visit many of the places on my itinerary by themselves. Of course, they wouldn’t do things in the same way. They wouldn’t have visits linked by a conceptual framework, they wouldn’t have them explained each day in a morning briefing, and they wouldn’t have the benefit of working together in a team. Nevertheless, to unlock the full potential of place-based learning, the students still need to think that they are doing something special; something that they couldn’t do by themselves. A successful trip subject needs the ‘wow factor’, and the way this is achieved is by having the students meet and talk with people. Ideally, at least some meetings should be with important people who the students simply could never see if they tried to organize a meeting themselves. These meetings can be difficult to arrange, but it doesn’t take much effort to send an email. Although I had many polite refusals over the years, I came to learn how intriguing a request from an Australian university can be and how generous important people can be with their time. Amongst the people who granted us audiences were: Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Senator Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader when we met him, and union boss Jim Hoffa. They all have charisma, and their ever-present aides somehow add to the sense of occasion by monitoring their Blackberries and always being ready to quietly end the meeting if an emergency intervenes. The best experiential activities are dramatic, and the drama of a US Senator getting a whispered message from an aide, then announcing that he can only give us another fifteen minutes, invariably draws the right response from the students.11 Their close attention and careful note taking when these people speak, coupled with their nervous tension when question time is announced, all attest to how seriously they take meetings with important people. Sometimes the sense of a special occasion can be achieved without a big name speaker. One of the activities that always creates a big 11

Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities (2010), 1.

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impression on the students is when we meet NCIS agents. The agents are anonymous, but that somehow adds to their mystique, as does the setting. The meeting takes place at Washington Navy Yard, and when we arrive at the gate, military police check our names and passport numbers against a pre-approved list. Their pedantic attention to detail, where “Tim” instead of “Timothy” can mean that the unfortunate student is denied entry, immediately sets the students on edge. Then, as we walk through the base, passing a troop of marines marching in precise formation, the students are wide-eyed. Knowing that the students’ knowledge of NCIS derives mostly from the television show of the same name, the agents do a lot of comparing and contrasting, but they have the knack of conveying how dangerous and potentially deadly the job can be. In question time there can be the usual nervous reticence amongst the students, but when the first question is asked, all the students want to ask questions, and I end up having to step in and give the agents a chance to escape gracefully. The importance of meeting people is underscored by the way they can make visits to places or institutions more special. One example is our court visit in Boston. Court might not be a usual tourist destination, but any individual has the right to attend a trial. What makes our visit different and makes it special is that I arrange it around people. As anyone who has attended a trial knows, they can be slow paced and nowhere near as dramatic as on Law and Order. However, Denise Regan, the Boston Public Defender, selects a trial for us, and before we enter the court she gives us a quick outline of what is happening. She warns us to “be quiet as if we were in a church.” There is still an element of luck in what we see, but on one memorable occasion we witnessed the closing arguments in a murder trial, where the defendant was accused of gunning down a low level drug dealer named Cushings Fortuna. After the summations, when the court was cleared, we re-entered and talked with the judge, who discussed America’s gun and drug laws, and the death penalty. When we finally emerged, the students were buzzing. They waited eagerly for the verdict, and then many of them followed up with vivid and insightful essays.

Sense of Belonging: Making the students feel they are part of a team One of my enduring memories of the American trip is of a seemingly trivial mishap that befell us in Brooklyn. The group was on the subway, making our way back to Manhattan after an afternoon at Coney Island. While there, I had encouraged them to try to understand what the

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amusement parks must have meant to someone who lived and worked in a crowded tenement one hundred years ago. Spirits were high. The afternoon had been productive, and Coney Island was fun. Some of the students were reading, some were planning their evening activities, and some were just sitting quietly, being lulled to sleep by the subway rhythm. Then, without warning, a young female student got out of the train at the wrong stop. It turned out that she had assumed that the Brooklyn 25th Street Station was in Manhattan, close by to the student dorm at 28th Street. As the train pulled out of the station we could see the bewildered look on her face give way to panic, and then, before I had time to respond in any meaningful way, a group of half a dozen students volunteered to get off at the next stop and go back to collect her. Bearing in mind that these students were strangers three weeks earlier when they walked into a pretrip meeting at Melbourne University, this struck me as a wonderful endorsement of the potential of the study tour subject to create team spirit, and it stood in stark contrast to the lonely, anonymous campus the students knew at home. The isolation that the students feel at university is partly the result of the very noble attempt to expand the university system and make it more accessible. Unfortunately, one consequence of this growth is the way in which Australian universities have become more impersonal. Unlike American universities, where students routinely live on campus or in a college town, most Australian students live at home. These commuterstudents have to rely on meeting people in classes. Sadly, on their first day, they typically find themselves in a massive lecture theatre with as many as three hundred other students. They sit, taking notes and feeling alone. Tutorials provide a more interactive environment, but because there is no continuity amongst tutorial groups, friendships tend to be weak and fleeting. Many educators believe that this loneliness and anonymity is one of the greatest problems facing first year students, but because it is built into the Australian university system, it is extremely difficult to overcome.12 The study tour experience is different. Travelling and living together for three weeks brings students together. Somehow the students know this instinctively, and prior to the trip, when they are asked what they are looking forward to, many of them nominate staying at an American college. When asked to explain the attraction, they often answer obliquely, talking about American college-inspired movies. However, the underlying desire to simply meet and connect with other students is clear. Without the 12

For a discussion of the problem of isolation amongst students, see Bette Erickson, Calvin Peters and Diane Strommer, Teaching First Year College Students (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 221.

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students thinking about it, this carries over into the way they learn. When the group visits a museum or an historic site, the students talk to one another, which is effectively an example of collaborative learning in practice, and the polar opposite of the individual learning in a lecture theatre. A final measure of the way the students embrace the idea of helping one another reach a better understanding is when they write their daily journal entry. These journals are assessed, and to the extent that a grading curve applies, the students are in competition with one-another. However, I learnt at the end of one trip that there had been regular “journal writing parties” in the student dorms at night. I know from reading the journals that there was no duplication – each student wrote their journal in their own words, and the final interpretations varied massively – but nevertheless, they wanted to do it together. The teacher-student relationship also shifts towards a collaborative approach. True, the thirty minute briefing that I begin each day with is conducted like a traditional lecture, where the students are fed out the travel arrangements for the day and are told how the day’s visits link to the American Dream theme. But after that, the line of separation blurs. At each museum or historical site my colleagues and I make a point of dispersing, moving through the group, and talking with as many students as we can. The students love this, and I have learnt not to expect to sit and read the newspaper on the subway after the visit, because there are certain to be students eager to discuss it in more depth. The key this is that the students talk to their teachers and one-another in ways that are unthinkable in a traditional classroom setting. Roger Greenaway has suggested that a de-briefing session, where students have a chance to talk about what they just experienced, can be as important as the experience itself. According to Greenway, “The experience can come alive in the de-brief. The discussion is not a static safe, merely cognitive exercise: It has feeling, anger, frustration accomplishment and fun.” 13 I have seen all of these emotions surface in a post-activity discussion, but in my view, the most important function is to make sure that every student feels that he or she experienced the activity as part of a group. Some activities, for example attending Sunday Service at a gospel church, don’t allow discussion, and even in activities that do, someone can be left out. To make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak in a de-brief, I divide the students into tutorial size groups, each led by one of the teaching staff. Mel Silberman suggests that there are three key questions that the teacher should pose: 13

Roger Greenaway, “Dynamic Debriefing,” in Melvin Silberman, ed., The Handbook of Experiential Learning (San Francisco, Pfeiffer, 2007), 60.

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1. What did the students feel? 2. What did they learn? 3. How can what they learn be applied? 14 From my experience, the students are eager to discuss what they felt and learnt. Occasionally, the possible applications of this newly acquired knowledge might need teasing out, but the most important thing that the teacher has to do is to make sure that no individual dominates the discussion, and nobody is left out. Everyone has to feel that they are part of the group, and that they contributed to a shared understanding of the activity. The nature of a study tour lends itself to the development of this sense of belonging, but with planning, the process can be facilitated. The first step is selecting the students. Obviously grades are a factor, but character is also a consideration. If the group is to function as a team, there needs to be a good chemistry. Students with a potentially abrasive manner, or those who might not be considerate in the dorm could be harmful to this chemistry. Drinking and lack of punctuality could also harm the smooth running of a trip. The problem is how to detect any of this. The student’s academic record gives a hint. A history of essays submitted late or attendance problems are warning signs that the student is not well organized and perhaps not responsible. A second filter is the student’s application form: Did it come in on time, was it well presented, and was the statement of purpose persuasive? But the most important part of the selection process is the interview. This can be time consuming. I routinely have 100-150 applications, and scheduling four interviews an hour means a week’s work. It is, however, a week well spent. Picking up on just one potential problem student, or conversely, one good natured, responsible student who didn’t stand out on paper, can make all the difference. The next step is taking the time an effort to learn the students’ names. Because it is just as likely the coordinator is going to want to talk to a student on the first day of the trip as at the end, this should happen prior to departure. I use the student records, which come with an ID photo, but if that isn’t an option then an easy alternative is to ask everyone to provide a copy of their passport ID page. This isn’t a bad idea in any event, just in case a student loses their passport on the trip. Of course, the students themselves also need to learn names, and having everyone wear a nametag for the first few days helps and has the added advantage of reinforcing the sense of belonging to a group. 14

Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities (2010), 2.

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The quality of the much-looked-forward-to college dorms has a massive impact on the mood of the group, and by association, the functioning of the study tour itself. Our first stop is in Boston, where, after discussing the matter with the Emerson College residential director, I had my students housed in three-bedroom “suites.” These bedrooms are twinshare, which gives students the opportunity to get to know one other student very well. This is fine, but my aim is for them to also have a wider acquaintance, and here the suite design, which involves the six students in the three bedrooms sharing a living room and bathroom, is useful. At Fashion Institute in New York the students narrow down to two-bedroom apartments, but I make sure that they are all sharing with new partners, meaning that by this point they have actually roomed with eight fellow students. At American University in Washington I have no choice but to have the students in conventional, twin share rooms, but by that point they already know everyone, and friendship groups have formed. Of course, there will be little niggles. People are away from home, out of their comfort zones, and after the ‘honeymoon period’ when everyone is being ultra considerate, someone will monopolize a shared bathroom, or a neat person and a messy person sharing a room will get on one-another’s nerves. But this is to be expected, and if the selection process put together a group of good natured, well adjusted students, and if the bonding process on the trip has worked, then these tensions can be resolved. One way to help the group come together is to devise activities that require teamwork. Some of these activities are serious. For instance, every year my students work a shift at the Greater Boston Food Bank. There, after a terrifyingly complex thirty minute briefing where they are warned about the dire consequences of mixing condiments and preserves or juices and beverages, the students work on a type of production line, where one mistake, or one person who can’t keep up, affects the whole group. The way they rise to the challenge and help one-another when the need arises is heart warming. I also have more light-hearted activities designed to build teamwork. A perennial favorite here is the Smithsonian treasure hunt, where five-student teams race one another to find and photograph items like Lincoln’s hat and Dorothy’s red shoes. All of this enhances the learning experience, and friendships are created, which is a wonderful thing in itself. Being focused on the learning outcomes, teachers tend to miss the strength of these bonds, but the final dinner in Washington invariably opens my eyes. These dinners are always emotional affairs, with group photos, heartfelt speeches, and teary hugs as everyone realizes that they are about to say goodbye to the people they went through so much with. But just as inevitably, it doesn’t end there.

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There are always reunions, and after one trip ten members of the group – none of whom knew one-another beforehand – formed a mixed netball team when they got home. The exclamation point on all of this is that the fifteen years my study tour has run has given rise to seven ‘trip marriages’.

CHAPTER THREE PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION

When students take their seats in a lecture theatre on the first day of a new semester, they are a little bit on edge. They are looking for familiar faces, and hoping that the subject won’t be too difficult. They don’t have long to dwell on any of this, because almost immediately, they have to start taking notes, and as the lecturer outlines the structure of the subject, they begin to understand how much work is ahead. There is reading that has to be done before each week’s tutorial, and then there are those lurking assessment tasks, including a research essay that will take a week’s solid work. Finally, when the semester is over, there is an exam involving more stress-laden work. The lecturer, by contrast, looks calm and in control, showing off expert knowledge, throwing in an occasional anecdote, and at times even appearing to enjoy the experience. The student doesn’t stop to think that the lecture took three days to write, that the lecturer spent weeks over the summer putting together the reading guide and devising assessment tasks that will bring the best out everyone. The lecturer, in short, is like the proverbial duck swimming in an apparently effortless manner, but whose webbed feet are churning beneath the surface. This applies even more so with a study tour subject, where the teacher has to have an air of infallibility no matter how stressful the situation and how strange the place. As Cassandra Atherton explains in her essay in this book, “Publicly, the teaching staff must be confident, wellorganized, charismatic and often fearless.” This poise, however, doesn’t come easily. It is built on months of planning and preparation, so that when the study tour begins, everything is in place, everything is arranged, and if there is a nasty surprise, there are structures in place to deal with the situation with a minimum of fuss.

Squaring Things Away With the Department Before the planning and organization begins, the teacher has to make sure that the people who determine workloads are aware of just how much time and effort a study tour subject involves. When I began my subject, it

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was all so new that it barely registered on my workload. I got the impression that some people in my department saw it as a three-week hobby that I was indulging myself in during the mid-semester break, with a trip thrown in for free. In those circumstances, it is difficult to ask for a significantly lower teaching or administrative load. But, as Smith and Sobel warn, a study tour is not an add-on that a teacher can “shoehorn” into their existing workload.1 If I wasn’t prepared to stand up for myself at this point, my research output would have started to decline and my other classes would have suffered. To some extent, this is compensated for by the high student evaluation scores study tour subjects attract, but as anyone who has spent time in a university knows, the pressure to publish and the expectation that academics will attend meetings is relentless, and sooner or later this pressure will result in a lecturer burning out and being forced to give up the study tour. Most university administrations will be sympathetic, but the problem is that the standard practice in many universities is to measure workloads by student numbers. In other words, taking thirty students to America is deemed the equivalent of teaching thirty students in a classroom. It shouldn’t be hard to make a case that a study tour has be counted in a different way. After all, the pressure of teaching in a classroom, although very real, pales beside the pressure of leading students around New York City, and while it is no harder to lecture to 120 students than 90, there is a physical limit to how many students can be taken overseas. If the university ignores this logic and insists on a headcount measure, then take as many students as possible without compromising the quality of the experience. In my case, the university decided that taking one student to America was worth two students in a classroom. I am still convinced that if Frederick Winslow Taylor came back to life and did a time and motion study he would make the ratio more like 4:1, but university departments have budgets to balance, and 2:1 was a compromise that I could live with.

Background Knowledge The teacher’s perceived mastery of the trip subject has to be real, and has to be anchored in a thorough knowledge of the places the students will go. When the group emerges from a New York subway station, with sixty pairs of eyes on their leader, it is not the time to be unprepared and look at the map. It is important to know instantly which way is “uptown.” And 1

Alan Smith and Gregory Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education in Schools (New York: Routledge, 2010), ix.

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when the group arrives at the historic site or the memorial, the lecturer must take the role of expert. They have to bring the scene to life, and when a student has a question, it is important to have the answer. On the face of it, this shouldn’t be a problem. After years of study and teaching, most lecturers have a command of their subject. Also, most historians have visited “their” country, whether for fieldwork, archival research, or even attending a conference. But the bar here is high. Running a study tour subject requires detailed, first hand knowledge of each city the group visits, and indeed of all the places within these cities that the group will go. In addition to this, the lecturer must know how to get to those places. There are no shortcuts, and if the lecturer hasn’t been to these places, he/she has to choose: Either drop them from the itinerary, or go there beforehand. In fact, even if the lecturer has been there before, my advice is to go again. A fact-finding trip is an added expense, but it is not a luxury. Subway routes change and museums alter their displays. Even at this early stage the lecturer will have tentative ideas about an itinerary, based on a central, linking theme. This is the chance to test its practicality (can the museum be easily reached by subway?) and each individual visit’s ability to contribute to the subject’s five basic fundamentals. In terms of sense of place and wonder, it is important to be satisfied that the historic site you visited ten years ago is still as inspiring as you remember it. It is also wise to check the places that have been noted as creating some sense of unease. Take Harlem, for example. My memory was of a tough, forbidding place, where a white Australian felt uneasy just negotiating the short walk from the 125th Street Station to the Apollo Theater. However, when I returned in the late 1990s after an absence of just a few years, the first signs of gentrification were becoming apparent. Ten years later, the students were almost disappointed at how safe they felt, and at the presence of familiar stores like H&M. For unease, we had to go further uptown, into the Bronx. In addition to investigating the viability of each visit, university dorms where the students will be staying must be looked over. University websites invariably paint a rosy picture, but a quick walk through with the housing director makes it obvious whether the rooms are up to standard and whether there are enough bathrooms. Bearing in mind that the students will be going out at night, even if it is just to find a Starbucks or a CVS, it is important to be satisfied that the neighborhood is safe. A good example here was my search for the perfect university in Washington D.C. I tried Howard University, which is a wonderful university, and most of the students loved staying on a predominately African-American campus. But there were a small minority who felt threatened walking to or from the

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metro at night. I did not anticipate this, and while I think the students were overreacting, it’s what they think that counts. The next year I switched to American University. As our bus drew close, the students commented on the affluence of the neighborhood, and the AU campus was nothing short of stunning. If they had a complaint, it was that it was all a bit too manicured and dull, but I never heard a word about not feeling safe. Considering the police patrolled the embassy studded streets nearby and the Department of Homeland Security is located across the street, this was understandable, but it was also comforting. After the lecturer returns from the fact-finding trip, he/she will need to put on an accountant’s hat and work out what is possible financially. A balance must be struck. The trip should be as good as possible, but also as affordable as possible. To find out exactly where this balance lies, a spreadsheet is the most useful tool. Start with the necessary, fixed cost items such as the airfare and ground transport. Then factor in the semidiscretionary items, such as accommodation and food. Host universities set the rates here, but choosing how many days are affordable is imperative. Finally, there are completely discretionary items, like museum and cultural visits. Of course, having both is desirable, but if the budget is tight then the Broadway show or the Red Sox game might have to go. Then it gets really difficult, and more than a little scary, because with an overseas trip all of this must be done keeping an eye on the exchange rate. Rates go up and down, and nobody can predict where they are headed. Make the budget and then add a buffer of at least 5%. If the rate holds, it is easy to add an extra day or a big-ticket item, and if it improves, there might be an opportunity to give the students a refund. Conversely, if it drops past the designated buffer, a day will need to be subtracted.

An Information Brochure The next thing to do is to put all of this together in an easy to understand information pack or brochure. Students can learn about the subject’s existence from the university website, from the department’s noticeboard, and word of mouth. However, actually applying is such major commitment that they need detailed information. The absolute essentials are: A description of the subject: The students need to be introduced to the subject’s central theme, and given an idea of how this theme will be explored on the trip. There is no need to provide a finely detailed itinerary at this point, and given that visits can fall through and new opportunities can open up, it is not a good idea to try. It is enough to let students know

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the type of activities (museum and cultural visits, meetings with politicians, and so on) and to give them something to get excited about. If the students will attend a Broadway show, and if there is a possible meeting with a high profile author or politician, let the students know about it. Assessment details: Let the students know what the assessment tasks are and their weighting. Students see this as essential information before they take any subject, and by giving them those details, the study tour subject is placed on the same plane – it is not a junket, but rather a serious, rigorous subject. Enrolment prerequisites – who is eligible to apply: If it is important for students to have a background in American history, this is one of the only opportunities to make this clear. Again, this is information students need before they take any subject. It is also a chance to alert the students to requirements specific to a place-based subject, such as the need for a general level of fitness. The travel and accommodation arrangements: Reading about flying and college dorms excites interest amongst students, but this is not just advertising. Students do need to know things like the sleeping arrangements. Twin share rooms are appropriate for most people, but some students might not feel comfortable with another presence in their room. The cost: For many students, this is the deal breaker. The truth is that most of them need little persuading that a study tour subject is a good thing to do. They know the limitations of traditional classroom learning only too well, and the prospect of travel and learning on-site has huge appeal, but they need to know whether they (or their parents) can afford it. So give the cost, and what the students get for their money. I offer a package that includes flights, ground travel, accommodation, meals and entrance fees. In other words, everything but spending money and what I call “social money,” by which I mean the money needed to have a coffee with their fellow students, or maybe to see a movie. So that students can make an informed decision, I estimate this social money at $20 a day, but the point is that the students have to know exactly what they are signing themselves up for. An application form: With the brochure read, interested students will be eager to apply. Having an application form included in the brochure facilitates the process. My form begins by asking for the basics, including the student’s identification number, address, age, gender, and, because my study tour involves overseas travel, a passport number. I also ask if they have any pre-existing medical conditions, and for a person I can contact in the event of an emergency. All of this is ultimately useful to me, but the

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real point of the application form is to begin to screen the students so that I can select the final group I end up taking to America. With that in mind, my form asks the students for a short, written statement explaining why they want to take the subject and where they think it will lead them. In effect, this acts like a shorter version of application essays American colleges use, and they give a number of useful clues about a student’s suitability.

Selecting Students Selecting students is not a task that usually confronts university lecturers, who get kudos for attracting large numbers to their subjects: In raw terms, more students means more money flowing into the department’s budget. A study tour subject is different. Of course, attracting sufficient students is still important. The subject needs to achieve the critical mass needed to cover fixed cost items like bus hire and the cost of the teacher’s airfares and accommodation, but there is also an upper limit past which the subject loses effectiveness. Because of this, a quota must be set. Imposing a quota can be emotionally difficult. The teacher, believing in the potential of experiential and place-based learning, is obviously keen to include as many students as possible, and having to tell a good student that the quota has been filled is never easy. Nevertheless, cold, hard logistics impose an upper limit. Only so many students can squeeze into a courthouse or a meeting room, and keeping a large group together on a crowded, New York footpath is difficult enough to convince any teacher that a quota is a good idea. (Even the most crowded footpath is an easy assignment compared to navigating through Penn Station quickly enough to catch the next uptown express without losing at least one student along the way.) Perhaps even more important than logistics, however, is the fact that too many students diminish the subject’s collaborative learning potential. The group has to be small enough to allow it to cohere and for a sense of team spirit to form. In terms of the teacher-student relationship, each student should at least feel that they had the chance to engage a teacher in conversation during any one day. As was discussed in Chapter Two, this means that the teachers have to know every student’s name at the beginning of the trip. I used this need to memorize the students’ names as a handy guide to the maximum size of the group. For us that meant sixty students, which by a stroke of good luck, meshed quite neatly with my other logistic requirements: It was a number the host universities were comfortable with,

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the group fitted comfortably into two busses for the trips between cities, and although sixty sometimes stretched the boundaries during a visit, I was able to manage, even if it meant splitting the group. Indeed, the students welcomed this because it gave them some choice. For example, the cat shelter we visit in Alexandria, Virginia was a small facility that could only cope with 20 student visitors. Fortunately, not every student was a cat lover. Some students were even allergic to cats. My strategy was to offer an alternative visit to the AFL-CIO, where the students would talk about the role played by organized labor in America today. In the same way, not every student felt drawn to this visit, with students from blue collar, union households much more interested than those whose parents were in professional or managerial jobs. I would stress here, however, that I always made sure that the next visit was a shared activity that brought the group back together. A little bit of choice is fine, but it cannot come at the expense of the sense of belonging to a group. With the quota set, the next step is choosing the group. When 150 or more application forms come in vying for just sixty places, this can seem like a daunting task, but the form itself acts as the first filter. One delicate issue that I tackle here is the students’ physical fitness. I don’t suggest that students need to be finely honed athletes, but the trip includes a lot of walking, and some demanding physical activities. For example, working at the food bank, involves a long hard afternoon of bending and lifting. In the early years I had students with mobility and health issues who had difficulties, and while nobody wants to see a student excluded from taking the subject, it was sad seeing them struggle to keep up, and it wasn’t really fair to the rest of the group when we had to slow our pace and cut activities short. I discussed the matter with the university’s disability officer, and she agreed that it was sensible to raise the issue in the application form. So, I explain that a general level of fitness is required, and ask the students to flag any potential problems. At this point I read the statements the students have written as part of their application forms. The things to look for here are motivation and enthusiasm. These generally overlap with the student’s academic ability, and a fluent statement that shows some understanding of what the subject is about is a good sign. Obviously, it would be dangerous to assess students only on the basis of their written statement, which could easily have been written with assistance, but there are other important checks. The student’s academic record can be revealing. A poor academic record can indicate problems with attitude, motivation, organization, and the ability to meet deadlines. The point here is that it is not unreasonable to expect that students who miss classes or who submit essays late will miss

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sessions or deadlines on the trip. Of course, there can be extenuating circumstances. The student might have been battling illness or family problems, so it can be worthwhile contacting a lecturer or tutor who has taught the student. The difficult issue here is that low achieving students will almost certainly benefit from being taken out of the classroom and given the experience of place-based and collaborative learning strategies, and their grades will improve. However, studies conducted in the United States show that students with good academic records improve more. 2 My experience echoes these American studies, but this needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. It is important to try to take into account the individual student’s potential to contribute to the collaborative learning environment and the team sprit that is so much a part of this type of subject. For example, the intense loner, who works obsessively to produce A grade essays is probably not as viable as the more sociable student who still manages to write solid B grade essays. Therefore, while grades and the application essay are good guides, taken alone they can be misleading. To get a sense of a student’s allaround suitability, it is wise to also conduct interviews. One caution here is that charm and personality can’t be allowed to override weaknesses in the student’s academic record, but used in concert with that record, interviews can give a more complete picture.3 There is no getting around the fact that this is a time consuming exercise. One hundred and fifty, ten-minute interviews, with five-minute breaks, means a full week’s work, with another day to further discuss the interviews and rank the students. But it is definitely worth the effort. The first time I conducted interviews they were held in my office, which was familiar to many of the students, and put them at ease. I came to realize, however, that a more formal setting, something that has the aura of a job interview, achieves better results. The student who arrives late or who hasn’t prepared is exposed, and conversely, the student who arrives early, is well presented, has done some research and demonstrates a real desire to be part of the trip, has a chance to shine. 2

See Smith and Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education in Schools (2010.) Smith and Sobel cite studies that found that “authentic pedagogy helps all students substantially. However, it provides an extra boost for students already performing at higher levels.” P. 77. 3 Cheryll Adams and Sara Moore, “Implementing Curriculum for Programs,” in Joan Smutny, ed., Designing and Developing Programs for Gifted Students (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2002), 60. Adams and Moore warn against using extra-curricular talent to “fix” weaknesses in the student’s record.

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In the end, the selection process is an art, not a science. There will always be a student who writes a good application and who interviews well, but who ultimately disappoints, and I am sure that there were wonderful students whose good qualities I just didn’t recognize. However, choices have to be made, and allowing the students to feel a sense of belonging is so important that any positive shaping of the group is worth the trouble.

Arranging Accommodation, Transport and Visits When the group has been selected and the students have all made a financial commitment, flights, ground transport, accommodation and the visits can be arranged. The fact that these factors need to come together seamlessly means that unless the teacher is hopelessly pushed for time, the temptation to delegate responsibility to a travel agent should be resisted. Apart from the fact that having a travel agent adds another layer of cost, the agent simply can’t know the lecturer’s preferences about locations, the preferred time to arrive in a city, or many other small details that only the lecturer can build into the process. Doing it alone is a lot of work, but as with the rigorous selection process, it is well worth it. As the years go by, it gets easier. This is because with every trip, knowledge about the places and students grows and the list of contacts expands. Even if the lecturer decides to use a travel agent to book flights and ground travel, responsibility for booking accommodation on a university study tour cannot be delegated. My students do not stay in hotels. Instead, they stay in university residential halls, which for many of the students is part of the attraction of doing the subject. They want the US college experience, which they believe, or at least hope, will be more social than the Australian version. This desire, of course, dovetails with the teaching aims, which are to foster collaborative learning and a sense of teamwork. Those aims need to be considered when booking university accommodation. Location is important. Proximity to a subway station is helpful to the daily functioning of the study tour, but the tone of the immediate neighborhood also has to be taken into account. It needs to be conducive to the positive mood that collaborative learning implies. It also needs to be safe and to feel like a student precinct, full of the cafes and the type of shops students would like. Cost is an inevitable consideration, but although I ruled out Ivy League schools like Harvard on this basis, a safe and pleasant neighborhood is non-negotiable, and once the colleges have been chosen, corners shouldn’t be cut if means compromising on the students’ shared experience. For example, although dorm rooms are

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always cheaper, I found that spending a few extra dollars on the apartment style residential halls that universities typically use for their graduate students is well worth it. Emerson College, which doesn’t have the same name-recognition as Harvard, shows how all of this can come together. Emerson is an urban college, but it is located between the Boston Common and the city’s theater district, and it is about a two-minute walk from the nearest T (subway) station. The students instantly fall in love with the location, but it is the apartment design that has the real impact on group dynamics. The bedrooms sleep two students, much like a basic dorm, but each three bedrooms share a comfortable living room, and this brings six students together. The danger with this arrangement is that friendship groups of six could form, but Emerson has a common area that all the students share, and, importantly, they dine together in the student cafeteria. The next step is to decide on dates. It is important to take everything into account before acting. The three colleges let me know if there are any blackout dates, then I look at flights. This is the biggest single cost involved in taking students from Australia to America, and shifting just a few days can mean a significant difference in price. However, it is pointless booking with an airline if accommodation isn’t available, or if it means arriving on a holiday weekend, when there isn’t anything for the students to do. I have other requirements: the gospel church in New York is a central part of my itinerary, so we need to be in New York on a Sunday, but then I need to juggle this with the availability of speakers in Washington. Piecing this all together is a little bit like doing a jigsaw, and having a visual representation is very useful. As old fashioned as it sounds, I use a white board, adding, subtracting, and shuffling, until it all fits together, and only then are bookings instigated. Even then, it is essential to be well organized, triple checking that the bus that has been booked to meet the group at the airport is for the day the group flight actually arrives, or, unless exposing the students to a 90 minute subway ride is the goal, that the night at Coney Island does not follow an afternoon in the Bronx.

