Adrienne-Reflecting on the Process

                My experience with What’s the Story has been vastly different from my typical classroom experience.  In the classroom, students are passive and have no need for personal drive. With this project, initiative is the key; without personal interest, nothing in one’s project is accomplished.

This course is better than traditional learning in some ways. It allows students to pursue their own interests and create their own persuasive pieces in the form of videos. Students can work independently and then come together to combine their work into cohesive, well-rounded pieces, allowing both individual work and group collaboration. Work schedules are entirely up to the individual, which helps to teach self-discipline and focus.

In contrast with these positive aspects, some students may struggle with the skills so much that their project is not up to their personal standards. While this is not a problem for me, I once forgot about a blog post until Sunday evening, when it required me to converse with a few people and combine those conversations and analyze them. Because of this, I spent the next week preparing for both the late post and the one for the following weekend. This self-directed component, while appealing, has shown to lead to forgetfulness on my part. Those who have trouble with shyness and professionalism may have difficulty conducting interviews or even arranging them. The practice this project provides on that front may help reduce those issues, though. I know that I am often shy, and I was concerned about that aspect of the project from the very beginning.  However, the two interviews I’ve conducted so far have proven that worry mostly unfounded; I feel relatively confident that the interviews went well.

Through this project, I’ve learned that I’m able to take initiative and arrange interviews. However, since this project is only half-done I know I still have plenty to learn about myself.  I’ll try going into further interviews with a bit more confidence. Thankfully I’ve become more adept at remembering my blog deadlines, so I don’t think that that’s a problem I need to be overly concerned about. But I remember during the meet-up in Starksboro I had trouble being patient with the unexpected collaboration. Whether my impatience was due to fatigue or my introverted nature, I know I need to be more patient in next month’s meet-up.

Continuing through this project, I plan to conduct more interviews. In the following meet-ups, I’ll need to be more relaxed and patient with my group members. Other than that issue, I think the remainder of my project will be successful. I’m looking forward to the next meet-up and seeing what my other group members have accomplished!

Marianna-Reflection on the learning process

    This course is very different from any of the other ones that I have taken, either online, self taught or at the high school, I have always had someone there to check in more regularly than this class can provide.  Even with people watching over my shoulder, I have become a very independent learner, so the larger teamwork aspect of this class, while something that I do have some experience with, took some getting used to.  I think that this is very good for me, I have advanced in many skills that might not have been my strongest points.  One of the biggest differences is the notifications just a few days before the assignments are due.  This has made it difficult for me to get them done on time, but I think that I have coped fairly well.
    I think that some of the benefits of this kind of course are getting to learn how to work with a group that does not see each other very regularly. Also working with the deadlines and working out your own interviews and meeting times can be great practice for the real world. You just don't get that kind of experience in regular school. The drawbacks for me are not being able to have regular updates on my progress and grades.  This usually helps me to know when I need to step up my work, and with this class I do not have that ability.
    I already had an idea of how my learning style works.  However this class has solidified that my brain needs to see and hear things in order to remember them.  Another thing that was brought more into the light was that without lists and deadlines I get so off track that it gets very difficult to catch up with my school work or personal life.
    I think that I will apply what I have learned about myself and learning in the form of lists and post-it notes.  In order to stay with the class for the rest of the time,  I will really have to apply myself and start making more deadlines.  I will also have to put myself out there in my group more.  
    In order to keep on track with the rest of the class I will have to continue to make lists of what needs to happen, and I will try my hardest to add the deadline component to my work.  Among the different things that I will have to do differently, I will have to try and stay in contact with the other people in my group more efficiently than I have been.

Lydia Charbonneau- Reflection on Learning Process

Hello to my lovely blog readers! I'm surely enjoying this holiday break, what about you guys? 

I really enjoy this type of learning. In my school we are forced to do what the teachers have assigned, whether we like it or not. But in What’s the Story? there's a little more freedom. And I think that's where kids would benefit from. At my school kids have little freedom. That's what makes it so hard to learn. Especially if a kid doesn't enjoy the subject being forced upon them. Kids learn different ways. There is no “normal” way of understanding, they all are different. I know this because for me certain subjects are harder than others for me to grasp. Like math for an instance. But that's why I like this way of teaching better. The teachers and helpers at What's the Story really want to help you and take your time understanding. At my school it's a little harder with 24 kids each period, twice a day. And that's another benefit. Since there aren't a lot of students in What's the Story, all individuals can receive the time and help that they need in order to understand better. For example in the beginning Lauren, Colleen, Bob, and just about everyone wanted to help me understand better since I was the youngest. And that really helped me a lot because I didn't feel excluded from the older kids. So thank you all for doing that for me. ❤️  But believe it or not, there are some drawbacks that could occur with this type of learning. When kids are given too much freedom they might abuse it. And this could very well happen in What's the Story. For example, we have two weeks to complete a blog post, that's a lot of time to write 400-500 words. And that leaves a lot of open room for errors. But at my school we have a given date. No what if’s, ands, or buts about it. Honestly, that's really the only drawback I can think about. 

