{"id":1009,"date":"2023-02-03T10:13:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T18:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/teaching-in-dornsife\/?page_id=1009"},"modified":"2023-02-06T13:49:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T21:49:47","slug":"blog-post-5","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/teaching-in-dornsife\/faculty-blog\/blog-post-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Make a Plan, Throw It Out, Make a New Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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When plans go by the wayside, there is potential for opportunity and growth<\/em><\/h5>\n

By Ben Pack – March 26, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

In community engagement and experiential learning, even the best plans go sideways. That can get frustrating, but those moments are often ripe for growth. When I helped found a writing workshop for former prisoners with my colleagues in the Writing Program (Emily Artiano, Stephanie Bower, and John Murray) we thought the population we were serving would want help on resumes and cover letters. Nope. They were creative writers interested in essays, short stories and poetry. While scrambling to adapt, we\u2019d show up some weeks and discover that just a single community member had come.<\/p>\n

When Emily Artiano and I began expanding a writing and community engagement course last year, we brought students to a day shelter on Skid Row to record for Miracle Messages, a non-profit that helps reconnect people experiencing homelessness to their lost loved ones. We set up a table and sat there, in a gymnasium sized room with a handful of students and fifty or so men spread across the space in their separate worlds, watching the morning news from a TV blasting in the corner. No one came to talk to us.<\/p>\n

In the week before spring break, as Covid-19 began to spread across the country and USC moved classes online, I kept making plans, and then new plans with my community partners. A group of my students who work with the literacy non-profit 826LA were supposed to have a scholarship day on Saturday March 14th to help local high school students write essays for college. I found myself parsing emails from the provost \u2013 did cancelling all \u201cuniversity-sponsored events, on and off campus\u201d apply to an event sponsored by our partner? Every day a new plan, and in the end, it didn\u2019t matter. LAUSD sent students home that Friday and the event was canceled outright, along with dozens of other events we had planned for the remaining semester.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I\u2019m heartbroken. I hate seeing months of effort go to zilch. On the other hand, service and experiential learning has always required flexibility and adaptation. Not everything can be controlled like a typical classroom, but problem solving on the spot is a feature, not a flaw: that\u2019s one way critical reasoning develops for my students, and it\u2019s been liberating for me as an instructor. Standing in front of a classroom, I used to think I had to have all the answers. When I didn\u2019t, I felt like a fraud. But working in the field with students has taught me that I don\u2019t need to be Mr. Answer-Man. Indeed, the class is best when I\u2019m collaborating with my students and community partners, and we\u2019re generating new answers by listening to one another. As someone who is supposed to be an expert, saying \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is scary, but it has also enabled me to move onto \u201cso, let\u2019s figure this out together.\u201d<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t pretend I\u2019m undaunted, but I am genuinely excited. For all of Covid-19\u2019s disruption, there are opportunities. The writing workshop with former prisoners? We\u2019ve been holding it digitally for two weeks now with professors, students, and community members all making it online. The day shelter on Skid Row? Miracle Messages and my students will be staffing a hotline (1-800-MISS-YOU) so our homeless neighbors can still reach out to their loved ones. The students? They started emailing me over break with great ideas. It\u2019s not the semester I envisioned on the first day of class, but I\u2019m optimistic it will still be a good one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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