Tag Archives: professional development

Skill Composites

  By laurelfelt | January 24, 2013 - 3:17 pm | , , , , ,
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In 2009, I began examining the intersections between new media literacies (NMLs; Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Weigel, & Robison, 2006) and social and emotional learning skills (SELs; Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, n.d.). I was a student in Dr. Henry Jenkins’s first seminar at USC, and the final paper was looming. I had recently been introduced, via Dr. Michael Cody, to Alexandre Rideau, the director of Senegal’s non-profit Reseau Africain d’Education pour la Sante (RAES) (or, in English, the African Network for Health Education). Alex wanted a proposal for revamping his youth communication for social change program, Sunukaddu. So I completed my assignment in Henry’s class by pitching a NML-rich modification to Sunukaddu for Alex, and adding in the dimension of SEL, which happens to be my passion.

Felt, L.J. (2009). Participatory learning methodologies for enriching an HIV/AIDS intervention to Senegalese youth: The Case for social and emotional learning and new media literacies. Unpublished manuscript.

Both boys bought it, and two important, collaborative relationships were born.

In terms of Alex and Sunukaddu… During the summer of 2010, I traveled to Senegal and spent two months co-designing and implementing Sunukaddu 2.0 with a group of extraordinary colleagues: Idrissa, Tidiane, Charles, and Amadou. Later, Brock also joined our brigade.

There was innovation on the educator level.

Formation Curiculiu, 350
There was learning on the participant level.

IMG_0592

Among both populations post-intervention, growth and advancement:

“You gave me self-confidence thanks to these skills” (Educator Tidiane Thiang, personal communication, September 22, 2010).

“…I saw [Sunukaddu participant] Mami who told me that she’s working in a retail establishment right now and [Sunukaddu participant] Azoupi is enrolled in a computer graphics workshop to become an editor. So, the training awakened vocational interests but also gave youths courage, the courage to take their destinies in their own hands” (Educator Tidiane Thiang, personal communication, October 18, 2010).

And on the communicative/scholarly level, a fair number of works produced (NOTE: The following list just details my efforts, not the textual, multimedia, and programmatic products developed by RAES):

PUBLICATIONS
Felt, L.J., Dura, L., & Singhal, A. (in press). Cultural Beacons in health communication: Leveraging overlooked indicators and grassroots wisdoms. In D.K. Kim, G. Kreps, & A. Singhal (Eds.), Global Health Communication Strategies in the 21st Century. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group.

Felt, L.J. & Rideau, A. (2012). Our Voice: Public Health and Youths’ Communication for Social Change in Senegal. In M.O. Ensor (Ed.), African Childhoods: Education, Development, Peacebuilding, and the Youngest Continent (pp. 201-217). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Felt, L.J. (2010, July 29). Making education (double) count: Boosting student learning via social and emotional learning and new media literacy skills. eLearn Magazine: Education and Technology in Perspective.

PRESENTATIONS
Dura, L., Felt, L.J. & Singhal, A. (June 18, 2013). Cultural beacons: Grassroots indicators of change. Paper presented at 63rd Annual International Communication Association Conference, London, UK.
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Ruth

  By laurelfelt | December 18, 2012 - 4:54 pm | , , , ,
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Ruth Feldman, circa 1922


On May 27, 2012, my family celebrated the 90th birthday of the one and only Ruth Feldman Marcus, aka Gramma. My mom and uncle — Ruth’s two children — set this simcha at Max and Benny’s Deli in Northbrook, IL.

The invitation to this party nodded to Ruth’s past, proclaiming, “you can take the girl out of the deli but you can’t take the deli out of the girl.” Ruth’s mother and brother, Sarah Rich Feldman and Maury Feldman, had co-owned and operated a Jewish deli on Chicago’s West Side during Ruth’s teen years. Ruth’s college dreams were denied when Sarah broke her wrist and needed Ruth to fill in for her, slicing cold cuts and carrying trays, among other things. Here at this family deli, Ruth’s future husband (and my grandfather) Ray Marcus took a shine to the cute blonde waitress and endearingly chose to eat far more meals there than strictly necessary.

My uncle Dick welcomed the group of approximately 50 family members and friends, explaining the significance of delis to our family.