Assessment After a few years of teaching, academics invariably settle on an assessment model, and they use this model in all their courses. In the liberal arts and social sciences in Australia, this is usually a combination of essays and class presentations, with an end-of-subject exam as a possibility. These models don’t, however, necessarily fit well with the needs and aims of an overseas study tour subject. Class papers don’t work

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because the “classroom” is a museum, an historical site or a politician’s office. Exams and quizzes are also problematic because the students taking them see their primary task as memorizing and regurgitating information. This is not to say that knowing facts and figures is a bad thing, but as Scott Wurdinger and Julie Carlson explain, “with experiential learning, remembering information long enough to score well on a test is not the goal.” They suggest that a better outcome is to have the student “apply the information, integrate it, and make sense of how it relates to their life.”4 It hardly needs saying that this is easier said than done. It certainly took me a number of years of trial and error to come up with as assessment model that worked. One of my early near misses was based on the idea that tests and exams push students into rote learning because they occur too infrequently, for example at the half way mark and the end of a course. The answer, according to Michigan State professor of education Richard Mezeske, is to integrate assessment and learning more completely. For this reason, I tried short answer quizzes every few days, while the facts were still fresh in the students’ minds.5 That was an improvement, but still not a perfect model of assessment. Quizzes are always going to test knowledge more than understanding, and they create a competitive atmosphere, where the students feel that they were being assessed individually rather than learning as a group. Finally, I experimented with the students keeping journals. At the time, this was something associated more with science than the liberal arts, but the way teachers in subjects like dentistry used journals to encourage their students to constantly reflect on and evaluate their experiences seemed perfectly suited to our needs.6 The aim was immediacy, so I asked for daily entries in hand written journals. Computers, which allow revision and editing, were not permitted. At this point I didn’t realize just how far handwriting standards have slipped since the advent of computers, but once I got over the students’ spidery writing, I discovered a rawness and emotion in their handwritten entries that that is somehow missing from the more polished work produced using computers. The journals were successful in other ways. They gave the students an anchor. Being immersed in a three-week trip full of new, challenging experiences can make students’ heads spin, but writing a journal entry at 4

Scott Wurdinger and Julie Carlson, Teaching for Experienitial Learning: Five Approaches That Work (Latham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010, 160. 5 See also Richard and Barbara Mezeske, Beyond Tests and Quizzes: Creative Assessment in the College Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007) 6. 6 G Wetherall and G Mullins, “The Use of Student Journals in Problem-Based Learning,” in Medical Education (March 1996, Vol 30, issue 2), 105-111.

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the end of every day gives them a chance to slow down and think about what they did. As Melvin Silberman has explained, experiential learning is half about experience and half about “having the opportunity to reflect on those activities.”7 At the end of the trip, when the students can reflect on the total experience, the journal gives them a finely detailed record of what they did and how they felt. Although keeping a daily journal can be a grind, in the end the students are always glad they have them to remember a wonderful, and for many, a life-changing experience. From a learning point of view, they are also an invaluable resource, as when the students come to write their essays they need to recall exactly what the homeless shelter was like or what the politician or author said. From the teacher’s point of view, the journal does a number of things. First, it acts as a de facto roll, checking on attendance. If a student missed a visit, then there won’t be a journal entry. Of course, if the selection process works then attendance won’t be a major concern. However, not every student is going to have the same level of engagement every day or with every speaker, and the journal gives the teacher a real insight into the student’s enthusiasm and the way they interpret their experiences. In my case, it shows how students relate visits to the subject’s central theme, the American Dream, and how their understanding of the Dream concept evolves. Finally, the journal provides honest, unadulterated feedback about every detail of the trip. Students are usually too well mannered to criticize things that they know the lecturer has organized, but the journals chronicle if a speaker didn’t connect with them or a museum was uninspiring. Also, things that don’t show up on standard subject evaluation forms, but influence the overall experience, like the comfort level of the beds or the quality of the food in the college cafeteria, are ruthlessly exposed. One caution with journals is that the students’ honesty can lead them to cross a line and, as Butler and McMumm put it, “share unexpected experiences or feelings.”8 There were times I rather wished I didn’t know who had a crush on whom, or who was worried about their weight. Nevertheless, if the lecturer can cope with these too-personal insights, the journals are a marvelous teaching tool, and one unexpected bonus is that they are consistent with the idea of collaborative learning. Reading them, I could see how students developed a shared understanding of visits, and indeed, they would often quote a fellow student to make a point. On one 7 Melvin Silberman, ed., The Handbook of Experiential Learning (San Francisco, Pfeiffer, 2007), 8. 8 Susan Butler and Nancy McMumm, A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Assessment: Understanding and Using Assessment to Improve Student Learning (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 65.

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trip, there were even “journal parties” happening in the dorms, where groups would get together and ease the daily writing commitment by working together over sodas and potato chips. Of course, collaboration has its limits. My second assessment task was a research essay written after the trip. Like any essay, this tested the students’ individual skills as researchers and writers, and had to be written and researched with all the rigor of a standard essay, where collusion is punished rather than praised. On the face of it, this break with the collaborative learning model seems like a risky strategy, but as Flint and Johnson have shown, students are wary of being assessed in just one way. They view assessment as fairer when it is “balanced and varied.”9 The essay fills that role, but because the students are expected to draw on their experiences and write something they couldn’t have written without the benefit of sense of place, they are in fact being asked to draw on the knowledge they gained together, even if the essay is written alone. Happily, most of my students are so inspired by their trip experience that they actually look forward to writing an essay. The primary responsibility on the teacher at this point is to provide a set of essay questions that allow the students to demonstrate their insider knowledge. In an essay on America now, that is straight forward enough, but in an essay on America then, it means writing as if they were there in the historical moment, which requires a little more imagination and creativity. Two sample questions illustrate the way I do this: Sample question 1. Imagine you are a new teacher at Booker T. Washington Middle School, in East Baltimore. What is it like to teach in such a school? What would it take to fix schools like this? Sample question 2. Imagine you had just come through Ellis Island and found yourself in turn-of-the-century New York. You use most of your money to pay the first month’s rent on an apartment at 97 Orchard Street, in the Lower East Side. Describe your life and how you would achieve the American Dream. At first glance, questions that begin with “Imagine you…” look as though they were appropriated from a creative writing course, but the essay still has to be anchored in primary research and be informed by the scholarship on the subject. Giving the students the freedom to inject their own experience and the insights they acquired on-site makes this scholarship come alive. In other words, these essays call for a combination of creativity and scholarship. Finding the right balance and writing in firstperson can be a challenge, but it is one to which most students rise. Over the years we have read some brilliant essays. Of course, sometimes the 9

Nerilee Flint and Bruce Johnson, Towards Fairer University Assessment: Recognizing the Concerns of Students (New York: Routledge, 2011), 67.

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challenge is too daunting, but one advantage of this creative, first person format is that it is almost impossible for a student to resort to plagiarism. The challenging nature of the task can sometimes lead to the sad situation of a student who has made a huge investment in time, money and effort, and who has been part of a team, falling at the last hurdle. This puts the teacher is in a difficult position. The teacher-student relationship on a study tour is far more personal than in a traditional classroom, and failing a student whose essay comes in late or is not up to standard can be very hard. Nevertheless, if the subject is to retain its academic integrity, it must be done. The subject cannot be seen to be a junket, or a way of students buying a subject credit. It is beneficial to make this clear to the students and the university. In fact, by letting the students know in advance, it might even prevent students failing.

Risk Management In their book Learning Outside the Classroom, Simon Beams and his co-authors stress the importance of having a risk management plan in place before undertaking a place-based learning subject.10 The department manager, fearful of the legal fallout if a disaster occurs, will certainly agree, but a well-constructed risk management plan is much more than a way of escaping legal responsibility. As Schwab and Gelfman explain, its main function is to “identify and eliminate risks.”11 In other words, the plan foresees potential problems and minimizes the chance that they will occur in the first place. It puts in place strategies to minimize the damage if they do occur. The first step is to undertake a risk assessment survey. This is where the value of the earlier, fact-finding trip becomes apparent, because it takes some of the guesswork out of the equation. Until I walked from the Jefferson to the Lincoln Memorial on a sultry, Washington evening, I didn’t realize how demanding it was. Of course, until these things have been done with students in tow, it is always an unknown equation. For instance, as part of my preparation I timed the walk and subway ride from the dorms at Fashion Institute to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, but that didn’t tell me how slowly a group of stargazing students move, or 10

Simon Beams, Peter Higgins and Robbie Nichol, Learning Outside the Classroom: Theory and Guidelines for Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 108-110. 11 Nadine Schwab and Mary Gelfman, Legal Issues in School Health Services: A Resource for School Administrators (Lincoln, NE: Authors’ Choice Press, 2005), 186.

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how easy it is to lose a student along the way. It is impossible to get around the fact that after the study tour has run the teacher’s understanding of the risks will be more complete. But on a first study tour, the most important thing is that the survey is conducted as diligently as possible. When it is put together into a risk assessment document, the teacher needs to err on the side of caution. It might seem to be common sense that a Washington July is hot and that wearing a hat can help avoid sunstroke, but some students have never travelled and might not have thought about Northern hemisphere weather conditions. In short, include everything in the assessment document. It should be remembered that the students are not the only ones who will read the risk assessment plan. Their parents will also be casting an anxious eye over it, as will the university Department Manager. All of these people want to be reassured that the potential dangers that have identified have been minimized, and if something does go wrong, that there are strategies in place to deal with the damage. With that in mind, it is important that the document makes it very clear where the teacher’s responsibilities lie, and where the students are expected to take responsibility themselves. My way of handling this is to establish a clear demarcation between free and supervised time. From the time I meet the students at the start of the day until the end of the day’s activities, they are on supervised time. During this time, I guide them through the streets, I tell them not to stand too close to the approaching train, and so on. While I am responsible, they are expected to heed my directions and use common sense. At the end of the day’s activities, I remind the students what time to meet the next morning, and announce that they are now on free time. Of course, if a student falls ill, or if there is an accident, I want and expect them to call me. In addition to this, I have warned them about avoiding certain neighborhoods and walking alone late at night, but they are adults and can decide how to use their own time. I simply ask that they behave responsibly. If a student does fall ill, there isn’t a lot that can be done. Although my university insisted that all teachers who take study tours take a first aid course, I am not legally allowed to give a student medication. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that for many students, this will be the first time they have been cut adrift from their parents, and they need to know that someone is looking out for them. Any sick student should be taken to a trained medical practitioner. One thing the study tour’s risk management document should include is the location of the nearest medical center, which in America will mean a hospital emergency room.

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For example, in Boston, I take any sick or injured student to Mass General Hospital, which is located just two T stops away from the student dorm. The other issue that must be dealt with in the risk management document is what happens if a student is separated from the group. The first thing I stress to the students is that if they are not in attendance when I take the roll at the start of the day’s supervised time, they will miss the day’s visits. There is no trying to catch up with the group, which in a strange city could get someone into a dangerous situation. Before I set out each morning I give the students instructions about where we are heading, which train we are taking, and so on. I also remind them to stay alert and do their best to keep up with the group. That can be hard on a crowded street or subway station, but I ask the students to look out for one-another. I have flirted with a buddy system, and although it works most of the time, when it fails, it fails spectacularly, because nobody is left to notice if both “buddies” go missing. Giving the students a wider responsibility works better, and, at various points, I check the roll just to make sure that no one has gone missing. Unfortunately, even the most careful student can get separated from the group. In these days of mobile phones, the first step if this happens is to call. Again, I insist that the student should not try to catch up. The instructions are that they stay where they are, tell me their location, and wait while one of us goes back to retrieve them. Even with the most carefully written risk management plan, vigilant teachers and responsible students, things can go wrong. With this in mind, the authors of Learning Outside the Classroom advise that the students should be required to sign a blanket consent form. The point is that the lecturer and the university need to be covered against any threat of litigation, so I have the students sign a form stating that they have been given a copy of the risk management plan, that I have gone through it with them, and that they agree that I have taken every reasonable precaution to identify, avoid and deal with risk.

Background Reading At first glance, assigning reading to students taking a study tour subject seems to be at odds with taking students out of the classroom and exposing them to place-based learning. However, fieldwork should not be seen as a replacement for reading and classroom discussion. Instead, the two should be regarded as complementing one another. Indeed, without background reading a student in the field can be aimless. Consider Learn and Serve America, the US government body that seeks to “get students involved in their communities.” Their programs include having botany students build

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and maintain a community garden, and history students repairing a local historical monument. It is hard to imagine more practical, commonsense projects, but the aim is to integrate them with classroom learning, and show the students how theoretical learning has a place in the real world.12 The history students in this example would research the significance of the monument and decide what sort of restoration was appropriate. Similarly, the botany students would research what plants were best suited to the area and what sort of fertilizer to use. With a subject that seeks to explore the American Dream from the time of the Mayflower through to the present day, reading cannot be so focused. Nevertheless, the students need a broad framework within which to make sense of their experiences, and they need some background for each specific visit. My broad, thematic readings are on the American Dream, with chapters from books by Jim Cullen and Jennifer Hochschild, both of whom the students meet. I also have a chapter that helps explain the importance of sense of place. The one I use is a wonderfully readable piece by the historian David Hackett Fischer that neatly doubles up as a reading on the Boston Common and the Puritans.13 Then I have chapters and articles that give the students some background about each of places we visit and the people we meet.

Pre-Trip Meeting The risk management plan, more general instructions and pre-trip advice have to be conveyed to the students. This can be done online, and the students’ questions could be answered on a discussion board. But while that would be cost and time efficient, it would hardly be in the spirit of a place-based learning subject, which is aimed in large part at reconnecting students with their teachers and one-another. It is far better to do things the old fashioned way, by having a meeting. In fact, I have two meetings. The first meeting is about two weeks prior to departure, and then the second a week later. The objective here isn’t just to attend to administrative matters. The meetings are also a chance to introduce the students to the subject’s linking theme, and to begin to create the sense of belonging that is so 12

Learn and Serve website, http://www.learnandserve.gov/about/service_learning/index.asp, accessed on November 13, 2012. 13 David Hackett Fischer. 2000, “Boston Common,” in William Leuchtenberg, ed., American Places: Encounters With History, New York: Oxford University Press, 125-144.

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fundamental to the trip’s success. Because I have sixty students, the best venue is a small lecture theatre, which admittedly isn’t ideal in terms of people getting to know one-another, but I have strategies to compensate for that. I divide the meetings into three: first, a formal presentation, followed by a question and answer session, then finally a meet and greet, which I try to enhance with American themed food. (Brownies are a perennial favorite.) In the first meeting I talk about the itinerary and how the American Dream runs through it. The students are a willing audience – they want this to be something wonderful – but it is important to meet these expectations by making it sound exciting, emphasizing the “wow factor,” using anecdotes from past trips, and showing evocative PowerPoint images. But while the students need to feel excited, they also need to know that this is a serious subject, so this is a good time to also discuss the assessment details. When they learn that their journals and place-based essays have the potential to be the best work they have ever done, their excitement levels rise even higher. To balance this, I am careful to remind them that if anyone skips organized activities, or if they don’t keep up their daily journal entries, or if their essay doesn’t shine, then it will be reflected in their mark, and that it is possible to fail. In the second meeting I cover the risk management document, and have the students sign the consent form. Then I move on to “cultural sensitivity,” which includes explanations of tipping conventions and a warning not to be critical of American foreign policy in public. Finally, I talk about living arrangements, something that the students are vitally interested in. They are looking forward to experiencing life in an American college dorm, but they are nervous. The most popular questions are: What are the rooms like and whom will they be rooming with? Is there Wi-Fi in the building? Is it safe to leave their computer in their room? The dining also excites them and makes them nervous at the same time. They ask: What time is breakfast, and is there a vegetarian option? I answer their questions as best I can, allaying their fears, and suggesting that the experience will be what they make of it: There will be sixty strangers, thrown together for three weeks, all feeling anxious, and if they are considerate and look out for one-another, then it will be everything they want it to be and more.

PART II INSIDER PERSPECTIVES: ESSAYS ON OUR STUDY TOUR

JIM CULLEN AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Many of the visits on the study tour itinerary come and go. Sometimes, a speaker is only available for a one-off meeting. Sometimes an issue has a short life span. Sometimes a museum closes for renovations. The Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum come to mind here, shutting down for four years after a fire in 2007. Sometimes, a visit just doesn’t work. One tour of The Kennedy Center, in Washington DC, where our well-meaning guide tested our endurance with detailed descriptions of the Center’s lighting and seating, was enough. But there are some visits that always work. Our meeting with Jim Cullen is a permanent feature of the study tour fixture. I first contacted Jim in 2002, and asked if he would talk to our students about his recently published book on Bruce Springsteen and the American Dream. The students didn’t share the enthusiasm Jim and I had for Springsteen and his music, but they loved the chance to get some insights about the American Dream, a concept many of them found extremely slippery. The following year, Jim published a book on the Dream itself. Indeed, it seemed that every other year he published another book. There was a book on the Civil War, a book on the Presidents, even a book on how to write essays, and while these added to Jim’s reputation, it was The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation the students always wanted him to talk about. The annual talk with Jim always lives up to the students’ expectations, but it also tends to take them by surprise. When they find out that they are meeting him at his school in the Bronx, they expect to find a gritty, urban environment, with burnt out buildings, graffiti and gangs. These thoughts magnify on the long subway ride on a local train all the way up to 242nd Street, and then we arrive and find ourselves walking through a leafy, upper middle class neighborhood. Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where Jim teaches, is even plusher, and Jim begins his talk by giving some background about the school, which is clearly a pathway to Ivy League and other elite universities. His amiable manner puts the students at ease, and they relax, then the subject shifts to the American Dream, and the mood also shifts. Bill Clinton’s streamlined definition of the Dream, which has served them so well, is suddenly being challenged. The students, having seen homelessness and hunger juxtaposed with affluence in cities like Boston and New York, question the Dream’s achievability for .

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all. Jim responds with questions of his own: Would someone who doesn’t realize their dream have been better off not having it, or are dreams valuable in of themselves? He asks them about their own dreams, and whether these dreams are their own, reminding them that dreams come to us in the night, unbidden. The students emerge feeling mentally exhausted. Some are unsettled. Some are exhilarated. I feel happy, and over a beer with Jim we reflect on a great session – this is what experiential learning is all about. As Mel Silberman showed, it is meant to “surprise and even jolt the participants [stirring] feelings of joy, wonder and sometimes discomfort.”1 Three days later, on the bus taking us to Washington DC, the students talk to me about the session. Some of them were indeed “jolted,” but it made an impression on them in ways that I rarely see in classroom discussions back at Melbourne University. Reinforcing this is the fact that Jim made them relate the American Dream to their own lives, and made them think about the Australian Dream. Indeed, as his essay shows, the sessions helped Jim question his own belief in American Exceptionalism, and started him thinking about a Roman Dream and a Chinese Dream. As Chapter Three illustrated, experiential learning activities are useful for all the participants.

1

Melvin Silberman, Unforgettable Experiential Activities: An Active Training Resource (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2010), 1.

A JOURNEY FROM HOME: PLACE-BASED LEARNING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOST JIM CULLEN

I am a relatively rare species of academic: an avowed provincial. I was born in the great metropolis of New York City, but on its margins in Queens, in the working-class neighborhood of Jackson Heights (my father was a firefighter; my mother a housewife, both upwardly mobile from their origins and proud of high school diplomas they did not take for granted). I didn’t board my first plane until I was seventeen years old, and that was for a trip elsewhere in New York State. I did go to college 200 miles (320 kilometers) away from home in suburban Boston (a huge step) and in my undergraduate years spent a semester in London (touching down for brief visits to France and Spain). But my passport expired at some unknown point in the last century; I have not crossed a national border since that trip in 1984. So it is one of the peculiarities of my career that I spend much of my time among the most cosmopolitan people on the face of the earth. I work at an elite prep school that is, statistically speaking, more exclusive than Harvard University (where I also taught). My students are the children of bank executives, Hollywood celebrities, and other luminaries. Each weekend many of these people flock to their summer or weekend houses, unless a longer break allows travel to Europe or Asia. I am invited to homes in Manhattan apartment buildings that have their own private elevators, and enjoy meals at restaurants as the guest of their owners. For the most part, these are activities I conduct in a professional capacity, like sitting on a search committee or meeting with the parents of my advisees in an informal setting. I’m not under any illusions that these people think of me as their equals in any formal social or economic sense. But like elites in other parts of the world (especially Asia), I enjoy a measure of esteem from people who seek to provide what they consider a high-quality educational experience to their children, are willing to pay a substantial

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amount for it, and would like to think that the people they’ve hired represent a good investment that should be treated as such. For most of my life, my mind has ranged more widely than my body has – but not by much. My undergraduate degree was in English, but most of that focused on American literature. My graduate degrees are in American Civilization, with a specialty in the history of U.S. popular culture, which is to say that it represented an effort to understand the sources of the vernacular idioms of my childhood. My dissertation, which became my first book, analyzed how the U.S. Civil War has been understood in film, music, and other media. My second was a history of U.S. popular culture; my third a study of Bruce Springsteen and his place in American cultural history. I went on to write a few others, the most well known of which is The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a nation (2003). It was published by Oxford University Press: yet one more curiosity about my career is that a substantial portion of my body of work has appeared thanks to British houses. In an important sense, my work is more highly regarded abroad than it is at home. In early 2004, I received an email from an unlikely source: a college professor named Glenn Moore who teaches at the University of Melbourne – Melbourne as in Australia, not Florida. It seems he somehow got his hands on my book and liked it. He also reported that he was planning what was already an annual trip to the States in July (summer in these parts) for a course he teaches on U.S. culture and society, and wanted to work a lecture by me into his itinerary. Why not, I said to myself. Glenn had booked his crew into the Fashion Institute of Technology in midtown Manhattan, which is where he asked me to deliver my remarks. This was terra incognita, but in a spirit of intrepid inquiry, I traveled about ten miles to meet people from my school to meet people who had traveled about 10,000 from theirs. My first impression is that they looked like Americans, which is to say they were a diverse lot: blond hair, dark hair, skin of various tones. But I saw some differences, too: they were notably polite, and they talked funny. At the time, The American Dream had been recently published, and I had done various kinds of publicity for it, and so had developed something of a routine. I don’t think I said anything terribly memorable in terms of my argument, but I had a good time, and over a pint with Glenn after a session, cheerfully agreed to do it again, not sure of course whether he actually would repeat the trip. As it turned out I would repeat my routine again – and again and again and again over the course of the next decade. The venue changed over time; eventually, our session moved to my school, which allowed Glenn’s

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students to take #1 train all the way from their (typically midtown) base to its terminus in the Bronx, where they would discover a place that was once a byword for urban decay was also a borough where one could find some of the most palatial riverside estates in New York. Our meeting also began to evolve. I became less interested in delivering a lecture and more interested in having a conversation, one typically rooted in other adventures Glenn, and eventually his wife, Cassie Atherton, had undertaken. This would prompt me to make a few observations of my own, which quickly evolved into an easy discussion that encompassed the undergraduates, their graduate supervisors, Glenn and Cassie. The victuals that followed increasingly became a savored part of the experience, a means of catching up with people who I soon regarded as old friends in visits weaved into the rhythms of my annual work calendar. But there was more involved here than a sense of pleasantry. Meeting with Glenn’s students became part of a larger process whereby I began to examine some of my deepest assumptions about the nature of the American experience. Like a lot of my fellow citizens, historians and otherwise, I regarded myself as an exceptionalist: I believed the combination of its colonial origins, revolutionary heritage, pluralistic demographics, and economic dynamism had made the United States a civilization like no other. I was fond of saying, and distinctly remember telling Glenn’s students, no one spoke of the “French Dream” or the “Chinese Dream” in the way people all over the world spoke of the “American Dream.” But I found myself increasingly less certain about my confidence in making such an assertion. In recent years I’ve become interested in ancient history, particularly that of the Roman republic and empire. This interest was significantly fermented in 2007-08 by the broadcast of the television miniseries series Rome, which did a marvelous job of evoking the late republic through spectacular sets, exquisite attention to period detail, and wonderful acting. I also read a few novels by Steven Saylor, which feature a fictional character, Gordianus the Finder, who works periodically for the great Roman orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero.1 Whatever errors of fact or interpretation one might find in these works of popular culture, such works, along with the more academically reputable books I’ve been reading, have helped me to see it is possible, for 1

See, for example, Roman Blood (New York: Minotaur, 1991) and Catalina’s Riddle (New York: Minotaur, 1993), both part of Saylor’s “Sub Rosa” series. Robert Harris has also written a good Cicero novel, Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), featuring a slave who works for the famed orator.

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example, to discern what might be termed a Roman Dream, and to believe the core ideas embedded in such a locution are no anachronism. Cicero also happens to be one of the featured characters in Rome, albeit as a man whose best days are behind him when the series opens but who is nevertheless a pivotal player in Roman politics. This is remarkable in part because the real Cicero was known as a so-called “New Man,” who rose to the ultimate office of consul despite lacking the usual aristocratic birth or connections. (Julius Caesar, for his part, came from a lowly aristocratic family, but attained power as a populist.) Cicero was a singular figure as a writer, orator and politician, but he was by no means the only person in Roman history to have experienced such upward mobility. Less spectacularly, but perhaps more importantly, non-Roman soldiers in the later empire who served a full term in the army (20-25 years) were granted citizenship, a welfare program in a multicultural empire that mingled social inequality and cultural pluralism in a way any contemporary immigrant would recognize. Like the United States prior to 1865, the Roman republic and empire were societies whose labor system depended on slavery (the U.S. has grown addicted to cheap labor in the time since). But while in the United States slavery was the chief obstacle in legitimating the American Dream, slaves in Roman society could achieve significant upward mobility in their lifetimes, and arguably achieve their freedom more easily than in the U.S.2 Nor are examples of such mobility limited to ancient Rome. One can see its outlines in the Confucian civil service in Han China, for example, or in the role of the Foreign Service in nineteenth century Britain. History is replete with examples of figures who aspired, and achieved, far more than their original circumstances would seem to warrant, and did so not because of some mysterious quirk of fate but because a system of one kind or another was in place to help such individuals realize it, whether religious, political, or social. My revised understanding was not solely a matter of research and casual reading. Although I knew that in some abstract sense Australia, like the United States, is a society shaped by a frontier experience, it was not until I was in a room with such people this reality truly became part of my frame of reference. While I don’t assume Glenn’s students think of themselves as living on the fringe of civilization (even if the very phrase 2 On the status and prospects of slaves and soldiers, see Lionel Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Rome, expanded edition (1975; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). For a sustained comparison of the American and Roman situations, see Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

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“down under” suggests as much), one does perceive, in having even the most casual conversation about geography, a feeling for the scale of the place: it’s a big country. And one in which its relatively densely populated coasts are separated by cavernously large open, and not environmentally hospitable, spaces. There are other similarities as well. Australia, like the United States, has a history of racial oppression involving a non-white minority. Clearly there are differences that should not be overlooked, some of which surfaced in our sessions. I don’t assume the students I met were a representative sample of Australians – their mere presence in my company was itself an indicator of their economic privilege – but I was struck, in a way I didn’t quite expect, by a perceptible diffidence in the way they approached the place of aborigine people in Australian society. While Americans certainly have their silences and omissions on the subject, I perceived that black-white relations are perhaps a bit more of an awkward subject in genteel Australian circles than in American ones. Perhaps the most striking aspect of my conversations with these young Australians, however, involves the way they seem to view their own temporal horizons. Although they concede the phrase “Australian Dream” is not part of their national lexicon, their belief in their own upward mobility is palpable. To some extent, their optimism is a function of their youth. But one also senses they too are the products of a political culture in which their parents and grandparents experienced at least a modicum of economic improvement, whether the result of their entrepreneurialism or the foundational promises of a welfare state grounded in recognition of labor unions and/or government transfer programs. Although what one might consider a centrist political view in Australia would be somewhat left-of-center in the United States, there’s still a discernible libertarian accent in the Australian model (one evident in Glenn’s laments about what appear to be increasingly successful efforts to promote a market model in Australian higher education) that’s part of a larger Anglo-Saxon heritage. There’s one other shared dimension of the Australian and American experience that’s at least as much about the future as it is the past, and that is the situation – in the broadest sense of that term – of both on the Pacific Rim. Asia has always loomed large in both imaginations, and in some respects it’s looming larger than ever. Both the U.S. and Australia are deeply enmeshed in trade with China, eager to capitalize on opportunities with that growing superpower but also increasingly apprehensive about the growth of Chinese power. As China develops a larger middle class it may well be possible to truly speak of a Chinese Dream. But one cannot take for granted the contours of that dream will be quite the same, or that a

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Chinese pursuit of happiness will please its neighbors. For the foreseeable future, however, the world seems big enough to accommodate multiple aspirations. In the meantime, I find myself thinking I should try to be a bit more adventurous in the way I approach my teaching. There’s been a push for experiential learning at my school in the last few years, and I’ve been making an effort to incorporate place-based learning into my courses. In recent years I’ve taken students to Boston, Philadelphia, and a variety of sites in New York City my charges would probably never otherwise visit unless someone else structured the trip for them. That I haven’t traveled more widely myself is to some degree attributable to my family situation: my wife and I have four children, a costly proposition even before one considers a holiday and daunting when actually begins to do so and calculates the price of six plane tickets instead of one or two. Still, even in middle age, I have a few dreams left in my quiver. I never conclude a visit from Glenn and Cassie without some talk about my coming to Melbourne some day. A mere pleasantry, perhaps. But I can’t quite shake the idea that such a trip is within the realm of possibility, so much so that I find myself fretting about how I’m going to handle the length of the flight. I hope that anxiety will prove justified. When it is, I’ll know I’ve made a big step toward putting my provincialism behind me and making progress in finally becoming a man of the world.

ALEC ROSS AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT

When Alec first talked to the Melbourne University students he was introduced as Felicity Ross’ husband, and the two talked about their experience teaching in a ghetto school in West Baltimore and the relationship between education and the American Dream. Like Felicity, Alec came to teaching through Teach for America, but after serving his two-year stint he decided that although teaching was a noble endeavor, and lighting a spark in gifted students was a wonderful achievement, he wanted to fight poverty on a macro scale. He did this by helping form a non-profit organization named One Economy. The aim was to bridge the digital divide: bringing low-income, inner city Americans online, allowing them to participate in the new e-economy. A simple example Alec gave of the cost of being disconnected was how job applications – which were once written and mailed with references attached – now had to be submitted online: It was pointless telling the unemployed to get a job if they couldn’t apply. By this stage of the trip, the students have talked with authors like Jim Cullen about the American Dream, and they understand that dreams don’t have to come true to have value. Dreams can give purpose, and dreams can give hope. But the students also believe that if the American Dream was to stay viable as a national ideology, it has to be possible to realize it. Having seen stark examples of inequality and poverty, putting the traditional American Dream of college, job and house out of the reach of many people, many of the students feel that the Dream is in trouble. However, Alec’s ideas about digital access allow them to feel more positive. Some, like Jen Barton, who contributed a chapter to this book, were so impressed that they took up his offer of a summer internship with One Economy. For these students, the study tour truly was a life changing experience. In 2008 all of this ended very abruptly when Alec resigned from One Economy to work for the Barack Obama campaign. His talk to the students that year was compelling – this was the closest any of them would ever come to a real presidential campaign – but, selfishly, I was worried that if Obama lost, our Washington contact would be out of a job. At the time, this was a very real possibility. Obama was by no means certain to beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, and clinging to thoughts

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of a victorious Harry Truman holding the newspaper that prematurely reported his demise, I hoped for a similar upset. Of course, it turned out well in the end. Obama won, Alec took up a position in the State Department, and his talks became even more impressive. Even before Alec’s move to the State Department, the students came away from his talks asking themselves whether they would achieve as much as quickly as he had. Students in their final year, with an uncertain job market looming, are susceptible to such worrying thoughts. When the still youthful looking Alec stood in front of them as Hillary Clinton’s Senior Advisor, these fears were magnified. Perhaps sensing this, he devoted part of his talk to telling them they have it in them to make a difference to the world. Quoting Teddy Roosevelt, he urged them to take risks. It could easily have fallen flat. He could have come across as pompous, or condescending, but somehow it worked, and I saw that Roosevelt quote in at least twenty student journals, each of the writers clearly inspired to take up the challenge. The quote read: Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Inspiring students is what all good teachers strive for, and by that standard, this was a very good meeting. More broadly, Alec contributed to the sense of importance that was discussed in Chapter Two. That is, speaking with a State Department official who could casually refer to conversations with Hillary Clinton or Kevin Rudd, or report on ways his cyber strategies were influencing events in Africa and the Middle East, made the students feel that they were experiencing something special, something they couldn’t possibly do in a traditional classroom. A successful study tour depends on meetings like this, and in the experiential learning handbook Learning Outside the Classroom, the authors advise study tour teachers to “construct a list of individual and organization partners who might be able to broaden the delivery of your students’ curriculum.” 1 However, this takes time, and operating from Australia complicates the process even more. That is where Alec made arguably his most important contribution to the study tour, because he was able to open doors and set up impressive meetings that would have been impossible for us to arrange in normal 1

Simon Beams, Peter Higgins and Robbie Nichol, Learning Outside the Classroom: Theory and Guidelines for Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012) 109.

