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ALL ABOUT � MENTORINGA PUBLICATION OF SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE Issue 39 • Spring 2011 ALL ABOUT MENTORING Issue 39 • Spring 2011 2 Union Ave. Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-4390 518-587-2100 www.esc.edu Printed by SUNY Empire State College Print Shop ALL ABOUT MENTORING issue 39 spring 2011 Alan Mandell College Professor of Adult Learning and Mentoring Editor Karen LaBarge Faculty Development Projects “It is important to listen. My most frequent mistake Coordinator Associate Editor is trying to impose my point of view or other personal Gael Fischer expectation on a multifaceted world. When we set Designer out to improve life for others without a fundamental Debra Park Copy Editor understanding of their point of view and quality of experience, we do more harm than good. Often, little p h o t o g r a p h y Photos courtesy of Stock Studios, more is required than to listen. The best change is one and faculty and staff of SUNY Empire State College, that enables those with plugged ears to hear what the unless otherwise noted. so-called ‘voiceless’ have been voicing all along.” Cover image Carol Warner, “The Best of Everything,” 2006, mixed-media room installation. Lauren Reichelt, “Making Polarization a Last Resort,” p r o d u c t i o n Kirk Starczewski Tikkun, winter 2011, p. 63 � Director of Publications Ron Kosiba Print Shop Supervisor Janet Jones Keyboard Specialist College Print Shop Send comments, articles or news to: All About Mentoring c/o Alan Mandell SUNY Empire State College 325 Hudson St., 5th Floor New York, NY 10013-1005 646-230-1255 [email protected] Special thanks to: Gail Stanback who provided valuable help for Justin Giordano’s piece, “Music in Our Times” (p. 15-16) in All About Mentoring 38. Mary Folliet for Judt research and reflection. Yvonne Murphy for ongoing help and insight. Jacque Dixon for last-minute aid. 1 Table of Contents Editorial – The Expertise of Humility . .2 My Lost Stories . .55 Alan Mandell Steve Lewis, Hudson Valley Center Imagination and Art: Children Cope with War . .3 Reflections on a Journey of Learning to Adjust My Blind Spot 57 Judith Gerardi, Metropolitan Center and Heidi Nightengale, Central New York Center Center for International Programs A Teacher Reflects: Learning About Student Leadership . .59 Mentoring: A Poet’s View . .11 Dianne Ramdeholl, The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Susan Jefts, Center for Distance Learning Center for Labor Studies Educating the Digital Citizen in the 21st Century . .13 Making Sense of Mexico: 1975-2010, Part I . .60 Nicola Marae Martinez, Center for Distance Learning Chris Rounds, Central New York Center Three Poems . .20 Found Things: Chansak Suwanchaichinda, Long Island Center Empire State College Objectives . .65 Debra Monte, Center for Distance Learning “Goin’ Mobile”: Designing for Mobility in Networked Social Spaces Changing Ways of Knowing for Transitioning Women . .21 A Review of a Special Issue of Open Learning 25(3), Jo Jorgenson, Rio Salado College Mobile Learning: Using Portable Technologies to Create New Learning . .69 “So They Will Honor You as a Human Being”: Indigenous Thomas P. Mackey, Center for Distance Learning Knowledge and the Practice of Mentoring . .26 Jeffrey P. Lambe, Long Island Center “Music never stops; it is we who turn away” A Review of Dear Maxine: Letters from the Unfinished Upstream Gallery Exhibit, “Collaboration is the Theme” . .28 Conversation with Maxine Greene, Edited by Robert Lake . 73 Mara Mills and Celest Woo, Hudson Valley Center Tina Wagle, School for Graduate Studies Yvonne Murphy, Central New York Center Mindy Kronenberg, Long Island Center Adult Education and Politics A Review of The Struggle for Democracy in Adult Education, Blended Learning Online: New Perspectives and Practices . .31 Edited by Dianne Ramdeholl, Tania Giordani, Thomas Heaney Sheila Marie Aird and Mary V. Mawn, and Wendy Yanow . .75 Center for Distance Learning Richard Wells, The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies The Haiku Maker . .34 Robert Congemi, Northeast Center Innovation, Disruption and Higher Education: Is There a Road Map for the Future? � Mentoring: A Social Relationship, An Academic Partnership . 41 A Review of Works by Clayton Christensen . 78 � John M. Beckem II, Center for Distance Learning Christopher Whann, Metropolitan Center Interiors – Installations . .43 Honoring George Drury (1917-2010): Carol Warner, Metropolitan Center Reflections From Colleagues . .83 Jim Anderson, Ken Cohen, Lloyd Lill and Wayne Willis, Lessons of War . .47 Genesee Valley Center Elaine Handley and Claudia Hough, Northeast Center Core Values of Empire State College . .86 Education and Individualism: Some Notes, Some Questions . 