Category Archives: My New Favorite Thing

Thank you gifts: Wonderful Stuff to Share

Posted on May 6, 2013 by | Leave a comment

This week is my blog-a-versary, or whatever you’d call that, so today’s post is just great stuff that I want to share.

I am grateful for you, and for what you’ve allowed me to do over these past four years, and, well, I like to share cool things.

Enjoy.

  • The awesome women at MomsRising created the coolest online advocacy tool I’ve ever seen this year for Valentine’s Day. You could create a Valentine to send to your members of Congress, asking for stronger gun control laws. And, as you’ll see, you can ‘decorate’ it electronically, making it the perfect advocacy project for, say, a 30-something mom and her 4.5-year-old daughter who loves hearts and sparkles. THIS is how you do advocacy with parents, people–asking them to take 3 minutes to do something fun with their children that teaches critical messages about social change. They’re going to the top of the end-of-the-year donation list again.
  • This American Life really outdid itself with the two-part series on Harper High School in Chicago. I am, actually, a TAL fanatic, guilty of using up almost all my data minutes just for streaming TAL on my phone, but this feature on the impact of gun violence on teenagers in Chicago, and on a school in particular, was extraordinarily gripping. It provoked an extra 3 miles on the treadmill because I couldn’t stop listening. Yes, that good.
  • I get posts from epolitics delivered to my email inbox and, while I don’t often share them here, because it’s a bit beyond the niche of this blog, I’m really fascinated by the research analyzing the role of social media and online engagement in shaping how Americans do politics, today, and what that means for all of us, tomorrow. Plus, it helps me understand what wonky tech people are talking about.
  • IREHR, always good for a buzz kill. On Kansas Day this year (yes, there’s a day, people; we celebrate it in school), my good friend Lenny was asked to speak about racism and anti-Semitism in Kansas history. And that’s what makes him, and the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which he heads, so important. They remind us of the parts of ourselves we’d rather forget, so that, in remembering, we have a chance to overcome. More than a few times, he’s pointed out how a given politician I’m trying to build an alliance with is a radical with ties to white nationalism. On a road trip once, he pointed out a Christian Identity trucking company. It’s a big burden to carry, this immersion in the nasty sides of everything, but he does it for our own good. And I’m grateful.
  • The award for best email subject line ever goes to Communities Creating Opportunities’ 2013 Covenant for Families initiative, which sent me an action alert this spring titled, “Woe to those who make unjust laws.” That is an awesome use of the prophet Isaiah. Even better is what they’re doing to engage people of faith in social justice work, now across the state of Kansas, where we can use some woe-bringing.
  • Having a great state representative is pretty terrific, really. I am so glad to call Representative Barbara Bollier my elected official. She’s smart, hard-working, and not afraid to take stands on controversial issues. She’s also extremely accessible and quite selfless. Yes, there are still really good people willing to run for office. And I’m glad.

Is there anything you’d like to share, in the cause of well-wishing? The only thing better than my list of wonderful stuff is that list with yours added to it.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , , ,

Stuff I love

Posted on February 14, 2013 by | 2 Comments

I’ve never been too into Valentine’s Day.

My husband and I don’t celebrate it; he rejects any holiday “created by the greeting card industry”. And I don’t object.

It falls in the middle of February, when I’m traditionally both loathing the cold weather and immersed in a brutal legislative session.

And, now, it means that my kids get showered with chocolate, which I then have to avoid during my late nights working.

But, still, we can all use more love these days.

So, in the spirit of today, here’s a list of stuff I love. I’m hoping you’ll add some stuff you love, too.

