One
of the themes for this issue is “how has an organization been transformed
by taking on dialogue education?” In the case of the California WIC (Women,
Infants, and Children) program the answer is both very broad and complicated.
First,
it may help to understand that rather than a single organization, California WIC
is more of a community - comprising over 80 agencies and 3500 staff, and serving
1.3 million participants in dozens of languages each month. The size and complexity
of our program dominate our efforts to “unlearn” traditional top-down
education and replace it with a Dialogue Education Approach.
As
a community, we have sent hundreds of staff to Learning
to Listen, Learning to Teach and Advanced
Learning Design courses, and collaborated with Global Learning Partners to
develop Finding
the Teacher Within, a comprehensive year-long project aimed to help individual
agencies integrate dialogue education throughout their program. Clearly, we would
not have invested so much into this effort if we did not see very clear benefits.
The
most universal change has been raising the bar of expectations for group sessions
we attend, be they classes, workshops, meetings, or conferences. Anytime we get
together in groups, we now look for and demand healthy adherence to core principles
and practices (P&Ps) of Dialogue Education. Some examples include:
We
have also seen incredible growth in hundreds of our teachers and trainers. My
favorite story is of a Cambodian-American employee who many months after going
through the Finding the Teacher Within project still would not facilitate
pair activities in her classes, despite the fact that they were written into the
design. This is very common with our paraprofessional staff, who often say “their”
people won’t like pairing – although we sometimes see this as their
discomfort facilitating a pair activity or unwillingness to give up their role
as traditional teacher.
Through
observation and mentoring, her FTW coach managed to convince her to try it. When
she saw that participants actually liked talking in pairs, she started believing
it would work. Gradually, with practice, she improved her ability to pair to the
point that now she is regarding as the “queen” of pairing in her agency.
Also,
we have developed hundreds of designs of participant classes, staff in-services,
meetings, and workshops, using the Principles and Practices of Dialogue Education,
some of which you can find posted on our website.
We
also face many challenges, the biggest of which is finding the time to support
all our staff, not only with training but by the ongoing reinforcement. As a public
health program, we recognize how difficult it is for most people to change their
dietary and physical activity habits. This, we understand, holds true of teaching
habits – these changes take time and lots of help. Compounding this is the
issue of staff turn over – every year we lose dozens of teachers, nutritionists,
trainers, education designers, and agency directors who have been essential in
leading, designing, and supporting our efforts.
Finally,
perhaps our most fundamental challenge is staying focused on the real outcomes
we all want–such as reducing childhood obesity and anemia, and increasing
breastfeeding. We have yet to answer the questions–“how can WIC really
help California’s families with these health issues?” and “what
role does dialogue education play in these?” Finding the answers to these
questions will be the ultimate legacy of how dialogue education has transformed
California WIC.
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