haven't posted in a while

I thought I would try to keep up with my blog a little more.

So far the wedding plans have been coming along, we are set for August 23rd, 2008!

Shannon has been very busy making arrangements for the reception, we have a checklist that we've been working off of. To date we have the chapel and reception hall booked. The color themes for the wedding party picked out. I actually bought 6 of the same ties for myself, my groomsman, and my brother-in-law to be.

This weekend we booked our honeymoon, which will take place in a quiet cabin in the shenandoah valley in western, VA.

It amazes me how quickly life can change. Next year I will be married, at a different field placement, hopefully doing something with inner city homeless populations, which has been a particular interest of mine since I began my MSW program.

This week is spring break. It doesn't feel like spring break because I still have to go to my field placement all week. Knowing that I'm 3/4 of the way through is a relief because the marathon of this year is coming to an end.

This year has been an incredible blessing since getting engaged to my wonderful fiancee (with 2 e's), and for the hope for what is to come soon.

Engaged!

I'll let the headline speak for itself. Last week while visiting with Shannon's parents in Lynden WA, I popped the question. Here is a pic of the two of us only minutes after the proposal


Shannon and I met back in September of this year and we were both amazed at how closely our interests and our values were connected. Shannon is getting her PhD. in systematic theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and although I don't have any formal training in theology myself, it has been a pet interest of mine for a few years. Shannon shares my care for marginalized people. Shannon and I are also both deeply committed to our christian faith on a personal level and beyond.

In spite of my busy schedule this year, balancing my full-time job, graduate school, and an internship, and Shannon's busy life as a PhD. student, we both managed to find the time to see each other on the weekends and have been vigilant with e-mail, text messages, and phone calls during the week.

I am very excited to be married to this remarkable woman, and I love her dearly.

This has been an unexpected blessing for me, but then sometimes God works in unexpected and unpredictable ways.

Nonverbal Behavior

In social work education we are taught to be perceptive to the role that nonberbal behavior plays in our communication. It has been said that much of the meanings behind what we say is conveyed through nonverbal cues.

I have a few examples of nonverbal behavior from a dinner I had with some friends from church on Sunday night.

My girlfriend Shannon snapped these unexpected photos of us around the dinner table. See these photos for real nonverbal behavior in action!




In the picture above my eyes are focused downward and my hands are in an open gesture, notice that I've managed to hold the attention of everyone at the table.



In this photo I seem to be indicating some kind of spacial relationship with my hands. Something must be really big!

The only problem with these photos is I have no idea what I was talking about, and why Dave, Amy, and Gary seemed so interested in what I had to say.

(By the way that is sparkling cranberry juice in the glasses not wine, just an FYI)

I could have been talking about theology and the soveriegnty of God...

I may have been talking about sports...

Or I could have been making predictions for the 2008 presidential election...

For the life of me I have no idea, but my nonverbal behavior is communicating that some intense dialogue was going on. What do you think I was talking about?

Trip to Greenwich Village

My girlfriend Shannon took me out for a night on the town last week. We walked around Greenwich Village and then saw a Broadway production the Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Here are some pics from our trip

This looked like the quintessential Greenich Village shot here.

Here are some people dancing to a street drummer. This guy had makeshift drums made out of buckets and boxes.



Here I am looking surprised

Here is Shannon and I in the park, yeah I'm really into her. She really showed me an incredible day.

Tea anyone?

This weekend I went to my first afternoon tea, or what I think the British refer to as "high tea." My girlfriend Shannon who is a tea connoisseur was showing her mother, who is from Washington State, some of the Bucks County country side.

For lunch they decided to visit the 1814 Tea Room located in my hometown of Doylestown, PA see the link 1814 tearoom

Here is a picture of me enjoying an afternoon tea

I had a a flavored tea with apple and Cinnamon in it. With my tea were three scones, with devonshire cream, and jam.

At first glance I almost called it biscuits, butter, and jelly.

Along with the tea came a three tiered tray with little cucumber and chicken salad sandwiches with no crust. The second tier had scones, and the third tier had little deserts.