  • Ami Musa’s Pinterest site: UNICEF created this fictional site, somehow managing to remind Pinterest users what real need looks like, without alienating the platform. It’s brutal, but also really poignant and pretty beautiful.
  • Public libraries: Not a new one, I know, but has anyone noticed how much cooler public libraries are now? I appreciate being able to pay my fines online, but I also have an app for requesting titles (and renewing them), social media platforms to get book lists from librarians, and invitations to really interesting discussions just about every week.
  • The Political Social Worker: What is not to love about a blog dedicated to macro social work that relies on a lot of crowd-sourcing for good ideas and includes such uplifting posts as a review of the “50 worst state legislatures”? I value Rachel’s voice.
  • DREAMers, especially their powerful commitment to fight for legal status for their parents, and their inspiring testament to the love and respect they have for those–often vilified–who brought them to the U.S.
  • Speaking of inspiring, Robert Egger’s announcement that he’s moving across the country to take his model of reclaiming food to build a movement of empowerment and opportunity, after 25 years of working that model in Washington, DC, makes me feel like a slacker. And really honored to say that I know him. Here’s to never resting on one’s laurels.
  • The inexorable march towards marriage equality: Every time my youngest son scowls when we drive past Chik-Fil-A (on his own accord–he overheard us talking about it one day!), I think, really, we’re moving beyond this. I don’t know how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule, but I’m not sure, a decade from now, how much it will matter. Sometimes, the arc of the universe bends enough, and this one is inevitable. I hope these guys are still alive to see it.
  • Efforts to bring good food to people who need it, affordably, like Kansas City’s Beans and Greens program. Obesity is a crisis, and every family should be able to feed its children, well.

What do you love, this Valentine’s Day?

→ 2 Comments

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

I pretty much totally love this

Posted on January 22, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I learned about the GreatNonprofits site from Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.

Initially, the way that it was described, I thought that it was mostly another aggregator of nonprofit financial information, an attempt to equate nonprofit efficiency with ‘excellence’.

But I was intrigued by a tag about it being like a Yelp for nonprofits, and I was pretty psyched by what I discovered.

Best things about GreatNonprofits?

  • Highlighting volunteer, staff, donor, and even client stories, with an understanding that data don’t have to be numbers, and that people’s experiences matter
  • The use of the phrase ‘impact’ at least three times, in my initial review–we still need to arrive at collective understanding of what that means, and what it looks like, but familiarizing ourselves with the term is a great place to start
  • This request for people to share their ratings of nonprofit organizations: “You contribute a valuable public service when you write a review. You are not only helping others learn about this nonprofit. You are also helping the nonprofit improve its programs with your feedback. The best nonprofits are those that are continually listening and learning.”
  • An active effort to promote the ‘best’ nonprofits, which adds a level of curating that makes the site more valuable–GreatNonprofits highlighted, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, “nonprofits that are on the ground and highly rated”, and the site had a list of user-recommended feeding programs for people in poverty, following Paul Ryan’s photo op at a soup kitchen

There aren’t many advocacy organizations listed, or very many organizations with advocacy-related content, but, since the site is largely user-generated, I think we can change that! Overall, I find it refreshing and encouraging, and I have enjoyed adding content and browsing organizations–including locally–that my family and I should consider supporting.

Nonprofit marketing folks, have you tapped into GreatNonprofits? Are you encouraging your donors and volunteers to rate you there? Have you had people find their way to you through the site? What do you feel is the greatest contribution of a site like this? What concerns do you have about these data?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged

It’s only 4 months until spring school board elections!

Posted on December 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Yes, I know, a lot of people are still recovering from the 2012 Presidential election. People who watch television tell me that it’s really nice to be able to do so without relentless political advertisements.

Me?

I’m thinking about our local and school board elections, set for the beginning of April (just 4 months from now!), and about how, especially in these smaller races that don’t receive nearly the same media attention, the ways in which we communicate about the issues, and the candidates, and the importance of voting are even more critical.

