Essay
Community Based Learning Assignment
OVERVIEW:
In simple terms, there are three forms of learning: content, experiential, and reflective. Throughout the course you have experienced each of these in multiple contexts. In this final essay, you will bring those experiences together to evaluate and articulate your role as a “change agent.” When finished, this essay will be a keystone in your ongoing leadership portfolio.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Review and understand prior learning (experiences inside and outside of the class) in-depth to reveal a broader perspective about your education.
Apply skills, abilities, and theories to evaluate changes in your own learning.
Use appropriate and relevant content to explore ideas and support your observations.
Use observations and conclusions to logically connect to a range of sources and cite them either in APA or MLA style.
GUIDELINES:
For your paper, you will answer the authors’ question on page 398 of “Leadership for a Better World”: “How can I apply the social change model as a guide for initiating and sustaining positive social change?”
To answer this well, you will need to draw upon your discussions, readings, and community experience over the course of the term.
To get started, think about the readings and experiences that were most challenging for you. Write down what was challenging and how you overcame those challenges. Those places are often where we have the most to learn.
All of the readings address the importance of developing self-awareness to be effective leaders. This essay is an opportunity to establish a practice of introspection and critical self-awareness. Use both your personal story telling voice as well as your academic voice.
Every observation should be connected to one of the seven “C”s. (change, citizenship, collaboration, common purpose, congruence, commitment and controversy with civility).
Remember when using quotes it is not enough to place them into the middle or at the end of a paragraph. You must explain to the reader why you think the quote supports your idea (i.e., what does the quote mean to you?).
Finally, be sure to end with why what you are saying matters. What do you want the reader to take away from your paper?
Essay Format: 4-5 pages (~1600 words), Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1 inch margins, double-spaced. When quoting, you may use either MLA or APA formatting for citations.
TysonLaurer
Prof. Dana Torrey
SINQ Leading Social Change
March 15, 2020
The Beach Community
The community engagement project that we worked on this term was an amazing way for
me to visualize the course content quite literally living and breathing throughout our world. It
was an experience for us to see the social change itself unraveling at the actions of our very own
hands. The social change model, which was our framework for our class this term, was a great
way to analyze situations in my community endeavors and extract meaning from each interaction
I had, as it provided a “a framework for groups to improve their ability to function effectively as
a collection of people joined to work towards a common goal” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg
20). This model is a guide to the ways we interact with others and influence change, and the best
way to do that is by getting into a community that you have a deep connection and care for. I
think that the best way to create lasting social change is by exploring our passions and by
involving ourselves in movements that are important to us, and by getting into the front lines of
that movement is what I think this social change model represents.
The idea of following one’s own passions in pursuit of leadership and social change
aligns with the values of “consciousness of self” and “congruence” (Komives & Wagner, 2016,
pg 21). The idea of consciousness of self represents the self introspection and review of our own
feelings and realizing what we are passionate about while congruence is the process of
identifying our passions and values and consistently acting on them. For my community
involvement this term, I volunteered for a beach clean-up organization in my hometown of
Longbeach, Washington and spent a weekend working with their leaders to remove trash from
the coast. Growing up at the beach, I felt that I sort of fell in love with nature and all of the
natural beauty that the beach has. Whether it is the animals, the plants, or just the view of a
sunset over the ocean, everything that the beach has to offer has a special place in my heart and
in the hearts of people who live in or even just visit coastal communities. To me, my passion for
this volunteer work comes from my drive to protect the beauty that I’ve grown up with, and the
hope that others can still have the experiences that I have been so lucky to experience at my age.
I feel that by cleaning up trash along the beach is also an investment into my future experiences
that I hope to have with my family at the beach one day. By protecting the area and keeping it in
peak condition for the native plants and animals, we can enjoy the area without losing out on the
natural beauty that is so important to the experience. In the terms of the first two C’s of the
model, consciousness of self and congruence, this was my thought process in my self awareness
of the importance of the coast in my life.
With self awareness and introspection I realized my true passion for the care and
protection of coastal wildlife, but acting on it and joining a group that aligns with those passions
requires commitment, the third C of the model. Commitment “is found in the decisions to select
a specific major or career field, a life partner, and a focus of community service, and it is found
in accepting appointment to a committee that will take time and energy to make a credible
contribution” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg 25). It is the idea that we are putting our great
efforts into what we have previously realized is important to our aspirations for social change. It
is here where I found my group up in Longbeach, Washington and made a commitment to help
with their work for the weekend I was there. This in my head is sort of the transition point of the
model, where we start to develop the group goals and community interaction that leadership and
social change is really based on. In the model, we can think of this as the moment in which
singular values turn into the group values that will carry us into creating a better world. In my
experience, commitment was me contacting this group and taking the 3 hour trip to support them
for the weekend and further develop myself as a leader in my collaboration with my fellow
volunteers.