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circumstances. Some of the big names we met courtesy of Alec’s Rolodex included Harry Reid, then Senate Minority Leader; Wendy Sherman, who directed Emily’s List and served in the Clinton administration, before becoming Under Secretary of State, and Walter Isaacson, whose intimidating C.V. includes stints as Managing Editor of Time Magazine, President of the Aspen Institute, Chairman of the Board for Teach for America, and author of biographies on Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs. As a senior staffer at the State Department, Alec was also able to arrange a panel discussion at the Department’s headquarters, which included diplomats, specialists in different fields, and a representative from the military. The rigorous security checks that day only added to the students’ excitement, and when they finally found themselves in a small lecture theatre engaging with these people, they truly felt that it was a special experience.

THERE IS TOO MUCH PASSIVITY IN OUR MODERN LIVES ALEC ROSS

For the past several decades, our world has grown increasingly more global. I am reminded every day that the 21st century is the century of interconnectivity, shrinking economic and political barriers, and an integration of many of the world’s people into a more global community. And I don’t disagree with that assessment. In fact, it is for that reason that we at the U.S. Department of State have dubbed our campaign to modernize many of the traditional forms of diplomacy in light of this super-connected environment as “21st Century Statecraft.” It is neither inherently good nor inherently evil that the technologies that allow faster and farther-reaching communications are growing, but it is indeed happening. Today we live in an era where each person with a cellphone and access to a social media network like Facebook or Twitter has the equivalent of a printing press and a global distribution system that an international news organization would have envied not even a century ago, but ten years ago. The world is getting smaller, and it is doing so at an ever-increasing pace. But in one way, and I mean the most fundamental way that a nineyear-old would know it, the world is of course staying the exact same size. While the Internet and the general trend of global affairs have made everyone more socially and economically interdependent and culturally cognizant, there remains a set of “data” that cannot be digitized. For example, though we may have learned everything there is to know about the annual Teej festival at the Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu, memorized every important date, analyzed each specific step of the ritual, and studied every notable dish – all from the convenience of our living rooms – nothing will ever take the place of actually being there. I spend a great deal of time talking with people about the important role technology is playing in bridging many of the gaps between nations, but there will never be a substitute for actually immersing oneself in a different environment. We’ve made some incredible strides towards shrinking the

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world and reducing some of the challenges that naturally come with a world as diverse as our own – strides that I continue to advocate for and that I think will play an increasingly important role in global affairs. But technology will never replace experience, and the only way to experience the world is to travel in it, live in it, and create and learn in it. I’ll give an example from my own career as Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Senior Adviser for Innovation. Though most of my job entails harnessing digital tools for the purpose of furthering the United States’ foreign policy, and I can do so regardless of where I am physically seated, I spend more than half of my time out of the country. I visit countries that are leading the way in Internet infrastructure, such as South Korea, but I also spend a good deal of time in places where access to the Internet is just beginning to take shape, like parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. In these regions, people are just starting to approach the Internet and learning what it can do for them. Some live under governments that are not thrilled about the idea of empowering their populations with such a powerful tool. So, I can accomplish a lot from State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., but to really be able to approach the situation with the appropriate level of depth and knowledge, it’s necessary that I get on a plane and get out into the field. This might seem contrary to my role as the person stewarding the State Department’s mission to reduce old-fashioned tactics and replace them with more digital solutions, but it isn’t. Tools like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet at large have not taken the place of actually being in the room, on the site, or at the conference. In other words, Facebook does not always replace face-toface. Of course, there are also much more practical concerns such as surveillance, censorship, and misinformation that come along with the Internet. Such issues also contribute to my having to actually visit the places I am attempting to help. So even as someone who is directly in charge of promulgating these new media that increase globalization and in many ways make traveling obsolete, there is still an aspect of my job that requires me to travel, as there always will be for most jobs involving diplomatic, volunteer, or government work. The fact that people have been increasingly required to rely upon other people, even if those people are halfway around the world, existed long before the first bits of binary were sent. From the Silk Road to the Dutch East India Company to the World Wars of the 20th century, the idea that people were ever really isolated, minus a few notable exceptions, is an illusion. So I think that the term “globalization” does not just involve the proliferation of broadband networks or increasing Internet speed. Globalization also requires a human effort. If a person wants to make a

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difference in Africa, he is not going to get very far just by talking on Skype to one of the few people in Cote d’Ivoire who has Internet access. He can learn a lot, yes, and he can give instructions, but there is no doubt that he has to visit the area he wants to affect if he hopes to get people excited about a project or interested in an idea. That’s especially why I advocate strongly for a constant exchange among nations not only of resources and information, but of people. Young people, especially, learn so much from spending time abroad and, conversely, can affect serious change either when they return home or while they are away, in part due to their understanding of the global networks and knowledge of technology I first mentioned. People in their 20s and 30s are idealists and persistent in what they believe and want. It’s exactly what we need in government, and for the first time technology has given them the ability to participate on a national and international level. Growing up, there were two times I traveled abroad that transformed my life permanently, and widened my perspective to a global context. When I was twelve-years-old and growing up in a poor part of the United States called West Virginia, a state principally known for its coal mining industry, my parents sent me to live for a year with my grandparents, who were living in Italy. My grandfather had been assigned there to a position in the American Embassy in Italy. The experience of an adolescent from a largely low-income environment in rural America heading to Italy and attending an international school where the typical student spoke four languages had a revolutionary impact on my personal and educational experience. I came back to West Virginia a thirteen-year-old transformed. That experience impacted the trajectory of my life in a way that simply could not have taken place if I had remained in West Virginia for that year and only read or learned about Italy by reading a book or learning about Italy on a computer. Next, at the age of eighteen, before my first year at university, I spent a summer on a fellowship in the Middle Eastern nation of Jordan. Though this experience in a non-Western country was brief, only two months, it significantly impacted the four years of academia that would follow. In both my year in Italy and my time in Jordan, I learned about and, perhaps more importantly, experienced a culture that was markedly removed from my own. Furthermore, one of the consequences of being able to do almost anything from the comfort of our offices is that technology has increasingly removed the hazards, pitfalls, and unexpected surprises that real travel entails. This may sound like a benefit, and perhaps one of the reasons we have begun to depend on the Internet so fiercely, but it is in

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fact one of the tragic flaws of our present state: there is too much passivity baked into our modern lives. By being able in an instant to access any final destination, we have taken away a lot of incentive to actually visit those places. Gone is the journey, gone is the unknown, and gone is the adventure that naturally ensues when plans inevitably collapse. Technology may be able to show me Petra in all of its 20 megapixel glory, but it fails to capture the bus-ride that brought me there or the conversation with Bedouins selling dates along the roadside. Technology gives us convenience, but it does not give us experience. The scientific data that has been collected regarding students who spend time overseas is overwhelmingly supportive of my own thoughts on the issue. The literature demonstrates that students who have taken advantage of their university’s study abroad programs are in a better position to interact in a global environment than those who did not bother to study abroad. In a study conducted by Texas A&M University, students’ responses to questions concerning international awareness and cultural sensitively were overwhelming positive, and clearly affected by the experience when compared to their responses they had given before they left. They reported to be more knowledgeable about current events, sensitive to others’ cultures, and more active in community events.1 I think it is safe to conclude that students working, studying, and living abroad make better public officials because of their more globally-minded and community-based ideologies. In another study, it was demonstrated that students from countries such as South Korea and Taiwan who come to America for university and technical training and then return to their home countries not only make significant progress in their own communities, but also help contribute to opening up trade relations, political dialogue, and further enhance existing exchange programs. 2 In short, I believe that everyone benefits from this kind of exchange, regardless of the person’s personal background or the country that he calls home or that he is planning to visit. Therefore, traveling and experiencing the world, especially at a young age, is a critical component to this global ideal. Just as a well-traveled student contributes to the globalization of society, so too does that globalization help facilitate people’s travel. It is a sort of positive

1

Boyd, Barry L., Christie Giebler, Matthew Hince, Yaru Liu, Neha Mehta, Ryan Rash, Jennifer Rowald, Carlos Saldana, Yvonne Yanta. “Does Study Abroad Make a Difference? An Impact Assessment of the International 4-H Youth Exchange Program.” Journal of Extension 39-5(2001). Accessed April 25, 2012. 2 Johnson, Jean M. “The Reverse Brain Drain and the Global Diffusion of Knowledge.” Science and Technology Summer/Fall (2002) 125-131.

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feedback loop that continually returns a more international individual and a more cooperative and collaborate society. The second part of the equation is the part that I have been charged at the Department of State with stewarding the role technology can play in bringing about globalization. This, too, will largely be affected by the newest generation. My job allows me to talk with a lot of young people. As the Senior Adviser for Innovation, most of those innovators I correspond with on a daily basis are under thirty, and many are just coming out of their undergraduate studies. In any part of the world I travel to, young people have an understanding of technology and those social networks that are rapidly expanding today that simply eludes the older generation, which is often wary about even opening a new email account. For the first time, I am speaking with new entrepreneurs who grew up with a keyboard and monitor in front of them; in a few years it will be those who grew up typing on touch-screens. It is no wonder then that the youngest generation has an advantage over their predecessors at formulating new ideas and applying their technical acumen to achieve economic and social mobility: they don’t know a world without it. If the world is becoming increasingly dependent on digital highways for communication, it is the men and women just beginning their formal education who will probably be our navigators. The global awareness students receive when they travel abroad, coupled with their innate skill with technology, is going to be essential in the next generation of statecraft. But one cannot exist without the other. A technology-whiz who has not experienced the wider world lacks content and context. Similarly, someone who has travelled from continent to continent, speaking with the most interesting people, and developing real convictions about what needs to be done, will be constrained without a way to spread the message through modern technology. So I talk on a daily basis about the first component of globalization: technology is here, it’s growing, how do we use it to make a positive difference in the world? But the second part is equally important: how do we not only globalize our communicative systems, but also the world population, particularly the youth, to best be prepared for managing and thriving in this age of instant, open, and receptive communication?

FELICITY ROSS AND TEACH FOR AMERICA

As a rule, I ask people if they will talk with my students because I believe that they fit with the themes I hope to explore on the study tour. If I am interested in discussing inequality, I contact the director of a homeless shelter. If I am interested in exploring crime, I contact a judge or a police department. But Felicity Ross was different. Fate put me in touch with her, and she changed the study tour experience. My first meeting with Felicity happened on the very first day of my first study tour. My group had checked into the dorm at Bay State College, in Boston, and they quickly realized that they were sharing the space with a group of young African American girls. The girls were from Baltimore, and in the charge of their teachers, Virginia Richard and Felicity. On the face of it, the two groups had very little in common, but somehow an harmonious relationship quickly developed. The Baltimore girls were fascinated by the Melbourne University students, and the two groups mingled at breakfast and dinner in the college cafeteria, and there were long evening chats, where the girls delighted in showing off math skills that left the Melbourne University students bewildered. This easy interaction vindicated Felicity’s decision to bring her students to Boston, where she hoped to broaden their horizons. This was part of a plan she and Virginia devised to take twelve young girls from a tough, inner city neighborhood and shepherd them through school to a better life. Felicity tells this story in her essay, and since that first meeting, she has spoken to my students every year. She recounts her decision to join Teach for America, her tough initiation in West Baltimore, and her emergence as a good teacher who went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that twelve young girls had a chance to realize the American Dream. These sessions quickly became a feature of our program. The students would sit spellbound, and those with teaching aspirations would be full of questions: What motivated Felicity to give up a lucrative job in the business world to teach in a ghetto school? How did she cope with the initial hostility? Why did she choose only girls to help, and how did their families feel about having two surrogate parents on the scene? This led the students into a much more motivated discussion of education than I ever had in tutorials back in Melbourne.

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Education is inevitably a key component in any investigation of the American Dream. After all, it is the most accurate predictor of where a person will end up in terms of job and income, so much so that American students are willing to take on massive student loans to get a degree from a good university. It also seems to fit with the American Dream equation that if you work hard and play by the rules, you get ahead. Felicity’s experience in West Baltimore is stark evidence, however, that access to a good education, and by implication to the American Dream, is far from equal. Moreover, the fact that even Felicity’s heroic efforts to even the odds for twelve disadvantaged, inner city girls yielded mixed results is a sobering reminder of the extent of the problem, and although our students universally admired Teach for America volunteers, they were less optimistic about its impact than the organization’s founder, Wendy Kopp.1 Education remains a hot and often divisive issue in the United States. My students watched a documentary film Felicity recommended, Waiting for Superman. The film’s solution depended largely on demanding excellence from teachers and not, as Time magazine put it, “coddling bad teachers.”2 The villain here was the Teacher’s Union, but when our group spoke to union representatives in Boston, they came away with a very different impression. As the union reps pointed out, when teachers are evaluated by test scores, those from under funded, inner city schools are almost automatically designated as “poor.” Whether this inequality can be cured by making teachers more accountable for student performance, or by boosting funding in resource-poor schools depends largely on people’s political point of view, but while Americans argue, the nation slips further behind competitors like South Korea, Japan and China, and the American Dream itself is undermined.3 Amongst all of the gloom, one ray of hope is an organization named Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP.) Felicity introduced me to Jason Botel, the Executive Director of KIPP Baltimore, and he explained to my students how KIPP teachers, students and the students’ parents are all 1

Wendy Kopp, One day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way (New York: Public Affairs, 2001) 2 “Waiting for Superman: Are Teachers the Problem?” in Time, Wednesday, September 29, 2010. 3 Surveys and studies showing America students’ lack of competitiveness in science, reading and math appear on a regular basis. One example was “Best Education In The World: Finland, South Korea Top Country Rankings, U.S. Rated Average,” in the Huffington Post, January 8, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/best-education-in-thewor_n_2199795.html Accessed on January 9, 2013.

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required to sign contracts guaranteeing long hours, hard work and discipline. He explained how this sort of discipline is exactly what inner city kids are missing, and when it is applied to them (no fidgeting in class, have your parents sign your homework every night) they don’t just catch up with students from affluent, suburban schools, they actually surpass them. Apart from a vague uneasiness about KIPP’s cult-like qualities, where students are “kippnotized” into accepting the rules, discipline and hard work, the students were impressed by Jason’s solutions, and many wrote essays positing KIPP-inspired solutions for problems in Australian schools.4 Education was a natural fit with our American Dream theme, and with Felicity’s help and guidance, I developed it into a cohesive part of the study tour program. A measure of the impact it made on my students was that the education essay question was always the most popular option. The question asked the students to imagine that they were teaching in an inner city school, just like Felicity. They had to explain how they would cope, and, more broadly, what could be done to fix the American education system. These essays were more powerful and incisive than anything I ever saw from students who had not been on the study tour, and they often included quotes from interviews the students had conducted by email with Felicity. Our chance meeting with her on that first study tour was truly was a stroke of luck.

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For a fuller explanation of KIPP see Jay Matthews, Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America (New York: Algonquin Books, 2009.)

THE WORLD AS YOUR CLASSROOM FELICITY ROSS

I wanted to make a difference. Until my senior year in college, I had been content to become an actuary, helping to set insurance rates using fancy statistical analysis to help corporations limit their exposure to financial risk and maximize their profits. But then, it hit me. If I did not become an actuary, Insurance Company X would be just fine. They did not need me. I wanted to do something that would really make an impact, something important. I wanted to do something that might not get done if I didn’t do it. I wanted to make a difference, not for an insurance company, but for a person or people who might not otherwise have a chance at a good life, like the one I had. I wanted to make a difference for children. I had been a math tutor since middle school and loved those light-bulbgoing-on moments when a student who was previously confused became enlightened and empowered with knowledge. This desire led me to pursue and gain acceptance into a teaching program called Teach for America. Teach for America is a national teacher recruitment program which aims to eliminate educational inequality by enlisting recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income, under-resourced urban and rural communities throughout the United States. Started by a university student named Wendy Kopp in 1990, the mission of Teach for America is stated as “One Day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” In 1994, when I applied, it was still a relatively new non-profit organization. It has since grown immensely. Upon being accepted into Teach for America, I, along with the rest of the corps members that year, convened in Houston, Texas for five weeks of intense teacher training. After that, we were deemed ready to teach. I did not feel ready, but that did not matter, I was to start teaching just a few weeks later in Baltimore, Maryland. Coined “The City that Reads” in 1987 by then mayor Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore’s inner city seemed to live up instead to alternate mottos. “The City that Breeds” and “The City that Bleeds” are two popular mottos that all but replaced the original wellintentioned one. A television series called “The Wire” has vividly chronicled its vibrant culture or drugs and violence. The year was 1994

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and Baltimore was in the midst of a crack cocaine-fueled period of extreme violence with high levels of incarceration and rampant drug use. I had been selected to teach math and language arts at Booker T. Washington Middle School. During a Baltimore-based training session, two police officers just shook their heads and offered up a sorry “Good luck sweetheart” upon learning that I would be teaching there. I had been tasked with educating children in an historically AfricanAmerican community that had become devastated by the drug trade and by huge, dysfunctional public housing complexes that were home to thousands of the city’s most impoverished families. Throughout the course of a day, I taught one hundred sixth graders at Booker T. Washington Middle School. The average age of the incoming 6th grader was 11.7 years, indicating an average grade retention rate of one year at the elementary level. On average, every one of my students had failed a grade. In reality, many of the students had failed no grades while others had repeatedly failed. My students were anywhere from 11 to 16 years of age, due to repeatedly failing a grade or failing previous grades. Slightly more than 80% of the school’s 796 sixth, seventh and eighth graders, received free or reduced-priced lunch. This figure is almost three times the state average of 30.4% and significantly higher than the city-wide average of 68.7%. That first year of teaching was a difficult one. On occasion, fights broke out right in the middle of my lesson. The students were suspicious of a perky 21 year-old who was insisting that they make an effort and try their best. They were used to apathetic teachers who let them doodle or talk or just sit. Teaching jobs in this community were not highly sought after and in many cases the main requirement to do the job was having a pulse. I was determined to be different. I believed that the kids could learn and I was the one who was going to teach them. That being said, I found it extremely difficult to compel my sixteen-year-old, six foot one drug dealing sixth grader that what I was teaching was relevant to his life. As someone who had always just intuitively understood mathematics, I was not sure what to do with students who still did not know their multiplication tables when I had mastered them easily by the time I was nine years old. My class was comprised of students who did not want to learn, students who had already had years of poor instruction and were so behind that they didn’t think they could learn and a small group of students who despite all of the challenges in their life, desperately wanted to learn. That first year I gathered up the handful of each class who really wanted to learn and taught them, while trying to maintain some semblance of order for the rest of the class. Even for those students who were really giving it their all, I wasn’t sure how learning a little math and language

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arts would be enough to break the cycle of poverty. It all seemed so hopeless. How was my teaching going to help Laila, my student who was eleven and pregnant? By my second year of teaching, I was doing more than just keeping my head above water. I was reaching the majority of my students every day. Despite my students’ dismal skills and general lack of confidence, I was teaching and my students were learning. The problems, of course, were much bigger than a lack of mathematics skills. Booker T. Washington Middle School was among the worst middle schools in Baltimore at the time. If you were attending Booker T. Washington Middle School, it was guaranteed that a certain minimum level of dysfunction existed in your life. The overwhelming majority of these students had a loved one or family member in jail, yet only one or two had a relative who attended college. Almost none of the 100 or so students I taught had a father actively involved in their lives, and many of them were also lacking a mother. Many of my students were being raised by a grandmother, oftentimes with several cousins also living in their residence. One of my students lived with her brother and sister with her grandmother in a statesubsidized retirement home. Children were not officially allowed in the facility, so they would live there for a couple of weeks at a time until they were asked to leave. They would then spend a few days with their drugaddicted mother in deplorable living conditions until they could once again sneak back in and live with their grandmother again. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the parents and caregivers of Booker T. Washington Middle School students cared about their children and wished for them a better life. However, due to poverty and its various causes and symptoms, they were unable to provide it. I began to really think about all that separated me, a successful young college graduate, from my students. For my entire life, I heard my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles tell me that I could do anything and be anything that I wanted to be. My parents especially stressed the importance of a good education and supported that by taking me to the library, to plays and concerts and taking me on trips. Not only did they tell me I could do anything I wanted to do, they also demonstrated to me that I could. When I showed an interest in astronomy, we checked out books on the planets from the library and they enrolled me in an astronomy class. When I dreamed of being a prima ballerina, I was enrolled in ballet lessons. Both of my parents were college educated and it was always just assumed that I too would attain a college education. Even though I was aware of the many challenges that my students faced, I don’t think I really understood the gravity of the situation until I casually asked my class how

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many of them had been to Washington, D.C. Home to some of our nation’s greatest museums, our nation’s capital, Washington D. C., is located just 45 minutes southwest of Baltimore, yet only two or three of my students had ever been there. I worked hard to tell my students that I was proud of them. I talked about going to college and that they could do anything that they set their minds to but that simply wasn’t enough. Not only were they not receiving the encouraging messages that I had gotten growing up, but they were told they were useless and that they would never amount to anything. They did not have to look far to see a broken down drug-addicted junkie or a drug dealer or a pregnant teenager. Everywhere they looked, they saw failure. Why would they be any different? Despite the nearly impossible odds, some of the students exhibited signs of extreme resilience. Isis Duvall came to my class every day with a smile. Her older sister was a cranky, mean eighth grader who could frequently be heard yelling at administrators, telling them to “fuck off” and worse, using harsh sexual language that would make anyone blush. But then there was sweet, smart, hard-working Isis. Born into a workingclass family, there was virtually no way Isis would not be successful, at least as she projected publicly. But, given this life, with two drug-addicted parents and an older sister already going down the wrong path, it seemed that her eventual failure was imminent. In discussing these issues with a colleague, we decided we wanted and needed to do more. We couldn’t stand by and just let Isis, with so much innate potential, be stuck in the rut of poverty. We could not let Tiana, with her sparkly smile and head for numbers, be consumed by the life she had been dealt. Tiana had watched her father get shot and had called the police while she, herself, tried not to also get shot. He did not die that time, but was later murdered, probably over a bad drug deal. Quiet Jackie, happy to be at school to be away from her crowded home, deserved more. Jade, strong, confident, and one of the few Booker T. Washington students living with both parents, was a smart girl. We felt bound to help her change her lot in life. My teacher colleague, Virginia Richard, and I knew that the obstacles that these children faced were huge. So huge, that we didn’t believe we could help all of them. Sadly, at even just twelve years of age, some of the students seemed too far-gone to reach. Some of them were already dealing drugs or doing drugs. Many, searching for the love and affection missing from their family lives, were engaging in sexual activity and would inevitably become pregnant or get someone pregnant. Many of my male students had already spent quite a bit of time in the juvenile justice system. We were not sure how to help them. What we did believe, however, is that

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with intense efforts we could help transform the lives of a select group of students who showed signs of resilience. We focused on those students, who despite tragic lives, came to school each day with a smile, eager to learn. We decided to work with female students. Being women ourselves, Virginia Richard and I felt much more comfortable dealing with girls. By focusing on young girls and not including the boys, we did not have to contend with the normal boy/girl hormonal issues surrounding the middle school years. We thought about what we wanted to accomplish and our goals were two-fold: we wanted to expose the girls to a variety of new and exciting experiences and we wanted them to realize that they could have a life beyond the confines of their neighborhood. We believed that they would benefit from being exposed to art and music and plays and different foods. We wanted them to be hungry for a different life. We did not want them to accept the blaring messages from society and their neighborhood that told them they would never amount to anything. Believing in the ability of education to move people up and out of poverty, we also wanted to introduce this group of severely at-risk girls to the importance of higher education, and at the same time, take steps that would help them gain admission to a university in the future. We designed a program for twelve sixth grade girls that included trips to museums, restaurants, art galleries, parks and the symphony throughout the school year, culminating in an-end-year trip designed to show them something far and away different from their regular life. The first year we decided to take them on a week-long trip to Michigan, my home state in the American Midwest. Every step of that trip exposed the girls to new experiences. None of them had ridden on an airplane before. Very few of them had any luggage because they had never really left the neighborhood. Virginia and I scrambled, asking friends and family to loan us a dozen suitcases for our adventure. We purchased toiletries, donated money and wrote a grant to cover the other costs of the trip. Our first stop was an overnight visit to the University of Michigan where they got a tour and were allowed to stay in the dorms. For many of them, this was the first time they dared to dream of going to college. They were not just being told that one day they could go to college. They were actually at a college, visiting classrooms and learning about the admission process. The rest of the trip was spent having cultural experiences, learning how to eat out at restaurants, and doing school work that Virginia and I had designed. Each of the girls was assigned a host family where they would have dinner and stay over each night. All of the host families were Caucasian in contrast to 100% of our students being African-American.

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For one week, the girls got to learn what it was like to live with a family not stricken by poverty. It was during that trip that the seed was planted in many of the girls’ minds that not only could they have big dreams, but there just might be a way to fulfill them. Another piece of the Michigan experience was a day of job shadowing. Michelle, who dreamed of becoming a chef, got to spend a day beside a gourmet chef, helping him prepare lunch for the day’s guests. Another student spent the day at a beautiful botanical gardens learning about plants and botany, and another spent the day with a woman scientist learning about research being done on zebra mussels. If the twelve girls felt special being selected to go to Michigan, they were absolutely over the moon when the following year’s culminating adventure was an 18-day trip to Alaska. Again, we visited a college, stayed with host families and participated in a wide range of new experiences including visiting a musk ox farm, going on a whale watching voyage and seeing what it is like for the sun to still be out at 10 pm. Instead of spending the majority of their time within a three block radius in their Baltimore neighborhoods, the girls were experiencing a wide array of enriching activities locally and far away. When they were in 8th grade (approximately 14 years of age, on average), we worked hard to get them into college preparatory high schools as opposed to their going to the neighborhood schools, which had sky-high pregnancy and drop out rates. Throughout their high school years, we continued to travel with our students. We visited a demonstration coal mine in West Virginia, we heard French being spoken on our trip to Montreal, Canada (a first trip outside of the United States for all of them!) and visited Harvard and MIT on our trip to Boston, showing them the best that American academia had to offer. We also learned a great deal about our nation’s early history on travels to Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Virginia and Philadelphia. Many of the benefits of these trips were obvious. Our girls became confident travelers, learned fully what it would take to get into college, and could speak intelligently about a wide variety of topics based on many varied experiences. They also knew how to be good audience members, how to eat politely in a nice restaurant and how to appreciate art. Speaking to many of the girls, now women, more than fifteen years after the program began, confirmed that being a part of this group was a significant step their path towards becoming successful, productive and happy adults. Isis, who once had to sleep with her money inside of her pajamas for fear of her drug-addled mother or uncle stealing it, has completed her Master’s degree and plans to pursue a PhD. She is happily married with a young son who earns straight A’s in school. Connie reflects that her family,

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comprised of her and her mother, was “functional but poor.” She admits that while her mother would have kept her busy with local activities, “I never would have been on a plane.” She shared that being in the group showed her “there was a world out there…there was more than what is outside on the streets.” Connie’s mother concurs saying “She got a love of traveling, a love of reading… culturally she was broadened.” Of course, these experiences were not occurring in a bubble, and this group of vibrant girls was affecting those with whom they interacted. First and foremost, they affected me. I learned just how strong and resilient a young person could be. When faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, time and again, these girls would surprise me with their utter resilience. Witnessing them persevere against incredible odds made me a stronger person. They also educated, in both small and large ways, everyone who they came in contact with on our trips. While we were in Boston, we met a group of Australian college students who were staying at the same dormitory. Several of our students interacted with the college students, with one of my students teaching the Australians how to braid hair. The host families became an extended support system for several of the girls. Even though we only spent a week in Michigan, Isis’s host family corresponded with her for years after that first visit, sending letters and presents. A few years after our visit to Alaska, Connie’s host family moved to California and invited her to visit. These experiences led to more and more experiences for these wonderful girls. Their peers who were not involved in the group simply weren’t afforded the same opportunities to travel and to meet people who were different than them, and to learn. Our experience was an extremely focused one, attending to the needs of a dozen young women and bringing out the best efforts of Virginia and myself. Thinking about our experience, I am able to confidently assert that our lives and the lives of the young women we sought to serve were enriched by the educational and cultural exchange programs we developed. It is one of the things I am most proud of being a part of in my now forty years of life.

KRISTINA STEVICK AND CRY INNOCENT

Teaching the history of Puritan New England to Australian students is a challenge. The students find it hard to empathize with these stern, grey people, who famously made a law against Christmas.1 They find it easier to sympathize with the dissenters and victims in Puritan society, but understanding people like Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and the men and women accused of witchcraft is still difficult. The Salem Witch Trials, in particular, is an episode that students find interesting – almost compelling – but it is all so strange that they invariably resort to using 21st century logic to explain 17th century behavior. They are skeptical about witchcraft and magic, and, bolstered by the fact the Puritans were sober, Christian people who surely couldn’t believe in such things either, the students search for the “real” reasons and motives behind the accusations and guilty verdicts. Of course, it is possible ergot-infected rye caused the afflicted girls to hallucinate and cry out, and historians have uncovered economic patterns that help us understand who was more likely to be an accuser and who was more likely to be accused, but ultimately, very few students find these explanations satisfying. Never was a topic more suited to being taken out of the classroom than the Salem Witch Trials. When we alighted from the train at Salem Station and began our walk down Washington Street, hopes were high. We were obviously in the Witch City. The masthead on the Salem newspaper was a witch on a broomstick, and when the students saw Elizabeth Montgomery’s statue there was a frenzy of group photos. Of course, broomsticks and sixties sit-coms were not the things serious students had come to study, but the problem was Salem did not seem to offer much else. The landscape didn’t give any sense of how things were in 1692. The promisingly named Gallows Hill left a lot to the imagination, and as Frances Hill admitted in her Visitor’s Guide, “no-one knows for certain where the witches were hanged.”2 The Witch Museum – another promising name – gave a good overview of the trials, but the papier mache figures and overly dramatic 1

Bruce Daniels, Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.) 89,90. 2 Frances Hill, Hunting for Witches: A Visitor’s Guide to the Salem Witch Trials (Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions, 2002), 93.