Rick Felt, Ruth Marcus, Dick Marcus

Ruth Marcus, Dick Marcus, Barbara Marcus Felt

Later, Uncle Dick revealed his wonderfully creative, hilarious, participatory party game. What if contemporary folks, ignorant of Jewish customs, wandered into an old school Jewish deli? And what if they all spoke Yiddish? (By the way, Uncle Dick’s premise isn’t as random as it may sound; see Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.)

The following three videos feature Uncle Dick’s funny and articulate explanation of the concept. Because my brother recorded the speech on his cell phone, the image resolution is poor but the audio quality is good. He broke the footage up into three segments in order to make each file small enough to send. The beginning of each film includes the end of the last, just to provide context and ensure that no part of the talk was accidentally lopped off.

Dick and Delis: Part 1

Dick and Delis: Part 2

Dick and Delis: Part 3

While the crowd laughed at the prospect of performing (and Uncle Dick’s improbable math), 11 brave, corned beef-sated family members later accepted Uncle Dick’s scripts and embodied the roles of meshuggeneh customers and exasperated servers, first in Yiddish and then in English.

Ashley and me

CUSTOMER 1 – YIDDISH

Customer: Vilt du zine azay goot oz tsu helfin mir?

Waitress (Waiter): Yeh. Vous vilst due?

Customer: Ich vill habn ah sendvich fun pastrami.

Waitress: Mit rye broit?

Customer: No. Mit veisse broit.

Waitress: Veisse? Feh!

CUSTOMER 1 – ENGLISH

Customer: Will you be so good as to help me?

Waitress (Waiter): Yes. What do you want?

Customer: I will have a pastrami sandwich.

Waitress: With rye bread?

Customer: No. With white bread.

Waitress: White?! Feh!

Dick Marcus, Kenneth Marcus, Ina Goldberg

CUSTOMER 2 – YIDDISH

Waitress:            Ken ich helfin der?

Customer:             Ich vill habn ah sendvich fun pecklfleisch mit rye broit.

Waitress:            Rye broit.  Zeier goot.

Customer:            Und mit a shmeer mayonnaise.

Waitress:            Feh!

CUSTOMER 2 – ENGLISH

Waitress:            Can I help you?

Customer:             I will have a corned beef sandwich on rye bread.

Waitress:            Rye bread.  Very good.

Customer:            And a shmear of mayonnaise.

Waitress:            Feh!

Bev Copeland and Bryan Savitsky

CUSTOMER 3 – YIDDISH

Waitress:            Ken ich helfin der?

Customer:             Yeh, danken.  Ich vill habn ah hot dog, mit pomidor und pickle.

Waitress:            Mmm! Geshmak.

Customer:            Und mit ketchup.

 Waitress:            Feh!

CUSTOMER 3 – ENGLISH

Waitress:            Can I help you?

Customer:             Yes, thanks.  I will have a hot dog with tomato and pickle.

Waitress:            Mmm! Delicious.

Customer:            And with ketchup.

 Waitress:            Feh!

Doug Hoffman and Benjy Felt

CUSTOMER 4 – YIDDISH

Waitress:            Arain!  Zetz zach ah nitter.  Ken ich helfin der?

Customer:            Yeh.  Nemn a salami sendvich.

Waitress:            Hart oder zachtig?

Customer:            Hart.

Waitress:            Broit?

Customer:            Tsibbleh bulke.

Waitress:            Zeier goot.

Customer:            Und a slice Swiss cheese.

 Waitress:            Vous?!  Salami mit cheese?!  Feh!  Bist meshugah?  Milchik  un fleishik?!   Nit gedacht!  Feh!

CUSTOMER 4 – ENGLISH

Waitress:            Come in!  Sit down here.  Can I help you?

Customer:            Yes.  I’ll take a salami sandwich.

Waitress:            Hard or soft?

Customer:            Hard.

Waitress:            Bread?

Customer:            Onion roll.

Waitress:            Very good.

Customer:            And a slice of Swiss cheese.

Waitress:            What?!  Salami with cheese?!  Feh!  Are you crazy?  Dairy and meat?!   God forbid!  Feh!