And that got me thinking back to a study in the journal Nature (which always makes me think about the time my friend Tim had a paper published in Science, and told me that all the best journals have just one name, I guess kind of like Madonna?), about the impact of social media posts on people’s political activities and even their opinions. The big-time science-y types who get published in Nature did a study that included everyone who visited Facebook in the U.S., ages 18 and older, on Election Day 2010 (61 million adults). They found that political messages in a social context influenced not just users but also other friends who also saw them. Critically, the effect of the social transmission–the fact that the messages were delivered through a social network–mattered more than the content of the messages themselves. If we see those patterns hold up in future elections, you just may be saved some of those political television ads in the future.

For methodology types, here’s a little more detail on how it worked.

Most Facebook users that day saw a “social message”, encouraging them to vote. It gave them a link to local polling places, and clickable button that said “I voted”. They could see how many people had clicked the button on a counter, and which of their friends had done so. But the remaining 2 percent saw something different. Half of them saw everything the same except WITHOUT the pictures of their friends–the information, but without the ‘social’. The other half saw nothing. When they compared the three groups, in such a large sample size, the scientists found that the messages mobilized people to express their desire to vote by clicking the button, and the social ones even spurred some to vote. These effects rippled through the network, affecting not just friends, but friends of friends. (Best part alert): By linking the accounts to actual voting records, they estimated that tens of thousands of votes eventually cast during the election were generated by this single Facebook message. It was an increase of 0.39% in voting probability, just by seeing the social message. As the analysis of the study cited, “Facts only mattered when paired with social pressure.” Furthermore, when they crunched the ‘friends’ into more precise types–close friends, with whom Facebook users interact frequently, versus the more ‘regular’ connections with whom one might not have much (or any) face-to-face interaction, they found that the size of effects varied as one might expect. The more distant ‘friends’ influenced the odds that someone clicked the “I voted” button, but not the likelihood that a user investigated his/her polling place or went to vote.

Without the institutional subscription that I enjoy, you won’t be able to read the whole article, so here are the pretty cool points:

  • Nearly all the transmission occurred between ‘close friends’ who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship, and the effects were strongest there. It makes sense–I may get annoyed when my neighbor or my cousin post political content that I don’t agree with, but I don’t/can’t walk away from them. And if someone I respect points me towards information of which I am skeptical, it makes me think twice.
  • The effects weren’t just on expression–what people posted themselves–but also on information-gathering (who goes to look for what information) and actual voter turnout. Those latter effects were more modest, but, still, with some of the razor-thin election margins we’ve seen recently, even small effects matter.
  • The messenger matters–we know that it’s not just the quality of one’s information, but also the trustworthiness and relational power of the person(s) delivering it.
  • Scale matters, A LOT. The messages themselves and the friends who shared their activity, collectively, accounted for about 0.14% of all the votes cast during the 2010 election. That’s more than 280,000 votes, from one Facebook message.
  • One of the coolest things, to me, about this study, is how ‘real’ it is. People didn’t know that they were part of an experiment. They were just doing what they do every day–spending some time on Facebook–and, in the process, shaping their own (and their friends’, and even their friends’ friends’) political behavior. The implications are significant.

And, again, this was for a mid-term congressional election that was, after all, a pretty big deal. Most people, arguably, knew it was happening. There were many other messages in the arena, about the same election.

What about those smaller elections, where, if we knew what our friends were doing and knew that they would know what we, in turn, were doing (or not), we could see, maybe a few dozen votes in an area that we normally wouldn’t, in elections with historically very poor turnout?

Maybe we need some experiments of our own, four months from now.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , ,

Measuring the Networked Nonprofit

Posted on December 3, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I recently read Beth Kanter’s new book (with coauthor Katie Delahaye Paine): Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.

For me, it was even richer in applicable content and nonprofit inspiration than The Networked Nonprofit, maybe because I am sort of an evaluation geek, or maybe because it’s exciting to see how the field is advancing, and how much more we know about how working in new ways can advance nonprofit missions.

I will be working some of my favorite pieces from the book into posts over the next several weeks–I have sticky notes with citations all over my desk at this point–but, here, in this season of giving, I have some key concepts from the book and an offer to give away the extra copy of it I bought, to one randomly-selected person who leaves a comment about an evaluation question to which they wish they had the answer, for their nonprofit organization’s work.