I have grown a lot with What's the Story.  And I'm not just talking about height (because I haven't grown at all) I'm talking about writing. Ever since I began What's the Story I have seen writing and everything in a different sense. For example, when we get the constructive criticism after writing these posts, I don't only try to apply them to just next week's post, I try to apply it to my school work. And this experience has helped discover who I really am as a learner. I am someone who has different strengths and weaknesses. Writing I like to think is a strength (I could be wrong) and math is a weakness. But I am also someone who likes to go fast. I don't enjoy reading directions. And when I go fast I don't always really grasp what I need to grasp, and this is why I have trouble understanding things. That's who I am as a learner. And with knowing these things about myself as a learner, I want to try to really slow down and take my time when I'm reading something or writing. I think that I will not only use these things that I have learned about myself as a learner, in the rest of this course but I will also use it in the classroom. 

I really want to succeed. Not just because everyone says I need to but because I want to. I want to get into a good college. I want to get a good job. I want a successful life. And in order to do so I need to change do things and continue to do some things. I am really going to try harder to slow down and take my time. Not just rush through everything. I also am going to try to really pay attention. Sometimes when someone is talking about something that might not be really interesting to me, I will just space out and think about something else. But I am going to really try hard to not do that. But on a positive note, I think that there are some things that I do well that I need to just continue doing. For one, I am good at just talking. And I do it a lot. That's what makes it easier for me to have a casual and informal conversation on and off the paper. Not to toot my own horn, but I think also am very good at just answering questions. For some people it's hard to really understand the question and develop an answer to it. But for me it's really easy and I can answer in all sorts of ways. I can answer in a one page essay or one sentence. And I think that if I change those few things and continue with those few things, I will become extremely better! 

Have a great rest of you're break guys! And Happy New Year!!!!!!

Post 12-13-15

While reading Michael Moore’s 13 rules for making documentary films I learned a lot.I will use all of this while creating my movie but I want to take this time to share only some. I found the most important one to me was to make it funny. I can relate to this because I know that I personally like my funnier teachers better than serious ones. When they add a joke or a hint of sarcasm here and there I automatically like the class and the teacher better. But it’s important to know what sort of things you can’t make funny. You can’t be talking about rape or murder and make a stupid Jeffrey Dahmer joke, it’s just not right. There are also things you can make funny, like the 2016 presidential race. There’s Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton. What's not funny about that? Another tip I found to be really important is that short is better. People don’t want to be listening/watching something for 8 hours.(unless it’s Star Wars) Try to pack all of your information in a small time slot. You don’t want to bore your audience by having them watch for a long time. You know that saying “short is sweet but long isn't a treat”. Next tip that I found to be important is show why people aren’t talking about the subject. Why it’s not in the media, why it’s not being talked about. I didn’t really think about this tip until I really realized what it was saying. It is basically saying “why are people afraid to bring it up”. And as I get older I start to realize that there is a lot of things out there that people neglect to talk about. They keep it a secret or leave out the details. And your viewers want to know why. In social media all you hear about is celebrities and other public features. No one talks about things that might be important to your audience. It’s like when there’s a car accident the news they don't give every detail. Final tip that I thought was really important was exactly what I have been doing this whole blog post. Make it personal. Don’t make it all about you but tie some stuff back to yourself. This way the audience will try to relate to your topic. The more the audience can relate, the more they understand and enjoy the film. I really enjoyed reading this article. I learned a lot from it.

Moore, Michael. "Michael Moore's 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films." Indiewire. Michael Moore, 10 Sept. 2014. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

I think that there could be a few different messages for our story but I think that only one really makes sense and stands out. I think that the message/ story of the DCF project would be that it’s an actual problem. And make people aware of these problems within the foster care system. On our last visit Alex brought up a good point while checking out the Vermont DCF website. Alex noticed and brought up that there may be a reason why there was no place to give or get contact information. I found that to be interesting and weird at the same time. We all came to the conclusion of “maybe they don’t want us knowing or contacting them”. And that made me think that maybe they are hiding something. Maybe they aren’t giving us all the details. Another reason why I think we should have our message be that it’s an actual problem is because people don’t talk about it nor know about it. I started to talk to my friends and some high school friends and they had no idea about the DCF system and that there was a problem. Clearly teens and kids don’t even know what DCF is and that there is even a problem. Last reason why I think our message/story should be that it’s an actual problem is because if people don’t know or believe that it’s a problem then there is no way to solve it. You can’t solve something without help. And if people don’t know its a problem then they aren’t going to help. That’s why I think our message/story should be that it is an actual problem.

