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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: February 13, 2003
Latest Update: February 13, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Student Practicum in Teaching

This is a standard contract prepared for those students who are taking a teaching practicum with Dr. Curran as part of Peace and Social Justice Practicum.

The Practicum Course, Sociology 596 S, is a graduate course designed specifically to give you practice in teaching sociology. In jeanne's terms that really means in sharing sociology with everyone you can in the interest of creating illocutionary understanding. Though you may not choose the path of formal teaching in a school, we all teach everyday, everywhere we are. We teach our children, we teach our friends, we teach those in our religious groups. The more effectively we teach the process of illocutionary discourse, the closer we come to the skills needed by our communities for governance discourse.

Membership in the practicum course with jeanne means that each student takes on some responsibility for locating, having face to face interaction with, and understanding and reaching out to someone. That someone may be friends and classmates here at school, may be your parents, may be co-workers, may be your children, may be local kids playing football in your front yard, may be a Sunday school class. May be any group that falls into your lived reality.

I'm not asking you to teach them a course in Sociology. I'm asking you to choose a social issue from our classes, to carefully master the theoretical concepts involved, both left and right, and to refrain from trying to make up anyone's mind for them. We are having ILLOCUTIONARY, not instrumental, discussions.

Steps involved:

1. Choose someone or several someones with whom you'd like to try illocutionary discourse. These could be one time flings, or you could choose someone you meet with again and again.

2. Choose a social issue that matters to you. Dialogue with jeanne and/or Pat about your choices. Sometimes that may come after the fact. You'd be amazed how many times opportunities for illocutionary discussions just come up out of the blue.

3. Report in via e-mail (jeanne and Pat lose papers, guaranteed, and do occasionally forget what you tell us. A 25 words or less e-mail confirms communication, please) the results of your discourse.

4. Personalize this contract by acknowledging the requirements and giving a copy to Professor Blischke, signed by both you and me.

I particularly liked the report, I think it was Shaunadonna's, about her and her classmate talking to their coworkers when she said, "we didn't call them idiots." Congratulations! I'm proud of you. A step in the direction of illocutionary understanding. I'll put up samples, if not all the reports when I get back from the death penalty defense seminar.

My commitment to you is to be available to guide your choice of issues and your handling of the discourse.

Your commitment to me is to stay current with your reports, and make time for face to face interaction with me and Pat.

Signature: ___________________________ Jeanne Curran, Ph.D., Supervising Instructor

Signature: ___________________________ Student in Sociology 596 S