The best part about the book is the way that it simultaneously demystifies and exalts measurement and learning. Here, it is accessible and valued, integral, but not scary. While a lot of the tips and tools help people think about how to measure what they’re doing with social media, really, the evaluation approach is valuable far beyond that aspect of nonprofit operations.

To get you thinking about measurement within your organization, think about:

  • Networked nonprofits measure failure first. Failure is more interesting, in some ways, and studying it can yield tremendous insights, if we learn not to avert our eyes.
  • We should experiment. When was the last time you deliberately tried something out, within your nonprofit, to see how it would work? If we weren’t afraid to fail, and if we started with questions we want to learn, then we would. The book has some very specific questions to identify opportunities to experiment with research questions and methods. I’d love to hear what you try.
  • Key performance indicators are what really matters. We have to figure out what we really want to know, and measure that, with a laser focus and a blind eye to much of the rest. As the authors say, “likes on Facebook is not a victory–social change is.” We have to be careful not to confuse means with ends, and this book helped me with that very important lesson.
  • Knowing more can improve our quality of life and that elusive ‘balance’, if we use data to figure out what we should really prioritize, instead of trying to do everything that sounds like a good idea. What headline would you most like to read about your work? Aim at that, and, probably, other things aren’t really that important.
  • It really is awesome to learn what evaluation and measurement can teach us. As one of the nonprofit leaders quoted in the book said, it’s really fascinating to learn what is fascinating to other people. That’s what measurement can tell us. We should care how many people like our Facebook status or follow our blog or sign up for our action alerts, not because it’s innately interesting that they did those specific things, but because that tells us something really fundamental about what people care about, and what they’re willing to do about the things they care about.

There’s a cool peer learning site that accompanies the book, definitely worth checking out as you make initial forays into measuring your social reach and real impact. If you’re still skeptical, read the list on p. 45. If you’re still, still skeptical, read some of the inspiring case studies about organizations that get it, and how measurement is making a difference for them.

You’ll become a measurement geek, too.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , , ,

How America Advocates

Posted on November 29, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Have you seen this infographic on philanthropy in the United States?

It has received a ton of attention, with some really fascinating ‘slices’ of the data, including this piece on whether ‘red’ or ‘blue’ states are most generous, in terms of the percentage of income contributed to charitable causes. (Of course, there are some obvious distortions there, particularly that religious/sectarian organizations receive a large share of charitable contributions in the U.S., so, without an ability to parse out giving to non-sectarian entities, ‘generosity’ can be conflated with ‘religiosity’, even though they are really measuring somewhat different constructs.)

There was an article in my local paper about how one quite poor census tract was pretty extraordinarily generous, and the data came from this same report.

I love data, I love people giving their money to help others, so this is quite fun for me.

But what I’d REALLY like?

The same sort of map, but with information about how, and where, people engage in advocacy on behalf of causes they care about.

We have voter data, of course, on the same scale: who votes, how often, and for whom.

But what I want to know is what advocacy looks like, both because I’m just curious about how civic and political engagement play out across the country, and because I think that kind of data would lay the foundation for really important studies of the quality of policies that emerge in different areas depending on the level of advocacy, and, maybe, how voter engagement fares where there is more policy interaction, too.

Maybe the raw data would be communication generated to members of Congress, because that could be trackable, and number of non-corporate registered lobbyists in the state, and maybe some local measures, like participation at city council meetings. Maybe we could roll in referenda, too, in the states that allow them. It would require many different data sources, obviously, since ‘advocacy’ takes so many different forms, and no one measure could adequately capture them. It would be subjective to a considerable degree, and certainly miss a lot of activity that could be considered advocacy, but, again, the charitable giving measure isn’t perfect, either, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t tremendously valuable information there.