Alex-Filming Techniques & Aesthetics; Citing Evidence/Thesis

This speaks to the quality of the teaching we have had here in this program, but in watching Vimeo's “10 Steps for Shooting Your First DIY Interview,” in realized that we had already learned everything they were saying! The only real piece I got out of that video was that it is a good idea to "ask your subject if there is anything they would like to add" at the end of the interview. This makes a ton of sense to me, as the interviewee will at this point know what types of information you are angling for and will doubtlessly have a few pieces of information that you had no idea ever existed and that would be valuable towards your project. I found Michael Moore's article  well... a bit crass but nevertheless extremely informative. One of the most intriguing and helpful pieces in his article was how to use your viewers emotion to your advantage. Emotions play a huge role in your documentary, in his words, “They don't care whether you make them cry, whether you make them laugh, whether you even challenge them to think -- but damn it, they don't want to be lectured, they don't want to see our invisible wagging finger popping out of the screen. They want to be entertained.” You could be making groundbreaking revelations, but if they come through dry as bones they will never matter to the audience. Emotions directly correlate to memory, that's reason you can always remember those embarrassing moments, those explosive fights, those moments of hilarity, it’s because emotion will always have a place in your long term memory. With thin knowledge in hand you can create a story that encapture the viewers. While Michael Emphasizes the value of laughter, it is not appropriate for this subject, but another emotion he mentioned is, anger. Anger is never forgotten, anger spurs action. “Depressed is a passive emotion. Anger is active. Anger will mean that maybe 5 percent, 10 percent of that audience will get up and say, "I gotta do something. I'm going to tell others about this. I'm going to go look up more about this on the Internet. I'm gonna join a group and fight this!" This subject is perfect to trigger anger in others, humans are hardwired to care about the young and so to hear the shocking issues plaguing the children in our story will bring up the anger and therefore cause others to take action. As a parting thought, “take the audience someplace they haven't been. Show them something they've never seen.” This issue is mentioned again and again on the radio and TV, but you know what? they are beating the same ideas to death, if we bring new and unheard information to the eyes of the viewers, we will be able to truly capture their attention.

With my interests spanning the entirety of this subject, I am open to looking into any/all of the stories, but seeing as two on my compatriots are angling towards the stories of the foster families and the children in the system, I would like to look more at the system itself, how it functions, and the stories of the caseworkers. As Adrienne said in her recent blog post,  “At one point, Vermont’s legislature voted to cut the budget of the DCF, which forced them to cut down their staff. This included social workers, so the cases of those who left the Department were distributed to other social workers. Outside of the DCF, Vermont’s opiate crisis was boosting the number of children removed from their parent’s custody. This put strain on the social workers, who already had too many caseloads.” It is things like this I would like to focus on, the dangers of the job, the stress and the fear for safety. With this in mind, I am very interested to hear the answers Adrienne gets from her interview with St. Albans DCF Director. We all have been contributing potential interview questions on a group email so that everything we want answers on is asked in this interview, and I cannot wait to we the responses.

Moore, Michael. "Michael Moore's 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films." Michael Moore's 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films. Indiewire, 10 Sept. 2014. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

Hayek, Daniel. "10 Steps to Shooting Your First DIY Interview." Vimeo. Vimeo, 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. <https://vimeo.com/64729691>.

Marianna-Filming Techniques & Aesthetics; Citing Evidence/Thesis

         For this weeks post, I watched most of the footage that was provided for us, as well as read the other articles.  My favorite one was “Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films.” .  It highlighted a lot of things that I had not really thought about before.  Not having watched a lot of documentarys, it was very interesting to learn about what he thought about how they should be made.  After reading this article I watched the “10 Steps for Shooting Your First DIY Interview."What really made this great for me is that I could see quite a few of the points that Michael Moore brought up in his article in this short little instruction video.
       In this paragraph I will review  “Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films.”   This article was my personal favorite to read.
        One of the things that he talked about that I found most interesting was the use of humor in documentarys.  This was never something that I had ever considered; when I thought of documentarys I thought of a long, boring lecture, there was never any humor involved in these films.
       Thinking back on the videos that were provided, humor played a huge role in these.  Without it, they would have been dull and I would most likely not be writing about them.  And I do understand that sometimes there needs to be a more serious aspect to these topics, it is wonderful to have a laugh at them sometimes.
                         “10 Steps for Shooting Your First DIY Interview” Vimeo Video School.
                                      “Video 101: Shooting Basics” Vimeo Video School.
                     “Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films.” Indiewire.com.

         The story that I would like to pursue more is foster parents and foster kids experiences with the foster system.  So far I have only interviewed two people with very different perspectives on this topic.  The first person I had an interview with had experience with the system that she described as not very positive.  However, she was an older lady, and was telling me about experiences that happened up to 40 years ago.  The other lady that I spoke with is a very recent foster and adoptive parent and she says that she has had nothing but positive experiences with them.  Now, these two could not currently have any more different stories.  However, I would like to see a pattern emerge within the story that we are going to be telling about how the foster system has evolved over the years and how it has advanced to what it is today.  I also hope to talk to some social workers who might be able to tell me about what they would still like to see changed with how the process works.
         While this is a side of the story that I would like to do more with, there are many other different paths that this could take that would be fasinating to go down.