Collaboration allows us to maximize our efforts and work toward our shared common
goals in a way that is the epitome of efficiency. I like to think of it in terms of a business. If
every business was run by just one person, would anything significant ever get done? If my
organization’s job is to clean the beaches and prevent wildlife from being harmed, would one
person be able to cover the entirety of the beach successfully? Of course not. Great ideas can
come from great people as individuals. And many individuals become the best leaders in the
world, but they get their from the communities that support and help them with their shared
common goals. In my volunteer experiences, one couple had started the initiative to do weekly
beach cleanups, and through that they created and founded an organization to do so and gained
the community following. The people up there are so passionate about the natural beauties of the
wild coast life, and bringing them together to work to protect it is an amazing gift. Together we
spent countless hours walking up and down the coastline removing plastics and other trash from
the natural environments and at the end of each day, knowing that we were making a place that
we all had a deep connection to was a feeling that is compared to none. While one small beach in
a world of places that are being polluted, the idea that there are people that lead these movements
gives me so much hope for the other communities that are just like mine, and any organization
achieving social change in many ways.
While everything on my weekend journey seemed perfect and enlightening from what I
have explained so far, nothing in the world works without its fair share of conflicts.
Organizations will always have disagreements, people will see things and take approaches to
situations differently, but that is part of the beauty of working with diverse groups of people and
is described as the value of “controversy with civility” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg 20). Many
people in the specific community I volunteered for are retired, so I was mostly the only younger
person there. This for me was an interesting experience because instead of butting heads with
different ideas in the old “young kid vs experienced elder narrative,” I felt like I learned a lot
from the experiences that my fellow volunteers shared, and I hope I was able to share my
younger view and ideas with them as well. One big thing that hit me is how much everyone I met
and worked with cared for the beach. Most of them were retired and had found a passion in
protecting the coast. It seemed like their lives, community, and belonging was tied to this place,
and that protecting it through the organization was a way to give back. For me, seeing that
dedication and drive so far in the future made me want to work towards their emotion and
dedication later in life. It pushed me to see nature differently, and appreciate the small things
more, because something that may seem so small at first glance can become the thing that people
revolve their worlds around one day, which was interesting for me to see.
The idea of controversy with civility really was more apparent in our day to day activities
when working, which leads back to what I was originally mentioning. I was able to bring new
ideas to the table and to the efficiency of our work, and instead of putting it off as just a young
guy messing up the system, everyone respected my ideas and we adapted together to clean the
beach as efficiently as possible in the time we had. The communication and understanding
among us was great, as our goals were aligned and we all were working towards the same thing.
Differences were appreciated and allowed us to work in so many new ways.
With every task completed and every bit of work we have put into our communities over
the past 10 weeks, everything leads to the idea of change. To me, change arises from the little
things we do every day that help the world. Volunteering for even just a few hours each month
can make a huge difference, and we all should use this tool moving forward into whatever path
life takes us. Some say that what can an individual do that will change the world? But it is the
individuals that lead the communities that breed the ideas of social change that we all have seen
in our volunteer studies, as well as in the media and in our own lives each day. We are difference
makers, and together with the right set of values we become the communities and leaders that
will change the world. You just have to know when to let the change in.
Jacqueline DeMers
UNST: Leading Social Change
Final Essay
March 15, 2020
How can I apply the social change model as a guide for initiating and sustaining positive social change?
To begin applying the social change model to our daily lives and experiences we must first understand how these values connect with ourselves. There are 7 C’s in the Social Change Model as discussed in our Leadership for a Better World: Understanding the Social Change Model of Leadership Development text by Susan Komives, Wendy Wagner and their associates.
In the Leading Social Change text they define change as, “improving the status quo, creating a better world, and demonstrating a comfort with a transition and ambiguity in the process of change” (Komives and Wagner, 2009). This is the ultimate goal of all the C’s in the social change model. I truly believe that to impact change or lead, your passion must drive your daily life, goals and experiences. If you don’t have that authentic passion, how will you ever have the motivation to change anything? I also believe that when people share their passions with others they are able to make a larger impact than if you’re only one person going after a goal.
