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Interview with George Freeman

Recent Teaching History
Diaspora, A Journey Toward Destiny; 2000-1
If You Weren't Listening…Say, "Yes, Go On"; 1999-2000
Master in Teaching;1998-99 and 1997-98
Tacoma: Millennium Shifts: Change and Construction Of Identity; 1996-97
Foundations of Modern Psychology; 1995-96

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

I think the center of my work is authenticity. I say that because I think the last two or three years my work has lead me to the questions: "How do I teach as authentically as I can?" "How can I be as fully present and available as a resource for the students?" "How do I teach in such a way as to be present at an emotional as well as an intellectual level for the students?" "In what ways do I guard myself from full contact with students?" These questions arise in part out of my training as a Gestalt psychotherapist, because what we look at is the quality of contact in any relationship. So that is really the center of it. I think my Gestalt psychotherapy training has moved my own work as an educator toward this question of authenticity. Part of what is lying behind that is this question of spirituality. And what role does spirituality have in education and the process of learning. This is connected through the Frierian concept of love. How do we, as educators, love our students? And how do we free people from the limitations they have chosen to take on? To explore this question of authenticity I use the processes of challenge and experiential learning. I use the challenge course we have here, and the low and high ropes course and team building activities to have student engage in both encountering himself or herself and encountering each other. This helps to strip away or at least come to an understanding about what frames their perspective about who a person is and what the story is that they tell. I really like to frame it in that way "what are the stories you are telling?" This leads to the piece of my work that has to do with identity. Part of what is driving my work now is looking at the matrix of identity, the construction of identity, particularly racial identity and sexual orientation. Those are the two pieces I work with most typically with students.
There are two projects I am working on currently. The first has to do with a series of interviews that look at the obligations that develop in families and what happens when there are violations of those obligations. My interest in this stems out of a story in my own life. The other project has to do with a sort of fun project where I am interviewing friends about their understanding of me as an African-American, gay man. Basically posing to them the question "What were your first thoughts about my being Black?" "How did you construct or come to an understanding about who I am based on that information?" "Then how do you understand my gay identity?" How do you put it all together?" What I am hoping is that the year after next when I teach senior psychology I can incorporate both of these projects into the students' work. I want to try to get them to think about these questions. This is an autobiographical piece and it lets me understand something about how people work with the idea of constructing an identity. Part of what I want to learn is how do you go about deciding on a particular fact or facet of a character to make important? How do you proceed to make the decisions you do? Underlying this is my belief that for most white people I present a real dilemma - I appear white. I do the same for many black people as well, but for them there is a different history around white appearance. They may look at me askance, but then they say I have cousin who looks like you. When I say I am black to white people this creates so much cognitive dissonance that they have to go about figuring out a way I could be black, even though I don't fit into their schema, or they just throw out the fact that I am Black and treat me as a white person. This issue of constructed socially of identity is illustrated by a story in The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin where he had two ways to go. He could either go with the street people, the pimps, the prostitutes or the drug users. Or he could go with the church. He went with his friend to church and the minister came out and said "Well whose little boy are you?" and that question crystallizes for me what I am looking at. He said right away of course "I'm yours." How do we make those decisions? That is the autobiographical point for me. Understanding what the feed back I receive is, I can ask how do we come to an understanding of what our own racial identity is.

Are there particular authors/artists/thinkers whose work you interested and which you often ask students to examine?

I guess these essential people are based upon what I want to have happen in a program. For example, James Baldwin is almost always a person I have students read because I think he writes so well and that his commentary on American society and race relationships, as old as it is, is so current. If I am doing a lot of work around identity development in particular then I usually try to hit some Susan Faludie about issues of backlash, about how does the society function to maintain control. Around education the central piece is Frire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I think it is important for Evergreen students because it directs them to consider what is education about and how do I become an autonomous, self directed learner. Baldwin and Friere are the core. I build on them depending on the work I am doing. For instance if I am working on lesbian and gay issues I might use Judy Graham's Another Mother's Tongue. Or if we are going to deal with ethnicity and psychology I use Ethnicity and Psychotherapy by McGoldrick. It's a good text to get students into the family and deals well with ethnicity.
In terms of writers and thinkers who have influenced me the person that comes to mind is Kurt Lewin, a psychologist who took gestalt psychology and advanced it into the study of organizational psychology.