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narration had a sideshow quality, and students come away asking if it really was a museum. I was about to give up on Salem when I tried attending Cry Innocent: the People Versus Bridget Bishop, a dramatic recreation of the pre-trial examination of Bridget Bishop performed by drama students from nearby Gordon College. When I read Kristina Stevick’s essay, my mind went back to our first viewing. It was a brutally hot day, and the Old Town Hall, where the performance took place, was not air-conditioned. I wondered how the students would cope, but later they told me that, to the extent they noticed the heat at all, they felt that it made the performance feel raw and authentic. They listened to the testimony, a few bravely asked questions when they were given the opportunity, and then, in a tight vote, they decided that Bridget should not go to trial. After that, Cry Innocent was the centerpiece of our day in Salem. It wasn’t always as successful as that first year. The interactive nature of the performance means it relies enormously on the quality of the cast, and to a lesser extent on the ability of the audience to ask the right questions. Nevertheless, it always has an effect. After the performance we make our way to the Salem Common, where we sit in a circle and talk it over. The students have not examined artifacts or conducted interviews, and the historical sense of place they acquire from being in Salem is limited. But, somehow, they understand better that if a farmer’s pig died of unknown causes that it would be comforting for him to fall back on witchcraft to explain it, and having been transported backwards in time to a situation where they weighed up this sort of evidence and voted on Bridget Bishop’s fate, they also have a better idea of how the hysteria took hold in 1692.

HISTORY AS ENSEMBLE-MADE THEATRE: CRY INNOCENT IN SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS KRISTINA STEVICK

I was a college freshman when I saw Cry Innocent: the People Versus Bridget Bishop for the first time. I was attending with four other teenagers, whom I had only known since the start of the school year, and I was nervous about the audience-participation part. What would the cast of “Puritans” make me do? Would I say something silly in front of the boy I had a crush on? Who else was in this crowd of strangers escaping the rainy October darkness to play “jury members” for an accused witch? My friends and I sat up front, about ten feet from the actors who would be playing first one character, then another. A stylized exposition gave us background on the ideas and events in the decades leading up to the 1692 witchcraft crisis. What was at stake for the 17th century New Englanders began to emerge. This beginning was a kind of performance poetry, but was giving me concepts and terminology that my middle school lessons on the witchcraft hysteria hadn’t. I was starting to get drawn in to the world of the American colony through specifics, artfully arranged. What was a spectre? What was a familiar? What did drawing somebody’s blood have to do with witchcraft? What does it mean to be in league with the devil? From the aforementioned lessons in middle school, I had been taught that Puritans were intolerant and violent, and (incorrectly) that people who didn’t conform to their beliefs were burned at the stake. From my 11th grade literature class I had come to early New Englanders through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eyes – dark and gloomy – seeing them as the kind of people who would miss the beauty that a courageous outcast like Hester Prynne would have celebrated. What I saw on stage, however, was a group of brightly clad, energetic people, enjoying bringing the specifics of history to their audience. After the exposition came a head to head between the presiding magistrate, Col. John Hathorne and the accused witch, Bridget Bishop. Hathorne was swift, attempting to catch Bridget in a lie. He tried angle after angle, but she never confessed, even after he nearly ensnared her by her own answers.

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The actress who played Bridget was fascinatingly complicated – saucy, undaunted, rash, beautiful, inclusive yet self-possessed, enchanting. After some testimonies from the witnesses Col. Hathorne invited the audience to cross-examine them. Some people found this easy to do, feeling confident that their questions would expose the falsity of the accusers. It didn’t actually prove to be that easy, however. Others had difficulty framing their thoughts into a question, but the Colonel was able to finesse what they were saying and get to the root of their observation. Many assumptions were being re-considered. It wouldn’t do for a witness to knowingly lie in this courtroom: doing so could be as risky as witchcraft. This couldn’t be just a land grab: Bridget’s land didn’t even belong to her. All Puritans drank beer, even the children, but everybody knew that drunkenness was a sin and public drunkenness, a crime. Therefore, basing a court testimony on a drunken vision would be an extremely unwise thing to do. With all this audience input in the air we were being guided through deconstructing a mystery together. I was nervous, but I wanted in. One of the testimonies gave me a chance. The actor, playing eighteenyear-old John Cook, described how he had been awakened, pre-dawn, to see a creature resembling Bridget Bishop in his room. She had turned to him, smiled at him, hit him on the side of the head and then exited through a crack in the window as big as his hand. What? John Cooke wasn’t a hysterical little girl or some spurned lover of 52-year-old Bridget. He wasn’t senile and he didn’t seem to be suffering from some kind of posttraumatic stress. This was a young man, my age, and according to the play, a meticulous Harvard student. What was going on? Like many people, young or old, I’d had vivid dreams and experienced things in that liminal place between waking and sleeping that were illusionary, but which felt very real. So, couldn’t John Cook’s vision be just a dream? Wouldn’t hanging a person because someone dreamed about them be a terrible shame? Of all the ignorance! Being a natural introvert, I sweated how to phrase my question. I created a different name for myself – one that sounded old-fashioned to my ears. I drew on my one month of college sociology and told the “17th century court” that my (pretend) husband was giving me the right to speak in his absence. Once I had erected enough of a buffer for my shyness, I laid the question on the cast. They could have just answered that John Cook was awake and that he had evidence that he was. But something else happened. I found I had opened a conversation about the significance of dreams to the Puritans and their spiritual heroes, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Bible. In their response I was hearing stories of biblical

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people wrestling with angels, being warned in dreams of the approach of enemies, being reassured of God’s plans and provisions. This pre-Freudian way of looking at dreams was getting at what might cause a well-meaning person to ascribe God’s direct hand in John Cook’s vision, an event modern society would likely dismiss as happenstance. I was getting a glimpse of the Puritan worldview with it’s other priorities and motivations. This was learning well beyond dates, names and “facts”. It was also different than learning about a people through the emotional world created by an author of a novel (however talented he may be). My memory, my imagination and my heart were being engaged. The production was an audience/cast co-creation, and I was starting to feel good about what I could contribute. I think we, the audience, all saw the possibilities of our own contributions. Some audience members brought a different kind of need to the experience. While I wanted to win the respect of my peers, others wanted to vent their spleen. Toward the end of the show, as the decision to send Bridget Bishop to trial or to set her free was drawing near, an audience member interrupted the proceedings to express her anxiety over the possibility of Bridget being hanged. Her cloaked body ascended the folding metal chair, with the help of a friend on either side. She hollered out an impassioned plea. She had clearly made a pilgrimage to be here in Salem and she wanted to let the entire group know that the tragedy of what happened in Salem affected her personally. She felt an affinity to the accused witch, as a person who experienced life on the fringes of society. I had never been to a play where the audience interrupted the show before. Again, what would the actors do? I could see Hathorne take a breath. His eyes darted for a second as he thought of what to say. Bridget cocked her head, bit her lip, arched an eyebrow, smiled and nodded at the cloaked woman standing on her chair as if to say they were allies. Then, collectively, the actors re-directed the emotion of the woman toward the accused. Colonel Hathorne stated that this audience member was joined by others in their community – ministers, politicians, intellectuals – who were recommending more caution in the proceedings. The actor playing Bridget’s minister admonished the audience to not put any more stress on spectral testimony than it would bear. Colonel Hathorne reminded the group that they were at a pre-trial, which served to hear and gather suspicion only. He said they had no jurisdiction to hang Bridget. The other characters, including the midwife who had examined Bridget’s body for “witches marks”, urged Bridget to confess of anything she ought for the sake of the community and those who cared most about her.

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Bridget didn’t. In fact, she even further implicated herself by hotly asserting that she could flawlessly recite the Lord’s Prayer, only to fumble it in a way the majority of the audience could spot immediately. She made a weak excuse. The vote was called for. I squirmed in my seat, considering the evidence against and then for her. My hand started to raise at the call for those desiring to hold Bridget for trial, then it sunk down again. I wasn’t ready to go that far. As a result, I figured I must vote to release her, though that seemed fraught with peril, too. We were talking about what could ultimately be someone’s death, but we were also imagining that we were people who truly believed that witches spoiled food sources, inflicted pain and sickness on their enemies, murdered children, and invited diabolical mayhem into a community. The votes of the spectators crammed into the muggy room were counted. Bridget Bishop escaped a hanging death by three audience “nay”s. We learned in a post-show announcement what really happened to Bridget Bishop: that she was sent to trial, convicted and hanged, the first person to be executed in the Salem witchcraft ordeal of 1692. It seems ludicrous to much of today’s society that anyone would vote to hang someone for witchcraft but, terrifyingly, witch hunts still occur around the globe in places where the belief in magic is predominant, and people are hanged for witchcraft without even so much as the mock trial we were engaged in. Of course, we in the modern “rational” west have our own witch hunts, too. The stand-out characteristic about a piece like Cry Innocent is not that it aims to ridicule a strange and small-minded society who behaved so ruthlessly such a long time ago. It is that Cry Innocent demonstrates, in a personally experienced way, that even educated, moral people can make deeply regrettable decisions when fear, insecurity, and self-righteousness overlap with a period of extended political and economic stress. Madness can happen today, too. A few years after witnessing my first performance of Cry Innocent, I auditioned and was accepted to the cast. (Yes, theatre and introversion can go hand in hand.) Over a decade later, after having performed in and directed thousands of Cry Innocent performances, I have never seen the same show twice. It’s impossible when the audience brings their own concerns to the experience. Of course, there are themes that come up frequently: the need for physical evidence, the reliability of the witnesses, the legitimacy of spectral testimony, etc. But each show truly is different and each audience an opportunity for a surprise. In addition to the general audiences that visit Salem during the tourist season, Cry Innocent performs for school groups of all ages. Adjusting the

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show for different age groups is not a matter of dumbing it down or smartening it up. Indeed our youngest audiences – if their own experiences and imaginations are allowed to guide their participation – ask some of the most observant and profound questions. Since exercising their imaginations is less of a challenge for many elementary aged students, they are often quicker at entering the world of someone from a different time and place, than more advanced students might be. They pick up on details and are likely to try to catch “witnesses” or “Bridget” in a lie. Tweens often identify with the themes of persecution for being different and the fear or pain of unpopularity. Younger teenagers notice themes of conformity versus non-conformity. Older students are often drawn to the questions of justice, so they are hot on the heels of “witnesses” who might be guilty of ulterior motives or hypocrisy. They hate to see anyone make Bridget a scapegoat. Adults tend to think about land grabs or sexual rivalry. Many times professionals bring their disciplines to their questions – doctors, lawyers, ministers and psychologists often announce themselves as such. Obviously, people bring themselves to a work of audience-interactive theatre. In the process of engaging with the cast and fellow audience, they are learning about the past, but they are also learning new things about themselves. It’s a chance to air their theories, defend the underdog, have their say, disagree with their spouse, argue respectfully with their teacher. Such a forum is something teaching a lesson from a book cannot replicate. Further, no text can foster the exhilaration of conquering your stage fright in order that you might have a part to play in events of epic historical proportion, whilst through the magic of theatre those events are not-yetdetermined. Live theatre can also do something that cyber field trips cannot. However “interactive” the virtual experience might be, too much of the actor and audience body language and emotion are missed. The web cam does not know where to look because it does not know how to feel. It most certainly cannot pick up on the energy of an assortment of people in a room, unsure of each other and unsure of what to expect. It may miss the subtle indicators that an actor uses when he makes his character lie or deliberately fumble. It cannot feel the collective sigh of relief when tension is lifted. It has a harder time transmitting primal emotion. And what emotions are likely to be more primal than those brought out by witchcraft accusations? As I’ve said, one of the first things I noticed about Cry Innocent as a teenage audience member was that the actors were enjoying what they did. They knew their history and they loved sharing it – and they loved the co-

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creation of the sharing. These weren’t burned out docents reciting a scripted tour. They weren’t drama queens of embellishment, mistakenly thinking that hyperbole is more interesting than the truth. They weren’t a bunch of show-offs monopolizing the conversation to meet some deepseated need. They loved the sharing because it was truly a give and take with the audience. As I got deeper into performing the history of the 1692 witch trials, I realized for myself that the truth of those dark times is more moving, more captivating than anything someone could make up. Consequently, I began to study the world of the play because I love it. And I love the world of the play because I study it. There is always something new that can be brought to ones fellow actors and together to the audience. Of the 300+ actors who have participated in Cry Innocent: the People Versus Bridget Bishop since it opened in June of 1992, I think most would agree that It feels like a privilege to share the incredibly explosive time in history with an audience just as complicated and nuanced as the Puritans were themselves. Cry Innocent plays annually in downtown Salem, MA and travels to schools. Further information, group reservations and tickets may be obtained at www.cryinnocentsalem.com.

MIRIAM BADER AND THE TENEMENT MUSEUM

When educators talk about experiential learning, they don’t necessarily mean visiting museums, which can involve putting the students into a situation as unfulfilling and as removed from real life as the classroom. But in the right circumstances and with the right museum, the experience is exhilarating, and well worth a place on a study tour itinerary. The Tenement Museum is a wonderful museum. It conveys the immigrant experience in such an authentic way that the grand children and great grandchildren of those immigrants pay homage by celebrating special occasions there. But is it the right museum for a university study tour? The test set out in Chapter Two was that a visit needed to: 1. Connect to the subject’s central theme. 2. Take the students out of their comfort zone. 3. Give the students a sense of place. 4. Help the students understand they are doing something special. 5. Make the students feel they are part of a team. The Tenement Museum’s obvious connection to the subject’s American Dream theme is through immigration. People choose to migrate for many reasons. The conditions in their home country, where they might be persecuted or poor, push them to leave. But they are also drawn to America for an equally diverse range of reasons we bundle together under the title of the American Dream. Prior to their visit to the Tenement Museum the students see the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, where they are told the Lower East Side was the starting point for many an immigrant’s quest to realize this dream. To tease this out further I have our guides emphasize the way people worked in the apartments or, when they became more assimilated, in sweatshops. The stories of how the young women who worked in these sweatshops tried to organize links in turn with our later visits to the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters. The aim of the Tenement Museum, as Miriam Bader explains in her essay, is to deliver “an authentic, place-based educational experience.” The museum is a real tenement that was found frozen in time and then lovingly restored to show in detail how immigrant families lived and (the part that interests us) worked. Standing in a cramped kitchen, with the

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summer sun starting to heat the building, the students are taken back to late nineteenth century New York as well as anyone could reasonably expect, and that sense of place is reinforced when they leave the museum and walk out into the street to see America’s latest immigrants living similar lives in a similar setting. The Chinese stores on Grand Street are the most obvious manifestation of this, but there are also Ukrainian and Hispanic accents to be heard, and the museum guides alert the students to occasionally look up – any steam they see escaping from an upper story room is a telltale sign that a modern sweatshop is operating. Factors such as teamwork and a sense of unease are not usually associated with a museum, but our students experienced both at the Tenement Museum. In a standard museum, groups such as ours drift through at their own pace, individuals lingering over what interests them and passing over what does not. Teachers circulate and talk to as many students as they can, but the students aren’t necessarily challenged. At the Tenement Museum, large groups are broken into smaller groups of fifteen, each led by a guide who stops at various places, and puts the students on the spot with questions. With their resistance lowered by the heat, the close, stuffy atmosphere and a long period on their feet, the students feel exposed and definitely out of their comfort zones. But then a nice thing happens. The group members support one-another in quiet ways, and those who are best equipped to answer questions step up and, in effect, shield their friends. The prospect of visiting the Tenement Museum does not excite students like singing in a gospel church or meeting important State Department officials in Washington. However, after the visit they appreciate the opportunity given to them to stand in the shoes of a nineteenth century immigrant. For the students who came from immigrant backgrounds, this is truly a special experience.

PLACE-BASED EDUCATION AT THE TENEMENT MUSEUM MIRIAM BADER

Walk through 97 Orchard Street, a five story tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on a typical morning and find students of all ages gathered in small groups exploring the recreated homes of families that once lived inside. Home to the Tenement Museum, this National Historic Landmark was built in 1863 and housed 7,000 people from 20 nations before it was condemned in 1935. Today, the Museum welcomes over 170,000 visitors, including 40,000 K-12 school students each year. The mission of the Tenement Museum is to preserve and interpret the history of immigration through the personal experiences of the generations of newcomers who settled in and built lives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; forge emotional connections between visitors and immigrants past and present; and enhance appreciation for the profound role immigration has played and continues to play in shaping America’s evolving national identity. The mission emphasizes the importance of both personal experience and a deep understanding of history. The two aspects are integral to our interpretive approach, which includes an immersive placebased experience and an educator-led program. School programs at the Museum encapsulate a unique place-based educational experience. As K-12 students investigate 97 Orchard Street and the surrounding Lower East Side neighborhood, students enter both a portal to the past and a pathway to understanding their own place within history. The combination of relevant content delivered through an interpretive approach based in storytelling, constructivism, and imaginative education creates a rich learning opportunity for students to actively engage with history. The Museum’s commitment to authentic placed-based educational experience begins with the exhibit design. While many museums and historic sites keep their exhibits behind glass or ropes, the Tenement Museum enables visitors to experience how immigrants lived by walking directly into their recreated apartments, holding objects residents might

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have used in their daily lives, and examining primary sources the Museum used to reconstruct their stories. 97 Orchard Street is the heart of the Museum’s collection. Its apartments have been designed to tell the story of a particular historic moment in the life of a family that once lived there. Each apartment is carefully curated to create an immersive experience, a place where the past meets the present, and new opportunities for understanding are created. In addition to immersing visitors in the physical space, they are also engaged in the stories of the families by an educator. All museum programs are educator-led and are designed to encourage interaction with the space and its history. Educators go through extensive training and are incredibly knowledgeable of both the historic content and interpretive strategies to facilitate an interactive learning experience for visitors of all ages. Monthly professional development workshops include sessions that are, themselves, place-based and challenge the educators to experience 97 Orchard Street in a constructivist and imaginative manner. For example, during annual object studies, educators spend time in a recreated apartment and select an object to reflect upon. This object becomes the basis for a creative writing assignment where its life and imagined relationship to the historic family that might have owned it is described. As educators share their invented stories, new ideas about the family emerge and are explored through facilitation. A mirror becomes a reminder of one’s existence within a crowded space, an umbrella holds the tales of journeys on the elevated train, and silver candlesticks speak of an Old World. This imaginative and narrative based approach mirrors the learning experience the museum seeks the educators to provide for visitors. Educator-led small group tours help to create what Ron Ritchart describes as a culture of thinking, “a place in which the group’s collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the ongoing experience of all group members.”1 This commitment to facilitating personalized experiences is a hallmark of the Tenement Museum’s approach to place-based education, an interpretive philosophy that recognizes that it takes more than a curated space to evoke the rich learning experience to which the museum aspires. School programs at the Tenement Museum include three distinct series: Meet the Building living history programs, which use costumed interpreters to bring past residents of 97 Orchard Street to life, Tour the Building educator-led programs which use storytelling, objects, and 1

Ron Ritchart, “Cultivating a Culture of Thinking in Museums,” in Journal of Museum Education, 32.2, 139.

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activities to explore family stories, and Neighborhood Walking Tours which uncover the history and culture within the city streets. All of these programs are deeply rooted in their settings. Each utilizes the tools of narrative and imagination to create an experience where students investigate, and make meaning and connections to the material. On a busy school day, one can practically experience the hustle and bustle of 97 Orchard Street’s historic past; hear the creaks of the old staircase and the sounds of students moving about. Some are interacting with costumed interpreters playing the roles of former tenants like 14 year old Victoria Confino, who lived in the building from 1913 to 1916. Others are sitting on the wooden floor captivated by the story being told by their educator about the family that used to live there. Immersed in history, imaginations ignite and questions are asked, considered, and debated. In The Promise of Cultural Institutions, David Carr describes the powerful learning experience that takes place in museums. He explains, “Great cultural institutions are situations where the learner gives voice to questions, where the learner’s experience is a story, where the learner is receptive to advanced connections, and where the learner’s cognitive life becomes clearer.”2 This combination of questioning, story based learning, and relevant content is precisely what enables the Tenement Museum to create such a powerful learning experience for students. At the Tenement Museum, stories are at the core of our curatorial and pedagogical approach. Stories connect students to people from the past and to the larger questions that their lives illuminate. What makes a home? Who belongs here? What rights are people entitled to and who is responsible for providing them? These essential questions help frame the experience and promote inquiry and deeper understanding of the material. The emphasis on story as a vehicle for exploring history has proven incredibly effective with students of all ages. As a 5th grade teacher remarked about her visit, “It was very moving and we felt almost like we knew the family who lived there thanks to Adam's storytelling.” 3 The ability of a story to help one connect to someone or something from another time occurs daily at the Museum and is an essential element in engaging students in the historic content. Students don’t just listen to stories at the Museum, but also help construct the tale being told. Educators create opportunities for students to participate by asking questions and guiding their investigation of the family’s story. From the very beginning of a school program, students are 2

David Carr, The Promise of Cultural Institutions (New York: Pedigree Books, 2003), 102. 3 Feedback Survey, completed 12/08/2011, teacher from Brooklyn Waldorf School

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introduced to a theme that connects the visit to their classroom study and to their own lives. First graders focus on homes, seventh graders on rights and responsibilities, while tenth graders delve into discrimination. These themes invite student to channel their personal experience from the onset of the program. As students move through the tour, their ideas about the theme are built upon and expanded. For example, on the Hard Times program, first and second graders explore the theme of homes by visiting three different tenement apartments. All of these homes have some things that are familiar to the students, but each also contains new ideas and information. As they move through the spaces, educators carefully scaffold the learning and guide the students’ exploration. In the 1878 Gumpertz apartment, students see a home without running water, but they also see a kitchen table and chairs where they can imagine the Gumpertz children, Nanny, Rosa, and Olga sharing meals and jokes, perhaps relating to their own experience at home. In the 1935 Baldizzi apartment, students investigate the changes that took place in homes after the Gumpertz family moved away. They notice that this apartment has running water, but the bathroom is in the hallway and the bathtub is in the kitchen. Still, some things remain the same. Here, too, is a kitchen table where the Baldizzi children, Josephine and Johnnie, would play games and solve their father Adolpho’s riddles. As the students detect clues, the educator integrates the story of the family in the space, helping the students to more fully understand how the home operated. The final apartment that the students explore is a “ruin,” a space that had no restoration work. In this empty tenement apartment, students revisit their ideas of what makes a home. They use their personal experience and the knowledge gained on the tour to reflect on this theme. As they consider the 325 square-feet of empty space, the students determine what a home should have and discuss how they would fill the rooms. They actively apply their new understandings of what makes a home as they debate where the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom will be and what each room will contain, so that the apartment could meet the needs of their own family. In this way, the students utilize the story of the Gumpertz and Baldizzi families to construct their own understanding of what makes a home. By inviting students into the learning process and creating an educational experience that is an active and social process, school programs at the Tenement Museum embody the constructivist learning theory of John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner. In Experience and Education, Dewey argues that education and experience are organically connected. According to Dewey, learning takes place when education is based upon experience and develops as one

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constructs his/her understanding of the world. Vygotsky builds upon this idea by creating the concept of scaffolding and exploring the interrelation between learning and interaction. Bruner further emphasizes the social role of learning. For him, the language of education is one of narrative and negotiation. Students become culture creators as they construct their knowledge of society. By providing a learning experience founded on the ideas of constructivism and enabling educators to facilitate opportunities for students to actively engage and question the stories being shared, the Museum provides students with the tools to construct their own understanding of the material. As students are immersed in the place, narrative, and construction of meaning, imagination can thrive. It is within this space that textbook learning comes alive and students can enter the invented world of the past. Whether they are being transported to 1878 and the experience of Natalie Gumpertz as she struggles to support her family following her husband’s disappearance, or to 1911, on the eve of the Sabbath, as Fannie Rogarshevsky prepares for the traditional holiday meal, the students enter a new world of possibility. In this space, older students connect with Natalie’s daughter, Rosa, and what it must have been like for her after her father disappeared. They can picture her sitting next to Natalie helping with her dressmaking business. They can hear her conversation and describe her mixed emotions and the ache in her back from hunching over her work. Their capacity to imagine Rosa’s world extends to her daydreams. As the educator invites the students deeper into the immersive environment, Rosa becomes more than simply a character in a story; she becomes real and relatable. Dewey describes this capacity for people to see the world as if it could be otherwise. He writes, “when old and familiar things are made new in experience, there is imagination. When the new is created, the far and strange become the most natural inevitable things in the world.”4 Maxine Greene also explores the importance of imagination and emphasizes that when one imagines as Dewey describes, the individual moves within the invented world from the vantage of personal experience. She explains: “To enter a created world, an invented world, is to find new perspectives opening on our lived worlds, the often taken-for-granted realities of everyday.”5 An 8th grade teacher described this when commenting on a visit with her students saying, “Visiting the tenement was an experience my students will not forget. They walked away with an enrichment of the 4

John Dewey. Art as Experience, (New York: Pedigree Books, 1980), 267 Maxine Greene. Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic Education. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 82

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classroom lessons we learned. More than that, the students left with an appreciation for the life they are living and grateful for the small things in life they tend to take for granted. Seeing and experiencing the stories of these two families was relevant and educational.”6 This comment reflects the quality of place-based education at the Tenement Museum. We aspire for students to not only see places from the past and imagine what life was like, but for them to experience it as personally meaningful and relevant.

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Feedback Survey Bnos Bais Yaakov Elementary 8th grade

MICHELLE LEBLANC AND THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE

Visiting historic sites is an essential part of giving students a sense of place and a connection with the events that shaped America. Unfortunately, unlike a vibrant speaker who engages, informs and excites the students, historic sites are passive. Students visiting Bunker Hill encounter a silent monument that tells them very little about the American Revolution battle. They need to be talked through the visit if they are going to get the most out it, and even a stunning monument like the Lincoln Memorial has more impact if the students are told about Marion Anderson singing there, or they are directed to where Martin Luther King made his “I Have A Dream” speech. Admittedly, this is what collaborative learning is all about, but it is hard work, and it can relegate the students to the role of passive listeners. To address this problem, some historic sites have been given a museum treatment, allowing visitors to take a more interactive approach. The best of these treatments are subtle and sympathetic to the site itself, but still successful in giving visitors guidance and information. Old South Meeting House is an excellent example of how this can work. Built in 1729 as a Puritan Meeting House, it has the clean, unadorned appearance that symbolized the Puritan belief system. Students obviously need to be given some background before they enter the building, or it would seem like an unfinished church, but there is still the danger of them being lulled into inactivity by its quiet, undemanding austerity. To circumvent this, after the students have taken a few minutes to look around, they are directed to sit in the old-fashioned pews and listen while an instructor tells them what a Puritan Sunday service was really like. As Anita Rui Olds has explained, sitting down can actually have a stimulating effect, “just as a brisk walk may clear the mind” in other circumstances.1 The other change of pace employed at Old South is the switch from the distant past to the more recent past. At Melbourne University, students study the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Many of them draw comparisons 1 Anita Rui Olds, “Sending Them Home Alive,” in Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Routledge: New York, 1994), 333.

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between the Red Scare era and the heightened security following 9/11, when recent immigrants were exposed to increased scrutiny. In the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, this played out as a very questionable conviction and a death sentence, but at Old South the students are reminded that the United States also has a tradition of people protesting when they believe an injustice has been done. A heavy-handed approach here would have compromised Old South’s Puritan aesthetic, but instead of loud video displays or a special “Sacco and Vanzetti Room,” visitors find an unobtrusive display telling in simple, clear terms how the Old South Board allowed Sacco and Vanzetti protestors to hold meetings there. The point made here is that although the Board members did not necessarily agree with the protestors, they believed that Old South should be a place where issues could be debated openly, “without regard to the popularity of the cause.”2 So, as well as getting an insight into the meaning of the Puritan mind, the students understand that this led to Americans’ devotion to the principle of free speech, as expressed in the First Amendment. Giving students and other visitors to an historic site this sort of guidance without compromising the integrity of the site is a delicate balancing act, and requires a special understanding of the theory and practice of place based education. As her essay demonstrates, Michelle LeBlanc has this knowledge. Michelle liaised with me before our visit and put together a special Puritan/Free Speech program. Rather than simplifying any of this, she made sure that the students were confronted with the full complexity of the subject. As she points out, a good museum takes issues that can seem straightforward in a book or a lecture and shows that in the past things were confused, and there were two sides to every argument. A pertinent example is how many American colonists did not automatically support the Revolution and in fact chose to leave America when the war was over. Embracing that messiness, and realizing that the past was just as complex and unpredictable as our own present, brings it alive. Of course, the aim of a study tour isn’t to leave the students feeling hopelessly confused, and Michelle explains how by “infusing each stop within a bigger story” students understand how the exciting, unpredictable past comes together and has meaning.

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See the Old South Meeting House “History and Mission.” http://www.oldsouthmeetinghouse.org/osmh_123456789files/Dissent_and_free_sp eech.aspx Accessed on December 31, 2012.

MAKING HISTORY PERSONAL MICHELLE LEBLANC

A wonderful professor leading a riveting tour of the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania once asked of our group, “when and where did you feel closest to history?” and “what does history demand of us?” These questions have come to me often as I’ve pondered the role of history and how best to interpret it and foster an appreciation for it in others. After years spent as a Boston, Massachusetts museum interpreter, educator, and currently an administrator for a program that links teachers with academic historians and museum educators to enrich their teaching, I have been on the front lines of helping both adults and children navigate these questions for themselves. Using museums and historic sites to teach is incredibly rewarding in the way you can engage a wide variety of audiences. While some may respond to the various stories they hear, others may find themselves simply struck with the beauty (or harshness) of a location. In history, we deal with both the “big” stories and those that are more personal and local in nature. In his book Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life, historian David Glassberg states, “We use the various histories we encounter in public in intensely personal and familiar ways, to understand who we are, where we live, and with whom we belong, and to impart a manageable scale to the flow of experience.”1 Teaching through stories, at the places they happened, can bring to life not only some of the most dramatic events in a nation’s history, but also the everyday history that is the backdrop to every national story and the lifeblood of every community. In many cases, it is these more local sites and their stories that pack the biggest impact for students and teachers as they find themselves within the larger fabric of history and their modern community. One of the major reasons many teachers give when asked: “why study history”, is to create informed and active citizens. Citizenship can extend from local activism to the broader idea of being a global 1 David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 207.

