Crash of worlds

                                                                                                         Blog post #3

How do we all fit into this world?  Do we ever really feel 100 percent part of a group, be it a family, a race, a culture, a work crew, a society? Do we really want to fit in with ‘Our’ group?  Maybe we’d rather back away, not wanting to deal with a groups uniqueness’s and issues, choosing instead to quietly retreat or make some noise while marching to the beat of our own drum.  I don’t think any one of us could definitively say yes or no to exclusively fitting in with any one group. Life is a series of communities that seem to continuously overlap and intertwine.

  How we move in our circles changes from day to day as our lives evolve. Not only is there the complexity of having to deal with our own groups, in life there are many communities that coincide, however at times these communities collide and this can sometimes result in tensions or even unexpected harmony.

So why are communities so vital to human existence? Without really realizing it, humans continuously interact with other humans, in class we discussed how as humans we develop our sense of self from relating and talking to others, people are vulnerable and dependent on each other. In the book “Radical Pedagogy Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation” in explores how individuals relate to each other in society and how they relate to each other in learning situations “The most fundamental identity need is the need for recognition, the need to have one’s being appreciated and validated, or at least taken into account by others…” chapter 1, pg.7. I found this to be a very powerful statement; perhaps many of us underestimate how dependent we are on each other, how we actually crave to be validated, certainly some more than others. We like to think we are independent thinkers and ‘don’t care” what people think, and I feel in some respects this may be somewhat true. But if we examine the research, it’s clear that as humans we are connected to each other socially and in learning, as a result this forms who we are and how we relate to each other.

In class we examined the movie “Crash”,2004,

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/ 

 In this movie, the lives of several vastly different groups of people overlap for a brief time and spotlight their vulnerabilities and preconceived notions of various races and ethnic groups. The characters in the movie, like many of us in real life, don’t want to admit they have any prejudices, yet they are present and visceral with most of the characters. Did they even know they felt that way? People tend to not want to acknowledge any animosity toward any marginalized group, even when it may exist. Is this the correct thing to do? It’s a tough question, as humans we have the need to be desired and would never want to put ourselves in a position of being excluded by a group, even when its not our own group. However to acknowledge a prejudice may be the first step in breaking down this feeling, however difficult it is for someone to recognize this in themselves. In the movie, the cop who sexually assaulted a woman who was black never stated to anyone that he was prejudice against this race, but clearly he was, however later in the movie he rescued this same black lady from a burning car. Did he finally realize his bigotry and then have a revelation how despicable it was and put aside his feelings and treat this woman as a human being regardless of race? I guess as an optimist I like to think so, I like to think we all have the potential to overcome the stereotypes portrayed in this movie, but that might be a tall order.

Along with the many benefits of belonging to a community of practice, such as, learning, relationships, feeling like we belong, which are all very gratifying, there can be consequences to all the communities of practice that exist in anyone’s life, such as forming preconceived ideas of other communities of practice, other social groups that we feel we know everything about, when actually we likely know little or nothing about their lives. Human arrogance and entitlement can be very powerful, however the desire to be desired for any human by any human can be a pure emotion, hopefully, with the ability to overcome the negative.

Jimi Hendrix

References:

Bracher, M. (2006). Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillian

Movie- Crash, 2004, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679

Where did you train?

                                                                   February 11th 2012

Does this question confuse you? The question was often asked to a nurse when someone wanted to know where he or she received his or her education to become a registered nurse, and realistically speaking, until recent times, it was usually women who were asked this question in the predominately female profession.  The question has become less common over the years due to the change in the educational programs to become a registered nurse in Nova Scotia.  From 1890 until 1995 registered nurses received their education to become an RN at Schools of Nursing located at various locations throughout Nova Scotia, however before these formal schools of nursing emerged, the mother and women in families cared for the sick at home.

“Before the emergence of formal training for nurses in Canada, nursing skills were passed down from one generation to the next by female relatives and neighbours through both verbal instruction and compiled manuals of domestic and herbal remedies.” Nursing history digitalization project, Nursing Education in Nova Scotia.
http://forms.msvu.ca/library/tutorial/nhdp/history.htm (first line)

This method of caring for families came out of necessity, concerned people needed to care for their sick family members and this was the only option. As Lave and Wenger discuss “…learner inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill require newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community” Lave J. Wenger E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation. http://www.amazon.ca/Situated-Learning-Legitimate-Peripheral-Participation/dp/0521423740/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328042167&sr=1-1 Pg 29. 

What a true emergence of a community of practitioners this  early system of nursing was, the younger members of the family observed and were likely cared for by mothers, older sisters, aunts and grandmothers, they would learn from the older female family members the methods of care, likely involving information about medicines from herbs, how to stop a fever and bathing a sick family member. These were apprenticeships that took place in the home and had many similarities to the apprenticeships discussed by Lave and Wenger in chapter three. The Midwives, Tailors, Quartermasters, Butchers and Alcoholics share methods for how they learn from the more senior members of their respected professions. The learning is directly attached to the specialty and skill, however the closest parallel to the early form of nursing is likely the Yucatec midwives, “A Maya girl who eventually becomes a midwife most likely has a mother or grandmother who is a midwife, since midwifery is handed down in family lines…. The child…absorb knowledge about procedures, simply in the process of growing up” Lave and Wenger pg 68.

Eventually the need for more sophisticated methods of care resulted in the formation of Nursing schools in Canada in the 1870’s, the first of such schools to open in Nova Scotia was the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing in 1890, followed by as many as 18 more schools of nursing over the years in Nova Scotia.

“Hospital administrators immediately began to recognize the improvements the trained nurses were making to patient care, and began to replaced their untrained nursing staff with student nurses, who spent two or three years working in the hospital wards in exchange for training and certification.”

http://forms.msvu.ca/library/tutorial/nhdp/history.htm paragragh 4

My own training to be a nurse took place at St Martha’s School of Nursing. It was a 24-month program that was a mesh of classroom learning and ‘floor nursing’. The apprentice aspects of the course rang through my head while reading Lave and Wenger accounts of apprenticeships. The passed down learning happened in almost all aspects of nursing school. First, we lived in residence, this was pretty much required with a few exceptions. We lived with the second year students and learned a lot about what to expect from their accounts of how things were in the hospital, sometimes the stories could scare the venerable students, some even quit in the first few weeks feeling overwhelmed. However for most the benefits of living with second year students outweighed the cons, and eventually most students made it to the units, where the apprenticeships continued with the Nurses in the hospital. Learning to talk to a patient was a challenge for me, it really didn’t help that the first patient they assigned me to was Margaret, a 90yo women who had dementia: “Hello Mrs. M, I’m Frances, I’ll be your nurse today J” to which she responded “you little B----, get away from me!”. Well despite a less than favorable response from patient number one of my career, I hung in there, in large part, because of the support and bonds I formed with my classmates, and eventually my colleagues at work. Our Communities of Practice truly can make us feel we are part of a group working toward a common goal and carrying each other along the way.

My St Martha’s School of Nursing 25^th Reunion 2010 J

References

Lave, Jean & Wenger, Etienne. (1991).Situated learning Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Project, Mount St Vincent University Archives (2005). Nursing History Digitization. http://forms.msvu.ca/library/tutorial/nhdp/index.htm