ICUCmE

Day-to-day details can make our jobs about us but often times I find myself needing to re-focus. Each of us does our work for different reasons: for money, for recognition, for the variety, for the satisfaction. In the end the work we do is about our consumers. It's easy to lose track of this, for me, anyway...

(And before anyone gets REALLY upset that I'm blowing off our rights as employees to have lives, to do our work and go home, etc., please know that I'm not. When several people in a month have expressed concern that work expectations are mere hoops, I think it's time to rethink/reframe a few things.)

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."
-- Aristotle

Of course we need to have our needs met too - don't get me wrong. But not maintaining a rigorous sense of excellence doesn't impact our needs nearly as much as it impacts our consumers' needs. We as service providers can afford not to strive for excellence - if our priorities are ourselves. We as service providers are in a privileged position in that sense. In fact, if you've never thought about this, you're experiencing a kind of privilege that Allan Johnson, in his book, Privilege, Power, and Difference, calls "the luxury of obliviousness" (p. 75). Basically the idea is this: people with privilege can afford not to consider their privilege.

It's not about us
I've recently had conversations with people in our unit about their work habits: punctuality, availability, skill development, etc. In each conversation the person asks me some form of this question: "What do you want from me?"

I often jump to a thought in my head that I'm not proud of: "I want you to do your job." (Dang that's hard to put out there.) Thoughts that come to mind: be on time, work while you're on work time, improve your skills - all of these details are sometimes my first reaction. (Also not easy to admit.) Why isn't my first reaction something akin to, "What do you want from you?" or "What do you think the consumer wants from you?" or "How do you think your actions contribute to our mission's sense of excellence?"

I need to re-focus.

Then of course comes the rejoinder. And since I've inkled enough to set us off down the path of defensiveness and details, it's full of resignation: "I'll jump through your hoops if that's what you need me to do."

It's all so conceited.

It's about the consumer
Work expectations exist so the work we are committed to gets done. In for-profit business, the bottom line might be money or it might be widgets (productivity). For us, the bottom line is different - in fact, it's not really our bottom line at all. "Our" bottom line is consumers' access to the opportunities that the rest of us (privileged people) take for granted. Here in ICU, our bottom line is our mission - it's how well we're meeting the consumer's needs.

So here are some questions/ideas I'm thinking about as a result of these conversations and my reflection on them:

• Imagine your work from the consumer perspective, what does your work look like?
o Your service provision
o Your punctuality
o Your improvement or lack thereof
o Your self-awareness
o Your willingness to do better
• Who gets to define all of these things? Why?
• Who should define these things?
Oppression happens at the intersection of power and privilege. As service providers, we often find ourselves at that intersection. What we do when we're there is critical...for the consumer.

As hearing service providers, we have privilege that our consumers do not. We use that privilege sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly both to benefit and to oppress our consumers:
• Do we prep?
• Are we on-time for assignments?
• Do we assert our needs as professionals?
• Are we lackadaisical about workplace work rules?
• Do we care?
• Do we think we're the victim of a bad supervisor?
• Do we accept or shirk responsibility?

One of the keys here for me is the distinction between intentionally and unwittingly. I know I need to be more aware of how I'm thinking about the work I (we) do in this unit. And I need to be more reflective and self-aware of my "unwittinglies". This month I've had good intentions in the accountability department but my approach has been less than intentional/aware.

I'll do better. Will you?

Heard in grad level class: a school is diverse because of high percentage of reduced price lunch students and few white students...

Posted via email from scottethan's posterous

"I'm sorry, but on behalf of the School of Youdontbelonghere I need to tell you that we're not willing to lift a finger to help create access to our knowledge and the opportunity that comes along with it."

That's essentially the message from a school on campus today. We asked for a file format that we could work with so we could add captions to video material for a Deaf student enrolled in the course. (Note: The student is now FIVE weeks behind.) They didn't even ask what was involved in "doing their part". They didn't even ask how long it would take.

I'm as guilty as the next person of the bad practice of making assumptions but when denying someone access to a University course...? I'd like to think that before making that decision, I might ask a few more questions.

