Category: Diversity
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Accessing Active Citizenship
Two years ago, I wrote about the member mentality and the Active Citizens Continuum which describes how our perspective on community engagement can change. When I was first introduced to active citizenship, I thought of it as “The Active Citizen” who collected all the badges for responsibility, justice, service, and social change. Becoming “The Active…
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Skills of Freedom
A year ago, I gave this assignment to students in my community engagement course: Select and practice one skill that you believe will support your own growth and freedom and/or your work for the freedom of others. Over the course of the semester, you will make a plan for practicing the skills, seek feedback from…
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What I Learned from “Teaching Race”
Continuing our commitment to anti-racist learning and action, Office of Community Engagement staff recently finished reading Teaching Race: Helping Students Unmask and Challenge Racism, by Stephen Brookfield and Assoc. (2018). This was our second shared reading after Teaching to Transgress. One of the tools I gleaned from the book was Coggle, an online mind-mapping tool.…
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Fall 2020 Book Report
Those who know me personally know I love to read. I once created a Facebook album (back when those were a thing) just of photos of me reading. Early in the pandemic, I even recreated some classic book covers with whatever I could find around my house. So when we decided that one of OCE’s…
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Learning to Transgress
How do I tell the story of five Office of Community Engagement colleagues reading bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress? I can tell you that the setting was a weekly Zoom discussion, sometimes infiltrated by the sounds of air conditioners and flashes of ‘UNSTABLE INTERNET CONNECTION.’ The story takes place in 2020 in the midst of…
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Money Matters
For the last five months I have been working to make sustainable anti-racism changes in my life. Having read a lot of internet lists about actions to take, one item that stood out was banking locally and with Black-owned banks. Here was something I could do to put my financial power to good use, and…
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Celebrating Active Citizenship
Closing her letter to students this year, Melody Porter, Director of The Office of Community Engagement, wrote: Your actions this year and throughout your lives are powerful. We are so impressed and glad to be community with so many people who have done the daily work of care and advocacy. You know that it has…
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Because of Community: Professor Jennifer Bickham Mendez
This post is written by Caitlyn Whitesell ’20, who serves as the communication intern for OCE. She interviewed Professor Jennifer Bickham-Mendez in Fall 2019. Professor Bickham-Mendez researches Latinx studies, race, class gender, social movements, and more in William & Mary’s sociology department. Through her research, she engages directly with the Williamsburg community to serve the…
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The Difference Community Makes
A few years ago, I asked the students in the Aim 4 community leadership program to write down three ways they are different because of their community experiences and three ways community is different because they engaged. As I was searching for notes to use at this afternoon’s Aim 4 meeting, I found the students’…
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What’s to Come in the Spring Timey Wimey
My freshman RA explained to us that Fall Semester winds down while Spring Semester winds up, with time seeming to speed up the closer to Graduation we are. Moving at regular speed, I’ve had the time to think about some of the things I am excited for this semester. MLK Social Justice and Service Program…