Adrienne-Filming Techniques & Aesthetics; Citing Evidence/Thesis

                Regarding Boyechko’s advice on shooting B-roll footage, I found some of it difficult to understand due to lingo. Phrases like “slider shots,” “monopod,” and “white balance” make very little sense to me. Despite this, the article gave me ideas for potential B-roll shots like entrances, buildings, and interviewee’s arrivals. I’m not sure if I should try to get any footage during my interview on Monday because I’ll only have my shoddy iPod camera, but I might make a few attempts.

                I found Michael Moore’s tenets for documentaries to be interesting, especially his advice to use humor. I don’t think I’ll be able to incorporate humor into the project, but I think a more light-hearted tone would come across better. I also found his advice on audience reaction to be particularly poignant: “Depressed is a passive emotion. Anger is active. Anger will mean that maybe 5 percent, 10 percent of that audience will get up and say, "I gotta do something. I'm going to tell others about this. I'm going to go look up more about this on the Internet. I'm gonna join a group and fight this!" To evoke this sort of reaction, I’ll need to present my audience with evidence that change is needed, preferably emotionally-charged evidence, and then a set of individually feasible solutions. I will need to give my audience their own way to “do something.” Moore also warns against assuming your audience is completely ignorant about your topic. This would be particularly obnoxious for me to do, because I only discovered the issue of the DCF through my local news. It’s guaranteed that many others saw the same broadcast or a similar one. While of course it’s important to introduce the topic with clarity, I’ll need to avoid being heavy-handed with my explanations.

Boyechko, Slavik. "How To Shoot B-Roll." Transom. Transom, 29 Jan. 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Moore, Michael. "Michael Moore's 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films." Michael Moore's 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films. Indiewire, 10 Sept. 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

                There are a few stories I’d like to tell and learn about: I’d like to tell the story of what life can be like in foster care, good and bad, the story of how adopting a child from foster care has affected the lives of parents, and how the DCF has found itself in this crisis. My first interview with my Human Services teacher revealed to me a lot about the DCF’s  recent history. Unfortunately I don’t have my notes from that discussion on hand, but I’ll do my best to recount what I know.

                At one point, Vermont’s legislature voted to cut the budget of the DCF, which forced them to cut down their staff. This included social workers, so the cases of those who left the Department were distributed to other social workers. Outside of the DCF, Vermont’s opiate crisis was boosting the number of children removed from their parent’s custody. This put strain on the social workers, who already had too many caseloads.  

Alex’s blog post from October 11^th cites that the Office of the Child Advocate has conducted research that shows “more than two-thirds of social workers said their job had caused them emotional or mental instability…” It’s clear that social workers operating under such stress cannot do their job as well as they could. To ensure the well-being of Vermont’s children, the conditions under which Vermont’s social workers do their job must change.

Bickart, Alex. "Whats The Story? The Vermont Young People Social Action Team-Alex Bickart." Whats The Story? The Vermont Young People Social Action Team-Alex Bickart. Alex Bickart, 11 Oct. 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Wiggin, Sal. Personal interview. 8 Oct. 2015.

Alex Bickart- #2: Interview & Storytelling; Goal Setting

Part 1:  For no particular reason I chose to listen to Brian Reed's presentation on "the craft of storytelling," and boy am I glad I did. This video was as enlightening as it was entertaining and engrossing, though I suppose that if a presentation on how to craft a strong and engaging story wasn't entertaining and engrossing, well it wouldn't be doing its job would it? Anyway, Brian brought to life something that has always been in the back of my head when I write a story or read a book, an unformed thought on what made the story so engaging. With clever anecdotes and fascinating stories from his work with My American Life, he described the four aspects of a quality story, Motion, Reflection, Stakes, and Speaking to Something Larger. Two of the aspects, motion and stakes are designed to keep you hooked. "We are hardwired to tune into motion in a story." Motion in a story tells us that there will be a payoff at a later point, a time when this motion leads to a climatic point, and we cannot help but wonder what that is. The same goes for stakes, "stakes drive a story, they keep you invested. In every book or TV show there is a question driving it forward." These are vital in our production, as there is no point in making project with a poignant and meaningful ending if people get bored and leave before it arrives. While the first two components make for an engaging media product, the second give it depth and purpose. The first is reflection, a.k.a  " the moment we get inside the persons head." This makes the subject of the story a real person, it shows their emotions, it gives us something to relate to and gives us an emotional connection to the story. The last important part is that the story speaks to something larger, that that is speaks to something everyone has experienced, a moral of the story as it were. the first two parts keep the viewer engaged, but its the second two that make it matter to them, its the second two that make people want to make a real change. With such a shocking roller-coaster of a project, we should have no issue keeping the audience engaged, what we need to work on is the connection. The issue with this...issue is that it may be hard to truly relate to it unless you have gone through it yourself. It is the type of long term lasting event that is in its own way unique, and because of this, getting the connection to the audience may be more difficult than it seems.

