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Course Documents
Viewable from this section are a number of course documents that should give a closer look at what I am doing in my classes, and may suggest approaches that others want to explore. These items are here for sharing. If you find them helpful (or in need of revision!) I welcome your feedback.
A. Sample project lists from three past courses
B. Questionnaire designed to help students construct an organizational profile
C. Handouts aimed at explaining myself to my students
D. A guidance memo for students about end-of-semester reports
E. Forms for eliciting feedback about community placements
Each semester that I teach a fieldwork course, I produce a menu of potential projects that students may want to undertake in the class, and it gets distributed during the first week of the semester. Few law students have current contacts with community-based organizations, and they generally appreciate having suggestions provided. At the same time, I always invite students to propose their own alternatives if they like. I want course projects to be genuinely exciting for each student, and I want to avoid having anyone feel restricted or hampered by the options I list, especially since many of them reflect my own interests and past collaborations.
Students are informed that community groups must give their approval before assignments are final. Potential partners are likewise warned that being listed on a course menu is not a guarantee that their project will end up being selected by a student or a team. Each semester there are projects listed on the menu that do not get chosen, and almost each semester I have one or more students who bring their own “off menu” proposals to the class.
1. Project menu for a course on welfare reform
This first menu was developed for a course I co-taught with visiting sociologist and Appalachian Studies elder, Helen Lewis in Spring 1997. The theme of the course was welfare reform, so all the projects and possibilities that we listed on the menu were related in one way or another to that issue. (At the time, Tennessee was just launching its version of welfare reform in the wake of sweeping federal legislation that abolished the previous entitlement program for poor single mothers and replaced it with a new system of temporary aid aimed at moving welfare recipients into paid employment. Tennessee’s new program under this regime is called Families First.) Note that the class included both law students and graduate students from a number of other social science and professional fields. The projects reflect that breadth.
To view the menu for the welfare class, click here.
2. Project menu for a course on immigration in Tennessee
The second menu posted here is from a course that was organized a little differently. The class was made up of law students only. Rather than assign students to separate free-standing projects, I decided to declare that the class as a whole would constitute an investigative team. Our goal was to explore a new phenomenon then (and still) unfolding in Tennessee: the arrival of a new population of Latina/Latino immigrants in a region long unaccustomed to foreigners in its midst. We worked with various networks of people in the community. Many students worked on multiple projects, and many of their specific efforts overlapped and intertwined, with the result that the whole project felt more like a single group undertaking than my field classes usually do.
The web page discussed in this menu document did get created -- by a team of students with and without prior web experience. In fact, it is still up on my university’s server, where viewers are welcome to visit it at <web.utk.edu/~tnlatina/>. If you visit, you will immediately see that the site cries out for updating and “refilling,” an effort that may yet happen, but is still presently on hold. At present the site represents an archive only, a snapshot in time. Warning notices are posted on each page accordingly. One clear lesson I took from the experience is that maintenance costs can be substantial on a site that requires any significant updating.
To see the menu for this class on new immigration in Tennessee, click here.
3. Project menu for a course on social justice lawyering
The third menu is taken from a later course whose theme was broadly lawyering for social justice. There are trade-offs in choosing such a general theme. It is more difficult to plan readings and class activities that bridge disparate projects, and the teams have less common ground on which to construct helpful dialogue about what they are encountering in the field. On the other hand, a broader theme allows students to learn from each other about a greater variety of issues, and it can sometimes create an opportunity for productive comparisons and contrasts. It also accommodates a wider range of interests from students who are considering signing up for the course, with a favorite interest they want to pursue, and it allows the teacher more freedom to tailor certain projects to the strengths and interests of individual students.
To see the menu for the social justice course, click here.
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