Leanne Marcus, Sarah Felt, and Someone

CUSTOMER 5 – YIDDISH

Waitress1:             Ken ich helfin der?

Customer:            Ich vill haben a BLT.

Waitress1 (aside to Waitress2):            Vos a BLT?

Waitress2:            A sendvich.

Waitress1:            Und vos iz in dos sendvich?

Waitress2:            Pomidor, salat, und, ummm, bacon.

Waitress1:            Vos iz dus bacon?

Waitress2:             Bacon iz…. well bacon iz….

Waitress1:            Bacon iz vos?

Waitress2:             Well, uh, well bacon seh kumpt foon ah chahzer

Waitress1:            FOON AH CHAHZER!  Feh!

Waitress1 to Customer:            Gai avek! Gai! Gai!  Gai tsu Howard Johnson far chahzerfleisch!  Meshiggoner!

CUSTOMER 5 – ENGLISH

Waitress1:             Can I help you?

Customer:            I will have a BLT.

Waitress1 (aside to Waitress2):            What is a BLT?

Waitress2:            A sandwich.

Waitress1:            And what is in this sandwich?

Waitress2:            Tomato, lettuce, and, ummm, bacon.

Waitress1:            What is bacon?

Waitress2:             Bacon is…. well bacon is….

Waitress1:            Bacon is what?

Waitress2:             Well, uh, well bacon comes from a pig.

Waitress1:            FROM A PIG!  Feh!

Waitress1 to Customer:            Go away! Go! Go!  You go to Howard Johnson for pig meat!  Crazy person!

 

Needless to say, a great time was had by all!

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My gramma and I have always been close. I had the good fortune of staying nearby for college, so during those years Gramma and I got even closer. I wrote my first column for The Daily Northwestern about a particularly memorable experience together.

Since graduating from college 10.5 years ago, I’ve only lived near Gramma (and the rest of my immediate family) for 2.5 of them. Boston was a lean time, family-wise, but luckily Gramma’s niece Helena Feldman Erlich and her daughter and her daughters live in the Los Angeles area. This means that, even though I’m far away from the heartland, I’m not without my family. We all gathered together last Saturday to celebrate the last night of Hanukkah, and Helena insisted that I share this video with Gramma. You were with us in spirit, Gramma!

Erlich Hanukkah 2012

Mike and I also threw a Hanukkah party, complete with high-stakes dreidel.

And I wrangled two rounds of latke-making, clad in a fabulously garish dreidel apron. As I jokingly explained to Gramma the next day, a 12-year-old girl does not truly come of age at her Bat Mitzvah — she joins the ranks of Jewish womanhood when she cooks up her first batch of latkes. :)

See you in March, Gramma! I love you!

Participatory Professional Development

  By laurelfelt | November 2, 2012 - 1:40 pm | , , ,
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Yesterday I had the opportunity to re-join my brilliant colleagues Erin Reilly, Ioana Literat, Sarah Kirn, and Sarah Morrisseau for a chat about our recent media-rich publication, Designing with Teachers: Participatory Approaches to Professional Development in Education. Our talk was moderated by the accomplished S. Craig Watkins and took place via LiveStream ConnectedLearning.tv webinar. To my delight, this technology again allowed me to show up, in real time, on the computer screen of an international friend. Whereas my first brush with webinar-ing motivated my colleague Cathy Tran to proclaim on FB from Norway, “I see you on “TV”!!! :)”, this time my colleague Tidiane Thang posted on FB from Senegal, “Don’t worry be happy, you started a great presentation.”

Tidiane was comforting me because my computer connection went awry — I might have had too many windows open (I was trying to backchannel with listeners via LiveStream chat as well as answer a few emails and skim the PDF, then toggle back to the webinar screen and see if I’d missed anything in our internal chat). I spoke around minute 33, then got kicked off at 34:24 in a very tragic, abrupt fashion. The “hilarious” part is that I continued speaking for at least two more minutes after that! :) Oy. I spoke up again around 40:30, got all touchy-feely around 47:30 by throwing down the term “self-actualization,” then revealed my obsession with food by likening technology to dessert around 49:50.

