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Unification of Art and Spirituality
Get PDFDavid Wagenfeld, an artist and resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, provided the cover art for the Summer 2024 edition of The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy (OJOT). “Word Fusion” is a piece made from ink on paper that uses words to depict an image of a person walking through an environment. The image is rooted to the ground in love, joy, calmness, and peace. The person is one with themselves and their spirituality with arms portraying presence, joy, and serenity. David shares his experience of self-discovery and understanding of the beautiful dance between art and spirituality
It Takes a Community: One NWP Site\u27s Approach to Establishing and Sustaining a Writing Community
Get PDFIn this article, one National Writing Project (NWP) site director details the process for establishing and nurturing a writing community that extends beyond school walls. This article details various events that have helped the site to grow and sustain a local writing community and includes recommendations for adapting these ideas for a variety of contexts and audiences
Call to Action: Disability Justice as a Framework to End Punishment of and Advance Liberatory Education for Disabled Students
No full textThe absence of disabled students in higher education, including social work, is a problem not only because of the missed educational opportunities and adverse effect on their earning potential but because disabled people’s knowledge, lived experiences, and skills can enhance social work services, advance innovation in knowledge production, and contribute to transformative organizational and movement leadership. School punishment, including suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, contributes to the absence of disabled people in higher education and begins as early as preschool. However, even for disabled students who graduate from high school and enroll in higher education, punishment continues covertly throughout higher education. Using Patricia Hill Collins\u27 (2002, 2020) approach to theorizing intersectionality through the matrix of domination, including the understanding of disciplinary power, and incorporating the concept of crip time (Ljuslinder et al., 2020), the authors aim to illuminate how the cumulative impact of punishment over a life course contributes to the underrepresentation of disabled students in MSW programs. This underrepresentation, in turn, reinforces ableism in social work and beyond. The authors, a disabled MSW student and a temporarily non-disabled social work professor, then integrate their lived experiences, literature, and social work ethics to call social work educators, practitioners, and students to action grounded in a disability justice framework
Social and Environmental Determinants of Occupation and the Need for an Intersectional Approach to Culturally Meaningful Practice
Get PDFTo provide culturally-centered care to clients and develop interventions that meet the client’s holistic needs, occupational therapists need to consider social and physical environments affecting participation in culturally meaningful occupations. Using a case study, this paper describes the use of the concept of social and environmental determinants of occupation (SEDO) as a necessary strategy to incorporate in clinical practice to determine how SEDO intersect, resulting in occupational justices/injustices that influence access to participation. SEDO are defined as broad (and intersecting) social and environmental factors that increase or limit an individual, community, or population’s ability to participate in culturally meaningful occupations of their choice. This information can then be used to develop strategies that more holistically address the SEDO experienced by our clients. The SEDO process refocuses research and practice with more inclusive attention to how these intersecting factors influence the client’s ability to access culturally meaningful occupations, provide opportunities for advocacy and empowerment, and better address the needs of our clients. The SEDO strategy can provide data for development of more holistic client-centered interventions
Interview with Kim Guess
Get PDFThis is an interview with the owner of The Xperience Kim Guess recorded in 2024. Ms. Guess was interviewed by JB Brown as a part of SHARE\u27s “Standing on Her Shoulders” oral history project. During the interview Ms. Guess discusses the following topics: The significance of opening the first Black-owned multi-use entertainment venue in Kalamazoo; The struggles and pushback she faces as a business owner; Advocating for and diversifying (downtown) Kalamazoo; The importance of collaboration; Reviving the Kalamazoo Island Festival; Her pride in the work that she does; Being a Black Woman entrepreneur; Being an introvert; Being motivated by others in the community; Her advice to entrepreneurs; Her visions for the future, and; Standing on the shoulders of her enslaved ancestors.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/standing-on-her-shoulders/1000/thumbnail.jp
Interview with Dr. Carla Adkinson-Johnson
Get PDFThis is an interview with WMU Professor Dr. Carla Adkinson-Johnson recorded in 2024. Dr. Adkinson-Johnson was interviewed by Dorcas Doku as a part of SHARE\u27s “Standing on Her Shoulders” oral history project. During the interview Dr. Adkinson-Johnson discusses the following topics: Her childhood and family life; Finding her place in Kalamazoo as a Black Woman academic; Learning from inspirational people in her family; Pursuing her PhD to research Black mental health; Being in academic leadership as a Black Woman; How her faith and family history has led her through her career; Identifying one’s purpose; Her strengths as a professor; The importance of maintaining sisterhood and relationships; Advice to young Black Women in academica; Her definition and measurement of success; Her hope for a racially and ethnically diverse Kalamazoo; The impact of watching her Black students succeed; Winning the YWCA’s Women of Achievement Award in 2024; The importance of oral history; Her passion for the preservation of the Black Family; Bible verses that guide her life, and; Balancing her personal and professional lives.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/standing-on-her-shoulders/1002/thumbnail.jp
Prioritizing Learners’ Cultural Assets and Multimodal Literacies During Preservice Teachers’ Community Literacy Experience
Get PDFAs teacher educators, we believe it is critical for preservice teachers (PSTs) to recognize the many cultural assets that learners bring to today’s diverse classrooms and to use these assets in their instruction. It is key to the literacy success of all students, particularly children of low socioeconomic status, multilingual learners, children of color, and children who continue to have limited literacy success in school. Our teacher preparation program in childhood includes out-of-school community literacy experiences for teaching diverse Grade 1–6 learners because these hybrid spaces provide rich opportunities for our candidates to learn about and with children and their families. This study explored the following question: What impact does a focus on diverse, multicultural texts and multimodal literacies—with our community learners’ cultural assets in mind—have on PSTs as they teach their first English language arts lessons? Findings indicate that the majority of PSTs showed growth in valuing the significance of using diverse/multimodal texts and learners’ cultural assets, including translanguaging opportunities, although a small percentage of PSTs exhibited beginning stages of cultural competence (e.g., Christ & Sharma, 2018). Overall, these community literacy experiences proved effective in developing PSTs’ cultural competence and culturally responsive and multimodal practices