Dang people! We all got-ta work together to make this happen. We can't just expect that we're gonna share our brilliance with the world - or at least with the part of the world that's easiest to share it with based on our own privilege - and ignore our responsibilities to "those other people". When a U student with a disability asks for access to information for a course, it's not acceptable to say "Not it." We ALL have responsibilities to make the U a place that welcomes the diversity that people of all abilities bring with them.

Posted via email from scottethan's posterous

Started Fall semester 1:1 meetings with ICU staff this week. These are great one hour spaces for dialogue and honesty that just fall by the wayside when we don;t formally schedule time to talk because we're busy running here and there to serve our consumers.

One thing I've been asking people is this: How's your committee work coming? I'm surprised by the similar answers I've received from most people. Even after each committee had the chance to meet during a staff meeting Monday, most people are still saying that they just need to find more time to meet.

Hmmm. Seems I haven't provided good support in the "what's a meeting for and how do I make it effective" department.

So anyway, in the spirit of making valuable meeting times more effective, here's a really short article highlighting a few things ICU committees can do to be more effective and more efficient:
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/managing/article/making-meetings-more-actionable-less-painful-behance-team

Happy reading...

scott

Really hoping we fund a gazzilion dollar football stadium in MN instead of education so I can do a "Family Fun Walk" every single Saturday morning from this Saturday until 2038 to raise money for my kids' schools. Assuming LGA stays in the toilet, of course.

Posted via email from scottethan's posterous

The 'O' word is the 'u' word (ubiquitous). What the heck?! I've become almost hyper-aware of the privilege and oppression around me recently. So much so that on the bus the other day, I sat and outlined almost all of what I hope will be a workshop on oppression including pieces about how service providers oppress DHH consumers, linguistic oppression, and how the DHH community oppresses its own members.

My most recent encounter -

We have a student taking a course that is a "hybrid" course: it's offered in-person as well as online with narrated PowerPoint presentations available to stream from the course's website. Those presentations aren't captioned and there is no silver bullet for the technological hoops we need to jump through to make the files even captionable. It's a necessary slog through a thicket of persnickety tech details which I will not go into here.

But here's my interaction. First, the instructor seems willing to help until we get to a point when I tell her that the department is responsible to get the presentations into a format that we can work with. Heels meet earth.

I tell her I understand it'll take time but I reassure her that we know what's necessary and we even know the workflow AND we're willing to share everything we know with her and her dept to make their learning curve a bit more gentle.

Heels become comfortable in earth.

Instructor doesn't like what I have to say so next email from her is to the department head (I'm cc'd). SO I call him. (And this is where it gets good...)

Totally nice man. Wants to talk through this thing. After hearing excuse after excuse about no money, no people, no time, AND after hearing the suggestion that the student just take an interpreter to class with her instead of working with the online material AND after listening to him defend his department because they're providing the class in multiple formats to help students and at some point you just have to throw your hands up and expect the student to take the option available to her, I say, "I don't think it's appropriate for one group of students to have one set of expectations and privileges while another group faces a different set of expectations and none of the same privileges."

The response: "I'm not getting into the equality issue here."

Oh my. You SO ARE getting into the equality issue here. In fact, you're standing smacked dab in middle of the equality bramble. Anybody see the 'O' word here? It's ok for hearing students to have options (live in-person lecture or online lectures) but the Deaf person should take what they can get??? Huh?

I could go on and on but if you're still reading even at this point, you're hoping this will wrap-up soon I suppose.

I'll end with an update. I called the department head today to follow-up. (The people he needed to talk with weren't in the office Friday and the whole thing had to wait until today.) He told me that after talking with his boss and the person in charge of their tech business, he had reassessed their responsibilities and was willing to assign a student worker to convert the audio files...if we would teach them.

So, we're on our way. Only about 20 hours of A/V to convert, caption, and deliver...and the captioning alone takes about 6 hrs per hour of audio.

Now leave me alone - I'm transcribing...hunt and peck style.

--scott

Thinking about Universal Design's relationship with privilege and oppression: What is it?
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Posted via email from scottethan's posterous