I haven’t found any sort of ‘advocacy aggregation’, in my search to date, but I would be beyond delighted if someone knows of data sources (or, even better, something that’s already analyzed!) to point me towards.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about what we can learn from these data on charitable giving–since donors are obviously people who are at least somewhat attuned to the needs of others, and willing to make an investment to meet them–to continue to explore the fundraising/advocacy link, in our organizations and within the sector.

Besides, the map is super fun.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , ,

It’s not just for crafting…Pinterest and Advocacy

Posted on November 19, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Image by Mashable

I don’t post too much anymore about social media and technology and nonprofit advocacy.

Mainly, that’s because there are people who are way smarter than I am at that, and so I just learn from them. I also don’t have nearly as much time to play around with new tools as I wish I did, because of consulting and teaching and parenting. And, truly, I’m pretty comfortable these days in some of my social spaces online–Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, this blog.

I am sure that there is more I could be doing with each of those, but I’m getting essentially the outcomes I hope for, connecting with great people, and learning new things.

I came across this post, though, on Have Fun Do Good, about Pinterest and nonprofits, and I just have to share…and weigh in with a few advocacy-specific ideas, too.

I am not much of a ‘pinner’. I spend a little time on Pinterest, but, truly, it makes me feel woefully inadequate. I would love to whip up fantastic, healthy meals for my kids that feature radishes shaped like farm animals (actual recipe I saw pinned last week) or use recycled paper to make a fabulous centerpiece for my table.

I would. Really.

But I take care of my four kids all day long and then work as a consultant and professor until about 1AM. I squeeze in some blogging in the (really) early morning hours. And then I wake up at 5:30AM and do it all over again.

Hence, no creative uses of chalkboard paint around here.

And I’d never really considered Pinterest as an advocacy platform, until I read that post, followed the links to different examples, and played around with some ideas about what it might look like in my work.

The key ‘lightbulb’ moment for me is that Pinterest is all about the visual.

And there is so much in advocacy that is visual, or should be.

Pinterest forces people to show, in photographs or graphics or illustrations, what they want people to see. And painting those sorts of mental pictures is a huge part of the task in advocacy, to get others to view the world through the same lens, so to speak.

So there are inspiring examples of Pinterest to capture attention for the plight of California’s state parks, to raise money for a cause, or, really, just tell their stories (in pictures).

And I am now convinced:

There are tremendous opportunities on Pinterest for advocates.

We have images to share: children who are hungry, children who are thriving, neighborhoods that are blighted, programs that are working. We have graphs that show the impact of new tax policies, the effect of nutrition policies on infant mortality, and the racial academic achievement gap. We have maps that demonstrate that distribution of resources is not random. We can show individuals’ stories in photographs, and we can invite people to share their own images, about what justice would look like, what they love about community, or what their hopes are for their children. I remember a photo journalism activity I did with some immigrant youth several years ago, about their families and what it means to them to be migrants. What if we had had the ability to pin those images and share them?

But, like any social media outlet, I’m interested in Pinterest not just for who it could help us reach, but also for what using it would mean for us, for our ability to tell our stories in a compelling way and for the curation that we need to do in order to be effective advocates. And that’s where I think Pinterest is particularly promising, because it could allow nonprofits to connect with those who may not be die-hard supporters, but who are drawn to some of the images that we share.

And that means that we’ll have to get good at communicating with those who don’t necessarily see the world in the same way, so that we can tell a story, in pictures, together. We’ll have to pare down what we know, so that it comes across powerfully, passionately…visually.

And maybe pick up some holiday decorating ideas while we’re there. No harm in that.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , ,

Studies in translation

Posted on September 27, 2012 by | 2 Comments

One of my new projects is a bit of a different approach for me, more directly bridging my pseudo-academic pursuits and my applied advocacy practice.

I am working with the Assets in Education Initiative, an effort of the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare, to produce some materials and provide some advising, towards their aim of making their academic research ‘resonate’ more in the policy arena.

