The Sunday after
Thanksgiving, Ann and I went into New York City to see the musical The Book of Mormon. Afterwards, we
searched the Times Square area for our favorite bar: The Marriott Marquis’ large-windowed
eighth floor bar. We didn’t know the name of the hotel that offers us views of
flashing 20 story illuminated ads and people like a scatter of ants on the
streets below, but in the past we’ve always just stumbled on it, and laughed,
“Here’s our favorite bar!” Sunday, however, we walked up and down crowded
Seventh Avenue before a bored man holding a sign noticed that we looked lost,
asked us what we were looking for, and told us where to go. We had walked past bar’s
lobby but hadn’t recognized it because its lower floors are being remodeled.
As we walked up
and down the long blocks, me holding Ann’s arm with one hand and my cane in the
other, I struggled over uneven sidewalks and crosswalks. Similarly lost
tourists and impatient locals bumped me without noticing how hard I was
working. Eventually, guided by the bored stranger’s directions, we found our
spot and had West Side Cosmopolitans, a Caesar salad, and quesadillas while ads
blinked a kaleidoscope of colors outside the window.
Afterwards, we
re-entered the crowded streets and made our way to the subway station and to
our hotel for the evening. As we walked, my arm in Ann’s and my head down,
navigating the cracks, I said to Ann, “I am a trooper.” I have been a trooper
since these brain tumors and my disabilities—in fact, I was a trooper even
before my disabilities—but I’ve never recognized it before. This identity as a
trooper is new to me. I have so many identities that are new to me.
I am now a
disabled woman, a survivor, and a social work student. I am no longer an athlete, a hiker, a driver,
or a teacher. I am still an adventurer, a yogi, a lesbian, a deep sleeper, and
(I now see) a trooper.
In my years
redefining my life after brain tumors, I have discovered in myself new selves. This
quarter, my research class at the University of Washington’s School of Social
Work has inspired in me yet another new identity. Before this class, I had
thought of myself as moving from being an educator to a social worker, and I
had decided to become a practitioner rather than a researcher. However, in this
research class I read about the merging roles of practitioner and researcher,
and I’m noticing my past and present identities begin to merge in me. I am beginning
to identify as both practitioner and researcher, both educator and social
worker.
I came
to the University of Washington’s School of Social Work (UW SSW) from my
previous career in secondary education. I left that first career because of
disabilities derived from brain tumors, neurosurgery, and radiation to my
brain. Though I had to leave that career, my education career continues to
inform my identity and my beliefs about work for social justice, the
cornerstone of both fields.
When I left my
career in secondary education in order to become a therapist for people with
life-changing health conditions, friends suggested that I not get a degree but
simply hang out a shingle. Being a therapist didn’t legally require any
specific education, and going right into the work seemed reasonable to them.
After all, I had personal experience with life-changing disease; experiences as
a teacher, instructional coach and curriculum development leader that could
guide my therapeutic work as a new kind of teacher; experience as a consultant
with a national education reform organization that would parallel this new work
for social justice; an advanced degree in education as well as several
certificates that would lend me legitimacy; and 27 years in high school
education, where I had sometimes felt more like a therapist (for my students,
their parents, and colleagues) than like one who taught the subject of
literature and reading and writing skills.
However, I did not
take my friends’ advice because I thought it important to be educated about
peoples’ experiences and available therapies. I believed in the importance of
research-informed practice from the beginning, and I had assumed that I would
read expert analysis from research professionals and apply the research to my
work.
I am glad I
decided to go to graduate school. I think differently now about my upcoming work
than I did when I started. One difference is in the way I think about
research-informed practice. Though I often used action research as a teacher, critical
action research is new to me.
As an educator, a
change agent who worked for social justice in schools, action research informed much of my work. When there was some
challenge in, say, expanding the cultural perspectives that my curriculum
taught or reducing my students’—and my own—stresses, I researched new
curriculum and new school schedules to inform actions my colleagues and I might
implement.
At that time, however,
I did not know about critical action
research, which would have strengthened my work for justice. Had I known, I
would have encouraged students and their families to lead research with my
support rather than my always leading research with their support. Students
and their families could have defined the agenda rather than me defining it.
My current work to
increase disability content in the University of Washington’s School of Social
Work involves this critical action research. The project goes beyond being
“community-derived” and is, as researchers DePoy, Hartman and Haslett describe,
“community-initiated” (1999). This work’s foundation is in trusting and
collaborative relationships.
My work at the UW
SSW builds on critical action research’s strengths, but I have only recognized
this since being in this class. Previously, I sometimes suspected the Associate
Dean and Program Director of encouraging me to do research that they should be
doing, but now I suspect that they recognized the strengths of research that is
“community-initiated.” I have legitimacy and passion in this work because I am
in the oppressed community for which I’m advocating. With more understanding now,
I have more trust. I believe that with this increased trust, we will work together
more collaboratively and more successfully.
My identity as
researcher and clinician, a social worker who is also an educator, begins to
tie together my past and present lives. Now, instead of feeling like a puzzle’s
many parts, I am beginning to feel like the puzzle whose picture is emerging as
the pieces fall, slowly, into place.
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