Are there specific areas of interest or issues you want to work with students on in the current year?

I define my obligation a bit differently, If there is a student who has a specific need that I can respond to and that no one else seems to be responding to I try to take him or her on. Usually this is in psychology. But the questions that are of interest to me are those of identity, gay and lesbian issues, and experiential learning. I usually do a lot of internships with a field supervisor for experiential learning. So the kind of person I would like to work with is a student working with issues of identity or theoretical issues of gestalt or one of the humanistic psychology. I really don't do psychoanalytic psychology and try to refer those folks to people like Kirk Thompson or David Rutledge. The areas I won't work with have primarily to do with "men's issues" and the men's movement. Actually if the student approaches me in a way that I find offensive I simply won't work with that student. Often I won't work with straight students on lesbian and gay issues both because I don't think many of those students want to hear what I have to say and because I can't quite see why they would want me as a sponsor.

Specific Skills, Competence, Techniques:

When it comes to psychology I really try to get students to think about how they ask questions, about what questions to ask, and what are the underlying assumptions. I like students to try to get a grasp on their logic and how they construct a logic for themselves. I try to get students to focus on a technically well-written paper, by thinking of the structural components of it and then thinking about the audience. Particular I am interested in getting students to effectively incorporate and acknowledge research materials in their writing. I also like to incorporate autobiographical writing into their work. I talk about this writing in terms of episode, particular, important stories of significant places in you life. The question really becomes How do you make a good story. ?" So when I talk about and teach writing I often say, "what is the story you want to tell?" Lets look at how the stories are told when we are talking from this perspective and how do we present it to this particular audience. How do we make sure both your voice is there and the voice of others is there? And that there is authenticity for both. This carries over into my teaching as I start to think about lecturing or workshops by asking, "How can I make a good story of this material?"
Another area I work on is effective communication skills. How do you go about decentering yourself as the subject of the conversation - to begin to truly listen to others? How do you go about listening at the empathic level, to hear the emotion, to see the detail? What I understand about student interests is that they want to learn how to help someone. But my experience in the world is that most folks walk around in a fairly egocentric space. We are geared to hearing our own story and we tend to take what other people are saying and try to shift it to support our own being. So I try to get students to see how they use their current skills to basically support their own story. Are you using the skills that you have to push your own values, world view, beliefs about what people should and shouldn't do, about what is right and wrong. If that is the case, is that a very effective way of listening and using communication skills? The decentering is about moving them away from that focus on what their own values are. In other words to put the values out in front of them sort of like a set of lenses they look through and to recognize that this "little distortion here" is really me – not the person I am talking to. This really comes down to some very basic communication skills like shutting up. I say to the students: "I want you to shut up," " I want you to stop asking questions," and "I want you to repeat back what people are saying." I want them to move from simply parroting people to really trying to hear what is going on behind the words. Why is it that this person is in this position? What is their body saying that is distinct contradiction to the words? Part of this process of good communication skills is trying to report as objectively as possible from the participant position what is it they see.

It is a matter of being present in the conversation while at the same time keeping a objective analysis of what is going on running inside your head. I want the student's to understand the power behind their silence - their being present. If you are authentically engaged with this person then how much talking do you really need to do? How much of your self needs to be displaced to be available? What then is the interaction of the two selves? This interaction is the core of what has to happen in helping. Students have to understand the meaning of their with interaction the other person. What does it mean to bring both parties to the table? To truly be at the table? What is going to happen to you when the person across the table tells you that they are abusing their child? What is the depth of your own reaction about? What are you going to bring to the table at that moment? How centered or decentered is the self going to be at that moment? I teach some of this through the processes of challenge and experiential learning. The active debriefing these experiences is critical to gaining some of this insight. I hope to use more videotaping of group process. There are five things you need to know about someone who is coming to you as a client. Who are they? Where do they come from? What are they about? Why are they here? How is it that you are going to help them and how will that benefits them? If you can get to the point where you can engage with someone and get those answers without actively asking those questions, but get the answers through listening and accurately reflecting back, then I have taught you something.

I really insist that doing this work entail moving from theory to practice. Sometimes students want to avoid theory and simply get by on their ability to talk with other people. But I insist that they need to know what theories are available and become really conversant with those that fit their own world-view. I think that they need to have a theoretical base to inform their interior conversation about the processes they are engaged in when they attempt to help another person.

