How Students Can Build Partnership Education
As a student, there are many ways to support the partnership movement. In addition to modeling partnership and moving through the world in partnership ways, here are some specific academic examples.
- Bring partnership ideas and language into class discussion—in all classes and in all formats. While it is important to do this respectfully (keeping the courses’ and professors’ learning objectives in mind, and being careful not to take the conversation too far “off point”), making connections between partnership and other theories and coursework will deepen your own understanding of partnership while sharing it with others!
- Incorporate partnership ideas in written work for your courses as appropriate. (You may need to check with your teacher or professor about this first.) When partnership is shared with other class members and professors/facilitators, you might find the conversation shifting and deepening in new ways.
- Share partnership ideas on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
- Publish articles on partnership in magazines (for the general public) and peer-reviewed journals (for peers and colleagues).
- Consider focusing on partnership in your capstone, thesis or dissertation.
- Foster a place for partnership in your school curriculum by contacting your department advisor/director and school administrators. Let them know how studying partnership in general and offering classes on partnership specifically are important to you. Share how partnership ideas have shaped your thinking, given you a more varied and improved skill set, and provided tools to apply in your current career/employment and life.
- When asked what you are studying, share ideas about partnership. Instead of just naming your discipline or field, share a few examples of what you are learning that also include partnership.
Contributed by Dr. Susan G. Carter who teaches partnership at the California Insitute of Integral Studies and is a Consultant to CPS.