Citizenship is the first C. To me, citizenship means understanding that we all are somehow connected. In any setting you are going to interact with others and the way that you do that determines your experience in the world. I think this is a very important aspect of the social change model because not one person can get anything done alone – especially change, big or small.
Common purpose is the second C on the social change model. Our Leading Social Change text defines common purpose as, “All individuals must engage in the visioning process and agree upon a collective set of aims and group values. Common purpose is strongest when a group explicitly examines its implicit, or unspoken, values.” (Komives and Wagner, 2009). This is especially vital to change. If there isn’t a shared purpose, vision, passion, or need, then the system cannot be built on a solid foundation. Identifying a common purpose means examining and understanding your individual purpose. If people’s wants, needs, goals, or passions do not align with the common purpose, there will not be much value or attribution from that individual. And collectively that can be detrimental to the success of change.
The third C in the Social Change Model is collaboration. As with every C in the social change model collaboration is based in a strong effort to use individuals to succeed as a collective whole. In doing so individual strengths, perspectives and attributes can become necessary to promote change. This goes along with the previous C discussed, common purpose. As one person with a large perspective on life, we usually can narrow down our values and passions into one or two things. And if your passion aligns with others collectively, your impact can cause a ripple in the waters of change eventually reaching new shores.
Controversy with civility is the fourth C. Our text defines this as “Multiple perspectives are needed to be understood, integrated, and bring value to a group.” (Komives and Wagner, 2009) This is something I think many of us need to learn, or maybe unlearn. Too many people do not understand that there are many walks of life and every input has value. In caution as to not sound like I’m above or have never witnessed a negative circumstance or action based on someones differences this was one of the hardest values for me to navigate on a personal level. I dug deep and tried my best to make sense of what this value really means. I’ve come to the conclusion that living life everyday with the mindset that I could learn something new from every person I meet, that is one step closer to connection and civility.
Consciousness of self was another tough value for me to fully understand. It is the fifth C in creating social change. I can appreciate this value as something to aspire to. I’m constantly changing as a human and I believe there is always room for improvement. As a young adult I have begun to create a life that suits me. Something to one day be proud of. My beliefs, values, attitudes and emotions are all areas I spend lots of time practicing. This value reminds me of a quote by Brene Brown, “Strong back, soft front, wild heart”. This quote has always spoken to me because it means to me that you should have strong values and beliefs, not to let anything push you away from your true self and what you believe in. But to have a soft front means to always be welcoming and open to new experiences and happenings. To allow the good and bad to flow gracefully, but still never wavering from your true self. To have a wild heart means to take risks and go for what you really want, no matter the obstacles. Having consciousness of self is the most important aspect to the social change model in my opinion. These are the basis to who we truly are, and we can’t promote change without that knowledge of the why.
Congruence is closely related to consciousness of self, making it the sixth C. To have congruence with your beliefs and values means to understand them fully, and act appropriately. This value was visible to me on the days I volunteered with Friends of Trees. I have a deep passion for our natural world and an even deeper passion for my home state of Oregon. On just one day of volunteering I planted around 30 native tree species. My group, the Beaver group, planted around 200 trees, and collectively we planted 2,000 trees that day. My contribution had a ripple effect that led to a total of 4,000 trees planted on the days that I volunteered. My congruence was aligned that day and I couldn’t have felt prouder.
Our last and seventh C is Commitment. The text defines this as, “requiring an intrinsic passion, energy, and purposeful investment toward action”. Investments take time, and most success is not achieved in a day. As quoted in the text this requires a lot of energy. And most energy isn’t given freely to things that don’t fuel our passions. To conjure my energy means for me to give my passions a name and remind myself of consistently. Or else I lose all purposeness. My dream has always been to leave a positive impact on the natural world and my commitment to finish my Environmental Science degree is just the first step towards that goal.
I’m hopeful that what drives people is their true passion. Looking back on this course I think that is the biggest thing I learned while reading Leadership for a Better World and The Truth About Leadership, volunteering, and reading what motivates my peers. We all come from different realities and can use our strengths for the overall good. Adding value to our lives can enrich the lives of others. I feel enriched to have experienced people coming together to achieve a goal not any of us could have accomplished alone.
Works Cited
Komives, Susan R., and Wendy Wagner. Leadership for a Better World: Understanding the Social Change Model of Leadership Development. Jossey-Bass, 2016.