What are key qualities you look for in student work? What techniques you use to assess their work? How doe you help students assess their work?

First, I consider the logic of the argument. I want students to be able to identify the claims they are making or the claims others are making and to be able to support and interrogate those claims. Students need help in seeing what it is they or authors are actually asserting. Once they see that I want them to look at the evidence and the argument and see how the claim is or is not supported. And then I want them to be able to make some sort of a judgement about this to ask, "Why should I believe this claim?" I assess their ability to do this both through their written work and through their seminar participation.
Another thing I am interested in working on and assessing, although this doesn't really go into their evaluations directly, is the quality of authenticity. This is really crucial in psychological counseling and teaching work. I try to get a sense of how authentic, genuine, and present in the world a student is. In order that students in the process of dealing with others can move from a neutral space of spontaneity in their work with others. This goes back to the ideas I was developing about effective communications. I try to assess this my relations with students and their relations with each other. This quality is very important in the processes of learning and when I am asked to write recommendations for students.

Finally I am interested in how the student works in community. I use a lot of group process and provide a great deal of feed back about roles and dynamics in that context. I hope that students can develop a sense of what roles they are comfortable with and a sense of their own efficacy within those roles.

I provide lots of feed back and we use lots of group assessment. But I also ask students to maintain their own journals at two levels about the weekly activities and learning. I hope that the descriptive journal leads to a deeper, more personal (and private) one about why they liked/disliked, were moved/or not moved by in the work.

Teaching Style:How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

I am a pretty confrontational faculty, especially when it comes to issues of identity. I have an agenda. I do want students to know that they are going to be confronted and will have to interact around the issues of who they are in the world. At the same time I see myself as playful – a bit of the archetypal trickster. I think there is such a thing as "deceptive Integrity" through which students can be lead to see things about themselves in a different light. While I enjoy lecturing, I am working these days on having a more collaborative and inquiry based process in my classroom. I am intolerant of students not doing their work and respond to their failure to engage by sort of passively tuning them out.

What types of students tend to do well with you?

Students who believe that I have something to say, and believe that the work we are doing together will help them fulfill their own goals. I like students who like to play – I believe that good thinking is a playful activity. This doesn't mean it is not a serious one. Thus students who want to work and who like to play in that process will be more happy than those who are always serious. Of course, I like bright articulate students who can move confidently through space and time, but I also like students who are struggling with their logic and who can be cajoled into seeing the world in new and more complex ways.

What types of students have a hard time with you?

Those who decide, for one reason or another, that they have nothing to learn in this class – who come as a filled cup, have a hard time. I am not sure why some students are this way. It tends to happen in those classes I teach that are more oriented towards professional careers, teaching and counseling. It may have to do with students being uncomfortable with being challenged around race, class, and gender issues. It may also be that some students come with the preconception that they already know how to be what they want to be, and the job of a professional education is simply to certify their competence. My experience in Core programs is quite different; those students seem genuinely receptive to change and challenge. I guess I don't do well with students who feel self-important and who have ideological blind spots. I am always up set when a student seems to choose a divisive path – where there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for rapprochement.

What do your student evaluations say about the way you come across to students?

Student evaluations generally range from good to great. The say that I am genuine, authentic, and funny. In the past year or so I have received a few that say I am too abstract. I don't quite get that, but I think it means that I use a story or a metaphor that students don't latch on to.

Expectations about Contracts, Internships, and Evaluations.What qualities do you look for in a student who comes to you for work in a contract?

I look for readiness to do the work they are proposing. I ask about the time they have available and their skills at time management. I look for their flexibility and their ability to adapt to move with their passion as their knowledge develops. I see education as a process of self-revelation. I want to know about their ability to work autonomously and the drive behind their work. And I want to be assured that the student isn't a shyster - I look at the B.S. factor and try to see if they want to do the work or just get credit.

What information do you want to see when a person comes to look for a contract?

They should bring themselves and a good idea. Once they have said what they want to do I will want to see a draft proposal and bibliography and before we actually get to work I need a contract with clear ideas, texts and timelines. All this can be modified, but they need to start with a plan.

Interviewer: Matt Smith

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007