I have some thoughts, and some questions, as I approach these challenges, but, mainly, I want to start by pointing out what should, perhaps, be obvious:

It is super awesome that they are doing this.

How often do we academics (including the just pseudo-ones, like me) read academic literature–others’ or our own–and think, “this has profound implications for policy”, without, perhaps, giving much thought to the unlikelihood that any real policymakers or influencers will ever see it?

How often do we look at a policy and smack our fists against our foreheads, because OF COURSE it’s not going to work, given what we have learned about XYZ issue in the past 30 years of research. It’s like the state legislators haven’t even SEEN the research on the short tenures of stay on TANF and the importance of higher education as a work activity.

Because they haven’t.

My own students lament the fact that, having been trained to look to peer-reviewed literature for trustworthy information about best practices, connections between social problems and interventions (that can form the backdrop of a theory of change), and credible support for the changes they want to pursue…they then find, post-graduation, that they can’t even afford access to the journals on which we tell them to rely.

So I’m struck by the insight, and the humility, with which my new colleagues at AEDI are approaching this ‘next step’ in their work. They recognize that we have learned enough, in the past two decades, to know that helping low-income households accumulate assets can have significant impact on their behavior and even their thinking. They have been part of demonstrating the potential of these interventions through demonstration projects and numerous rigorous research efforts.

The next step:

Leveraging that base of knowledge, and the passions of those who have seen lives transformed through this asset-based approach to fighting poverty and reducing economic inequality, to win policy changes that can take these ideas to scale.

I hope this is just the first I’ve seen of a trend in academic researchers thinking hard about how to translate their ideas for policymakers, media consumption, and advocate empowerment. And, not just thinking about it, but dedicating resources, within their research budgets, to bridge that gap.

Some of the items we’ll undertake are already spelled out, but I am crowdsourcing this a bit, too, and I’d love to hear from those of you on the advocacy side–what do you wish you had, in order to carry academic studies that you find promising to a policymaker audience? And those who are researchers–where are your greatest challenges, in terms of figuring out ‘hooks’ to make your knowledge accessible by those in the policymaking arena?

Thank you, in advance, for your help in this decoding.

There’s no Rosetta Stone for this kind of translation for policy impact.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , , , ,

In search of elusive collective impact

Posted on September 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This summer, I spent a lot of my time working on a sort of landscape assessment of the advocacy capacity–individually and collectively–of organizations working to combat obesity and support healthy eating and active living in the Kansas City area.

It was a tremendously exciting project, for me–a chance to learn more about work happening in an area that I care about but have relatively little experience in, and an opportunity to try out some of the tools I’ve been reading about, like a new network mapping system and a different method of analyzing coalition advocacy capacity.

For me, that passes for absolutely thrilling. Seriously.

I may have some other insights from this work to share in the future, but, for today, I want to highlight what was an unexpected development:

Everyone was talking about collective impact.

OK, so not technically everyone.

But, where I was expecting to have to prod folks into thinking, not about what their own capacity looks like or how they leverage that towards policy change, but, instead, how their capacity fits with that of others in the field, for greatest combined impact…

They were already there.

Several informants (I interviewed almost 40 people working in the field) talked about things like the need for shared metrics and a common vision, the importance of a network mentality so that individual organizations’ capacities were truly available to others, and the need for ‘backbone’ organizations that can catalyze a field approach.

They didn’t have the answers, certainly. It’s one thing to know that we need complementary skills and strategies AND the will to use them collaboratively, and another thing to really make that happen.

But they’re thinking about it. And talking about it.

And hoping for help–from foundations (who can fund in ways that encourage consideration of combined contribution, rather than individual attribution), from consultants (who can help them to map the capacities of others and focus on their best ‘niche’ in the network), and from each other (because impact is, after all, what we should all be in this business for).

I can’t definitely prove that this attention to collective impact comes from this Stanford Social Innovation Review article, although more than one informant mentioned it (and one even emailed it to me after we spoke).