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citizen. Whatever the definition, both adults and children undoubtedly benefit from being pushed outside of their comfort zone and into new experiences where they must engage with history and community. As every educator knows, there is always so much to teach and not enough time. For public school teachers, there is the state curriculum, national standards, district standards and text books that paint the nation’s history in broad strokes. And then there are the other stories: those that really get students excited about history – the stories that stick. Teaching on site has an immediacy that one can’t quite achieve from the lecture in the classroom.

Embrace the Messiness One of the most satisfying aspects of my work in public history has been exposing audiences to new points of view and challenging their perceptions of a time or place. At the Old South Meeting House, a Boston museum and historic site where I worked for six years as Education Director, this was often enriching the story of the American Revolution, or painting a picture of the everyday life of the residents of colonial Boston, perhaps in ways that teachers, students and visitors hadn’t considered before. We may seek out a site like Old South Meeting House to reinforce the stories in our national pantheon, but we should come away with a more nuanced view of these events. The interpreters of these sites, as well as any teacher of history, have a responsibility to ensure that the messiness of history is emphasized, challenging preconceived notions of our national stories, banishing the idea of every story having a hero and a villain and all details are either black or white. The very nature of the term “interpreter” to refer to a history museum staff member implies that they are there to be a facilitator of information, rather than the final word on a topic. The Old South Meeting House was a Puritan meeting house, once the largest building in colonial Boston. It was most famous for its role as a secondary town meeting hall when it hosted debates and a series of meetings preceding the infamous Boston Tea Party. Within the context of the Boston Tea Party, I often enjoyed telling the story of the Loyalists who retained fidelity to the British crown. To most Americans, these were the losers of history: those who gambled that the unrest in the colonies would blow over and their lives would continue just as they had before. To tell some of the stories of these Loyalists, banished from Massachusetts–for many the only home they had known – and settling in London or Nova Scotia years after the Revolution ended, is to show the true reality of what happens to the losing side of a Revolution. In some cases, families were

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ripped apart, with even parents and children standing on very different sides of the conflict. Many Americans say with great assuredness that they would certainly have sympathized with the colonists and their revolution. It can be a very difficult exercise to really put ourselves in the shoes of historical figures as we all want to think that we would always end up on the “winning” side of history. The beauty of taking a classroom out into the community or a historic site is that it allows us to more easily step outside of what we know and imagine ourselves in the shoes of someone living in 1775 or any other era. I have watched school children and adults alike, fully engaged inside the Old South Meeting House running their hands down the wooden banisters and sitting in the pews. It is not as easy to observe history as it is with a scientific process or a work of art, but there are some very fundamental ways that we can engage historical senses by visiting battlefields, historic houses or even factories. We should actively seek these connections to the past as we try to make sense of our place in the modern world. It is these very tangible places that allow us also to place ourselves in the context of history. The hard part about working with groups in the context of these very famous sites, however, is standing up and countering information that has, in many cases, had years to ferment. Boston’s Freedom Trail (an actual painted and brick trail that connects various sites related to Boston’s revolutionary history) is often promoted as a celebratory history experience when many of its individual sites take great pains to expand their interpretations beyond simply what is expected by your average tourist. Groups from abroad (like Glenn’s university groups from Australia) were always some of my favorites. Their understanding of American history was generally not personal and inculcated from childhood and therefore I did not have to worry too much about veering off into topics such as the museum’s 1920’s debate over allowing controversial speakers to use the building as a forum. In many ways, these debates, and others happening nationally at that time, are key to our present interpretation of the Bill of Rights, and could be considered more important to our understanding of ourselves as a country than the events preceding the American Revolution.

Think Local The importance of place is something many take for granted in the Boston area. While there is always history around us no matter where we live, we are particularly rich here with what some refer to as national stories; the bedrock narrative that every American knows and that seeks to

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explain how the country came to be. In other words, even kids in Alaska are studying the American Revolution battles of Lexington and Concord, or the Boston Tea Party. Here, many New Englanders assume that the rest of the country has this same landscape infused with history. My current role, as Project Director for a Teaching American History grant, has given me fresh perspective on the essential elements of a quality course. The Teaching American History program, as defined by the United States Department of Education, is a program that “is designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of and appreciation for traditional U.S. history.” School districts throughout the country that received these grants are required to partner with colleges or universities, nonprofit history or humanities organizations, libraries, or museums. Many districts choose to take their teachers to Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. to experience Ellis Island or the National Archives. Some of the most successful projects, however, have linked teachers with the stories that surround them. For teachers in a rural Wyoming district, this might mean partnering with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center while for a district in California, their teachers will engage with the resources at the Ronald Reagan Library. Giving teachers more direct access to the history educators and resources within their community is a key facet of the program designed to engage teachers in professional development that is relevant to them and will thus translate to an excitement and deeper engagement for their students. With our teachers in the Teaching American History program, we have often partnered both larger, better known historic sites and museums as well as smaller, local history sites that tie in to the larger story we are telling. For example, we have successfully partnered a small organization called Discover Roxbury. Roxbury is a largely African American neighborhood of Boston that has long suffered an image problem. As urban renewal swept through American cities in the 1950s and 1960s, Roxbury was particularly targeted for highway building and demolition of entire blocks as part of a philosophy that prized cleaning up densely packed urban areas in favor of high rises and stark concrete structures with large wind swept plazas. The neighborhood has its share of urban issues today (a high rate of poverty, gang violence) but, as with many reputations, much of its current notoriety is unfounded and based on racial prejudice. Many of our teachers grew up and currently reside in suburbs outside of Boston and had never spent much time in Roxbury. As we designed our course, we decided that the neighborhood and Discover Roxbury were the perfect choice to provide a window into the history of immigration in

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Boston over the course of 300 years, from the colonial settlers that first farmed there to the Jewish and African American residents that moved there in the early and mid 20th century. The neighborhood today reflects the changing face of immigration and new Boston with residents hailing from Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. The tour was illuminating to many, opening up the layers of a complex neighborhood history many had written off as simply a blighted area they were warned not to frequent. Teachers participated in a document and architectural scavenger hunt where they pieced together several different stories related to the individuals and businesses that had been a part of the community. They took a trolley tour to various religious institutions in Roxbury, from the recently built Islamic Society of Boston to a Catholic basilica built by German immigrants in the 19th century to a former Jewish temple, repurposed as a United House of Prayer (a Pentecostal church), a religion founded by a Cape Verdean immigrant to Massachusetts. Finally, they toured Franklin Park, a 527 acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (designer of Central Park in New York City), a park that suffers a similar reputation of urban crime, but is beloved by the neighborhoods that abut it and an underutilized gem of an urban park. Many of the teachers pointed to this day as the highlight of the week. One teacher stated, “the days in Boston – the walking tours and the handson stuff [were what I liked most about this course] because it brings meaning and life to what we were learning more powerfully than the lectures.” This was not the kind of education that could be undertaken anywhere else. We could have instructed the teachers in one of our classrooms with PowerPoint presentations and speakers about the history of Boston and Roxbury, but the experience of being in a location that you’ve perhaps been warned to avoid can change perceptions permanently. While most of our teachers will probably not specifically teach the history of Roxbury as it is not standard within the Massachusetts state curriculum, they will all draw on the larger themes raised by the tour: urban unrest in the mid-20th century, the Civil Rights movement, and the larger history of immigration to America. They experienced the story of a neighborhood that is a microcosm of these larger national stories. They also might be more open to returning to the neighborhood for cultural events and to bring their families to the sites, restaurants and green spaces we visited. Many teachers eagerly volunteered their family stories about parents or grandparents who grew up in Roxbury or other parts of Boston in the early 20th century. These personal connections bring the history full circle and show how we can make new stewards of these communities.

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Teaching in Place: The Practical Side From a planning perspective, there is an immense amount of preparation that must go into making a complete place-based course. Having worked with groups of students and teachers on both sides, as both an instructor as well as a course organizer, I have come to truly appreciate how exciting it can be to find a site that embraces its unique story and delivers a program that is both rich in content as well as sensory experiences. While each individual site may have an excellent education staff, it is up to me as the project director to make sure the thread of our theme carries through to all of the various sites we visit. While many historic sites work together naturally (such as those on Boston’s Freedom Trail which focus mostly on the American Revolution), more often than not as a course organizer you must communicate the key themes of your tour and ask the presenters to reiterate the connections. One of the most challenging trips I have put together knitted a wide variety of industrial revolution sites in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, all located in the Blackstone River valley. While there are a few formal museums and historic sites in the area, this is mostly a geographic region dotted with small towns, old mill buildings and a former working canal. The National Park Service ranger who took us through this rich landscape (in a bus often too large for many of the tiny bridges) managed to tell an expansive history just by infusing each stop and site with a bigger story of how and why this area industrialized in the early 19th century and why its story was so different from the better known industrialized cities such as Lynn, Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts. This is what we expect of our teachers (and thus of their students): they should take the seemingly endless stream of historical information and make some sense of it. However, there is not a single way to do this. David Glassberg, again, put it best stating, “as the marketplace through which we interact with the world becomes more impersonal, we want our histories to become more intimate, with an emphasis on the particular that just might keep us from becoming overwhelmed.”2 The best way to locate the “intimate” side of history is simply to look around us and find it.

2 David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 207.

JOAN SCHAFFNER AND ANIMAL LAW

When the students first look at the study tour itinerary and see a meeting with the head of the George Washington University Animal Law Program, they are instantly impressed but ask: “What does animal rights have to do with the American Dream?” The answer to their question begins in Boston, the first stop on our three-city study tour. It is here they are introduced to the idea that the American Dream is not just about individuals competing with one-another for wealth, position and status. Standing in the Common, a shared resource established by the Puritans, I talk about their conception of the community as a family of families, and how the Puritans’ concern for the common good overlapped their own, individual concerns. We leave the Common and walk through the Public Garden, stopping for a ride on the Swan Boats, before proceeding down Commonwealth Avenue, where we stop at a plain looking bench. As we watch, this bench attracts a steady stream of excited dogs, straining at their leashes as they draw near. The bench is a tribute to Richard Harmon, a homeless man who somehow found a way to get enough dog biscuits to treat the pooches whose owners walked them down Commonwealth Avenue. By any usual standard, Harmon was a failure. Apart from his daily dog ritual, he spent his time in the nearby Public Library, reading mystery novels, and he slept rough, in a doorway hidden away in a Public Alley. But the dogs of Back Bay loved him, and when he died in 2003, their owners paid for his funeral, including a floral wreath in the shape of a dog. They also lobbied the City, which agreed to dedicate one of the Commonwealth Avenue benches to him. The plaque reads: “Richard Harmon (1930-2003). The Dog-Man of Back Bay dispensed dog biscuits to his ‘customers’ for years on the mall and they sought him eagerly.” Beside the bench is a small metal container, which residents keep filled with the dog treats Harmon once dispensed. Visiting the Harmon bench sends mixed messages to the students. On the one hand, an old homeless man whose body was found in a Public Alley betrays the harshness of American society, with its winners and losers. But by all accounts Harmon did not consider himself a failure, and the joy he experienced each time a dog recognized him and raced up for a treat might just have been his American Dream coming true. The wealthy

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residents of Back Bay could and probably should have done more for Harmon while he was alive, but their sadness when he died, and their determination to continue his good work, shows that they respected him. Also, as Sara Brown pointed out in Boston.Com, “while the treat can is a tribute to Harmon, it is also a testament to a sense of community spirit.”1 In other words, intertwined in the story of a homeless man is evidence of the compassionate, communitarian nature of the American Dream. Of course, Richard Harmon was just one man, and Back Bay is just one community, but these micro examples reflect a widespread concern for animal welfare in the United States, where the Humane Society alone boasts a staggering eleven million members and supporters. I contacted Joan Schaffner hoping that she would be able to give the students an understanding of the intellectual and legal underpinning of this movement. No-one is more qualified to speak about recent trends in animal welfare and the law, and coupled with the fact that I knew she was a charismatic speaker, I was thrilled when Joan agreed to speak to the students. She also arranged a panel of speakers, including representatives from law firms and animal rights organizations, which was an amazing opportunity for us. The three-hour program taxed the students, and some were challenged by what they heard. A student whose family owned and operated a beef cattle farm felt particularly threatened, and there was an uneasy guilt about the exposé of the inherent cruelty of factory farms. The level of engagement, however, was remarkable, and the students who wrote essays on the subject excelled. Animal rights is a great example of how a subject comes to life when it is taken out of a classroom, even when it is transported to a similar setting at an American university. Joan’s essay comments on the value of such panel sessions as an alternative to traditional classes, and, experiential learning more generally. What is particularly interesting is the way experiential learning need not take the form of a study tour. Of course, study tours are the perfect format for an Australian-taught American Studies course, but for a law school, the pro-bono work Joan has her students undertake gives them the “skills needed in the real world.”

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Sara Brown, “For Back Bay Dogs, Community Treat Bin is a Favorite Spot and a Memorial to a Friend.” Boston.Com, March 9, 2011. http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/back_bay/2011/03/for_back_bay_dogs_co mmunity_tr.html Accessed on December 31, 2012.

AMERICANS WORKING ON BEHALF OF THE UNDERDOGS JOAN SCHAFFNER

“I teach American Studies at the University of Melbourne, and in July of this year I will be taking a group of our best students to America to find out how you deal with problems that trouble us too, and I was wondering if we could possibly speak to you about the Animal Welfare Project and the legal status of animals in the United States. Our group is fairly diverse and large, about 60 students. The broad theme of our trip is that although many Australians see Americans as competitive and individualistic, there is another, more caring America that values the common good and looks out for the underdog. Sorry if that sounds corny, but we will be visiting community organizations, unions, church groups, and I think animal welfare groups definitely fit there, too. The simple idea that animals have rights is fascinating, and I think we would happily learn about problems animals face in America and how US humane organizations operate, and how the law can be used. (One of my students compared your approach to that of the NAACP early in the century.)” This e-mail introduced me to Dr. Glenn Moore and I have been impressed ever since! What a fabulous program to introduce young adults to how community organizations world-wide advocate for those less fortunate and without a voice. I was especially pleased that he thought to include the group whose interests I now champion, non-human animals, to the list of the “underdogs.” I immediately contacted several colleagues who have devoted their lives to using the law to promote and protect the interests of all species. They brought a wide variety of perspectives and approaches which are needed to address the wide ranging animal communities whose interests they promote – from those at Alley Cat Allies protecting stray and feral cats, to those at Compassion Over Killing seeking to improve the lives of animals used for food, to the public interest law firm of Meyer Glitzenstein and Crystal whose environmental and animal law focus often includes cases to help save the world’s endangered species. The goal was to provide the students with a basic understanding

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of animal law in the United States, explain in general terms the difference between the concepts of animal welfare and animal rights, and then provide concrete examples from advocates who use the law to advance the interests of different animal communities. The students learned generally that in the United States, although every state has an anti-cruelty statute, the statute protects only a small number of the animals who live amongst us, and only from the worst abuses or neglect. Most state cruelty statutes exempt wild animals and animals used for research, and either exempt animals used for food or allow for socalled accepted agricultural practices. However, accepted agricultural practices include horrific conditions for virtually all animals in factory farms, including use of veal gestation crates, sow stalls, and battery cages for egg-laying hens that do not allow the animals to turn around or spread their wings much less engage in other natural behaviors. Laws at the federal level are quite limited. The Animal Welfare Act is the primary statute that regulates treatment of certain animals, primarily those used for breeding and in research and entertainment, but the level of protection and enforcement is very limited. Thus, the reality under U.S. law is that society allows animal “cruelty” when it benefits human interests. The panel was a huge success. I was especially impressed by the thoughtful comments and questions the students raised as they grappled with the ethical, moral, and legal issues concerning humans’ use and abuse of animals. What was unique to our discussion was that the students were being introduced not only to American culture, something they were not familiar with, but also to the interests of non-human species – they truly must have felt like “strangers in a strange land”! The world has become so much more accessible “virtually” in the era of the internet but a virtual experience does not duplicate the experience of meeting, in person, experts in a given field, and hearing first-hand their stories of their lives and work. In the area of animal advocacy, this firsthand exposure is critical to students’ understanding of the real plight of other species and, in particular, the problems animal activists face as they seek to educate and advocate for animals’ interests. The George Washington University Animal Law Program (Program) has combined traditional classroom learning with service-learning to teach law students about animal law while also affecting public policy and providing service to the community of humans and non-humans alike. The Program started in the fall of 2003 when my colleague, Mary Cheh had the idea to create a one-year pro bono project at the law school that would benefit the community and provide an opportunity for our students to develop their legal research, writing, and advocacy skills. As

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animal lovers, and noting that the laws governing animals in the District had been drafted decades before, we established the Animal Welfare Pro Bono Project to research the state of animals in the District and the laws that govern them, develop suggestions for ways to improve upon the laws in order to provide greater protection for them, and then draft a report to submit to the D.C. Council and Department of Health, the executive branch department that has primary responsibility for animal control in the District. Within the first few months, we held a summit at the law school and invited government officials and animal advocates – including those working in local shelters, with rescues and sanctuaries, for domestic animals and those living in the wild – to discuss their experiences, the challenges they faced, and ideas they had for improving the welfare of all animals in the District. It was a great educational experience for all, as these groups had never before come together to share their stories and goals for the District’s animals. We learned an immense amount not only about the animals and the law, but also about effective means for bringing together diverse communities working towards common goals. The end result of this project was the enactment of the D.C. Animal Protection Amendment Act of 2008, introduced by newly elected D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh, and a permanent animal law program for the school. The timing of the creation of the Program was perfect. Although lawyers had been advocating for animals since the 1970s when the Animal Legal Defense Fund was created by Joyce Tischler and others, it was not until the dawn of the 21st century that animal law became recognized as an accepted area of practice. In 2000, there were only a handful of schools in the U.S. that offered a class in animal law, now there are over 140 law schools with animal law courses and the Association of American Law Schools now boasts an Animal Law Section. Moreover, the American Bar Association, (ABA) Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section established an Animal Law Committee in 2004 through the hard work and dedication of attorney Barbara Gislason. Furthermore, now over twenty state bars, fifteen regional bars, and the District have Animal Law Sections or Committees. This trend has helped to legitimize animal law as an area of scholarship and practice and to advance the state of the law to provide greater protections for animals. For example, prior to 2004 arguably few members of the ABA had heard of “animal law” but within a few short years, and as of February 2012, the ABA House of Delegates has approved the Model Act Governing the Care and Disposition of Disaster Animals (103A) (2010), Guidelines Regarding Animal Seizures (108B) (2011), and Guidelines for Service Animal Policies to Comply with the ADA (303)

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(2012) and will be considering at its annual meeting in August 2012 Legislative Recommendations to Ensure Due Process in Canine Ownership. This is one small example of the advancements made in promoting public policy devoted to protecting animals in the U.S. The Program at GW Law now includes three courses in animal law and the sponsorship of conferences and speaker panels on animal law, the Animal Welfare Project, the Animal Law Lawyering Project, and a Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter. The Program combines education, advocacy, and public service to promote the interests of all animals. Animal law cuts across virtually every substantive area of the law, public and private, civil and criminal, federal, state and international and the overview Animal Law Seminar surveys these laws that govern humans’ interaction with animals. The Wildlife and Ecosystems Law course focuses on the intersection between animal law and environmental law and presents an in-depth study of the complex body of laws protecting and regulating wildlife and the habitats in which wild animals live. The third seminar, Animal Rights and the Law, discusses and critiques the laws that regulate humans’ uses of animals as companions, for sport, entertainment, food or research, and as environmental resources, and presents alternatives to the law’s current treatment of animals as mere property in order to provide protection for their own inherent interests as sentient beings. Students are encouraged to work on independent research projects to explore, in depth, an animal law topic of specific interest. In addition to these traditional classes, the Program hosts a variety of speaker panels on topics ranging from the link between animal abuse and human violence, prosecuting animal cruelty, animal trafficking across international borders, and factory farms’ abuse of animals and the environment. Annually, the Program hosts the Animal Law Panel during D.C. Week for the Animals sponsored by Animal World USA and co-hosts the National No Kill Conference, in coordination with the No Kill Advocacy Center and No Kill Nation. The No Kill Conference brings together the nation’s most successful shelter directors and leading animal lawyers to work towards creating a nation where all homeless and saved animals and those in our shelters find loving adoptive homes. These classes, panels and conferences provide students with the knowledge necessary for them to move beyond the classroom and develop the skills needed to advocate for animals. Enter the Animal Law Lawyering Project, an experiential learning component of the program designed to develop student’s research, writing, oral advocacy, and management skills needed in the real world. This Animal Law Lawyering Project pairs students with lawyers working in the

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courts and legislatures to promote animal protection through litigation, lobbying, policy, and general advocacy. Students interview clients, draft pleadings, statutes, or regulations, attend court hearings, meet with legislators, draft educational materials, and engage with attorneys, fellow students, and faculty to reflect on their experience and hone their skills. The Animal Welfare Project (AWP) combines experiential learning and pro bono service to the community. This Project that gave birth to the entire Program, remains an important component designed to raise awareness of animal welfare issues locally and to improve the lives of animals through the law. Over the years, students and faculty, working in concert, have testified on behalf of repealing the pit bull ban in a neighboring county, published the pamphlet entitled Animal Law in the District of Columbia on the web site of the Animal Law Committee of the Environmental and Natural Resources Section of the D.C. Bar, and drafted amendments to the laws in the District governing veterinarians and veterinary facilities. The AWP has also partnered with the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys to research and summarize the case law interpreting each state’s anti-cruelty statutes as part of their training program for state prosecutors on the prosecution of animal cruelty, including large scale animal fighting, hoarding and puppy mill cases. The AWP has recently expanded its focus to include the drafting and submission of comments to federal, state, and local agencies proposing amendments to their laws. Students research and analyze the proposals published for comment by the agency and submit extensive comments designed to improve the proposal’s protection for the animals affected. Examples of recent comments include: arguing against the City of Rockville Maryland’s Deer Management Task Force proposal to amend the local law that prohibits hunting in the city to allow hunting of whitetailed deer as an animal management measure, supporting a petition before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within the U.S. Department of Interior to upgrade captive chimpanzees from threatened to endangered status pursuant to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and offering amendments to the draft policy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, within the U.S. Department of Commerce, on the interpretation of the phrase “significant portion of its range” in the Endangered Species Act’s definition of “Endangered Species” and “Threatened Species.” These projects provide the perfect opportunity for students to hone their research, writing, and advocacy skills and affect policy to protect animals’ interests. The final component to the Program is the GW student chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF), an active and engaged student-run

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organization that promotes the interests of all animals through education, outreach, and public service. As the faculty advisor, I facilitate, support and participate in their activities, and find them to be some of the most rewarding events on campus. Their activities include hosting adoption events for the local shelter in the University Yard, participating in walks for animals to raise money for the local shelter and farm sanctuary, distributing pamphlets on the benefits of veganism while offering delicious vegan goodies, and sponsoring the annual pet photo contest and calendar where students, faculty, staff and administrators show-off their adorable animal companions. These events and others have helped raise awareness of animal law issues and have provided needed resources to those fighting for animals’ interests on the ground. Every day, dogs, cats, rabbits and other companion animals in the local shelter are killed because they have no homes. Cows, pigs, and chickens on factory farms are slaughtered for food, animals in research facilities suffer in the name of experimentation, captive wild animals are forced to engage in unnatural acts for human entertainment, and animals in the wild are hunted down for pure sport. The Animal Law Program at GW is dedicated to training law students through traditional and experiential learning programs to advocate on behalf of these animals and work towards a world where their interests are respected and protected under the law. Mahatma Gandhi inspirationally noted, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” The goal of our Program is to work through the law to create a truly great nation and world.

ALLIE PHILLIPS AND KING STREET CATS

The first time Allie Phillips spoke to the Melbourne University students was as part of a panel on animal organized by GWU law professor Joan Schaffner. Some of the students found the session exhilarating, some found it challenging, some simply found it grueling listening to seven speakers in three hours. One of the few things they agreed on was that Allie’s recollections of the animal cruelty cases she prosecuted as a District Attorney were compelling. Part of the appeal was the incongruity of this demure, neatly dressed woman showing such passion and aggression in representing “victims who could not speak at trial” and making sure that the offenders received a maximum sentence. The students also appreciated the fact that Allie was able to show that animal welfare was an issue that mattered to everyone. The next year, Joan was out of town at a conference, so Allie spoke to our group alone. She focused her talk on the interconnectedness of humans and animals; something Allie calls “The Link.” In the manner of a D.A. delivering a final summation, she methodically demonstrated that there is a connection between animal cruelty and other crimes. In particular, she discussed the ways in which animal cruelty committed by children is a good predictor of later crimes against humans. Conversely, she showed that when a child has been abused or traumatized, it is the non-judgmental comfort from an animal can help the child heal.1 After her talk, Allie mentioned the possibility of the students on the next study tour visiting a no-kill cat shelter. I was excited by this opportunity, but not because talking with Allie in an American University classroom had been ineffective. The confronting nature of the subject matter, combined with Allie’s expert status successfully took the students out of their comfort zone, and some were deeply moved by what they heard. However, shifting the meeting to a cat shelter promised to give the students the sense of place that would truly bring the subject alive. The venue’s small size meant that not all sixty students could take part. The twenty who signed up were, of course, the most interested and committed to the subject. Interestingly, they were also all female (perhaps the male 1

Allie Philips, “The Dynamics Between Animal Abuse, Child Abuse and Domestic Violence: How Pets Help Children. The Prosecutor (2004) 38(5), 22-28.

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students we afraid that showing an interest in cats would harm their macho image) and, even more interestingly they were, by and large, the students with the strongest academic records. Gifted, committed students mixed with a compelling speaker and a sense of place was a powerful cocktail, and we had high hopes for the visit. While I took the remaining students to another meeting, my colleague and the cat lovers travelled by train to Alexandria, Virginia. What followed was a magical experience, far exceeding our high expectations. The students found spots wherever they could, some on seats, some on a windowsill, and most on the floor, and while they listened to Allie, cats rubbed against them, settled in their laps, and one little kitten even dozed off in a student’s arms. The students were spellbound. At the end of the talk they had Allie sign their copies of her latest book, and when I read their journal entries they were peppered with words like “love” and “anger.” It was what place-based/experiential learning is all about.

AUSTRALIA MEETS AND EMBRACES AMERICAN ANIMAL PROTECTION ALLIE PHILLIPS

The American Dream is a goal that many Americans and foreigners seek. One educator has taken this search to a new level. Professor Glenn Moore teaches a class called “Searching for the American Dream” at Melbourne University in Australia. But this is not your ordinary undergraduate college class. Instead, the students are given an extraordinary lesson outside of the traditional classroom setting: they travel to the United States as a group to visit Boston, New York City and Washington D.C. to learn about American culture, social issues and to seek this infamous and elusive American Dream. It all began in July 2009 when I was invited to participate in a panel presentation to sixty students from Dr. Moore’s traveling class. Meeting at American University in Washington D.C., the panel focused on a variety of animal protection issues encountered in the United States. At the time, I was the Vice President of Public Policy for American Humane Association. As a former prosecuting attorney who has been involved in prosecuting criminals and training prosecutors for many years, my passion has been protecting our most vulnerable victims, particularly animals. So I discussed animal protection laws and the research supporting the linkages between violence to animals and people. The students were attentive and posed thought provoking questions to the panel. It was clear to me that the students were more attentive because they were hearing directly from nationally recognized experts in the field of animal protection. In July 2010, I was invited to return to provide a sole presentation to the new group of students. I spoke about the linkages between violence to animals and people and how the criminal justice in the United States responds to these “link crimes.” I discussed how those who are cruel to animals have a likelihood of being harmful to people. I argued that violence is violence whether committed against a two-legged or fourlegged being. I shared how our legal system responds to these cases (or fails to respond) and discussed a solution I created that provides guidelines

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to domestic violence shelters on how to allow families bring their pets onsite when fleeing an abusive home (a program now called Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T)™). Once again, the students were engaged and intrigued to learn of this area of animal protection. Afterwards, Professor Moore and I brainstormed about how to bring the American animal protection system closer to his visiting students. The following year, we found a way. In July 2011, some of the visiting students received an up-close look at one side of the American animal sheltering system: a free-roaming cat orphanage where no cat is euthanized due to overcrowding or temperament; a space where each cat is given the space to thrive until they find their new home. Twenty students, pre-selected from the sixty visiting students, traveled from Washington D.C., across the historic Potomac River, to Alexandria, Virginia to visit King Street Cats. I felt it would make an impression to have the students visit King Street Cats and observe how an innovative shelter is making a real difference for animals. And while King Street Cats is not a typical American shelter, I was concerned that visiting a “traditional” animal shelter would leave the students feeling sad and helpless. In the United States, there is no exact number on how many animal shelters exist. It is estimated to be approximately 10,000. There are basically three different types of housing for homeless animals: (1) Government operated shelters are typically open admission shelters funded and operated by local government to enforce animal control and protection laws. These shelters cannot turn away any animal, including feral animals and wildlife. They typically have high euthanasia rates due to limited resources. Animals reside in cages and may only be at the shelter for a legal minimum hold period, which can sometimes range from 0 days to 7 days. They are often called “animal control shelters” although there is a movement to remove this negative label and rename them “animal care” shelters. (2) Nonprofit shelters can either be open admission (and accept every animal) or limited admission where they decide which animals to accept and sometimes have a waiting list of animals to take in. These shelters are typically “humane society shelters” or “SPCA” (Society for Protection against Cruelty to Animal) shelters. They do not receive government money and are funded through private donations or grants. These shelters may or may not euthanize animals due to overcrowding. They typically house animals in cages, but because they garner more resources, the settings are healthier and breed-appropriate for the comfort of the animals. (3) Foster care programs that typically arise from animal rescue groups who do not have a physical shelter and instead place

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animals in the homes of volunteers. These groups overwhelmingly allow animals to live until they find a home and euthanasia only occurs when an animal is very sick and dying. Intermixed in the American animal shelter system is the “no-kill movement,” which is advocating for shelters to stop euthanizing animals due to overcrowding. In my book Defending the Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets, I discuss the no-kill movement and the struggles that shelters face in trying to increase adoptions, decrease euthanasia, and do this amongst increasing opposition from the public. The no-kill movement has been polarizing in America, and the animals have been caught in the middle. Within this complex framework of animal shelter sits King Street Cats, a unique cat orphanage that provided an excellent opportunity to educate and inspire. King Street Cats is not your typical American animal shelter. It is a nonprofit charitable organization solely operated by volunteers that provides a safe haven to homeless cats and kittens until they find a home. In that regard, we operate much like an animal rescue organization. We have existed since 2003 (and before that under a different name). We started in a small room (approximately 350 square feet) above a store called “Unique” that was owned and operated by our founder, Ethel Beun. In 2009, after Ethel passed away, we moved to our current location and enjoy 850 square feet with many sunny windows for feline lounging. I have volunteered at King Street Cats since March 2004 and was the president in 2008-09. We call our facility a “cat orphanage” because our feline residents have been orphaned (through abandonment outdoors, being relinquished by their families, or being transferred from another animal shelter). We take in close to 300 cats and kittens annually. A majority of our cats are owner surrendered and the reasons range from moving out of the country (due to the large military presence in Washington D.C.) to behavioral problems (which is almost always the owner dying.) We welcome cats from near and far (including the islands of St. Croix and St. Thomas, West Virginia, South Carolina and more). We aim to help those who are the most desperate and need a calm environment with no time restrictions. We specialize in bonded-pair adoptions and caring for cats who are elderly, pregnant, or orphaned newborn kittens requiring bottle feeding. We are unique because our cats free-roam and can reside with us until they find a home. From 2007-2010, we had Nala, our long-haired buff colored beauty who was a permanent resident after three failed attempts to adopt her. She simply wanted to be with us and welcome every new resident. Our longest resident, so far, who is still available for adoption is

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Rexy, a handsome long haired black and white boy who arrived in January 2010 after living outdoors as a stray for three years. Rexy is friendly, but quiet, and enjoys hanging out with his cat family. He is gentle and harmless, yet fiercely guards our orphanage and will show his teeth if a stranger looks in our windows. Rexy has no intention of leaving because he has never lived so well. In most animal shelters, he would not be given the luxury of waiting for his new home.1 In the United States, approximately 6-8 million animals enter shelters annually, with 3-4 million being euthanized due to lack of adopters and lack of space. The no-kill movement, as discussed earlier, has resulted in the establishment of numerous rescue groups and other sanctuary/orphanage facilities who welcome these “death row” animals; but it has also resulted in too many of these facilities being closed due to hoarding (taking in too many animals and being unable to provide appropriate care). This staggering euthanasia statistic does not account for the number of animals who are abandoned outdoors to fend for themselves, or feral animals born in the wild, who never arrive at a shelter. Those numbers climb high in to the tens of millions. Knowing how grim the homeless animal scenario is in the U.S., I felt the students would have a more positive and lasting experience by visiting our unique orphanage. In July 2011, twenty students, all female, along with their guide, Cassie Atherton, arrived at King Street Cats. Before they entered, they had their faces pressed up against our four large sunny windows to check out what was inside. It took some time to bring the twenty students through the front door foyer into our small orphanage while avoiding a feline escape. King Street Cats is comprised of two rooms: the main room is approximately 700 square feet and is where our cats free roam; our second room is a small isolation room for new cats, cats with illnesses, and cats recovering from spaying and neutering. The eyes of every student were wide open in amazement at the 30-plus cats who wandered around amongst them as they entered the orphanage. As the students sat on the floor for my discussion, many of cats made themselves comfortable in the arms and laps of the visitors. A few of the cats, like our dear Bubbles, threw a little hissy fit because she wanted the students all to herself and did not want to share with the other cats. I spoke on a variety of different topics, including the different types of housing shelters for America’s homeless pets, the controversial “no-kill movement” which is pressuring all shelters to stop euthanizing adoptable animals, and the innovative work of King Street Cats. Once again, the students asked thoughtful questions that conveyed that they understood the 1

At the time of the book going to press, Rexy had been successfully adopted.