Part 2: After seeing it in every single one of the newest blog posts, it is ever clearer to me that the media kit and filming interviews is an issue, but we have beat that topic to death, and i think it is time to move on. Something that I saw in Marianna's blog sparked something in me. I saw mention of how we still do not have our personal interests/roles in this project fleshed out, and I came up with a harebrained idea that may or may not be good. With five people in our group compared to the three in most groups, I wondered if it was really a good idea to have five people doing interviews. My thought was that it would be good if we had one person (me...maybe) who was more or a researcher, someone who dug into the cold hard facts online, following leads that way. Someone who compared hard data from state to state, someone who would look at how other countries run their foster systems and how some of their ideas may be used here. Regardless of how many interviews we have, we still need data, and in the process of finding this information, the person would be able to come up with specific and in depth questions for interviews and other members could ask them. This would be helpful because it could make it easier to get the media kits around, as one of the far distant members of the team would not need to find a way to get access to them. The person would still be contributing thoughtful questions to the interview process, just not interviewing themselves. Now this idea may be off the deep end but I would love to see everyone else's thoughts!!!

Alex

Marianna Barrett - #2: Interview & Storytelling; Goal Setting

                   

           For the exploration of a source provided, I chose Brian Reed's video "The Craft of Storytelling."  This was a very interesting video to watch and I think that I learned quite a bit.  He talked about the three things that are essential to a good story, be it a radio show or just a fun story to tell your friends.  These three things are Action, Reflection, and Stakes, without these, a good story becomes nondescript and boring.
           This is some of what I learned from this video.  The first element-Action is the process of the story; it is how the story moves.  The second one- Reflection.  This is where the storyteller can get inside a persons head and really make them care what is going on in the story.  The last one is Stakes.  This is the big question in the story. It is what makes people keep listening to what you are saying.
            I really liked how Brian Reed told us about these elements.  All of the different pieces of shows that he gave us really helped me to understand what he was talking about.  With all of the different points that he made, my favorite was this one about what a story should do- "It should make a larger point about the human experience and about the world"

            My personal goals for the next three weeks are going to be setting up more video interviews with people and figuring out what my next steps should be.  I am having a little bit of trouble contacting people, so far I have only one interview set up and am still not sure if I will be able to video tape it.  However, I do have some sources that should be willing to do so.  For my groups goals, I think that for now we are just focusing on getting footage for our documentary so that we can focus more on other things that need to be done later in the year.
           There are problems that I had that have been figured out though.  One of these was access to the media kit.  Like Alex was talking about in his last post, I was really worried about not having nice enough equipment that I could get from the local high school.  However, I got access to a video camera from the school that should work just fine, if not perfectly.
          I am very excited about how much progress my group is having.  While it might not be as much as we would all like, we are still getting the things that need to be done done.  So while we still have work to do, this should be a very profitable adventure for all of us.

Lydia- "The Life Story Interview"

While I was recovering from eating so much on Turkey Day I read “The Life Story Interview”. I learned a lot from reading this. I learned that interviewing is a lot like writing/reading a novel. Novels have chapters, going from one story to the next. They give details but still leave some things out for the reader's imagination to fill in. They also include the events leading up to the climax.Good and bad events, they don’t just include the positive things they include the negative things too.  So I definitely see the similarities between the two.

I also learned that it is important to focus on the past, present, and the future. To not just dwell in the past, whether it was a good past or not. I found it interesting that while interviewing you should go through the negatives. Like regret, loss, and a challenge that was hard to overcome. I found this to match what we see on tv. Whenever a celebrity gets interviewed they focus mostly on their problems. And after discussing the struggles with their problems they talk about things they had to do to overcome these problems and what the future looks like now that they have overcome it. I found this article to be very informational and helpful. I am glad I read it!

Citation Here:

McAdams, Dan P. "The Life Story Interview :: Foley Center :: Northwestern University." The Life Story Interview :: Foley Center :: Northwestern University. Northwestern University, 2008. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Adrienne-Interview & Story-telling Techniques; Goal Setting

                Given the sources available to me, I’ve chosen to look into Dan P. McAdams article on “The Life Story Interview.” While I’m not sure I’ll be looking to record anyone’s life story, a brief skim of the page revealed that some of the sections contain valuable questions I can utilize during my interviews.

                Under Section A, McAdams advises the reader to think of a person’s life as a novel with chapters (McAdams).  If I interview a person who was been in foster care, I could ask them to divide their experience into chapters as well. This could help to divide my videos by subject and theme when I splice together different accounts of similar topics. For example, I could ask three different social workers what their most challenging experiences have been and what has been the most rewarding about their work. Instead of whipping the audience back and forth from question to question, I could put each response to a single question one after another and follow that with a second series of responses. This will combine smaller “chapters” into larger ones.

                This article also lists a series of memories and points in a person’s life I could touch upon, such as high and low points, vivid memories, learning experiences, and turning points (McAdams). Many people are interested in learning about the lives of others and hearing their stories, and combining this sort of information could help me create an engaging piece of media that will also help me to convince my audience. McAdams’ advice on interviews will be very useful for my project.