It’s definitely worth reading, though, if you haven’t.

And I’d love to hear from you, today.

First, what about collective impact? What would it look like, in the field where you work? What would it take to get there?

And, second, has there been an article that has really ‘echoed’ where you work? A particular way of thinking about organizational change, or capacity, or advocacy, or, really, anything, that has shaped how you and your colleagues see what you do, and what you need to do differently? I’d love to see it.

We mostly face complex problems that have multiple potential intervention points, in this world.

It seems that most of the quick ‘technical’ fixes already have been. Fixed, that is.

So it’s going to take thinking, and working, collectively, in order to get to the scale where we can make a difference.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary, My New Favorite Thing

Tagged , ,

Happy Week! The best things this blog has done for me

Posted on May 8, 2012 by | 2 Comments

It’s still Happy Week, and I’ve been thinking about the reasons that I started this blog in the first place, and what I hoped to get out of it, and what it–and, more importantly, the practice of writing it–has done for me over the past few years.

My life has changed a lot over the past 3 years; when I started the blog, the twins were still babies, I hadn’t really started consulting, and, of course, I had 3 kids instead of 4, none of whom were in school full-time.

But, in other ways, it hasn’t changed that much, really. My biggest challenge, then and now, is trying to balance my role as a mom and my passions as an advocate. I still feel pulled into direct advocacy, and then struggle with how family-unfriendly a life that revolves around media work and legislators’ needs is. I still get a huge thrill on the first day of a new semester (and feel like a graduating senior on the last day of class!). I still wish that I had more time to read blogs by really smart people, to get through the ever-growing list of titles to read in my calendar, and to eat a meal uninterrupted.

But, this week, I’m reflecting not just on how I have changed in the time since I started this blog, but also how it has changed me…or, in some cases, kept me from changing. The 6 (2 a year, no?) awesomest things, then, that this blog has done for me, in no particular order.

And, please, because it’s Happy Week: has it done anything even somewhat awesome for you? Would you be willing to share?

  • Kept me in touch with former students: It is truly a delight to get a comment from a student I had a few years ago, or to see a former student and hear that he/she has been impacted in some way by our ongoing relationship through the blog.
  • Expanded the walls of my classroom: While former students are much more engaged than current ones–likely because they no longer have so much reading to do for class!–it is a real asset to my teaching to be able to use the blog as an extension of a conversation we’re having in the classroom, or as a way to connect my students with other thinkers in and outside of the profession.
  • Introduced me to some insightful, passionate people: Some of my favorite people I have never met in ‘real-life’, yet I feel so blessed by the generous way they share their reflections, and even their guidance, online, in their own spaces and here.
  • Kept me engaged with scholarship: While I’d never pretend that my writing here is of peer-reviewed caliber, it is such good discipline for me to have to write, and read, regularly, in order to produce content for the blog. Especially with the demands of my family, teaching, and my consulting work, it would be so easy to let those practices slip by, and I believe that I would suffer, personally and professionally, for it.
  • Connected me to the social media sphere: I don’t think that I would have embraced social spaces online as thoroughly as I have without the blog; it was definitely my motivation to try Twitter, for example, and it complements my personal Facebook engagement, too. I can’t really imagine my life without those outlets, and those relationships, now, and so I’m grateful.
  • Given me an outlet: There’s no denying it; I’m happier now that my husband isn’t the only entity to whom I can vent about policies that are maddening, or rave about organizing campaigns that are inspiring. When I finish a book, I have something to DO, actually, with the sticky notes that I’ve littered it with. And that’s really therapeutic.

    Thank you, those who read and, in so doing, both enrich my thinking and justify my pursuit. YOU are, without a doubt, the awesomest of the awesome things that this blog has brought to me.

    Happy Happy Week, to you!

→ 2 Comments

Posted in My New Favorite Thing

Tagged ,