Beyond navel-gazing, though, I appreciated the opportunity to acknowledge the complexities and constraints that teachers negotiate. I’m disappointed by the reductive rhetoric that is usually invoked vis-a-vis school reform and American achievement. Rather than respect teachers as professionals, stakeholders, and heroes, we villainize teachers as lazy, underperforming, or even lascivious. How many more stories about teacher-on-student abuse have we heard than stories about teacher-for/with-student uplift? If the teacher isn’t female, white, and cute, and if her students aren’t black, brown, and poor, then the extraordinary teacher story isn’t deliberately buried — it’s never pursued or located in the first place.

I admire teachers’ work. I value researchers’ knowledge. If we could bring together these two products and their respective producers by translating and collaborating, as well as welcome more constituents including administrators, students, parents, and community members, then what a dynamo we would have. Then just try to stop us! Who could stop us? Everyone would be on board, helping to push us along!

I’m a lucky human being (as I own at 55:42!) and a motivated partner. Let’s make some magic, mes amis.

USC Annenberg Fellows Symposium

  By laurelfelt | April 10, 2012 - 5:44 pm | , , , ,
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On Wednesday, April 11, 2012, I presented Explore Locally, Excel Digitally: A participatory learning-oriented after-school program for enriching citizenship on- and offline at the fourth annual USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Research and Creative Project Symposium.

I spent hours on my gorgeous Powerpoint presentation but not a soul reviewed it. If I’d remained in my booth, perhaps I would have gotten some visitors. But since the crowd was anemically thin, I opted to court professional development by engaging with colleagues. I got to know some of the first-year PhD students in my program. I caught up with Katya Ognyanova, who I’d taken a class with back in Fall 2008 and haven’t really spoken with on an academic level ever since. I embraced my friend Lori, who became DR. LOPEZ yesterday when she successfully defended her dissertation! I chatted with my colleague Rhea Vichot, who wryly observed that conferences never know how to classify her scholarship. I asked two Greek engineers about their top takeaways from their presentation on big data. Their answer: new solutions to backing up must be devised and implemented. (We also spoke about Thessaloniki, Greek islands, cheese, and yogurt.) I heard Ritesh Mehta and Tisha Dejmanee share their phenomenological take on Facebook, then sat down with Erin Kamler (and LeeAnn Sangalang) to discuss participatory action research, Theater of the Oppressed, and Erin’s recent paper that examined modes of establishing validity in interventions that combine both approaches. We discussed the power of comradeship and fantasized about forming a reading/critical feedback circle to provide each other with intellectual/practical support. I told them to set up the Doodle. We’ll see if anyone follows through… But our hearts were in the right place.

I also attended a session in which the focus was on money and conspicuous consumption. USC Annenberg PhD student Laura Alberti spoke about the EU debt crisis and the framing of Greece as a deadbeat family member, USC Annenberg PhD student Lana Swartz spoke about the rise and fall of Diner’s Club credit cards, and USC School of Cinematic Arts PhD student Katherine Wagner explored Yelp’s implications for Los Angeles segregation. USC Annenberg PhD student LeeAnn Sangalang served as moderator.

While this event wasn’t exactly what I expected, I feel nonetheless that I benefited from learning about others’ diverse scholarship. I also strengthened collegial connections that, at the end of the day, matter far more than any one project. Therefore, I thank you, USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Research and Creative Project Symposium. Thank you very much.

PhD and Beyond

  By laurelfelt | March 20, 2012 - 3:15 pm |
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This event filled to such an extent that I had to join the waiting list. The gods must want me to consider a non-academic career, though; either that or the waiting list is generous. Regardless, I’m attending USC’s Beyond the PhD Career Conference next Wednesday.

Cross your fingers that the networking and dessert at the “dessert and networking reception” (what a combo!) give me the boost I need.

UPDATE, 4/4/2012:

  • Great discussion with David Bibas of the California Science Center, inspiring contemplation of a museum career…
  • Richard Reis’s “After Your PhD or Postdoc: Five Career Options and the Strategies You Need to Implement Them”
  • Joshua R. Eyler’s “Rhetoric of the CV”
  • Susan Herbst’s “What Do Professors Do, Anyway?”
  • Scott Jaschik’s “Faculty Pay, Around the World”