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Flipping Frames
My students’ favorite class period, usually, in the Advanced Advocacy and Community Practice course, is when we talk about framing. Everybody loves reading Lakoff, right? The fun part for me is...
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Policymaking for small failures
This one has been in my draft folder for awhile, while I spent the first part of the summer teaching and consulting and the month of July mostly playing. One of my favorite bloggers anywhere, Beth...
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Tripwires in social policy
One of the greatest insights that I gleaned from Decisive was this idea of ‘tripwires’. First, let me say that this is not anything like the automatic budget cuts that triggered the sequester, nor,...
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The new ‘mommy wars’
I am all for more Mommy Wars. Not the ‘stay-at-home’ v. ‘work-full-time’ type. Those are offensive (because they totally ignore the reality of families’ economic needs for two incomes, and the...
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Coming out of our bunkers
Sometimes my students say things in class that just make me love them so much. I try not to gush, because that’s a little strange; I mean, I cheerlead my own kids A LOT (“It’s a beautiful day to be...
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A 21st Century Financial Aid Policy
I have come to believe that we need dramatic changes in our financial aid system. We have largely eroded the supports that used to be there for low-income students seeking to go to college: In the...
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Review Week: So Rich, So Poor
When I see statistics like this one in So Rich, So Poor: In 2009, there were 2 million families in the United States with only SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/food stamp) benefits as...
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The Poor Will Always Be With Us
This might not be an April Fool’s Day post like I’ve done some years, but there’s definitely a trick. Because, really? Are we going to allow ourselves to believe that ‘nothing works’ in combating...
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Taking some things ‘off the battlefield’
I am not afraid of controversy. Really. But I will admit to being tired of having to contest EVERYTHING. It seems like we should be able to agree that some things are, if not sacred, at least accepted,...
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Starting in the Classroom: Blended Instruction for Policy Practice
I can definitively say, now, almost 4 years after the university started its experiment with instruction that is part traditional classroom format and part-online, that, for teaching social policy, I...
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