McAdams, Dan P. "The Life Story Interview." Foley Center for the Study of Lives. School of Education and Social Policy, 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

                Even before rereading my group members’ blog posts, I know that transferring the media kit from person to person is going to be a challenge. If all five of my group members arrange an interview, that will mean the media kit might transfer hands five times. The five of us don’t live close together at all, and if some of us arrange more than one there might be even more transfers.

                In her last blog post, Marianna mentioned that speaking some people might be difficult because of confidentiality restrictions. I agree that this problem will be difficult to overcome, especially because I’d like to interview minors. However, I think we may be able to supplement our own research with that of others who have looked into this topic in the foster care system in the past. However, Vermont-specific information will probably have to come from us.

                I also like Lydia’s statement that the “first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there is one.” (Charbonneau) Part of my ultimate goal for this project is to raise awareness for this issue and encourage the general population to help resolve it through solutions that my group proposes. With input from experts in the field, I think we might be able to come up with a few actions that the average citizen could feasibly take in order to combat the growing number of Vermont children in the foster care system.

what i think about this topic

 what i learned about the DCF program

The Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) provides a large sections of programs and services, including adoption & foster care, child care, child development, child protection, child support disability determination, and 
economic benefits such as 3SquaresVT, fuel assistance, and
Reach Up . there goal is to reduce homelessness, improve 
the safety of families and children, and to provide support to the families and children part of the system and helping it. on the website it says that there vision is for children and families be safe around there staff and help them live up to their potential. well from listening to the news and catching up on the free press for vermont they said that a mother killed a DCf worker and family members for losing custody of her child and putting the child in the system they put the child in the program because they illegitly thought the mom was unstable and needed the daughter to be in safe hands. i know they only did that because the mom had a problem with drugs but to kill family members and a DCF worker is not okay. see the DCF staff want us to trust them and make sure everybody is safe. how are we going to be safe if parents are killing staff to get there child back?. it doesn't work that easy anyways you can't just go killing people, get your child back and think it's okay well it's not. i really want to help out and make sure everybody is satisfied with this program and make sure everybody is safe and secure. while i'm working with this program i think it's good to find the pro's and cons and work out the cons so we only have pro's with this system.

Blog post 1

I came into this topic not really knowing anything. And now that I am doing this topic I feel really good about it. I want to make it a “to do” to learn as many new things as I can before I die (sorry that sounded bad) but I want to learn new things. And I am really interested in this topic and I want to learn about it. I have a few friends who have been and is in the foster care system. And when I think about them and their families I honestly get a little sad. Because some of my friends have been bounced around from house to house for 9 years now. And they doesn’t keep relationships for too long. I’m basically the only exception. They have had a hard time talking to people that they have never met. And I think that that’s a great place to start. I think that people focus too much on how things would affect them and too little on how much it would affect others. And that's what it really comes down to when talking about DCF.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there is one. And when I first came to learn about DCF I had no idea what it was about. And I imagine that many people don’t even know that there is actually a problem with the DCF organization. And other than speculation, I don’t really know all or a lot of the problems behind DCF.

I really want to learn:

Why kids are put in these situations?

How are kids put in these situations?

Who Are responsible?

Why don’t people help?

What can people do?

Why people foster?

I really think that after these questions are answered we will have a clear shot at helping these people in and out of the foster system.

Alex- What I am thinking about my new topic.

In all honesty my views of the topic itself have not changed at least in the sense that i have made no profound discoveries, I have had no eye-opening interviews or seen some fact that changed my views on life. Instead my thinking is changing in the logistical sense, when I went into the overnight I was a lone wolf, going at this alone. By the end of the day however I was joined by four other people who are passionate for the issue and now everything is changing. Changing not in the topic itself but rather how we go about attacking it, the massive switch from one person to five changes the logistics of this project immensely. Nearly all the changes are good ones, we now have five times the interviewers, five times the researchers, and five times as many minds working together to solve problems. This is a great addition, but the point of this blog post to me at least is not to extol what we already have, but rather to puzzle out what issues may have arisen, because hearing what you are already doing right is never as as helpful as hearing what you can make better. The biggest issue in my mind right now is the media kit. We have fewer media kits than we do people and we as well as the group members who are the farthest afield, and this leads to serious issues in these critical months when we are interviewing a myriad of people. I cannot speak for the rest of us but I know that my phone and my school camcorders are not high enough quality for this project, and with media kits so spread out, I am rather stuck. The only idea I have to solve this would be if we as a team scheduled it so each person did all of their interviews withing a 1-2 week slot and at the end of that time they would meat with the next member and pass off the kit relay style. This still involves a fair amount of driving, but it would be a vast improvement over having to bounce the kit back and forth again and again to get to each persons single interviews. Along with this ever-looming issue, the other piece that lays heavy on my mind is who i am going to interview. A of today I have made contact with potential interviewees including an administrator and a case worker at our local DCF office, a long time therapist who specializes in children with home and family issues, and a recent graduate from my school who now works in the Barre office. While I am beginning to talk with these people, I am hesitant to set up an interview until we (the group) set up a plan to schedule the use of the recording equipment. Until then I will simply continue to talk to these people and brainstorm a mess of interview questions.