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nuances of the American animal sheltering world and the issues we encounter in trying to save as many adoptable animals as possible. I also discussed my recently published books, How Shelter Pets are Brokered for Experimentation: Understanding Pound Seizure (2010, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing) and Defending the Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets (2011, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing). 2 Several of the students purchased the first book to learn more about pound seizure and expressed interest in the second book which was being printed at that time. We spent over an hour discussing animal sheltering and animal protection issues, and then almost another hour letting the students interact with the cats. I know that each student bonded with at least one cat. I asked the students to write down their name, email address and the names of cats they bonded with and subsequently sent emails when the cat found a home. Many of the students, along with Professors Moore and Atherton, “liked” the King Street Cats Facebook page and, in subsequent months, voted online to help King Street Cats win a grant. At the end of the gathering, I was presented with a generous donation from the Professors and students for King Street Cats. And since the visit, I have received many emails inquiring about some of the cats and expressing joy when they found homes. I knew that the visit was inspiring and educational, because it was for me. As I write this article in Spring 2012, I continue to receive stories that the students from the King Street Cats visit are still inspired by the visit and continue to learn more about animal protection. Professor Moore, who was not able to attend the King Street Cats visit due to the other students having another presentation, has informed me that a return visit to King Street Cats is at the top of his list in 2013 after the program is transferred to a new University. King Street Cats is grateful that the students and teachers continue to support our orphanage via the Internet and a small group of them even started cat sitting for Professors Moore and Atherton. Professor Moore even shared that he has a morning ritual that involves voting for King Street Cats to receive a grant that is based on online voting. For a little orphanage in northern Virginia, we never expected to receive such an outpouring of continuing support from students and their teachers in Australia.

2

Allie Phillips, How Shelter Pets are Brokered for Experimentation: Understanding Pound Seizure (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2010) and Defending the Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2011)

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I have seen first-hand that Professor Moore’s dedication to teaching through place-based learning has made an impact on his students. Learning about animal protection and sheltering in a classroom, detached and immune from the issues and realities, cannot compare to visiting and interacting with homeless animals and hearing directly from someone who cares for homeless animals. Had the students simply learned the issues in a classroom setting, I doubt they would have become as involved in King Street Cats and the individual cats in our care. The place-based learning model is an important method of learning about social issues and should be modeled by more universities and professors. I look forward to continued visits from the students at the University of Melbourne and introducing them to the bittersweet world of animal protection.

Resources King Street Cats (http://www.kingstreetcats.org) National Link Coalition (http://nationallinkcoalition.org) Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T) (http://www.anmalsandfamilies.org)

STEPHEN CUNNIFF AND THE NEW ENGLAND CENTER FOR HOMELESS VETERANS

The flight from Melbourne to Boston is long and grueling, and the students are in a state of semi-exhaustion when the finally collect their bags at Logan Airport and file onto the waiting bus. They perk up, however, as the bus enters the city, and there is audible excitement as we move down Commonwealth Avenue, with its imposing brownstones and nineteenth century gaslight style street-lamps. They check into Emerson College, and can’t quite believe that college dorm rooms can be so salubrious. After a jet-lag compromised sleep, the group gathers and we have an orientation walk through the manicured Public Garden and down chic Newbury Street. First impressions are that the streets of Boston really are paved with gold. The only exceptions to this sense that Boston is a place where the American Dream comes true are the poorly clad men standing outside the CVS and 7-Eleven store. They hold the door open for people who enter or leave, and politely thank those who drop a coin into their cup. As the days go by, the students notice more people, sleeping rough in the Common, or whiling away the hours in public buildings. This stark contrast between rich and poor raises questions about the American Dream, which, as Jennifer Hochschild points out, can have a competitive edge where “my success implies your failure.”1 Of course, failure and success are relative. One doesn’t need to be a millionaire to feel content. Equally, one doesn’t need to sink into homelessness to feel like a failure. There are many people who work hard in nine-to-five jobs, and come home every night to their suburban home and family, who still feel unfulfilled. But the point is that it is possible for anyone to sink into the depths of poverty and homelessness. As Scott Sandage argues, “The American Dream gives each of us the chance to be a born loser.”2 1

Jennifer Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 17. 2 Scott Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 278.

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To show the students poverty in the raw, I have included some harrowing visits over the years. One year the students worked a shift in a soup kitchen in the Bronx. Seeing beaten-down people shuffling in for what was probably their only meal that day outweighed the good feeling gained from doing something to help. Another sobering, slightly depressing visit was to Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter located disturbingly close to Boston’s affluent Beacon Hill neighborhood. If anything, this was even more jarring than the soup kitchen. We saw through the facility and then had a question and answer session with the staff. The students were impressed with the way the shelter staff tried to treat the residents with respect, and the “Transitional Programs” designed to help the residents out of homelessness. Then one student asked how successful these programs were and the answer was grim. A small percentage of the homeless got a job and found an apartment, but many of them slipped back into a life of drunkenness, unemployment and homelessness. The staff admitted that this wore them down, and that there was a very high turnover, with some of their best people leaving. An exclamation point was put on this grim story when we left the shelter and saw a crowd of homeless people gathering at the entrance. The students commented on the large number and were told that the staff conducted a lottery each night. The lucky winners got a bed, while the losers trudged off into the night. After that, the students approached the New England Center for Homeless Veterans in a somber mood. The idea that a shelter purely for veterans would be necessary darkened the mood even more.3 The first hint that they had misjudged the situation was when the Center’s Director of Community Affairs, Stephen Cunniff, greeted us at the door. He was friendly, and seemed happy in his job–not what they expected after Pine Street Inn. The difference, they discovered, was that while he agreed wholeheartedly that the number of homeless veterans was shocking, he didn’t see the situation as hopeless. He explained that the Center was not just a shelter, but also made a genuine commitment to making the homeless veterans self-sufficient. The computer training they receive was a good example of how the Center puts this into practice. These programs are remarkably successful, and although I am sure that this success partly derives from the discipline and esprit de corps of the homeless veterans themselves, who make a commitment to the program and help one-another 3

According to the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, veterans comprise a conservative one-in-four of America’s homeless population. http://www.nechv.org/nechvfaq.html accessed on January 30, 2012.

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honor it, it was uplifting to see Stephen and his colleagues making a genuine difference. The visit to the NECHV made a huge impact on the students. They were shocked by the extent of homelessness in the richest country in the world, and this made them question the competitiveness of the American Dream. But then there were people like Stephen Cunniff, who devote their working lives to helping these unfortunate people. This indicated to the students that there is a compassionate, caring side to the American Dream, too.

A WORKSHOP IN HOMELESSNESS STEPHEN CUNNIFF

Along Boston's Freedom Trail, in the very heart of the downtown district, stands one very unique house. Over a century old, this facility houses a special group of people – those who served to defend America's freedom and are either homeless or at risk for homelessness. Seventeen Court Street has a long and storied past going back to colonial times. The site once served as the printing house for two Boston papers, including the Boston Gazette and The New England Courant, which at the time was the first news outlet to report on the revolution breaking out in the colonies. In fact, Benjamin Franklin served an indentured apprenticeship for his brother James at the Courant. Across the street stands the old Massachusetts State House, the location of the 1770 Boston Massacre, which precipitated the American Revolution and the birth of a new nation. For over a half century, 17 Court Street has served its nation’s veterans, first as a Veteran’s Affairs Clinic and presently as the New England Center for Homeless Veterans (NECHV). After witnessing thousands of displaced and homeless veterans at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a group of veterans founded the Vietnam Veterans Workshop, Inc. in 1988, which presently does business under the name of NECHV. The Center serves more than 1,000 veterans annually and operates out of a ten story facility next to Boston City Hall, in the present day Government Center and financial district. As one of the nation’s largest veteran-specific centers, the NECHV works to eradicate and prevent homelessness in America, while offering programs and services for men and women who are homeless or at risk of becoming so. A community of caretakers, including social workers and training specialists, helps support the veterans’ needs in their journey to regain an independent life with permanent housing, jobs and training. Staff efforts are supplemented by volunteerism and donations. The largest sector of support comes from government sources, while the community supplements and bridges gaps through donations and pro bono assistance.

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Among the constituencies are the colleges and universities in the area. A large majority of these schools participate in some form of volunteerism, along with thousands of students, each of whom in ways large and small, lend support to the organization and the veterans in its care. Student participation and educational support greatly enhance the success of the programs offered by NECHV. Students help by sponsoring campus-wide initiatives, pitching tents on the lawns of universities such as Harvard Business School, while Northeastern University sponsors job fairs to hire veterans who are currently unemployed. Educational support also comes internationally, with student groups visiting from all across the world. Students who volunteer at the Center work alongside staff, helping to serve meals, answer phones, write resumes, and research papers, reports and articles. They also help to raise money by sponsoring drives that provide additional annual support. While at the Center, students learn about the root causes of homelessness and its many pathways. They are exposed to leading-edge solutions and are able to witness results. They spend time directly with the veterans and form meaningful relationships. Groups of interns work in many varied areas, including the medical clinic, supporting clinicians and social workers; the training school, assisting in classroom educational and training sessions; the administration offices, performing clerical office tasks and in maintenance, helping to care for the 103 year old facility. My years of work in the non-profit community have shown me that youth and students bring a certain kind of vitality and an added spark to the work and the mission of the Center. Their curiosity, enthusiasm, and eagerness to become involved is truly engaging, and the veterans we serve are most appreciative for their demonstration of care and concern for the well-being of them and their families. They learn from their experience and their direct involvement produces future leaders. Many youth and children have been inspired to pursue careers supporting military organizations. Some of them have enlisted into service based upon direct involvement with the Center. As part of a democracy, Americans are self-reliant and try to look out for one another. Civic responsibility involves the education and awareness of our youth. When people get hurt or have an otherwise hard time in their lives, social commitment calls for action. When this happens to a military veteran – regardless of having combat experience, during war or peacetime – the nation as a whole forms a complex safety net of supportive care services including both private and government sources requiring a multi-tiered approach.

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One of our students is a young woman named Holly Sumner. Holly is a student volunteer at the NECHV, who after three years serving as a volunteer coordinator will be leaving the Boston area to attend graduate school at USC where she plans to earn her master’s degree in psychology. Holly shares in her own words the impact that volunteering at the Center has made on her: “When I started volunteering for the New England Center for Homeless Veterans (NECHV) I did not know that much about the organization or what to expect from my experience there. I did not have any idea as to what I wanted to do at the shelter but I knew I wanted to do something, not because I felt a need or a calling to help but for selfish reasons. I wanted to eventually work for a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital and I thought this would be my way in. Although I have yet to meet my goal of working for a VA hospital, my time with NECHV has proven to be way more beneficial than just looking good on a resume. I began volunteering with NECHV after I completed my undergraduate degree in psychology, and I really think it is because of my experiences at NECHV that I was recently accepted into graduate school to pursue a Master’s Degree in Social Work, specifically Military Social Work. While I have always known I wanted to work with those currently or previously in the military and their families, I did not know in what capacity. My time with NECHV has helped me to explore my options by allowing me to attend a VA Summit meeting about “Ending Veteran Homelessness in America by 2014”, to learn more about other programs available to military service members and their families. This included the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Sox Foundation’s Home Base Program, and also the opportunity to see the full operations of one of the first veteran homeless shelters in America. I have been with NECHV for two and a half years as a volunteer coordinator, but I do not feel as if I have been able to do enough for a place that does so much for our veterans. This facility offers a second chance to those who might not think they deserve it; to those who protected our rights. This opportunity has given me a chance to change my thoughts on what homelessness is. Prior to my service at NECHV, I thought of homelessness in stereotypical terms, as addicts and mentally unstable individuals, but I am now able to understand more about those issues. I also have been able to see past the word “homeless” and see the person behind the word, whether that person is an addict or just someone without a home. NECHV provides a home to those without one and gives them an opportunity to better themselves with classes at the onsite Veterans Training School, or through offering the mental health services.

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The Veterans Training School and the mental health services, such as the dual-diagnosis counseling center offered at NECHV, are just two of the many services that the Center extends to veterans. They also have a medical clinic on site that is managed by Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, and a housing office that helps veterans find a place they can call home. This facility is a model for the many other homeless shelters and centers, and to be a small part of this has really left an impact on me. There have been thousands of Veterans who have walked through the doors and walked out in a better situation than when they came in because of the assistance the volunteers were able to provide the staff with.” Glen Hopkins teaches high school in the Boston area and recently spent a week in service with students from his school. As a teacher and a veteran, Glen shares his perspectives on the importance of student involvement at the NECHV and the impact that it has on their future lives: “As a High School Wellness teacher, I am constantly trying to help students see the big picture, whether it be their own well-being, or their part in a larger whole. The experience of even just one week of volunteering at the NECHV created the opportunity to put much more into a context that they rarely get within the confines of a classroom. It is that context and the genuine human interactions and stories that have fundamentally changed how they see the world, and themselves. To their credit, the kids wanted to volunteer where they thought they could have a bigger impact than simply cleaning up a space or organizing donations. They were looking for human interaction and a chance to make a tangible difference in the life of a real human being. It is easy to talk about things like homelessness in an impersonal way, particularly if we’ve had no experience of it. This volunteer opportunity personalizes it; gives it a face, a name, a story. It is easy to talk about things like addiction in an impersonal way because the vast majority of the people they know aren’t addicts. Here they get to see the personification of addiction and begin to really understand the many roads that led each person to that point. It is no longer that thing that happens to those people. It’s really part of a complex chain of events, of cultural influences, of stresses, of understandable events that have led good men and women to make bad, tough, and sometimes understandable decisions that have led them to the doorstep of the NECHV. Being a veteran myself, I have a sense of that brotherhood or bond between people who are willing to die for each other if necessary. Parents might feel this way for their kids, but students can’t possibly know this yet. What they can see and learn and begin to understand is the respect, compassion, and love that the people who work at NECHV show to their

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brethren on a daily basis. This is not pity or charity, it is a respectful compassion and commitment to help extend a hand to those who’ve stumbled and need a hand to get back on their own two feet. That is the kind of real life lesson that is usually reserved for the occasional private family crisis, not on the large and open a scale you find at the NECHV. Like most things in life, the best teacher is always experience. Talking about alcohol in a classroom doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact as the types of discussions we had in context and where connections were made at a personal level. They will never again be able to talk about many of these subjects: addiction, depression, stress, cultural influences, compassion, homelessness, pride, humility without a newfound depth and understanding that can help them in their own lives. I know the veterans enjoyed their company, but I believe that these kids received so much in return. They will be able to be more thoughtful, knowledgeable, compassionate ambassadors for everything and everyone they interacted with. I only hope we can have more students have this kind of real experience.” In the last three decades, homelessness amongst veterans has fallen by more than two-thirds. As of 2012, the nation is on track to eradicate veteran homelessness with new federal initiatives that have substantially reduced, and will hopefully eliminate, veteran homelessness altogether. Social entrepreneurial programs that help people are a vital part of our world economy, and the work of the New England Center for Homeless Veterans in Boston is one such organization. When I graduated college in 1988, the Center did not exist. I did not imagine that my business degree from Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts would one day be put to use directing a community program to support veterans, and yet it has. Along with the staff, students, interns, volunteers and the community, I am pleased to support the NECHV with my full-time efforts and feel that the contributions I have made to this particular organization and the veterans it serves has been a valuable and most appreciated way to serve those who once served to defend our freedoms and our liberty. For more information on the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, please visit the website at: www.nechv.org.

TAHIR DUCKETT AND ORGANIZED LABOR

The Melbourne University students have a vexed relationship with the topic of unions and the American Dream. They understand the Dream as a promise that if you work hard and you play by the rules, America will give you a chance to get ahead. They have also seen enough people who work long hours in minimum wage jobs to know the promise is sometimes broken. Their problem is accepting the solution posed by people like the investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, who suggests in her book Nickel and Dimed that the answer is for them to organize in unions.1 This solution is consistent with my argument that Americans have always sought the Dream in collective as well as individual ways, but while the students are happy to accept this happens in the form of neighborhood organizations, churches, and community gardens, they are hesitant about the idea of unions. Not that they know much about unions – few of them come from union households – but somehow they think of unions as old fashioned and just not American. To show that unions have a long history in America, I have developed a sequence of linked visits that begin with a day trip to the town of Lowell, about 45 minutes from Boston by train. Unlike Great Britain, where the Industrial Revolution happened in large, smoky cities like Manchester, in America it took place in picturesque little towns like Lowell. This history is preserved today at the Boott Cotton Mill Museum. There, the students learn what these first factory workers experienced, and why they organized to fight against what they saw as a form of slavery. As Cathy Stanton argues, the Cotton Mill Museum makes “sharply critical statements about early capitalist development in Lowell.”2 To move this closer to the present, in New York the students visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where they see how immigrant girls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries worked in sweatshops, and again organized to win themselves better wages and conditions. To expand their knowledge, the students talk with Joshua Freeman, a professor at CCNY, whose book 1

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 2001.) 2 Cathy Stanton, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City (Amherst, MA: U Mass Press, 2006), 229.

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Working Class New York shows how “working-class New Yorkers, through political groups, tenant and neighborhood associations, fraternal and ethic societies, and above all unions,” shaped and humanized the city.3 In Chapter Two of this book the importance of linking visits in this way was discussed. Linking allows the students to feel that they have a growing understanding of the subject, and I was always confident that when we arrived in Washington, where the union visits take place, they would have the background needed to discuss the subject in a meaningful way. What I learnt, however, was that having this grounding didn’t necessarily mean they would feel any more comfortable with the subject. Indeed, this was one discussion where many students were definitely out of their comfort zone. Over the years we have visited two unions: the Teamsters (IBT) and the Services Employees International Union (SEIU), as well as the umbrella union body, the AFL-CIO. I gradually started to worry that the passion I searched for in the speakers was what the already wary students were finding challenging. Of course, everyone expected the Teamsters to be passionate and just a little bit scary, but many students were taken aback when we visited the SEIU and met a fiery organizer named Angela DiLeo. It took a visit to the AFL-CIO in 2011 to make me realize that the students didn’t mind passion, but that they found it easier to accept when it was coming from someone they could relate to: someone closer to their own age who understood their concerns and fears. One person who was already aware of this need to connect was Karen Nussbaum, the Executive Director of an AFL-CIO affiliate called Working America. The students had read one of Karen’s articles, and I was trying to organize a meeting with her, but she suggested that the students might appreciate talking to one of the talented young people on her staff instead. Tahir Duckett was the perfect person to talk to the students. He was not much older than them, and after giving a brief outline of how the union movement had improved the lives of working Americans – something they had already heard on the study tour – he asked them why they hadn’t read about it in their history books. The discussion then turned to: why, when previous generations had fought and sometimes died for the right to belong to a union, today’s college students don’t really care. Rather than preaching about what is wrong with Generation Y, Tahir asked the students for advice: What did they think that unions could do to make themselves more relevant and to attract new members? Suddenly, the students became a vital part of the discussion. Without thinking about it, 3 Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York: Life and Labor Sine WWII (New York: The New Press, 2000), xiii.

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they were playing the part of union organizers, and although I wasn’t sure that suggestions like free movie tickets for joining a union were going to do much to revitalize organized labor, Tahir dutifully wrote it all down and at the end of the session thanked the students for their help. This was a perfect example of the value of experiential learning. I have taught the history of America’s labor movement for many years, but although my students learn the facts and can write accomplished essays on the Knights of Labor or John L. Lewis, they don’t have any real enthusiasm for unions themselves. It was not until we left the classroom and the students talked to someone they could relate to that, as Tahir put it in his essay, we succeeded in “giving life to the words in the textbooks.”

GIVING LIFE TO THE WORDS IN TEXTBOOKS TAHIR DUCKETT

“Well?” my friend asked. I looked up from my fairly-traded cup of coffee. “What do we still need unions for?” she repeated. I found myself speechless for a moment – not a familiar position for someone who had, for most of his life, gotten in trouble for talking too much. Years of formal high school and college debate had educated me and prepared me to be able to intelligently (or at least, so I thought) discuss philosophers from Foucault to Habermas or economic policies from Keynes to Hayek. But I didn’t have much of an answer to what seemed to be a relatively simple question. The year was 2004, and I was the President of the Young Democrats on campus at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Like many college students living on campus at four-year universities, a bubble of a few thousand student peers were most of the world that I knew. And for a few months, it seemed my entire world saw me as a political authority, a liberal firebrand ready to defend the policies of the Democratic Party at a moment’s notice. I was, of course, happy to oblige, and so I debated and wrote editorials and sat for interviews and yet it was in this private moment, sitting across the table from a friend of mine, that I first faced this gap in my political knowledge. “All I know is it seems they’re corrupt and outdated. We already have employment safety laws and child labor laws. So what are unions good for now?” she asked, more as a conclusion than a question. The justification that followed from my lips may have allowed me to save face with my friend, but clearly reflected when it came to knowledge about the role unions have played and do play and will play in the U.S. economy, I was sorely lacking. I wasn’t the only one. In fact, it’s perhaps telling that only once during the entire election cycle was I asked about unions and it wasn’t from a reporter or debate moderator or potential voter; it was a question offered from a friend of mine, over coffee. What was going on? Why did this major player in Democratic politics barely factor into progressive conversations about my country’s future? How

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could an entire election cycle pass without a serious national debate about the role of labor unions in our country’s economy? Years later, and only after working as a labor organizer, I realized that our country’s perspective on unions mirrors the education we receive about unions in school; or in other words, “What perspective?” The treatment labor unions receive in most primary and secondary schools in this country isn’t necessarily negative. It’s nonexistent. Curricula view unions as historically irrelevant to the major social and economic gains made over the last 60 years. It wasn’t until well into college that I was taught that the existence of the weekend has its roots in efforts by labor unions. I wasn’t taught about union efforts to increase the minimum wage or to fund the Civil Rights Movement. I wasn’t taught that many of the workplace benefits we find standard today – paid sick and vacation leave, health insurance, workers’ compensation, to a name few – were concessions won by unions and slowly spread to non-union shops. I wasn’t taught that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while in Memphis to support striking members of AFSCME. These stories were never told, but we did learn about the impact of successful corporations. We were glowingly taught about the impact of companies like U.S. Steel and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie on the growing U.S. economy, but never taught about their history of fierce anti-worker behavior or the rise of the United Steelworkers of America as a check on their management practices. We stood in awe of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor could perhaps be found in the footnotes. In our schools, the history of the United States is told from the perspective of corporate power. Corporate victories are America’s victories. Collective worker action is a curiosity at best, anonymous at worst. Political conversation in America reflects this telling of history. In 2003, the AFL-CIO founded Working America to organize workers, not into traditional unions with contracts and collective bargaining rights, but around the traditional labor values of solidarity, collective action, and strength in numbers. Working America organizes these workers, who aren’t represented by a union in their workplace, primarily via a door-todoor canvass that seeks to re-orient the worker’s perspective towards the economy and corporate power. In these conversations, we frequently encounter the effects of our education system’s disinterested approach to trade unions. Workers don’t understand the power of collective action or, more importantly, how it can provide a check to corporate abuses. They don’t understand that the role of a union is to use the strength of numbers to give a voice to individual workers. With corporate abuses as wanton and prominent as they’ve become, it’s not difficult to articulate the need

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for such a check on the power of capital. The challenge is to articulate a persuasive solution. It’s easy for middle class workers to view corporate power as an unstoppable behemoth. They’ve spent their lives bullied by banks over fees, watching communities crumble in the face of plant closings and massive layoffs, and fighting losing battles with credit card companies who want to raise interest rates. They complain about being forced to work longer hours for less pay, about unfair treatment from their bosses, about having benefits taken away while their CEOs take multimillion dollar bonuses. It’s no wonder they feel powerless. Left to stand alone, they are. And with an education system that has failed to teach them about the alternatives to corporate power, they’ll continue to stand alone. It is the work of the organizer to thus become simultaneously educator and agitator. It should be noted, the situation in our classrooms threatens to become more dire as our politics becomes more divisive. In May 2010, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a controversial new history and social studies curriculum that would make the following changes, among others: Ɣ remove Thomas Jefferson (principal author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States, and founder of the Democratic-Republicans, the predecessor to the modern Democratic Party) as an “influential political philosopher.” Ɣ require students to evaluate efforts by organizations such as the United Nations to undermine U.S. sovereignty Ɣ refer to the slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade.” Ɣ tone down criticisms of Senator McCarthy’s “red scare” tactics in the 1950s As one of the largest states in the country, Texas is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks in the country; its curriculum has weight far beyond its borders. And with elected Boards of Education around the country taking notice, Texas is unlikely to be the last state to adopt a nakedly ideological school curriculum. Of course, one need not be quite so brazen as the state of Texas to impart an ideologically selective history to students. The point isn’t that we must simply avoid making an international embarrassment of our curricula; it’s that our curricula are bound to be incomplete in one way or another. It’s that for all the advantages of a structured classroom learning experience, nothing we put down on paper can teach students in the same way as an unexpected contribution from outside of the classroom. There are, after all, real and lasting disadvantages to an education that fails to challenge a student to think in ways applicable outside of a static classroom curriculum. Some are as obvious as the gaps in important

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knowledge mentioned earlier. Some, like stunted critical thinking skills, can be a bit more difficult to identify. In either case, how can we expect students to grow up and innovate and challenge the status quo? Whether their education is one-sided or merely incomplete, do we fail our students if we don’t give them the opportunity or the challenge to get out of the classroom and give life to the words in the textbooks we’ve asked them to learn? I recall learning stoically in high school about farm subsidies; we lived only miles away from both large industrial farms and small family farms. How much more could I have learned if I had the opportunity to visit both? I learned that the Tennessee Valley Authority was part of the New Deal, but I certainly didn’t learn why it was such a crucial part of the legislative package, or what its intended impact was to be. How useful would it have been to learn from someone who had led a public-private partnership? Instead, I learned some facts that I could recall at a moment’s notice. I’d later find I was leaving other important facts on the table: “unknown unknowns,” as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might say. As adults, these missing pieces of the puzzle can leave us with significant policy consequences. Many Americans continue to believe the existence of global climate change caused by humans is a legitimate controversy within the scientific community. We don’t understand the source of our rising health care costs. And workers who find themselves in search of a voice on the job don’t know to consider a union as a possible solution. Perhaps I find myself so convinced of the value of education outside of the classroom because it’s exactly what we do every day at Working America. While not as central to the upbringing of the typical American child as we might like, the values that prop up the labor movement – collective action and solidarity – actually do interest most Americans. It is to these ideals we appeal when we ask workers, right there on their doorstep, to join an organization of which they’ve never before heard. We educate workers about what’s happening to the U.S. economy and why it’s happening. We give direction and words to the frustration workers feel with the impact of corporations on our politics and our economy. And we give them our perspective on legislative solutions and a strategy – strength in numbers – to achieve those legislative solutions. The effect is astonishing. Go out with one of our organizers for a night and you’ll realize an incredible truth: most people have never had a discussion like this before. Two out of three people we talk to, join Working America right there on the spot. Studies by leading political analysts have shown that these short conversations do nothing less than shift the entire political and economic worldview of these new members. Where twenty minutes

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earlier you’d find a worker angry about unemployment but not certain who to blame or what to do, you’d now find a new member willing to write a letter to a legislator, and who now understands their potential power. It’s a lasting, impactful effect that comes from filling a gap in their education they didn’t know existed. Notably, Working America organizers don’t seek to change workers’ minds on core issues or instill values contrary to the ones the workers already hold. They won’t have a debate on the doorstep of a worker who believes increasing corporate power is the best way to ensure a healthy economy. They simply connect the dots for workers who already share Working America’s values and views on the issues. The shift in perspective doesn’t take hold because of some silver bullet piece of information the organizer provides; it takes hold because it is rooted in the core beliefs of the worker. So when Dr. Glenn Moore asked me to speak to his students about the role of labor unions in the United States, I knew it was an opportunity to have an important conversation. Of course, no one would confuse me for someone who comes to the table without an agenda. I made no attempt to hide the fact that I’m a trade unionist and a progressive, and the information that I gave reflected those realities. But just as Working America organizers do not seek to dismantle beliefs that are already in place, I knew my goal was to make connections between values, issues, and action in a way that met students where they already were. The point isn’t to discuss labor nor the environment, nor feminism, nor any subject matter with disinterest. The point is to create space for students to learn from the perspective of someone who is actually living the curriculum. It is important to give them the opportunity to evaluate, discuss, debate, and decide for themselves. The aim is to force students to use critical thinking to attack unexpected topics, much as they will need to when they join the workforce themselves. His students didn’t disappoint--they asked difficult questions, forced me to consider my own views, and taught me quite a bit about their own experiences. In the end, education is done a disservice if we think of it as a one-way street, because in that room, for those 90 minutes, we were all being educated. Dr. Moore’s students had gaps in their knowledge of corporate power and the labor movement, and their roles in the U.S. political and economic environment. I gained valuable insight into the perspective Australian students could bring to the table. This interaction, coupled with Working America’s thousands of conversations with workers every evening, taught me that educational experiences outside the standard classroom can be far more potent and perspective-changing than those within.