53 Carla R. Payne, Union Institute and University, and Community College of Vermont suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011 2 and expansion of what is “scholarly,” but, had a question about it, or trying to just e d i t o r i a l bottom line, even as so-called “mentors,” hang in there to find the learning we sense we just didn’t want to give it all up. We’re is lurking somewhere in a student’s work scholars – of some sort – damn it! experience, or going back and forth, and then again, with a group of colleagues in an We have learned that the qualities and effort to revamp some procedural matter, expressions of meaningful mentorial or staring at a screen struggling to find just expertise at our college (and at other the right phrase to capture our judgment colleges with core values similar to ours) are about the outcome of a student’s work? incredibly hard to articulate and, for sure, Do we genuinely take these activities to to regularly practice. And our difficulties be part of our scholarly lives? Do we ever are only made rougher by the slippery imagine in our heart-of-hearts that they are terrain of taken-for-granted assumptions appropriately academic and carrying them about the glow of the professor-as-expert. out is an expression of our expertise? It’s just not so easy to surrender, especially when confronted by the not so distant fear Our challenge is not to draw ever-finer that such a scholarly construction is all distinctions between teaching, service and that stands in the way of the loss of any scholarship because even within such an The Expertise kind of academic identity. When we’re ingrained tripartite model, we know that frightened, we desperately grab onto a more there is already a tacit hierarchy. Our of Humility conventional ideal. dilemma also cannot be reduced to one of workload, although without doubt, we have The question, however, shouldn’t go away: been bitten by this menace and its legacy “Nobody sticks a finger in an electric fan How, every day, sitting face to face with of unfairness for years. I’d argue that the to see what will happen. Conversely, a student or being online, or working with expertise of mentoring (in as much as we we have all we can think about.” a group, or taking a call – how, in any honor it at all) plays second fiddle because of these forms, can we – should we, as John Ashbery, “Zymurgy,” it is our own version of “care work,” a mentors – display what we know? As an in Planisphere, 2009 fantastic blend of the cognitive and the experimenting college, shouldn’t there be affective, a kind of experiential-emotional- an experimenting expertise? e depend on our expertise. intellectual labor that has been historically Indeed, we calibrate the degree I’d say this: The professorial strut is demeaned (so often as “women’s work”), W to which, in any given situation, tantalizing. Faculty pass along what they but is personally enriching, socially valuable our expertise is acknowledged, exercised, claim to know, develop curricula and and intellectually complex. deepened. And we worry, with good reason, whole programs based on their authority, Yes, of course, deskilling continues to occur about the myriad ways in which what we produce research that assures their pedigree, in many areas of labor (teaching at all think we do best is ignored, denigrated or and are rewarded for their single-minded levels included), but we shouldn’t confuse just plain thinned out. Why learn all that commitment to their scholarly vocation. deskilling with the true skills necessary to we have learned if we’re not even given the Professors are deemed authentic; they take carry out a complex and difficult faculty space, the time, the encouragement to strut pride in and expect recognition for their role and the deep learning demanded to our stuff? labors and fight for their time. do it well. We shouldn’t use our fantasy Yet, from the very start, Empire State And I’d also say this: The mentorial strut of the professorial strut as the criterion to College has been confused about what is harder to recognize let alone act on, judge an on-goingly experimental mentoring legitimate strutting should be all about. exactly because the lure of the professorial expertise that rests much more on our What kind of strutting, if any, is appropriate is so strong. Can it ever be that responding nuanced responses to not knowing, to our for mentors to do? We didn’t come to to a student’s difficulty in organizing her commitment to listening, and, overall, to a this place, did we, to become the kinds thoughts, or confusion about what new tradition of strong academic caring, than to of experts we would be if we were on the studies he should take up, or worries about the arrogance of claiming “I know it and faculty at a Research I institution, or even how her kids are responding to her many you surely don’t.” Our distinctive mentoring at a more conventional four-year liberal hours in front of the computer – that we strut is one that, in a most intricate turn, arts school? But, at the same time, did we truly believe that attention to these matters embeds our expertise in humility – a expect to be mired in what some feel to has real academic significance? How about humility that we have to nurture together.

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