Community-Based Learning Exercises New Intellectual Muscles BY EMILY HARRISON WEIR Introduction to Women's Studies students, including Sayó:kla '97 (right), spoke with young girls at an after-school educational and recreational program in Holyoke to find out why teenage girls typically leave Girls Inc. The interactions were part of a community-based learning unit on the social construction of gender. As part of her women's studies seminar, Siana Collyer '96 works the AIDS hotline for the Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts. "Women's studies talks about deconstructing gender stereotypes," she says. "A lot of what I do at the hotline involves deconstructing AIDS-phobia, homophobia, and sexism, which are rampant in the callers. Having had classes on deconstructing 'isms,' I have the skills to tell callers, 'Here's another way to look at it.'"

AURA BELLUSCI IS HELPING WOMEN get restraining orders against their abusers. Margaret Rooks supervises educational activities for preschool children. Carol Olstad is working at one of America's only residential methadone-maintenance programs for women and their children. Volunteer work? No, it's part of Women's Studies 390, a seminar for senior majors. The approach, called community-based learning, "uses experience to help students synthesize theory and practice," according to Martha Ackmann, assistant professor of women's studies and seminar leader. The distinguishing feature of community-based learning is off-campus experience. For students in Women's Studies 390, this means about eight hours weekly spent at a social-service, education, legal-system, health-care, or immigration organizations. Students also participate in an intensive seminar, prepare a twenty- to thirty-page research paper on ideas arising from this experience, and present their findings publicly at a women's studies colloquium. Though structured differently than traditional courses, community-based learning makes similarly rigorous intellectual demands on students. Siana Collyer calls the course "the one I'm working hardest for and the one I'm most motivated to work hard for. It's an amazing and exciting integration of all that I've been learning in women's studies." Andi Boguski adds, "At my internship, I'm constantly thinking about what everything means: what assumptions people use, the way the office space is structured, the racial makeup of the office, what a worker's complaints say about this kind of work. And I'm always looking at how everything might fit into my research paper. This is not just an internship. I can't say enough about community-based learning being academic; who says that 'academic' means just sitting in a classroom?" "We're not just having experiences," Bellusci stresses, "we're also thinking about what they mean within the broader scope of all our work in women's studies, and trying to attach deeper meaning to those experiences." Julie Cedrone adds, "If you're using textbooks, someone has already interpreted everything for you. Community-based learning is much more original. It takes more academic confidence to piece together your own observations and make sense of a whole variety of sometimes contradictory information." Ackmann helps students integrate their thoughts during seminar discussion. Here, she says, students "exercise their muscles in learning how to read experience as a text." This metamorphosis happens each Wednesday at Dickinson House, where Ackmann and seven students convene under the watchful eyes of Dorothea Lange, Rosa Parks, Frances Perkins, and other women whose photographs adorn the walls. For three hours they discuss the contents of notebooks, journals, and brains packed with the past week's encounters. The discussion is wide ranging and lively, and students are bursting with comments and questions. "That class is an explosion of questions," agrees Cedrone. "We always have a lot more to say than time to say it, even with a three-hour class." That's All Right in Theory... One way students process raw experiences into understanding is through synthesis points, analysis fusing women's studies theory and practice. "The experiential analysis is then placed in the context of a student's previous work in women's studies by making connections between it and the theory, narratives, history, and research she has encountered in the women's studies core curriculum," Ackmann explains. For example, Dorothy Allison's writings helped Cedrone analyze class dynamics among the exotic dancers she's studying. Siana Collyer detected a sociological pattern in the fluctuating number of phone calls to the AIDS hotline where she works. ("It's generally busy on Mondays because of 'morning-after syndrome,' and slow on Fridays because people are thinking more about partying than precautions," she hypothesizes.)

Carol Olstad is examining whether the "relational model" theory of women's psychological development is borne out at a residential methadone-maintenance program for opiate-addicted women. Treatment there is based on the premise that a woman's sense of self develops through her relationships with others. "I am constantly forced to try and use the theory as the soles of the shoes in which I walk with the residents," says Olstad. "It is a vital intersection of theory and practice." Several students cited Audre Lorde's essay, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," which argues that patriarchy cannot be conquered by working within the system. Bellusci used Lorde's concept to question the exclusion of adolescent boys from most Massachusetts battered-women's shelters. She suspects this policy might prevent some mothers from leaving their abusers, even though shelter workers use the ruling to help battered women feel safer. "Lorde talks about exclusion as a tool that perpetuates the status quo," Bellusci explains. "If exclusion of adolescent boys from the shelters is thought of as a 'master's tool,' can we ever eradicate violence against women using this principle?" "We talk a lot in women's studies about gender as a social construct," says Rooks, who supervises preschool children at the Amherst Family Center. "I saw that clearly one day when kids were playing with Mr. Potatohead dolls. They have bodies and arms, to which kids add accessories, and a boy gave his toy a mustache and a purse," Rooks recalls. "A girl came over and said, 'You can't use the pocketbook 'cause yours is a boy.' I found it interesting that, at age three, she had very strict ideas about what were boys' things and what were girls' things." Boguski saw how the feminist maxim, "The personal is political" applied to life-and-death issues. At the Breast Health Project in Northampton, she realized how a public issue like discrimination against lesbian patients in health care could directly affect the personal lives of individuals who have their breast cancer treated well or poorly. As useful as applying theories is for students, Ackmann says, "It's when a student is wrestling with a collision of theory and practice that some of the greatest learning and intellectual creativity can take place." Kris Woolery faced such a dilemma during her work with Cambodian refugee families. Using feminist and anthropological knowledge that culture affects how events are interpreted, she realized, "It may be a new idea to [the Cambodians] that hitting women isn't okay." Ackmann acknowledged her cultural sensitivity, but also pointed out that Woolery had previously agreed with theorist Mary Daly's condemnation of labeling violence against women a cultural trait. "But now I hear you saying that you must be mindful of the culture from which a woman comes; these seem like conflicting ideas," Ackmann gently challenged. "I don't know if they're conflicting, but they certainly are rubbing against each other," Woolery admitted, as discussion about this tension continued. Learning for Life Community-based learning is a national pedagogical movement, and at MHC it's about to move beyond the women's studies program. Associate Professor of French Nicole Vaget is incorporating the concept by sending students who have just returned from studying in French-speaking countries into local schools to share their insights on cultural diversity. Assistant Professor of Politics Preston Smith is also preparing to use community-based learning in his community-development course. Ackmann hopes to guide the development of about a dozen such courses by fall, funded by a Mellon Foundation grant. "One reason it's important to have community-based learning at a place like Mount Holyoke," Ackmann says, "is that 'reading' experience well and understanding it is what students will be doing for the rest of their lives. It stimulates a habit of the intellect. So if we can begin to exercise those muscles here, taking experience seriously and learning to apply what we know from experience, it will serve students well when they leave the College."

According to Assistant Professor of Women's Studies Martha Ackmann (standing), studies have shown that students in community-based learning courses retain more of what they learn, show greater understanding of how problems are interrelated, can better apply principles to a situation, and more frequently report working up to their potential than students in other courses.