ALICE PEISCH, ALLI O’LEARY AND THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE PEISCH

The golden dome atop the Massachusetts State House is visible from Emerson College, where the Melbourne University students stay in Boston, and partly because of this proximity, the State House has traditionally been part of the first day itinerary. The State House is also a stop on Boston’s Freedom Trail, and this provided the context for our early visits. Coming from the Old South Meeting House, where I talked about the Puritans’ participatory democracy, then the Old State House, where I talked about the republican ideas that emerged during Revolutionary era, the State House gave students an opportunity to see how democracy developed in the oldest commonwealth in the nation. In other words, they saw the State House as an historic site, and while things like the wooden “Sacred Cod” that hangs in the House of Representatives and the “Holy Mackerel” in the Senate brought the building to life for the students, they almost forgot that this was a living institution where current day issues are debated and voted on. To remedy this, I contacted Alice Peisch, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It wasn’t an entirely random choice. I knew that Alice was on the Joint Committee for Education, which gave me a tie-in to our other education-based visits. With my student group being overwhelmingly female and interested in the ways women could break through the glass ceiling, I also consciously sought out a successful, woman politician. Still, I really had no idea how the meeting would turn out, but those doubts soon evaporated, to the extent that I remember feeling increasingly guilty as we ran over time, and the barrage of questions from the students continued unabated. As the years went by, the “State House visit” became the “Alice Peisch meeting.” This reflected a growing understanding that while sense of place was at the heart of our American venture, meeting and talking with people was an equally powerful teaching tool, and in combination, the two were more potent still. These in situ meetings came to dominate the itinerary,

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and although it wasn’t planned, when Alice talked to the students about her life as a Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, she touched on the importance of speaking with her constituents. In her essay, Alice describes how she takes care to have regular office hours in each of the three towns in her district so that she is accessible to her constituents, but she also noted the importance of informal meetings at places like high schools. When the question and answer session finishes, I lead the students across Beacon Street and into the Common, where we find a shady spot and discuss some of the points Alice raised. In particular, we talk about the way that the health of a democracy, and in a broader sense, a society, depends on people being able to talk to one another in the informal meeting places that Alice mentioned. I prime the students for this discussion by having them read a chapter from Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place, which introduced the concept of the “third place.” Essentially, Oldenburg argued that there are three places where social interaction takes place; the home, the workplace, and third places, like cafes, diners, barber’s shops, and so on.1 The significance of third places is that unlike the home and the workplace, where people mix in a tightly defined group, in a third place people from a wide range of overlapping groups mix, talk, and provide the glue that holds society together. If, as I suggest to the students, the American Dream is communal as well as individual, this is of huge significance, and it is clear from the students’ journals that they put this proposition to the test, talking to people in diners and neighborhood bars, and in short, learning from experience, just as I hope they will do.

Alli O’Leary When my group meets with a senator, the editor of a newspaper or an esteemed professor, the students feel grateful that such a busy, important person has given up their time to talk with them. In terms of the meeting itself, this can be a two edged sword. On the positive side, the students feel an obligation to do the background reading, to be on time and to pay close attention during the meeting. But some of them can’t help feeling a little overawed by the occasion. There is a respectful hush as they file into the senate chamber or the Harvard classroom where the meeting takes place, and there can be a general reticence about asking questions. The students’ 1

Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Marlowe and Company, Broadway, New York, 1999.

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journal entries also betray the fact that some of them find it hard to connect on a personal level with the speaker. Interestingly, the students often feel more comfortable with an aide who has set up the meeting. By the time I meet the aide or assistant, I have normally dealt with this person for a period of weeks or even months, working out times, the topics to be discussed, and the security requirements. But the students are barely aware of this, and the person who greets us and ushers the group through security is a complete stranger to them. Invariably, the first thing they notice is that this person, who obviously has a responsible position, is surprisingly young. Alli O’Leary, who arranged our meeting at the Massachusetts State House with Alice Peisch, is barely older than the students. Someone who has achieved so much so soon could potentially be as intimidating as the powerful person speaking to us, but the thing that disarmed the students was that Alli was friendly and humble, and the students we eager to talk with her: How did she get into politics? What was the job like? Did she ever encounter resistance simply because she was a young female? This was such a popular talk that the following year I asked Alli if she would talk to the students in her own right. In effect, the students got two meaningful meetings in one visit: first, with a successful woman politician, and then with a young staffer, each who was inspiring in their own way.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STAYING CONNECTED, OR WHY TOO MUCH TIME IN THE STATE HOUSE OFFICE MAY LEAD TO DEFEAT AT THE POLLS ALICE PEISCH

I have served as the Representative for the 14th Norfolk District to the Massachusetts General Court since January, 2003 and as House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education since January, 2011. Prior to my service as a Representative, I held a number of positions in local government, including a six-year stint on my local school board. During the course of my career in public service, both at the local and state level, I have found that one cannot underestimate the importance of “connecting” with both the people that I serve and those with whom I must work. These connections build trusting relationships that ultimately are very useful. It is my experience that there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction, whether in seeking the voters’ support during a campaign or in convincing a colleague of the merits of one’s position. However, if one does not make maintaining these connections a priority, it is very easy to become disconnected from one’s constituents and colleagues and therefore vulnerable to a challenge at the next election and/or a lack of support for an important piece of legislation. I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing some of my most valued colleagues defeated in their bids for re-election. More often than not, these defeats have been attributable to a lack of appreciation for the fact that, as former Massachusetts and U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill so eloquently put it, “all politics is local”. While it can be very tempting to spend more and more time at the State House focusing on “important” policy matters, doing so at the expense of maintaining relationships in one’s district can be fatal to a political career. Given that Massachusetts state legislators are up for re-election every two years, it is vital to remember the local constituency that put you into office in the first

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place, as that same constituency can choose to vote differently during the next election if people believe they are not adequately being represented. I have also witnessed a colleague successfully lobby the House Speaker to bring a bill to the floor for a vote only to see it go down in defeat because she failed to lobby her legislative colleagues whose votes she took for granted. In that instance, she relied upon lobbyists to do the time consuming work of polling legislators to determine if her bill had the votes to pass. Most legislators are loath to reveal their positions on controversial matters a moment before absolutely necessary, and feel no obligation to reveal such information to a lobbyist. Investing time in direct contact with one’s fellow legislators is usually time that is very well spent. One of the most unfortunate examples of the high cost of failing to appreciate the need to connect directly with the voters occurred in the Massachusetts special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s death. The Democratic nominee spent very little time on “retail politics”, i.e. making appearances at public places where the candidate could interact with the public. On the other hand, the Republican nominee, who had been given virtually no chance of succeeding Senator Kennedy, spent months traveling the state and meeting with a wide range of voters. On Election Day, the Republican candidate won by a comfortable margin. To ensure that I remain connected to those who elected me, I hold office hours every month in each of the three towns in my district. I post notice of the date, time, and place of these hours in the local newspapers, with on-line media outlets, and on my website, along with an invitation to make an appointment at a different time and/or place if that is more convenient for the constituent. Additionally, I encourage direct communication via email or telephone on my website and in my quarterly newsletters. I also make a point of doing most of my routine errands in my district when I have plenty of time so that I can speak with whomever I might encounter. I have had to make more of an effort to “stay connected” since my youngest child graduated from high school and went away to college several years ago – high school playing fields and other school-related events were a great source of interaction with the community for me and I miss this relaxed and easy connection. In my capacity as House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education at the State House, I make an effort to reach out to all the stakeholders and interested parties on bills that the Committee is considering. While we hold public hearings for the purpose of receiving input, I am very aware that the timing and format of these hearings, which are held during the

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work day in Boston, present obstacles to participation for many. Failure to speak with all constituencies can leave one blindsided at the last moment when seeking to advance a piece of legislation. Similarly, I never turn down a request from a legislative colleague for a meeting or delegate that meeting to a staff person. Because no bill will get through the Legislature without the vote of more than half of its members, I try to reach out to any legislator who expresses concern about a pending bill in order to address those concerns. Beyond meeting with fellow legislators while at the State House and with constituents while in my district, I try to make a point of accepting meetings with anyone interested in speaking with me. To that extent, I have had the opportunity to interact with a wide array of individuals over my ten years in office. Some of the more meaningful conversations come from my meetings with students. In particular, the meetings I hold with graduate students pursuing education policy studies can then establish important connections I can utilize once these individuals have graduated and are working out in the field. In the vein of meeting with students, when I was starting my 3rd twoyear term as a State Representative several years ago, my office received a call from a Melbourne University Professor, Glenn Moore. He wished to schedule a meeting for his students who would be visiting Massachusetts. Because of my aforementioned habit of meeting with almost anyone who seeks to meet, I agreed to what became the first of many annual visits. I found these sessions to be worthwhile for a number of reasons. First, because the students had no experience in the United States, I realized that I would need to educate them about the workings of the Massachusetts State Legislature and the job of its elected members. I have since used the same talking points when addressing groups of Massachusetts residents, many of whom, surprisingly, have little to no understanding of how their state government works. Depending upon the level of knowledge of the group, I adjust my “Melbourne remarks” accordingly. Had I not had the experience of hosting the Australian visitors, I would not have been as well prepared to educate my own constituents. A second benefit to me of these visits has been the thoughtful questions posed by the students. When discussing issues with constituents, and sometime with fellow legislators, I too often make the assumption that they are familiar with the issue and I do not make much of an effort to explain the issue or my position on it. Questions from the Melbourne group have ranged in topics from the difference between how the federal government operates versus the Massachusetts government to how

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districts are composed; from the operation of political campaigns to what voting laws we have in place. Having intelligent questions posed regarding matters I may have previously thought were clear has enabled me to be more articulate when conversing with those in my district and with my colleagues. Taking the time to ensure that others understand the point I am trying to make is invaluable in working to achieve results, both at the ballot box and in passing legislation. Finally, these visits enable me to maintain a consistent practice of remaining available to meet with a wide range of people. While it remains important to uphold my connections with my constituents and legislative colleagues, the things that I learn while meeting with groups, such as the Melbourne students, remind me of the importance of taking the time to reach out to others in order to gain a more comprehensive perspective on issues beyond my own original viewpoint. This broader understanding better helps me to approach policy in a thoughtful manner in a way that can benefit the state of Massachusetts as a whole beyond my own district. I have been fortunate enough during my tenure in public office to cross paths with a wide spectrum of individuals, who hold an even wider array of thoughts and ideas. I value each and every opportunity to make a connection with another person or group, as I believe that these experiences better enable me to represent others in my role as a State Representative. As such, I look forward to the many meetings and discussions still to come as I continue to work on behalf of others and help shape policy for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

IT IS A PLEASURE TO GO TO WORK EACH DAY ALLI O’LEARY

I currently serve as the Staff Director for State Representative Alice H. Peisch, Chair of the Joint Committee on Education, within the Massachusetts Legislature. For me, this job is a natural fit. I was interested in government and politics at an early age; in fact, as a young girl, I had dreams of becoming President of the United States. Although my dreams have changed since then, my passion for public policy and public service has not. In my three years working at the Massachusetts State House, I have found that being a Staff Director involves a little bit of everything. My main priority is to manage the Representative’s legislative agenda. For each two-year legislative session, I prepare and file bills on behalf of my boss pertaining to issues that are important to her. I then monitor the bills as they move through the legislative process, meeting with other legislators, advocates, and constituents to determine how best to advance any particular bill. In addition, as Chair of the Education Committee, my boss is responsible for reviewing all legislation related to public school education for students up through 12th grade. As such, I work closely with fellow committee staffers to conduct research on these bills and help craft education-related policy. Along with the substantive work, I am in charge of the logistics of running our office on a day-to-day basis; I need to ensure that my boss, co-workers, and student interns are all where they need to be and doing what they need to be doing at any given time. In essence, I need to have my finger on the pulse of the office at all times. I also get the opportunity to meet a variety of individuals that cross my path on any given day, which is one of my favorite parts of this job. The Massachusetts State House is a building that attracts not only local officials and residents, but also foreign dignitaries and international tourists and students groups. When such groups indicate they will be visiting and express interest in having Representative Peisch speak with them, I ensure that all logistics are taken care of so that it is a positive experience for all. Often, I just observe the conversations that occur between my boss and visiting groups; there are times though when my

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boss or a group will ask me to contribute to the discussion. I thoroughly enjoy such opportunities and being able to converse with those who come to visit, because it is a mutually beneficial learning experience. Not only do the visiting groups learn about the Massachusetts legislature, but I also get to learn about how other governments work all around the world in these discussions. It is a pleasure to go to work each day in a building so full of history and I love being able to share that with those that visit. I can say with confidence that no two days are alike for me. Working for the Massachusetts Legislature has afforded me many memorable experiences and opportunities that I will carry with me as I move forward in my career. The question remains, will I ever run for office one day myself? For now, I enjoy working on policy behind the scenes, but never say never when it comes to politics. You’ll just have to wait and see.

CASSANDRA ATHERTON, KAT ELLINGHAUS AND THE UNIVERSITY

The essays by the two colleagues who have helped me with the study tour over the years are especially important to me, because, quite simply, I couldn’t have done it alone. Indeed, many Australian universities now formally require that at least two staff members accompany the students on study tours. The motivation for this is health and safety. That is, university administrators are concerned about what would happen if a solo teacher fell ill, or the more likely scenario of a student falling ill. If there are two staff members, one can accompany the student to hospital and the other can continue the scheduled activities without disruption. Having a colleague also means a shared workload, and the essays written by Cassandra and Kat illuminate some of the other practical advantages a second or third teacher bring. Two or three teachers can talk with more students during a visit, and as the years went by I increasingly took the opportunity to divide the group and give the students a choice of activities. For instance, half could go with me to meet a union organizer, and half with Cassandra to visit a cat shelter. Splitting the group also allows for more personal debriefs, with every student having the opportunity to speak and feel that they contributed to a shared understanding of the visit. In addition to these practical advantages, having a co-teacher on a study tour also pays a psychological and emotional dividend. This dividend mostly takes the form of relieving some of the relentless pressure on a study tour leader to get everything right. Kat wrote about the simple pressure of finding your way around, a pressure magnified by having sixty students trailing behind, trusting you to get them to the meeting with the important union leader, writer or professor on time. As Cassandra noted, the pressure doesn’t ease when the group arrives at its destination. The teacher is always nervous about whether the speaker will connect with the students, and ultimately, how they judge the visit and the overall tour experience in their subject evaluations. Sharing responsibility doesn’t mean that the pressure goes away, but it is comforting to know that you can quietly ask your colleague if you are heading in the right direction, and

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the value of being able to unwind at the end of the day over a coffee or a beer, rather than stewing alone, is not to be underestimated. Why, then, would anyone not automatically take a colleague? There are two answers. First, having a second staff member has a considerable impact on the budget. Second, it has an impact on the running of the study tour itself, with the original teacher’s creative control loosened. Worries about the budget are unfounded. A second teacher adds to the cost of the tour, but more students can go, and I found that because of the possibility of group splitting, the teacher-student ratio can actually be lowered. Losing creative control is a more serious worry, because if two sets of ideas don’t come together around the study tour’s central theme, the subject loses focus. This is a problem with many team-taught subjects. As the educator Susan Fitzell noted, “unless the two teachers are at the stage of finishing one-another’s sentences,” a productive working relationship is difficult to achieve.1 In this regard, I was lucky. Early in our careers, Kat and I job-shared, we shared an office, and we team-taught in a number of situations, from a massive, first year survey course, to a seminar for fifteen fourth-year students. Cassandra and I are married (the ultimate ‘sentencefinishing’ relationship) and we also had prior experience teaching together. They both understood my American Dream theme, and added visits that allowed the students to explore it in new ways that had not occurred to me. As Kat discusses in her essay, she instigated an overnight stop on our journey between New York and Washington in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There, the students were able to investigate the American Dream in a small town setting by splitting into groups and interviewing the town folk. They were also exposed to the complex relationship between Native Americans and the mainstream, American Dream, something I had never taught, but which is Kat’s specialist area. In the same way, Cassandra used her specialist knowledge in literature and the arts to show our students how the American Dream is portrayed in the theatre and even poetry. This resulted in the students attending a Broadway show, which somehow I had assumed would be too costly and not really scholarly. Happily, group discounts brought the price down to a reasonable level, and the shows we saw, such as Avenue Q, were easy to relate to the American Dream. In addition, the students absolutely loved the opportunity to get dressed up and do something as glamorous as seeing a Broadway show. It was a huge success. To explore the role of the poet, Cassandra arranged a meeting 1

Susan Fitzell, “The Pros and Cons of Team Teaching,” Pataya Today, Saturday, January 5, 2013. For a fuller discussion see Susan Fitzell, Co-Teaching and Collaboration in the Classroom: Practical Strategies for Success (Manchester, NH: Cogent Catalyst, 2010.)

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with the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia. Again, this was something that I knew very little about, and it had never even occurred to me to take the subject in that direction. However, watching the students sit spellbound while Gioia talked to them about the value to society of poetry and, more broadly, of reading, spoke volumes about the advantages of team-teaching. While the addition of a second teacher adds complexity to the study tour itself, it can simplify the potentially confused teacher-student relationship. The confusion arises because the lone teacher has to take on multiple roles, and in the students’ eyes, multiple personalities. On the one hand, part of the point of leaving the classroom is to allow for a more relaxed dialogue. This is what educators mean by collaborative learning, and it implies a more equal teacher-student relationship than the top-down model usually found in the classroom. At the same, however, a study tour needs discipline and structure. There are rules that the host universities expect to be adhered to, there standards of behavior the students are expected to live up to during meetings, and there is the constant pressure to be on time. The group has to leave at a certain time in the morning, catch a certain train, and so on. The students are asked to behave responsibly and to be well organized, always keeping an eye on their watch, and mostly they do all of this, but the occasional reminder, and if necessary, rebuke, is important. Balancing these contradictory roles is not impossible, but can be difficult, and I found that having Kat and Cassandra play the role of the friendly, sympathetic teacher gave me the space to act as the primary authority figure.

‘ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE’: THE PRODUCTION OF THE OVERSEAS INTENSIVE CASSANDRA ATHERTON

Planning an overseas intensive is, in many ways, akin to staging a fullscale theatrical production. After the overture, when the curtains open, the audience is taken on a thrilling journey into the creator’s imagination. If the performance is successful, the audience will not see any commotion backstage: the mad running around; changing costumes; warming up. If the performance is effective, the audience won’t know if the actors are having a good or bad day in their personal lives. If the performance is ‘a hit’, everything will run smoothly and effortlessly and the audience will not stop to consider, until some time later, how much work must have gone into making it a success. In the best overseas intensives, the coordinator is the auteur; he/she has artistic control over the subject and directs the entire trip from its conception of place and theme, through to the objectives and planning of each of the events on the itinerary. For this reason, the trip becomes his/her responsibility. When the reviews are published, in the form of student evaluations, the coordinator is either celebrated or panned. It is rare that the home institution or the overseas colleges, universities or people are judged in the same way. Every event and activity is appraised as a product of the coordinator’s artistic vision. For the coordinator and the enthusiastic tutor, the overseas intensive is a precarious balancing act between public and private spheres. Publicly, the teaching staff must be confident, well-organised, charismatic and often fearless. Privately, they are scurrying around hotel rooms confirming events for the following day, printing and photocopying revised schedules for the students in business centres and mapping out the best routes and series of directions to get to the following day’s activities. More privately, perhaps, they are skyping loved ones at home; marking essays; emailing assessment results to administrators; preparing for the following semester’s classes and trying to complete a chapter or some form of

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research. Any private problems must be confined to the private domain; the students should never see any of the behind the scenes workings, or it ruins the ‘magic’. This division between public and private isn’t always easy to maintain, which I experienced on a recent trip as a tutor on an international intensive. After stepping off the aeroplane in Los Angeles and waiting for my luggage, I received a text message from my apartment-sitter, informing me that she had locked herself out of my apartment with one of my cats and didn’t know what to do. It was two o’clock in the morning in Australia. As I read the message I had a line of students asking me questions about the next flight, their luggage and international roaming on their mobile phones. I answered all their questions and then headed off to the toilet and rang the apartment-sitter from a toilet cubicle. I figured I had about ten minutes to sort it out before a student would come looking for me. I was upset and had no idea what I was going to do. But I solved the problem, thanks to a friend with a spare set of keys, exited the toilet with a smile on my face and began to cheerfully answer the next lot of questions from students. It was important I kept up the act; I had a live audience. Theatre allegories for the classroom and discussions of the teacher as actor are not new. Seymour Bernard Sarason argues, “Teachers are actors. We perform”1 and Nike Imoru posits, “the educative performance [is] a performance of the self, or a performance of the selves.”2 He identifies, “a dynamic at play [in the classroom], the dynamic of the self, my self as lecturer (as actor), in tandem with the material and the students (as spectators).”3 However, on an overseas intensive, the students are expected to be more than spectators; they are participants in the performance. In this way, the teacher’s performance turns on his/her skill in improvisation and its success is determined by the way in which the students can be included as protagonists in this theatre of experience. The challenge is that there is no script and no rehearsal in this live performance and it spans three weeks. Richard Lee Smith and J. Merrell Hansen attempt to break down the divisions between the teacher and actor to demonstrate the ways in which they are both “concerned with making an impression on an audience…Any distinction that the teacher’s method is primarily cognitive and the actor’s message is emotional is misleading since most effective 1 Seymour Bernard Sarason, Teaching As Performance Art, Teachers College Press, New York 1999. p xi 2 ibid, p.xi 3 Representing Lives: Women and Auto/biography, Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey (eds.), Macmillan Press, London, 2000, p.130

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teachers and actors operate in both domains.” 4 Smith and Hansen’s identification of the “emotional domain” of teaching is particularly important in any discussion of an overseas intensive. This is because students and teachers have far more interaction with each other over a more intense period of time, than in a standard subject offered on-campus. Most commonly, a tutor will only teach a student for one or two hours per week in a tutorial or seminar, for the twelve weeks of the semester. However, in an effective overseas intensive, students and teachers spend an average of five hours a day together for three weeks. In addition to this, the overseas experience is vastly different and takes students out of their respective comfort zones, often resulting in heightened emotional responses. Even the long flight and ensuing jetlag makes many students and teachers tired and vulnerable. On a recent flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, Glenn and I were woken more than a dozen times by students with questions, the most worrying of which was, “What happens when you lose your passport?” In the first twenty-four hours of the trip, many students have run the full gamut of emotions: from the excitement at the airport waving family goodbye, to the nerves as the plane takes off and the frayed tempers when we finally touch down in Boston after twenty-two hours of flying and stopovers. Teachers on overseas intensives operate in this “emotional domain.” Despite this, or perhaps even because of this, students are ripe for new experiences. This supports Tom Grigg’s assertion that, “All education is – or should be – about transformation, whether for teachers or learners: transformation in conceptual understanding, in the range and nature of strategies available for completion of tasks, and in personal perspective related to the way challenges are met.”5 An overseas intensive transforms the classroom into the world stage. This concept of an alternative classroom is best discussed by Scott D. Wurdinger and Julie A. Carlson, who state, “A different type of classroom culture needs to be created when using Place-Based Learning. For instance, the role of the teacher is to guide students in designing meaningful learning experiences and allowing them time to complete and

4 Richard Lee Smith and J. Merrell Hansen, “The Teacher/Actor” in The Clearing House, Vol. 47, No. 2, October 1972, p96. 5 Tom Griggs, “Teaching as Acting: Considering Acting as Epistemology and Its Use in Teaching and Teacher Preparation”, Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring 2001. p.1

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present them to their peers…”6 The overseas intensive allows students to understand that learning can, and should, happen everywhere. Freeing students and teachers from the constraints and confines of the classroom and guiding students towards creating learning experiences for themselves and discussing these with others, promotes independent thinking, acquisition of skills and creativity. While Wurdinger and Carlson assert that, “Place-based Learning creates new learning environments that are changing the way students, educators, and individuals outside the field of education view learning,”7 it is disappointing that so few studies of Place-based Learning concern the disciplines of history and literature. Students in these traditional arts are often tied to the classroom and are rarely the subject of studies of experiential learning. In this respect, Environmental Studies teachers and scholars are far more advanced in understanding and promoting this form of education to their curriculum. This is evidenced by The Centre for Place-based Learning’s manual, Learning to Make Choices for the Future: Promise of Place. This is an excellent document which points to the way in which “Place-based Learning and civic engagement have emerged over the past decade as the rich ecotone of environmental education, conservation and community development.”8 It is no surprise that this is an American study, as the United States has an enviable tradition of preparing their students by encouraging participation in community groups, internships and fieldwork. Particularly encouraging is the series of blogs that have been published on the Edutopia: What Works in Education website, created by The George Lucas Educational Foundation.9 On this site, David Markus’ “The Kentucky Derby, Springboard to Lessons in American Culture” is a study which picks up many of the main themes and philosophies behind the University of Melbourne’s, Searching for the American Dream study tour. He states: “You can pivot off the Derby to discuss with your students everything from Abraham Lincoln's love life (legend has it that when his 6

Scott D. Wurdinger and Julie A. Carlson, Teaching for Experiential Learning: Five Approaches that Work, Rowman and Littlefield Education, Lanham, Maryland, 2010. p.31 7 ibid p.21 8 The Foundations of Place-based Learning last accessed 26/01/13, p1. 9 The George Lucas Educational Foundation, “K-12 Education and Learning Innovations with Proven Strategies that Work”, in Edutopia, last accessed 26/01/13

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future wife temporarily dumped him, his best friend brought him to Louisville, Kentucky to seek new prospects), to a savory Kentucky culinary concoction known as burgoo.”10 This same impulse was behind the decision for the students to visit Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere, Massachusetts (before it closed) and Suffolk Downs in East Boston. In an effort to understand the American Dream, the Australian students were asked to consider the American nightmare present in these places. In the same way that Markus argues, “there is practically no end to the classroom connections you can make on the wings of America's most famous horse race,”11 Wonderland and Suffolk Downs made an impact on the students in a way that reading a book or googling images of the tracks could not. This supports the importance of experiential education, where “learners are in direct experiences and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values. Students make discoveries and experiment with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the experiences of others.” 12 Sam Seidel, co-author of Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education13 argues that the most important question to ask, when planning lessons to engage students is: “Is it real?” An overseas intensive is full of some of the most palpable of experiences that students will ever be exposed to in education. Very few Melbourne University students will forget the punters at these racetracks in Massachusetts, despairing at their losses but still believing that the next race may be their ticket to achieving the Dream. University students are at a point in their lives, which Molly Schaller defines as a period of “focused exploration.” This is when students “attempt to determine what they want to do with their lives and opportunities such as studying abroad, service learning, cooperative learning, internships, and conducting observations outside of school should be provided.” 14 The structure of an overseas intensive promotes individual exploration and discovery. This is best achieved when the itinerary encompasses group events and free time; addressing both the public and private spheres. In an overseas intensive, the importance of some unstructured time away from the main group cannot be underestimated. The students’ own discoveries in this time provide opportunities for independent learning. 10

“Kentucky Derby: Lessons in American Culture”, ibid, p.1 ibid p.1 12 The Foundations of Place-based Learning, p.1 13 Sam Seidel, Herbert Kohl and George Clinton, Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 2011 p 20. 14 Wurdinger, p21 11

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Finding the intricate balance between group activities and free time is one of the challenges in planning an itinerary. If there is too much unstructured time, the students will not benefit in the same way as if their time away from the group is limited but meaningful. On the Searching for the American Dream trip with which I have been associated, one of the many activities students are asked to do in their own time is find a third place. James H. Banning, Stephanie Clemons, David McKelfresh and Richard W. Gibbs state that it is “a version of the once popular television series Cheers.” 15 This is particularly apt, given that the Searching for the American Dream intensive begins in Boston. Banning et. al’s study into third places specifically concerns college students’ use of third places. The study focused on the ways in which informal learning occurs in conversing and socializing in a third place. They conclude that in third places, “It is social discourse which serves to help promote student growth and development.” The Australian students are encouraged to enter into social discourse in a range of third places in an attempt to understand American history and culture. Many begin with Starbucks. Starbucks has worked hard to promote itself as a third place: “Our stores become an instant gathering space, a Third Place, that draws people together.” Bryant Simon in his study of Starbucks, draws on Howard Schultz’s argument that the expression “third place” is linked “to the coffeehouse traditions of connections, conversation, debate, and, ultimately, the ongoing and elusive desire for community and belonging in the modern world.”16 In this way, the “Cheers environment” is a clever analogy. It is a pity that very few students are familiar with this television series as it captures the essence of a third place and could have been the proforma for Schultz’s argument that, “Customers wanted a throwback to the past–a sense of touch, the sound of voices, and the noise and intimacy of laughter and conversation.” One of the ways in which the sense and importance of tradition can be identified in a diner is by watching the ‘regular’ customers being asked if they would like to order “their usual”, indicating that they belong or are aligned to a certain place outside of their work and home. The sense of community a third place offers, in the act of talking to the bar tender, barista, waiter or chatting to other regulars, has

15

James H Banning, Stephanie Clemons, David McKelfresh and Richard W. Gibbs, “Special Places for Students: Third Place and Restorative Place” in College Student Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4, Dec 1, 2010, p. 906-912 16 Simon Bryant, Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, p.82.