The traditional tea time is a time to stop and enjoy the company of others. I can see why my girlfriend Shannon enjoys the practice so much. It isn't just about tea, but about company and conversation.

Is Social Work Education liberal biased?

Is social work education too biased? According to Washington Post columnist George Will it is. see the article,
WashingtonPost

Will asserts that social work education is liberal biased. He gives some example of a few conflicts between conservative students and various schools of social work. I won't repeat them here, but they are worth reading about.

I discovered this article when my mother left it for me with a note attached to it asking if I noticed these issues in my MSW program.

George Will has a problem with terms like "ethnocentrism," "classism," "social justice," and of course "white privilege"

All of these are common terms used in social social work education and all of these are barriers that social work client's have have to face everyday.

This article hit close to home because he criticized a textbook that I am currently using called "Direct Social Practice: Theory and Skill" Will finds one sentence in the entire 600 page textbook that speaks to the challenges that social work client's have to face as a result of conservative trends.

George Will indicts social work educators for ideologically conditioning their students and refers to some outdated supreme court case back in 1943 that social workers are in violation of.

This column is not very thoughtful.

To give some credit to it, I will agree that social work educators do ideological condition their students and that this conditioning leans strongly towards a progressive view, but doesn't every school program ideologically condition it's student's in some way?

George Will seems to think that social work educators are wrong for doing this?

Some of the cardinal values of social workers include: social justice, dignity and worth of a person, and human relationships.

These values need to be upheld regardless of whether the person is a gay or strait, white, (or not white), or convicted of a horrible crime.

It would be absolutely absurd for social work educators to say, "You are supposed to advocate for and help disadvantaged people unless they are gay and you have doctrinal objections to homosexuality"

It would also be equally absurd to say to students "You should seek for social justice, unless you believe that our society is already just and equal and that the problems your client experiences are completely a result of their own behavior and nothing more than that"

What is fundamental to the social work profession is the idea of the person in the environment. This means that the 'whole' person needs to be addressed. Included in this is the person's behavioral health, his or her immediate environment, and the larger systematic forces that act as barriers to this person succeeding.

I agree this is ideological conditioning, but why would someone do social work without an ideological basis of helping people and challenging the structures that get in their way?

Furthermore, if social work educators are guilty of ideological conditioning, which I agree they are, then what should they do in place of it? Should they just teach counseling theory and how state and local governments work?

Does George Will really believe that American society is truly equal and that all of these ideas are just a "maze of jargon"

Let's say George Will is right and social work educators are in violation of this 1943 supreme court case, does that imply that christian colleges are also guilty because they turn down gay and lesbian students and require their students to prepare a statement of personal faith prior to entry?

I agree with part of the article that social work education could rub a conservative the wrong way, and I don't think that social work schools should hang signs that say "conservatives need not apply"

However, social work educators should not capitulate to conservative sentiments at the expense of compromising the most historic and fundamental causes of the profession.

Bush Veto's Children's Health Insurance

President Bush vetoed a bill today that would expand health insurance to children. Here is a link to the New York Times story
ny times

According to the article this would have expanded health care from 6.6 million children to 10 million children.

The purposes of SCHIP is to provide health care to the children who's parent's make too much for medicaid, but cannot afford private health insurance.

The bill received a great deal of bipartisan support, but sadly the veto will be sustained by the house.

I will try to be fair to the Bush Administration and mention that their reasoning behind the veto was because they only wanted to expand SCHIP by $5 billion rather than the $30 billion which the bill called for. Even Senator Trent Lott (R) has mentioned that the bill still has the possibility to be passed at a reduced level.

Unfortunately, many of these children, who's families stradle the poverty line will not be able to access health insurance.

Our treasury shells out $40 billion per year in the War in Iraq. Aside from the loss of political capital in the world, and the human loss, this war has resulted in an opportunity cost for the U.S. who could spend this money towards other programs.

Another sad fact is that the Bush administration continues to use it's trademark ideological rambling about the evils of "socialized medicine."

It is sad when sick children are left without health care because of such abstractions as fear of socialization.