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Category: Everything

  • Win-Win in the Classroom

    Do you trust enough to think win-win?  Do you trust yourself?  How about other people?

    After having taught at a variety of colleges in two states for the past 12 years, I am often surprised by the perceptions of many students in my courses.  I get the feeling that some students believe that education and class is a competitive process with their instructors.   Simply put, us (the students) vs. them (the professor).  This seems a little perplexing to me.  

    Some assumptions I have heard from students about the student-instructor relationship:

    • The instructor is here to give me busy work 
    • The instructor wants people to drop out 
    • The instructor wants to give me a bad grade 
    • (Believe me, it goes on and on…)

    What ever happened to the idea that we are all in this together?  This journey of education could be a win-win for both the student and the professor?

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  • Failure is No Longer Accepted

    Failure must be embraced.   Failure creates growth.   Failure teaches us much more than success.

    Yet, we implement programs in the field of helping where failure is not a norm, but the exception.   Programs promote success rates that reach the sky.   Eighty percent of this population is successful, ninety percent of this one is successful.   Cases are closed early, or kept open not because of client performance or need, but in order to ensure a successful outcome.   Cases are closed on the first day of the month, instead of a last day of a month to prove that program capacity is met.   We work so hard as a system to prove success, to manipulate, to ensure funding or to gain political points.

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  • The Cost of Providing Services

    Thinking back to my younger years in human services a common refrain was “no matter the cost, if we only helped one person, it was worth it.”

    Fast forwarding to recent times, I have not heard anyone say this.   Times are tough, budgets are tight, funding levels decease…if they exist at all.   Human services has become much more business orientated and goal driven.   At the same time, money has changed the field forever.   Salaries have increased, we follow medical models, yet clients are being served at lower rates than ever before.   Agencies are saying yes to almost anything in hopes of staying afloat.

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  • How Did I Get Here?

    Students frequently ask how I ended up in the field of human services.  Many expect a grand plan or lifelong dream to be shared.   Neither is true in my case.

    I was given a great opportunity when very young (19 years old to be exact) to be involved in a new human services program providing for the needs of citizens within the same town as my college.   The assignment was scheduled to be only two weeks with the duty of providing technology assistance to the newly hired staff.   I can still remember the interview for that two week job as if it was yesterday. Unknowingly those two weeks turned into over seven years of experience. Simply put, Jamie was in the right place at the right time.

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