Marianna Barrett- #1 Evolving thoughts on our shared topic

        My thinking has evolved in ways that I might not be able see.  I already knew about this topic, but I know now what a big issue that this is.  I did not know about all of the different sides that should be examined, and talked about.  Even with just having the overnight to work on it with my group, I can look at it with a much broader understanding of what needs be thought about and brought into the light.
        Right now I am most interested in learning about mental and health disorders in children who go through the foster system.  Also, the same disorders in the social workers who have to deal with this everyday.  Even though these are the sections of this topic that I am most interested in, I am really looking forward to working on the other problems as well.  I am also very excited to get started working with the technology, as I have zero skills with that sort of thing and I hope to get some.
         I would like to learn more about the sub-topics that I talked about in the previous paragraph. I am also wondering about how my thinking might change as the class progresses and I learn more about what my other group members are interested in working on more.  I can not wait to see how our project comes together in the end.
         I really think that we should be interviewing a lot of people who have experience with this topic. For example, I might want to try and talk to a psychologist who has worked with the people who have experienced the effects of foster care, and talk about different possible mental disorders that might be present.  That might be very difficult to do, because of patient confidentiality.  As Alex said in his reflection post, this is a very sensitive topic for many people, so we are going to have to take our time.  It might really help to have and insider view of this, rather than just articles and papers, which are still very helpful, but should not be the only source of information.  I believe that it is very important to get all of the information that we can so that we can draw our own conclusions for things, instead of only listening to others.  And we really do need all of these different sources to help us to figure this out.
        And finally, what plans do we have?  We did not really get around to making plans for the future , but we did talk about maybe trading the equipment off to different group members, since we all live so far apart.  This might work well, but it would be nice to all get together and interview different people.  I hope that we will able to work some of those things out when we talk today.

Adrienne-What and How am I Thinking about my Shared Topic?

            The first over-night exposed me to different thinking than I had been doing alone. I learned a little about different aspects of Vermont’s Department of Children and Families and the changes that need to be made within the organization. While this problem is definitely interesting to me, I would still like to focus on my original issue. I don’t say this out of disregard for the multitude of issues involved in the topic of foster care in Vermont, but because I don’t want to compromise my personal goals just because this project became unexpectedly group-oriented.

            I’m not sure if my thinking on the issues regarding life in foster care have changed, but I attribute this stagnant thought to the fact that I haven’t done much research in the past couple weeks. My first objective after the over-night was to establish contact with a social worker and possibly find contacts through them. This was only partially accomplished; I’ve found a pair of promising e-mail addresses, but because it was so late in the week I decided to postpone initial contact until Monday the 16^th.

            During future research, I’d like to answer a variety of questions I have about foster care in Vermont. What are the best and worst outcomes of life in foster care? How can we minimize these worst outcomes? What factors lead to placement in foster care and how can they be eradicated? What problems do children face after leaving foster care, and while in it?

            I think I’ll be able to answer some of these questions be gathering information from a variety of people within the foster care system. Some helpful sources may be social workers (both current and retired), foster parents, employees of the Department of Children and Families, and maybe even foster children themselves. I would really love to communicate with children in the current foster care system or those who have recently emerged from it because they have the insight I need to answer my questions. Information from other sources is valuable, but children will be able to give me direct insight into their lives. However, I doubt that this will be possible.

            In the future I plan on conducting interviews with at least one social worker and a DCF worker. These are my minimum goals for interviewing, and I’m open to conducting more. However, I believe online correspondence is also a valuable resource, and has the added benefit of requiring less planning and no travel involved. I’ll be initiating contact with the social workers I mentioned above in the next couple days.

            Although I haven’t made much progress over the past weeks, I believe that a Google Hangout with my group this evening will inspire me to get cracking. I look forward to hearing about my group-mates accomplishments and working together to accomplish our common objective in the next few months.

Lydia's Reflection Post

I came here with my topic Bikers vs. Drivers on my mid. But I am now living here with 3 new friends and a new topic. The new topic is the struggle for social workers and families in Vermont's DCF. I didn't even know that this was a problem until Alex and Adrienne brought it up in their own slide show's. And the fact that almost no one in the room (except for the adults) knew what this topic even was or what it was about is just sad. I asked my group at the beginning of the day today this exact question "how do we change things that people don't even know needs change" and that really got us to thinking. And we looked at the DCF website and we saw this same exact problem strike us again. There was no useful information on the website. This could be for many reasons but a possible reason could be that they want people to be in the dark about this problem. But it could as be the possibility of them just not being up to date with their website, and that makes me wonder about others things they might not be up to date about. Again,we can't have the community's support with a problem if they don't even know that the problem exists.