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been described as being restorative and gives an important insight into American culture. American diners can also be third places. As the American Diner museum points out, “Diners evolved into community gathering places were people from all walks of life and origin shared a home cooked meal in a small and comforting atmosphere.” 17 Australia does not have a tradition of diners and although cafés and café culture could be considered an Australian equivalent, they are generally not third places, nor do they have the same emphasis on home cooked meals or a bottomless cup of brewed coffee. Jill Gardner in her study of diners states, “It is a feeling and a flavor – a flavor of home cooked food and a flavor of people past and present. So if you really want to understand what American diners are all about, go visit one. While you're there, have a cup of coffee and absorb the subtle nuances of the world around you.” 18 Australian students who venture beyond Starbucks and eat at a diner are notoriously surprised by how welcome they are made to feel by patrons and staff. They comment on the way in which they are invited into conversations, share their stories with, hitherto, strangers and are even invited to ask questions or interview customers for their assessment. In the week that the students stay in one city, many develop relationships and patronize the same diner. This supports Gardner’s assertion concerning visitors and the way they “sneak away from the well organized amusement centers to enjoy some real fried eggs – yolks and all – bacon – no turkey please – toast – with all the butter it will hold – and home fries – glorious greasy home fries dripping in ketchup – in a small diner where the true flavor and tempo of the city comes shining through.” It is this “taste” and experience of the city which endorse the principles of experiential learning. No amount of research can capture the essence of a place. It is in the taste of the “real fried egg yolks” and the conversations with strangers in diners. The solace and familiarity of a third place in the United States is also appealing for the teaching staff on an overseas intensive. After a busy day, its restorative capabilities are transforming. Glenn and I always share our third places with the students. Sharing “the best third places” with the students; hearing and reading about their meals and conversation is one of the most rewarding parts of an overseas intensive. In this way, the students guide their own learning and even lead the coordinators and teaching staff

17

American Diner Museum, http://www.americandinermuseum.org/site/history.php last accessed 26/01/13, p.1. 18 Jill Gardner, Diners in America: An Evolutionary Process, last accessed 26/01/13, p.1.

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to a series of places that are the product of their own, independent discoveries. Private time is crucial on an overseas intensive. Behind the scenes, staff and students scurry around to meet the requirements of the unit of study. Students often have journal writing parties in their dorm rooms and spend time in libraries researching their essays, while every year the teaching staff madly confirm the following day’s events from their hotel rooms; purchase tickets; plot routes on public transport and thank the range of guest speakers for their time. In any good production this is screened from the audience. And so, the students appear to effortlessly complete their assessment tasks and the staff seem to sit back, relax and let the events unfold. Such is the illusion of an overseas intensive. As the curtains close on another year, with the applause ringing in his ears and trip presents from students heavy in his arms, I know that Glenn starts to plan the next one; that is the reality of it.

GETTING THERE KAT ELLINGHAUS

For most of the 2000s, I co-taught ‘Searching for the American Dream’ with Glenn Moore, first as his tutor and later as co-coordinator, and then a few times I joined Glenn and his students as an interested observer when I scheduled my personal research trips accordingly. Family responsibilities put an end to my involvement in ‘Searching for the American Dream’ in 2008, but it was an experience that shaped me profoundly as a teacher of United States history. As is the case with many junior academics, I began teaching United States history without any real feeling of being an expert. It was a far cry from how I imagined university teaching to be when I was an undergraduate – that professors had significant life experience, knowledge, and involvement in their area. While this is certainly true of many senior academics, as a tutor and junior lecturer I felt untraveled and a bit of a phony when teaching United States history. Even though I’d been on several research trips, I’d spent most of my time in archives and dingy hotels and spoken only to archivists and people serving me behind counters. But ‘Searching for the American Dream’ was different. As teachers, we engaged with American citizens far more than we might have as a visiting researcher or a tourist, from developing relationships over email with college summer housing administrators to sharing my enthusiasm for a certain aspect of history with an archivist or curator. The trip fed back into my classes back home – my set piece was a lecture on ‘ghettoes’ during which I described a drive I’d taken with Alec Ross into West Baltimore that had my predominantly white Australian students spellbound. It was a nice feeling when the student newspaper published an “alternative” student-written handbook recommending my US history subject as one taught by someone who ‘really knew’ the US. But ‘Searching for the American Dream’ had a personal impact on me as well. Years after my involvement with the subject had ended, I would be jolted back to my experiences on the trip by a certain sound or smell on the street walking my baby daughter in her pram in the early mornings. It was not so much the visits themselves that provoked the strongest

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memories, even though many of the people we met were amazing and the lessons we learned invaluable. It was the process of getting from visit to visit that I remembered so vividly. Getting from visit to visit was often the most anxious part of the day. Our days were crammed with many appointments. We set off early in the morning and lunch breaks were often forgotten in the rush. We were often finding our way to new places, in cities that were big and complicated and unfamiliar, to see important people who would not appreciate us being late. Walking along a city street with thirty or forty students was a bit like herding cattle. After trial and error Glenn and I worked out the best strategy was for him to stride ahead, and for me to bring up the rear of the group, snapping at the heels of the stragglers and making sure that I could keep Glenn in sight. I once threatened to make him wear a Lincoln-esque top hat to make this task easier (he refused). Nothing terrified me more than popping up from a New York City subway station that I had never been to, and standing on a street corner with the students blocking the sidewalk waiting for me to work out which way was ‘up’ and ‘down’ according to my map. Sometimes our careful planning backfired – distances that looked short on the map often turned out to be anything but. One year we decided to walk to our meeting with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, a notoriously rough suburb of Boston. We got lost, and I popped into a friendly-looking car repair shop to ask directions. “You’re walking WHERE? You’ll get shot!” exclaimed the unhelpful mechanic, looking with unconcealed horror at the small, white Australian woman in front of him, and the enormous group of young people outside. Outside, sotto voce, I reported his opinion to Glenn, but we decided to push on anyway (despite my visions of the horrified faces of the Risk Management Office back at Melbourne University). When we arrived, safely, we reported the mechanic’s words to the Dudley St. staff, and their reaction was illuminating. This is one of the biggest problems we face, they told us. People forget that Roxbury is a place where people live, work, and raise their families. It’s not just a place where people get shot, and one of the main tasks of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative is to change the very stereotype we had just encountered. This experience soon made it into my lectures and tutorials back home as a telling anecdote about the assumptions we make about cultures and communities that are not our own. In retrospect, I think moments like these were some of the most important educational moments on the trip. Who knows how much of an idea students got about what it was like to live in New York City from not making it on to the same crowded subway train as the majority of the

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group? Their sad faces as they watched us whisked away were very different when they caught up with us later, triumphant at having worked out how to get to a visit by themselves. What lessons about race relations did young, white Australian women learn when they wore mini skirts on a visit to the Bronx, and had to endure loud and embarrassing sexual harassment from African American men, enjoying their freedom to comment on white women after centuries of it being taboo? What did they learn about the American class system simply from the experience of taking the T all the way to the end of the line to Wonderland greyhound track, and watching all the white, middle-class people get off one by one, till the only people left on the carriage were the visibly downbeat, most probably off to gamble their last few dollars on the dogs? Watching the impact of these experiences on students has made me wonder about the role of discomfort as a teaching tool. We don’t often think of our students’ comfort or discomfort beyond solving the problem of a crammed lecture theatre, letting a silence in a tutorial go more than ten seconds, or opening a window on a hot day. But on an overseas intensive subject, the discomfort of students becomes not only a teaching tool, but also an issue that you had to deal with every day. Perhaps because I was a woman, and perhaps also because I was a softer touch than Glenn, I was the one students complained to about missed lunch breaks, sore feet, or hot dorm rooms. On one memorable occasion I boarded the bus which had just arrived to take us to New York to be greeted by a student asking me how to recline the seats, as if I, as teacher, would have this little piece of trivial knowledge about the mechanics of that particular bus covered along with all the course themes and materials. Beyond these day-to-day challenges, there was a real tension inherent in the experience of teaching this subject. Melbourne University was understandably worried about the safety of students, we had to fill out Risk Management forms and create Risk Management ‘strategies’, and show how we would do our utmost to keep students safe and well. Any kind of travelling, however, as every tourist knows, entails a certain amount of risk, and it is that risk that provides some of the thrill, the excitement and the reason for travel. We followed the university’s guidelines while simultaneously explicitly encouraging students to step out from our supervision, to have their own adventures in the places we travelled, either in smaller groups or by themselves. I believe the lessons students learned doing this, or from walking with us through unsafe neighborhoods, or being the only white people on a form of public transport, probably gave them life lessons much more profound than the insights into US history we imparted to them through lectures and classes

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and course readings. ‘Productive discomfort’ is sometimes talked about as a teaching tool, and it was, in hindsight, an integral part of the success of ‘Searching for the American Dream.’ Comfort, too, had a part to play in this unique learning experience. The course was conceived and shaped by Glenn, but in 2001 and 2002 I designed a short stopover in between New York and Washington DC that spoke to my own interests and research into American Indian history. Many people assume that Indian history and culture takes place in the mythical American ‘West’ and I was eager to show students that there were significant places to the history of American Indians on the east coast too. I made contact with Barb Landis, Carlisle Indian School biographer for the Cumberland County Historical Society. Richard Pratt, a retired army officer and passionate believer in the possibility of assimilating American Indians, established Carlisle Indian School in 1879. His version of assimilation was harsh. He targeted children and young adults, and removed them completely from their families and communities. His oftstated purposes was to “Kill the Indian and save the man,” and he aimed to do so in a strict, boarding school environment, in which children were expected to speak English, forget their culture, and work hard at both school and manual labor (the school supported itself through government and private donations and student labor). Carlisle never fitted very well with the course, but it gave at least a kind of United States history that was far from the monuments and central places we visited in Washington DC, New York and Boston – places that Americans themselves would visit because of the significance. It also added a different ethnic group to our studies, which had been confined so far to the usual dichotomy of white American/African American, with a sprinkling of Latino issues when we met with the Services Employees International Union. The physical setting of Carlisle was a significant part of its impact on the students. Getting to Carlisle was a long trip on a bus. We all left New York exhausted. The bustle of the ‘city that never sleeps’ and the many, many things to see and do meant that all the students tried to fit as much as possible into our week there. As we drove out of the city and the views out the bus window changed from urban vistas to green fields, a very different America came into focus. Carlisle is a small town, with cute houses and wide streets. Dickinson College, where we stayed, was a far cry from the dingy apartments we occupied in New York. Dickinson is a wealthy school. Its buildings are attractive, its dorms are luxurious and most of all, it is situated on acres of lush green grass, complete with fireflies. There was always a palpable sigh of relief as the students exited the bus, got rid of their luggage, and then

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stepped out to enjoy the summer weather on the Dickinson lawns. It was a world away from the genteel busy-ness of Boston and the loud and dirty New York streetscape. But we weren’t only there to enjoy the scenery. After an early dinner (which often surreally took place among a sea of little ballerinas, who were sharing our Dickinson accommodation), we walked down quiet streets to the Cumberland County Historical Society for a talk and slide show from Barb Landis. She introduced the students to the world of Carlisle Indian School, and talked about Carlisle students experiences, showed striking images of the “before” and “after” shots that the school used to advertise itself. Two photographs were placed side by side. The first image was of a scared-looking, long-haired child or teenager dressed in traditional clothing, the second of the same child, now short-haired, dressed in western clothing and supposedly “assimilated.” We talked about all the things wrong with the idea of being able to transform people so quickly, and the assumptions of cultural superiority inherent in Carlisle Indian School’s philosophy. The ways in which this history was still impacting on the present day was brought into poignant focus when Barb pointed out the signs around town welcoming the controversially named Washington Redskins to their summer training camp (they would soon be joining the ballerinas at Dickinson). The next morning Barb took us on a tour of the site of Carlisle Indian School, which is now an army barracks. The students always particularly enjoyed her description of “The Man in the Bandstand” who was a fictional character who appeared in the Carlisle student newspaper. The bandstand itself still survived, and it stood in the centre of the buildings which had made up the school. “The Man in the Bandstand” expressed warnings and gossip, giving the students the impression that there was someone always watching them. Scholars mostly agree that “The Man” was Pratt. The bandstand is a beautiful building, but sitting inside it, experiencing the panoramic views it offered of what was once the school, it was hard not feel a little shiver of revulsion at the idea of a shadowy figure constantly watching from the very place we were sitting. It was noticeably similar to Foucault’s “panopticon” – the use of the promise of constant surveillance as a means of control – and was a striking demonstration of the harsh world the Indian students lived in. Another poignant site was the little overgrown path down to the now disused railway siding, which the many runaways used in their attempts to escape back to their families. Our visit to Carlisle Indian School gave only a very brief introduction to the complex history of Indian-white relations, but it

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was a topic that a significant number of students always pursued in their research essays. While in the town of Carlisle, we also took the opportunity to have the students think about ‘small town America’, and to compare life in Carlisle to the big cities we spent the majority of our time in. We asked them to use Carlisle to think about the American Dream and its conflicting definitions. Jennifer Hochschild, whom they had all read, argues that the American Dream is all about success, which she defines as “the attainment of a high income, a prestigious job, economic security.” The map distributed by the Carlisle Camber of Commerce, however, claimed that small-town Carlisle is itself “An American Dream.” We asked the students to think about this claim as they walked around Carlisle in small groups. More specifically, following the course theme of the importance of grass-roots community organizations, we also asked them to look for signs of community, such as locals gathering in a café, a town hall, a volunteer organization, a school or an op-shop. In what ways, we asked, were people are working as a community rather than as individuals? Could they find any evidence of a sense of civic duty? We encouraged them to talk to locals – shopkeepers, people in the street – and visit public places or spend time in the local café. The students were to give us two or three handwritten pages answering the questions: What does the American Dream mean for the residents of Carlisle, PA? How is it different from the American Dream we have searched for in Boston and New York? The students responded enthusiastically with assignments that variously undermined the myth of small towns as safe havens from the problems of the rest of the US, pointed out that small town feelings of community and belonging are not absent from big cities, particularly after September 11, and showed the different ways in which people defined success in Carlisle. They commented on Carlisle’s lack of racial and economic diversity and many realized on their own the impossibility of conducting such an assignment on the streets of New York. The richness of their responses showed how the quickly contrast between the big city bustle and the small town quiet had made an impression. Walking and talking were an integral component of the learning experience of Searching for the American Dream. We had scheduled classes during the trip but it was the conversations as we walked from one place to another that gave me some of my favorite teaching moments. As students expressed their own experiences of the places we had been to and were going, and were freed from the constraints of asking “stupid questions” in a public forum, it gave them a confident approach to the materials, themes and issues we introduced. This confidence fed through

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to their class contributions and their written work, and perhaps even, I’d like to think, into their decisions about their future endeavors. Like many historians, I have certainly had my own profound experiences of connecting the place where I was standing with the histories that I have researched and written. Sharing the encounter between past and present as a teacher, however, was perhaps an even more powerful experience. Its impact is difficult to articulate, but many years later it is certainly evident in the speed with which my mind springs so quickly from my physical presence on a Melbourne street in the early morning to my memories of teaching Searching for the American Dream.

JEN BARTON, JESSICA MCCRUM, VANESSA CONDEMI AND THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

The emphasis in this book is on explaining the value of experiential and place-based learning, and the teacher’s role in facilitating a study tour. Here, as in most educational “best practice” books, the students themselves are pushed to the margins. To the extent that they do appear, it is as subjects, the recipients of the sort of strategies outlined in Chapter Three. Discussion most often focuses on taking them out of their comfort zones, making them see links between visits and the subject’s theme, and so on. What all of this forgets is that without the students’ contributions, a study tour wouldn’t work. At a very basic level, this means having students who do the reading to prepare for visits, who are on time every morning, and who listen to instructions when the group is navigating its way around the New York subway: A study tour involving sixty students requires them to be diligent, reliable, and willing and able to abide by the rules. Of course, those are qualities that any teacher in any classroom asks of students. The difference is that in the experiential learning situation, the students don’t feel as though they are merely following orders. As John Dewey explained a century ago, traditional, classroom teaching, where the teacher teaches and the students listen and take notes, requires “docility, receptivity and obedience.”1 Dewey advocated a more interactive process, where teachers and students work together to make meaning of visits. Education scholars now call this “collaborative learning,” and as Johnson, Johnson and Smith have pointed out, this collaboration involves the students cooperating with one-another as well as with their teachers.2

1

John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Collier Books, 1963. First published in 1938.), 18. 2 David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Karl Smith, Active Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom (Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company, 1998), 9:4. See also, Anthony and Jan Herrington, Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education (Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2006), 6.

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The three students whose essays follow, were all team players. They all helped make the group function cohesively, and ultimately made the study tour work. Jen Barton, a cross-institutional student from the University of Western Australia who knew none of the Melbourne students, faced the sternest test, but she fitted in seamlessly, and a year later she accompanied a Melbourne University student to Washington where they both took up internships. Vanessa Condemi was one of those people who could step up in an emergency. The day we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Vanessa and three other girls got separated from the main group on the subway. They took a cab, thinking it would be easy to meet up with the group at South Ferry, but found themselves deposited at the Staten Island Ferry terminal instead. The other girls were ready to give up, but Vanessa piloted them to the Statue of Liberty Ferry and they caught up with us soon after. My initial impression of Jessica McCrum was that she was quiet and studious, which was true, but she was also willing to assist when required, asking questions and thanking speakers at the end of meetings. Her biggest contribution, however, was that she uncomplainingly roomed with a girl, who, by the last leg of our trip, had become unpopular to the extent that we had requests not to be roomed with her. It seems like a small thing, but without these sacrifices a study tour can easily fall apart. Each of these three girls had strong academic records prior to the study tour. According to studies undertaken in the United States, although most students benefit from experiential learning, strong students benefit more.3 It must be said that measuring benefits is an art, not a science, because as well as grades, there are hard-to-quantify things to take into account. These include the effect on the student’s confidence, ambition, and ultimately, whether they have success in their chosen field. Jen (study tour class of 2002) took up an internship a year later with one of our partner organizations, a Washington non-profit named One Economy. From there, she joined a law firm in her native Perth, and I didn’t hear from her for some years, until she asked for a reference to do graduate work at Cambridge University. Jen was always destined for success, but clearly the study tour gave her a push along. Vanessa and Jessica (study tour class of 2011) are still too young to have entered the workforce, but the study tour has already been a positive influence, with Vanessa going back to the America on exchange at the University of North Carolina, and Jessica gaining entry into Melbourne University’s prestigious law program, after 3

Alan Smith and Gregory Sobel, Place and Community-Based Education in Schools (New York: Routledge, 2010), 77.

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which she plans to give legal representation to unions, something she links to her visit to the AFL-CIO in Washington.

FROM UWA TO CAMBRIDGE JEN BARTON

I remember being sprawled out on the Oak Lawn at UWA on a sunny spring day when a friend suggested going to America on a course run by a visiting lecturer from Melbourne. It was just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and smoke was still rising from the World Trade Centre. While it was a tragic time, I knew that a study trip at this pivotal moment would offer a remarkable opportunity to learn more about the US. The trip was all that I hoped it would be and more. I returned with a much greater appreciation of American history, America’s place in the world, its internal politics – and the importance of the American Dream. Yet the ability of the course to open doors and offer life-changing experiences became apparent a few months later when I received a letter inviting me to apply for an award at UWA. The Patrick O’Brien Political Science Graduate Internship Award offered a great opportunity to further my political knowledge, but I needed to come up with a good application and an organization that would accept me. A friend from the course recommended that I get in touch with Glenn to see if Alec Ross, whom we met in Washington D.C., would let me come to One Economy, a small not-for-profit organization that aimed to provide low income people with greater access to the Internet. Alec and his wife were two of many inspiring individuals we encountered on the trip. They had met at a disadvantaged school in Baltimore when they were both part of the Teach for America program. Felicity still taught in Baltimore while Alec had helped found One Economy and kindly agreed to let me do a four week internship at a small organization that was committed to “helping bridge the digital divide.” One year after the trip, I was back in the US, staying at GWU and taking the short walk past the White House to be an intern at One Economy. It was fascinating to see how a small not-for-profit group operated, and from that brief experience with One Economy, I’m not surprised that it is now a large international organization or that Alec has been profiled in the New York Times as a senior adviser on digital diplomacy to Secretary

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Clinton. Aside from the weekday work at One Economy, my time in D.C. allowed me to interview a range of lobbyists for my dissertation (including a lobbyist from the NRA and the press secretary for Common Cause), attend a baseball game in Baltimore, study in the Library of Congress, visit Jefferson’s home in Monticello and look at monuments on the Mall. For a West Wing tragic, the experience could only be described as incredible, and for a politics honors student, it was invaluable in shaping my dissertation on interest group politics in America.

A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE JESSICA MCCRUM

I initially chose to take Searching for the American Dream because I have always been fascinated by America and the enduring idea that Americans are connected by a central philosophy revolving around the concept of working hard to get ahead. The lead up to the trip was quite exciting, as we were regularly sent emails from Glenn detailing the wide variety of organizations and places we would be visiting and the significance of each. This helped to set the scene for our visit and the idea of what the American dream was. The sense of history that is prevalent in Boston made it the ideal city to visit first. I particularly enjoyed the JFK museum as it offered unique insight into one of the most powerful and dynamic American families. Like many others I have always had a strong interest in the lives of the Kennedys, especially given the turbulent historical context of John and Bobby’s leadership. I later chose to write my final essay on Bobby Kennedy having been inspired by the extraordinary impact he had when he ran for the presidential nominee position for the Democrats, especially through his attempts to promote equality and reconciliation, all of which are still burning issues in America today. Another highlight of Boston was the opportunity to work in a food bank. It exposed me to the extremely difficult lives that many Americans lead but also illustrated the sense of community participation and volunteerism prevalent in America. A significant part of the trip that I greatly enjoyed was the focus on community action and protection, which is often achieved in America by the unions. The importance of unions was initially demonstrated in New York through our study of the terrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, which dramatically exemplified the exploitation of workers. It was also wonderful to gain an insight into the work being done by volunteers at The Point in the Bronx, where disadvantaged youths are provided with opportunities to become more self-sufficient so that they can overcome the barriers they face. Our visit to the AFL-CIO union was one of the best parts of the trip. It offered a different perspective to the American Dream, one in which a community of people rather than

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individuals work together in order to achieve success. It was also great to finish our meeting and realize that the White House was just across the road. The trip impressed upon me the elusive nature of the American Dream, demonstrating why for many it is a dream rather than a reality. But it is the motivational aspect of the dream, and the idea of improving one’s life, that inspires Americans, which facilitates success. Additionally, while the dream is often centered upon individual success, through our visits I witnessed a strong element of collective action in America, which contributes to establishing the success of many. Overall it was an amazing experience that enabled me to gain an insight into the impact the American Dream has had on people and groups, and continues to have today.

WE DID IT AS A GROUP VANESSA CONDEMI

The three-week study intensive trip ‘Searching for the American Dream’ changed my life in ways I was not even remotely prepared for. As a recently decided History major I had left it a bit late applying to the subject, so it was with equal amounts of excitement and nervousness that I accepted my position on the tour. I was extremely curious about American History in particular, and coupled with an intense desire to visit all of the cities that were mentioned, the study trip was the perfect opportunity to gain a deeper knowledge in my field of interest. Our first meeting as a group completely removed all remaining feelings of anxiety, Glenn and his wife Cassie were everything you could possibly ask for in group leaders, they were approachable and knowledgeable, ready to answer any and all of the thousands of questions that the fifty or so of us had to throw at them. The peers in my group were all fantastic and warm people, we had the same ideals going into the trip: to make the most of our time and learn as much as we possibly could with an open and inquisitive mind. The atmosphere amongst the students was unanimously positive, everyone that was there was there to learn and experience as much of America as we could. The friendships that I made from the trip are irreplaceable. It was an invaluable experience. The people we were able to meet, talk to and interact with is not something that would ever be able to be replicated. The trip was a whirlwind and extremely tiring at some points, but it was moments such as when you’re in the Peace Corps headquarters, or talking to Hilary Clinton’s Senior Advisor on Innovation that reinvigorate you. The people we met and the places we visited were ones that I admittedly wouldn't have gone, or wouldn't have been able to, had I just visited the United States as a tourist. However, those exact places were the most beneficial and provided the most depth to our trip; such as attending a Gospel church in Brooklyn and ‘The Point’ Community Development Center in the Bronx. These visits provided us with an intimate knowledge of the realities, struggles and hopes of Americans while they battled to achieve their dreams. Throughout the trip we learnt

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about how the American Dream can be just as much of a group effort as an individual one, and upon reflection this was certainly true for our study tour group. The study trip changed so many things for me personally. It added a wealth of knowledge to my History major, a true appreciation for American culture and history, and further opened my mind to the opportunities that lay in front of me. I feel that it was the only way to truly appreciate American History and society as you are completely immersed, meeting so many wonderful people that my curiosity and thirst for more knowledge only grew. It was an unexpected stepping stone to more opportunities, opening doors and windows that I couldn't have anticipated. Searching for the American Dream allowed me to pursue an international exchange to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where I studied American History for a further semester. As a group we did not just search for the American Dream, we learnt the value of having our own dreams as well.

CONTRIBUTORS

Cassandra Atherton is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Professional & Creative Writing at Deakin University. She has published a book of poetry, After Lolita (Ahadada Press, 2010), a novel, The Man Jar (Printed Matter Press, 2010) and a book of literary criticism, Flashing Eyes and Floating Hair: A Study of Gwen Harwood’s Pseudonymous Poetry (ASP, 2007). Her book of interviews with American public intellectuals, In So Many Words, is forthcoming from Australian Scholarly Publishing. See her website for more information: www.cassandraatherton.com Miriam Bader is the Director of Education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum where she oversees the administration of tours and the development of school programs. Her educational approach is based in constructivism and imaginative education, and includes inquiry, hands-on learning, and multisensory experiences. Prior to joining the Tenement Museum, Miriam worked at the Museum at Eldridge Street, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, and as a school teacher. She received her MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education. Jim Cullen is Chair of the History Department at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City. He is the author of "The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation" (Oxford University Press, 2003), "Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions" (Oxford, 2013), and other books. He is also a book review editor for the History News Network (www.hnn.us). Jim lives in Hastings-onHudson, New York. Stephen Cunniff is the Director of Community and Media Affairs for the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, a position he has held for nearly a decade. Currently, he oversees community engagement programs that help enhance the Center's operations, while increasing awareness and support for the Center and the homeless veterans in its care. Prior to joining the NECHV, Stephen worked in a variety of business management, marketing, operations, research, and public

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relations capacities. Stephen holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Bentley University. He currently resides outside of Boston. Tahir Duckett joined Working America in February 2007. As assistant field director, he helps manage and maintain all aspects of a network that has reached more than 20 canvass offices with more than 500 paid canvass staff. Prior to serving at Working America, he worked as the field director for the Democratic Party of Georgia, where he helped manage field campaigns for two of the most competitive congressional races in the country. He was raised in Atlanta, where he received a bachelor's degree in Religion and Political Science from Emory University. In his few moments away from politics, he spends his time playing and following soccer and trying new techniques in the kitchen. Kat Ellinghaus holds a Monash Fellowship in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University. She is the author of Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 18871937 (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). Kat writes and researches in the areas of colonial history, transnational and comparative history, interracial relationships and the social and cultural history of the United States and Australia. Michelle LeBlanc has worked in the history education field in Boston, MA for over 15 years as a museum educator and currently as project director for a Teaching American History program that links teachers with historians and institutions to enrich their teaching. She holds a Masters degree in American History and Public History from Northeastern University. Her favorite moments working in the history world have been leading a full scale reenactment of the Boston Tea Party and introducing school children to the local history that surrounds them every day. Glenn Moore has taught American history at the Australian National University, the University of Western Australia, and Melbourne University. While teaching at Melbourne in the late nineties he started the study tour that this book was based on, and has taken student groups to the United States ever since. He has written on American labor and sport history, as well as the articles on teaching American history to Australian students.

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Allison O'Leary joined Massachusetts State Representative Alice Peisch's staff as a Legislative Aide in August 2009, and currently serves as Staff Director. Her work focuses on advancing the Representative's legislative agenda and conducting policy research. She graduated from Colgate University in Hamilton, NY with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and History in 2008, and is currently pursuing a master's degree in Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Allison both grew up and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Alice Peisch serves as the Massachusetts State Representative for the 14th Norfolk District, which includes the towns of Wellesley and Weston, as well as Precinct 4 in Wayland. Prior to her election in 2003, Alice was active in Wellesley's municipal government where she served on the Town's Advisory (Finance) and School Committees, both of which she chaired, and as the Town Clerk. Alice's legislative leadership positions include serving as the Vice-Chair of the Joint Committee on Revenue, as well as Chair of the Metrowest Caucus, both in the 2009-2010 legislative session. Currently, Alice serves as the House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education, which she was first appointed to Chair in the 2011-2012 legislation session. Alice received a B.A. from Smith College in 1976, a J.D. from Suffolk University in 1979, and a MPA from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2009. Allie Phillips is an attorney, author and advocate for animals. She was a prosecuting attorney in Michigan, worked as a Vice President for American Humane Association, and launched the National Center for Prosecution of Animal Abuse at the National District Attorneys Association. She is nationally recognized for her work on the cooccurrence between violence to animals and people, and is the founder of Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T) Program™, the only global initiative working with domestic violence shelters to welcome families with pets. She has published Defending the Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets (2011) and How Shelter Pets are Brokered for Experimentation: Understanding Pound Seizure (2010). She volunteers her time with numerous nonprofit organizations and to help shelter animals. Alec Ross serves as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the U.S. Secretary of State where he is tasked with maximizing the potential of technology and innovation in service of America’s diplomatic goals and stewarding America's 21st Century Statecraft agenda. In this role, Alec helps ensure

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America’s leadership and advances the State Department’s interests on a range of issues from Internet Freedom to disaster response to responding to regional conflicts. Felicity Ross studied mathematics and psychology at the University of Michigan. Upon graduation, she joined Teach For America (TFA), becoming a middle school mathematics teacher in Baltimore for a period totaling nine years. Felicity transitioned from the classroom to a variety of education-related consulting roles from teaching graduate courses at Johns Hopkins University to teaching online courses for Maryland Public Television. Professor Joan E. Schaffner, J.D., Associate Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, teaches Civil Procedure, Remedies, Sexuality and the Law, and a seminar on Animal Protection Law and directs the GW Animal Law Program. Professor Schaffner’s most recent book entitled Introduction to Animals and the Law was published by Palgrave MacMillan as part of their Animal Ethics Series. She shares her life and home with a magnificent group of felines and Rocky, an African Grey parrot. Kristina Wacome Stevick is the Artistic Director of History Alive!, the theatre branch of the Gordon College Institute for Public History. The Institute programs historic venues in downtown Salem, MA. Ms. Stevick has cast and consulted for films and television programs including work for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, TLC and PBS. She holds a BA in Social Work from Gordon College and an MA in theatre education from Emerson College.

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