Touchstone 1 Second Edition Teacher 39;s Book

[Lu Rounsaville]

WhenI was a high school junior in New Orleans taking AP American history, my teacher assigned us a paperback book. Slim in contrast to our hulking required textbook, it was a funny, compelling, even shocking read. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen, explained how history textbooks got the story of America wrong, usually by soft-pedaling, oversimplifying and burying the thorny drama and uncertainties of the past under a blanket of dull, voice-of-God narration.

He tells NPR, "I started out the new edition with the famous two photographs of the inaugural crowds of this guy named President Obama, his first inauguration, and this guy named President Trump, his first and maybe only inauguration. And you just look at those two photos and they're completely different. There's all kinds of grass and gaps that you see in the Trump photo. ... What that does, I hope, is signal to every reader of the book: Yes, there are such things as facts here. You can see with your own eyes."

My first full-time teaching job was at a black college, Tougaloo College in Mississippi. I had 17 new students in my new second semester [freshman sociology] seminar and I didn't want to do all the talking the first day of class so I asked them, "OK, what is Reconstruction? What comes to your mind from that period?"

And what happened to me was an aha experience, although you might better consider it an oh-no experience: 16 out of my 17 students said, "Well, Reconstruction was the period right after the Civil War when blacks took over the government of the Southern states. But they were too soon out of slavery and so they screwed up and white folks had to take control again."

Second, the Reconstruction governments did not screw up. Across the South without exception they built the best state constitutions that the Southern states have ever had. Mississippi, in particular, had better government during Reconstruction than at any later point in the 19th century.

[Loewen, along with colleagues and students, co-wrote a new high school state history textbook called Mississippi: Conflict and Change. Despite high ratings from reviewers, the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board rejected the book on the grounds that it was racially inflammatory. Loewen and his co-authors sued the board.]

The assistant attorney general for the state of Mississippi asked why he had voted against our book. And he had us turn to [a] page where there's a photo of a lynching. Now, our textbook at that time was the only textbook in America that included a photo of a lynching. And ironically almost none do to this day.

Turnipseed is on the stand and he says: "Now, you know, some ninth-graders, especially black male ninth-graders, are pretty big, and I worried that teachers, especially white lady teachers, would have trouble controlling their classes with material like this in the book."

Usually when I'm asked, "What's the biggest lie?" I put my hand out in front of me slanting upward and to the right. And what I mean by that is the overall theme of American history is we started out great and we've been getting better ever since kind of automatically. And the trouble with that is two things. First of all, it's not always true. ...

And the second part is what it does to the high school student. It says you don't need to protest; you don't need to write your congressman; you don't need to do any of the things that citizens do, because everything's getting better all the time.

Well, every single textbook that I looked at says that they came across the Bering Strait during an Ice Age. It turns out they might have. It also turns out they might not have. And what we should therefore do is let students in on the fact that we don't know, that there's a controversy here and invite them to go research it themselves. ...

I feel like there is a tension in what you're saying because we do want to debate and understand where there's genuine uncertainty in history, but how do students discriminate among various sources of information? Especially in the age of the Internet and thousands of pages on any subject.

Well, I think there's one key question to be asked of any source, and that is "Why do you find it credible?" Now, a KKK site on American history is perfectly credible if you're asking the question "What does the KKK believe about the Civil War?" OK. If, on the other hand, you're asking, "Why did the Southern states secede?" Maybe you don't want to cite a KKK site.

After these conflict themes were identified, researchers analyzed them for qualitative emotional themes. The qualitative emotional analysis revealed common feelings that LGBTQ students experienced within their field placement, including fear-related emotions, sadness-related emotions, discomfort-related emotions, and shame-related emotions. Examining these conflict and emotional themes, researchers were able to highlight the unique challenges LGBTQ students may face within a field placement.

The authors offer recommendations on how to enhance and improve the field education experience for LGBTQ students. These recommendations include enhancing social work education in preparation for field placement by helping students address discrimination issues; preparing field placement sites by implementing nondiscriminatory policies or updating current policies; and preparing LGBTQ students for field placement by providing them with extra support, such as pairing LGBTQ alumni of the social work program with new LGBTQ students to help provide guidance and support.

Branching from self-awareness comes the second touchstone, attending to unconscious interpersonal dynamics. While interpersonal dynamics may be unconscious, McMahon further describes two phenomena that are likely to occur during supervision: parallel processing and relational negotiations. Maintaining a humble appreciation of these unconscious dynamics is essential, since they can negatively influence good supervision.

The fourth touchstone McMahon explores is attending to power dynamics. Power imbalances are immediately present due to the hierarchical nature of the supervisory relationship, and attending to these imbalances is essential to a positive relationship. Additionally, attending to power dynamics is important in keeping two areas of concern in check: supervisors abusing their power, and supervisees withholding disclosures during supervision. By humbly acknowledging the hierarchical nature of a supervisory relationship, balanced power and agency within supervision can be fostered.

To help implement the five touchstones in practice, McMahon offers reflective questions to guide the development of humility in the supervisory relationship. McMahon concludes that the intention of the five touchstones is to improve and strengthen the supervisory relationship.

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