Norma-May Isakow brings energy and rich experience to her role of Associate Director of the Institute for Public Engagement. “Fellows and Friends,” a new lunch series for faculty hosted by the Institute for Public Engagement, is the brainchild of Associate Director Norma-May Isakow. The third in the series, “Assessment in Engaged Teaching,” will take place Monday, March 26 from 11:00 – 12:15, Reynolda Hall, Room 301.
“Every engaged teaching course is about illuminating the human condition,” says Isakow. “If you, as a teacher, can create a course that grows out of a connection you have seen between a community need and your own discipline then you are making students part of the world in both a macro and a micro sense.”
A vibrant presence, Isakow brings to her position stellar professional credentials and the rich experience of one who has boldly dedicated herself to addressing human need in settings as diverse as Soweto, London, Zambia, Denver and Birmingham.
“Civically engaged learning can be life changing learning,” says Isakow. “I know this first hand. That’s why I want students to have these kinds of experiences.
“As an undergraduate student, I volunteered in an orphanage in Soweto and at the Johannesburg Legal Aid Bureau where many disenfranchised South Africans sought assistance and relief from the effects of Apartheid Laws. These experiences were formative in my outlook, career pursuits, and finding a sense of purpose in life.”
While the Fellows and Friends luncheon series grew out of the ACE Fellows Program, all faculty are welcome. Isakow’s intention is to unite ACE fellows from past years with those faculty participating in the current program and attract other faculty who may be curious about their colleague’s strategies to include community engagement components in their courses. During each lunch, small panels will initiate discussion on topics related to service learning and engaged teaching, and share their experiences. Isakow hopes that greater awareness of what colleagues and the Institute are doing will inspire even more faculty to introduce civically engaged courses into the University’s curriculum.
Wake Forest’s commitment to service learning, as Isakow is quick to point out, has earned national recognition, in the form of election to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. WFU has also earned the Carnegie Engaged Campus Classification through 2015.
Third year law student Jonathan Ellis, pictured here in Nicaragua, will speak with Steve Virgil about summer work in Managua.
“I feel very privileged to be a part of the work of the Institute for Public Engagement. I’d like faculty – whether or not they are an
ACE fellow – to see the value of service learning. And, I’d like faculty to recognize that service learning is not a burden they have to bear themselves. I’d like them to see the resources IPE has to offer them. IPE is here to take the burden off.”
Featured faculty at the IPE luncheon include Steve Virgil, Betina Wilkinson and Ananda Mitra. Virgil and Mitra will present briefly on student work in Nicaragua and India. Wilkinson will discuss her Race and Ethnic Politics course and two of her students, Kathryne Doria and Tamara Guillen, will be talking about their experiences at CHANGE and El Buen Pastor Latino Community Services.
Q & A with Norma-May Isakow
1. You noted that your own experience of being transformed by service learning and the practice of public engagement is why you want students to have similar life changing learning experiences. Could you elaborate?
My own experiences with community began in my college and law school days in South Africa when I volunteered at an orphanage in Soweto and worked at the Johannesburg Legal Aid Bureau. Nothing was more impactful on me than having these very direct experiences of community and understanding challenges in the human condition particularly in Apartheid days in South Africa.
Throughout my professional life as a lawyer I did legal aid work and then dedicated myself to connect students to community experiences. In a freshman seminar about communication and relationship skills I witnessed students finding their voices and experiencing significant personal growth through interacting with homeless persons, victims of domestic violence and disabled adults and then bringing these experiences back to the classroom and sharing their learning with other students through in-class discussions and written reflections.
I continue to take the opportunity to interact with different populations – recently, the MLK Day March provided a wonderful opportunity to meet new and diverse people, I attended a CHANGE Homeless Caucus, and joined the Board of El Buen Pastor Latino Community Services – I learn so much through these opportunities.
2. What are some of the ideas you have about keeping the Institute for Public Engagement and its Pro Humanitate imperative vibrant?
One tends to think of service learning in an academic setting as engaging with the local community and local issues. I’d like to see us linking local and global issues. There’s huge potential there.
For example, one issue I am particularly passionate about is food insecurity. Four out of ten children in Forsyth County are food insecure. North Carolina is ranked 10th from the bottom of all states with respect to food security.
Food insecurity is both a local and a global issue. Furthermore it is such a complex, multifactorial problem that any discipline can meaningfully get involved to address it.
I’d also like the faculty to help identify local community needs. What opportunities for connection do they see with the practices of their discipline? What are the critical issues that are implicated in our community’s needs? Can you see an opportunity to relate the need or the issue to your discipline?
There are so many opportunities to connect with. For example, Winston-Salem Forsyth County Homeless Council does, with volunteers, an annual one-day count of homeless individuals in the community, “The Homeless Point-in-Time Count.” Wouldn’t it be great to get students involved in something like that?
3. You said you are trying to move beyond the term service learning. What larger ideas are you trying to signal by the term engaged teaching (or engaged learning)?
The key element of engaged teaching is that it involves students in the process of thinking about, identifying and understanding community issues. Such teaching can but does not necessarily involve students doing direct service with a community partner (although such service learning would be considered one form of engaged teaching).
The community engagement component of different courses will vary depending on how the faculty member envisages the learning objectives that will be achieved. While one course might have a weekly service-learning component with a community partner (and be considered engaged teaching and service-learning), another might not involve direct contact with community but require students to understand, identify, or address an issue that affects individuals in the community (and be considered engaged teaching but not service-learning).
4. What, in your mind are critical factors for a successful integration of service into an academic course?
Successful integration involves careful thought on the part of the faculty member constructing the syllabus as to how the service learning or community engagement component helps to achieve course objectives. There also needs to be attention paid to integration strategies that connect the academic work in the classroom with the real-world experience in the community.
Included in the syllabus must be time and structures to enable students to process both experiences (classroom and community) and integrate components of each into the other experience. This yields a richer and more meaningful overall experience in both the classroom and the community. Good integration strategies help students further understand course content, learn from the community experience, develop critical thinking skills, develop values associated with citizenship, diversity, and civic responsibility and link community engagement and academic experiences.
Integration/reflection strategies can be formal, such as a structured paper, or informal, such as in-class discussion or activities. They could include regular journaling, a narrative account of a student’s weekly service experiences, small group discussion, class-wide discussion, in-class activities and exercises, assigned, structured reflection papers.
Integration strategies/ structured reflections might cover issues such as how is the service /community engagement component related to the course content, how is the student’s service work impacting the community, how is the student’s service work impacting them personally, what does it mean to be a citizen, what role should citizens play within the community, how can the skills learned in the particular class or discipline be applied for the betterment of community as a whole.
Creative modes of reflection/integration include:
- Telling: Reporting insights orally to others because storytelling is such a powerful way to share information with each other. Examples of telling include oral presentations and class discussions.
- Activities: activities and projects, which involve reflection through action, can also help students make meaning of their experiences. Interviewing, role playing and more experiential activities are examples of this mode of reflection.
- Multimedia: creative outlets of expression can be wonderful ways to reflect on experiences. Examples of this type of reflection include collages, drawings, photo or video essays, music, paintings, etc.
- Writing: Writing opportunities can take a variety of forms, including journal writing and directed reflection papers.