I think that when I leave here today I will be leaving with not just my two bags full of mischievous stuff,  I will be leaving here with a whole lot of new knowledge about things I didn't even know existed along with a  bunch of new friends. I think my new topic and group will go far with the DCF project. I'm excited to work with all of my new amazing group members.

Alex-Reflection Post

Every person that arrived here today is leaving having learned different things, that is the whole idea behind workshops such as this, that everyone gets out of it what they need the most. For me personally that is the solidification of my project. As anyone who may have read my personal blog posts would know, I was rather terrified that upon arriving here there would be zero interest in my topic from the other students and that it would be disbanded. This thought actually effected my work, leading me to have a highly analytical and statistic based blog for the first few weeks, and I did not want to schedule interviews with people in these fragile times in their lives, only to back out and leave them out in the cold, alone. Now that I have completed this retreat however, I am ever more passionate about this topic, as now I have others to be passionate at my side. We have formed a strong group out of people who were originally doing five different topics, coalescing ourselves into one team with one mission, to bring the truth of the foster system and the reality of the inner workings of the DCF into the limelight. Other than that, the biggest discovery for me was in the usage of technology. I was a novice when I came in here, I had no idea of the proper lighting for a picture, and could not have shot a solid documentary video to save my life, but now I have enough knowledge to at least send me on my way into that terrifying void that is "technology" with a fighting chance and you never know, I may love it. Looking forward into the future of this endeavor I see a better project than ever before. The ability to have five people interviewing, five people researching, five people putting their individual voices into this will make it infinitely more diverse, but with this diversity comes problems. With so many voices and so many passionate ideas, it is easy for things to become muddled. Unlike other groups we are spread far and wide across the state, and this sets us up with unique problems. We will not be able to physically meet and talk things over, instead we will have to rely on technology to converse. Sadly though, one cannot truly communicate as well online as in person so we will have to simply deal. Other than that, the biggest issue will be interviews. It is not that we cannot interview people, it is simply that our topic is extremely delicate and personal for many people and we will have to be truly patient.

Marianna Barrett- Overnight retreat: Initial thoughts on our group topic

  What type of learning is happening here?  I think that we are all getting a better understanding of how to work in teams of people that we might not have normally worked with.  We are also learning how we can get our topics out there and really make a difference with them.


    I have learned how a group of people who live in very different areas can work together to accomplish a common goal.  I have also figured out that with all these different ideas, not all of them will come to light, but they should.  The more ideas about how to solve a problem, and the more discussion around that issue, the faster it can be solved.


     I am really looking forward to getting to know the people that I am working with better, and working with them.  I am also looking forward to expanding what I know about our topic. It is a difficult subject to work on, but it should be a lot of fun, and we should learn a lot along the way.  I look forward to doing more research on this topic.


      I am concerned about how difficult it will be to keep in touch during the time we will be working together.  I am also worried about being able to work the technology aspect of this work.  It was not hard to do during the first part of the class, but now that we are getting more advanced with the tech I might have some difficulty.

Adrienne's Reflection

                Over the past day, I’ve learned that we’ll be working in groups. This has changed my perception of WTS as a whole, and also jumpstarted me into developing a new vision for the project I had in mind. I’ve also learned about the topics of others, and what’s important to them. Conferring with my new team members has helped me see many new angles on my topic, the struggles of children living in foster care. Although I had had knowledge about these issues, I didn’t think I’d ever go very in-depth with them. Through the investigations of my team members, I’m sure that I’ll learn more than I planned.

                In the next two months, I look forward to establishing contact with social workers and foster parents and learning from them. I’m nervous about interviews, because I’m concerned that I’ll be unable to work the technology as deftly as I could. I think bringing a more tech-savvy person along with me could help to resolve any of these issues that may crop up. As a shy person, I’m also concerned about the social aspect of it. I hope that my reticence won’t obstruct my objectives. I don’t have many connections relating to foster care, so I may need to rely on my Human Services teacher as a resource. Through her, though, I’m sure I can find a plethora of useful people to interview.

                Before I form a long-term goal with this project, I think I’ll need to gather a large amount of information in order to gain a “big-picture” understanding of the issues surrounding Vermont’s DCF and its foster care system. Only after gaining a more complete understanding of the organization and the people it affects can I hope to start any sort of change.

van stehly post 1

 We started out learning about our own topic we chose, for example my topic was police brutality, but then we started discussing about what topic you guys as the students want to pursue as a group. So i joined the DCF/foster care topic. We as a group are going to pursue this topic and find out why its an issue in vermont. Right now we are learning on how we as a group are going to solve this problem. I learned that DCF/foster system is screwed up. it doesn't have enough social workers, the social workers are good or treating the foster kids like trash or the kids are filing false complaints making there foster parents look like they did the wrong thing. We as young people need to step up and help out. I look forward to learning more information on this and figure out whats happening in vermont. I would love to make change. like when they go screen the soon to be social workers they need to be evaluated more thoroughly and have courses to take so they can apply for the job. I would also like supervision on the social workers so they know not to make bad choices, and to make sure the foster kids are treating the social workers well.