Our Story-Share Workshop

My spouse and I had the great pleasure of working with the peer mentor and two students from my PSU Freshman Inquiry class on Immigration, Migration, and Belonging Friday and Saturday in Seaside. We did a workshop on story sharing. Christina did a wonderful job laying out the process, then Meiling and Paola shared each other's stories in front of about sixty people to give them an idea of what the process could be like, and it was such an incredible experience.

Story sharing entails telling a meaningful story to someone, then they do the same with you. Then the two of you join other pairs in a circle, and everyone shares. The point of the process is to build a sense of radical empathy. When you try to embody someone else's story, the walls that separate us strt to crumble.

That certainly happened at our work shop. There were so many stories of suffering and redemption, and the high school students at the workshop resolved to go back and start a story-share movement in their school to bridge the many divides.

It was the courage of my young students who really made it work, another reminder of why I so love teaching at PSU in general and this class in particular.

Actually, President Trump, We Need More Africans

OregonLive just published my opinion piece on why the U.S. would benefit from more rather than fewer Africans. It is scheduled to appear in the print version of the Oregonian on Sunday.

I've come to believe that most people learn empathy through interpersonal interactions with diverse people than through what anyone might write, but at the very least I'd like the countless Africans in Ghana and the U.S. to know that many white people in the U.S. appreciate Africa and Africans.

Thank you for so deeply enriching and informing my life and the lives of many others in the U.S.

"I finished the book!" Why We Should Volunteer with Youth

The Oregonian recently published an alarming article on the decline of mental health among Oregon teens. Although many of the large number of commentators focused on the evils of cell phones, much of the reaction fell along political lines. Conservatives tended to blame youth's emotional fragility on liberal permissiveness. Liberals pointed to conservative economic policies.

What I have observed in my thirty years or so of volunteering with children in classrooms and other venues is that youth need caring people in their lives. I was stunned to learn a few months ago that in a city festooned with signs proclaiming that "refugees are welcome here," refugee children who are desperate to learn English lack sufficient tutors. But it's not just refugees who are suffering. In the past couple of decades class sizes have gone up and the stability of many homes have declined. On average, Americans of all ages have fewer close friends than we used to. Many of our youth trust no one.

Most of us can do something about this--and I don't mean just blaming the other side. Start by checking with your local school about volunteer activities. You can play a crucial role in a child's life, and in spending more time with youth you will have a much more informed opinion on what sort of larger political, economic, social, and cultural changes would help youth. You will also be pushed to develop larger reservoirs of patience and empathy.

One of the many times I learned that lesson was about ten years ago, working with a boy with severe behavior problems. He had just been allowed back into a classroom, and I spent an hour each week helping him to work his way through a book. He tried everything he could think of to get me to read the book for him, and he seemed incapable of reading more than three or four words at a time without kicking the wall, staring at the ceiling, stumbling over words, and bitterly complaining about the cruel task at hand. I think I hated the process as much as he did. I was discouraged. But somehow we inched our way through most of the book before my time with him mercifully ended.

About a month later, he came jetting toward me on the playground yelling: "I finished the book! I finished the book!"

I don't know if he remembers that achievement, but I'll never forget it.