Course Description

Confident that students could learn more about the complexities of lowincome housing and welfare policies through hands-on experience rather than through assigned readings and classroom work, I have led small groups of undergraduates through this course with very positive results. The format selfconsciously emphasizes an experiential approach to learning. The need for a strongly hands-on approach to this course is particularly important given the middle-class, mostly white, and suburban composition of my institution's student body. The course emphasizes the importance of understanding both the federal and the local views of public assistance and requires that students interview policymakers in Washington, D.C., as well as front line workers at the local level. Further, the course requires students to think hard about the moral values involved in welfare debates, which suggests a course framework that would put students in emotionally challenging situations that knock down any complacency they might otherwise feel toward these issues.

This course, titled “Finding Work and a Place to Live,” is offered as a political science class, though issues from sociology, social work, women's studies, and economics come in as well. The course avails itself of the immersion quality of our May term (following the end of the spring term), in which students enroll in a single course and remain available for a full day's instruction every day for three weeks. The term's brevity makes extended library research and full-length term papers difficult if not impossible. I assign only short reflection papers based on assigned readings. However, being able to work with students for large blocks of time presents numerous opportunities for varied and dramatic hands-on lessons. Careful course planning can situate students where they are very likely to engage in significant inquiry and selfexamination.

Following a day or two on campus to cover some historical background and an introduction to the theoretical underpinnings of welfare debates, students spend two weeks in Washington, D.C., where they receive briefings from policy experts in and out of government. Next, they spend a week in Chicago visiting organizations—governmental as well as non-profit—whose work involves implementing federal anti-poverty legislation and related programming at the local level. These dual views of welfare policy ensure that students appreciate the tensions between both the lofty expertise and the sometimes overtly political considerations prevalent in national policymaking on one hand and the practical implications of those decisions for state or local agencies on the other. The course makes plain to students that the policy debates result in real outcomes affecting the lives of real people by situating students full-time in various poverty contexts, thereby creating opportunities for spontaneous learning beyond the formal scheduled programming. As one student wrote in a course evaluation, “I learned some of the most important lessons of the trip during the informal time when we were volunteering or visiting a site,” such as a soup kitchen or a job placement center.

The surrounding context provides a vitally important part of the instruction in this course. In Washington, the group stays at that city's largest shelter for the homeless, the Community for Creative Non-Violence. Beyond providing adequate accommodations at a very reasonable price, this facility provides an ideal location near the National Mall, volunteer opportunities, significant interaction with the staff (mostly formerly homeless people themselves), and plenty of opportunities, if taken, to spend time with some of the shelter's hundreds of daily residents. Staying in such simple accommodations also helps preserve continuity to the overall experience in a way that studying poverty all day only to return to a room at an expensive hotel would not. This design invites students continually to question how well the premises employed by poverty policy experts fit with the actual poverty in which they find themselves temporarily embedded. Carefully designed experiences typically lead to specific lessons learned. The shelter stay and other poverty contexts virtually ensure that students will have extended conversations with homeless people, that they will begin to examine their own preconceptions about the causes of poverty and the potential effectiveness of antipoverty policies, and that they will cease thinking about the poor as a homogenous group. They will also gain an appreciation for the complexity of antipoverty policies in general and federalstate shared programs in particular. With these experiences in hand, the students are better prepared to ask penetrating questions of the experts and local agency workers they interview throughout the course.

Several of the experiences built into this course leave strong impressions on the students and consistently provide useful reference points for subsequent class discussions. One exercise encourages students to become more openminded about the difficulties faced by poor people generally and the homeless in particular. On the morning of the first full day in Washington, students are asked to leave behind their wallets, purses, backpacks, cellular phones, bus passes, and all their other security blankets and to spend a full day on the streets. In groups of two or three, students must locate and interview the staff at various social service agencies that potentially could provide them with a change of clothes, food, medical care, and a place to stay for a night. They are required to interview agency staff to learn about their operations and funding sources. In scavenger hunt fashion, they photograph several sites located beyond what are normally considered comfortable walking distances. Coming up with a presentable resume and finding a job turn out to be nearly impossible. Students have resorted to selling plasma and panhandling, both of which create memorable and humbling lessons about the difficulties of extreme poverty. The single dollar bill I provide each student with at the outset proves of little help (the Metro costs more than a dollar to ride). Through the day they become familiar with much more than the range of social services agencies in Washington, D.C. They learn new things about themselves and each other. One student commented that the experience helped her affirm her career goal of social work. More generally, this day-long exercise encourages students to think about the difficulties of meeting basic human needs and the extent to which they take for granted the social networks that separate them from the homeless. One of the lessons this day clarifies is how multi-faceted programs designed to help the homeless must be, given the utter lack of resources and wide-ranging needs homeless people bring to the hunt for employment, housing, education, and healthcare. This activity's strong focus on avoiding the perils of the unexamined life not only humbles students but also piques their awareness of how many resources economically stable people take for granted. Their respect for the tenacity of homeless people to survive visibly increases.

The briefings and interviews in Washington have included meetings with both non-partisan and highly ideological research organizations, the Congressional Research Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, congressional member offices, advocacy and lobbying organizations, and service providers. Most of these willingly provide one- to two-hour briefings, gratis, with resident specialists. Some will accept honoraria, but most decline payment. The research organizations tend to provide the most rigorous presentations. Congressional staff members, on the other hand, vary widely in their expertise. They readily share their representatives' or senators' perspectives on the substance of the policy debates as well as the strategic side of the political process behind welfare policymaking, but they frequently lack the detailed knowledge of the policy professionals. Senate staff members tend to be more expert than those on the House side. Briefings are generally more helpful if those giving them are provided with a clear list of points to address a few weeks prior to arrival. In the absence of a known contact at a particular agency or organization, contacting the public information officer usually proves most helpful in arranging an interview.

Complementing the two or three briefings or site visits each day, late afternoons and evenings are available for reading, writing in journals, group discussions of the assigned readings or the day's events, and recreation. (Scheduling more than three briefings, interviews, or site visits per day taxes the students' attention spans, though this varies with the type of students and site visits involved.) Students write short reflection or critique papers weekly based on the readings. This helps create an understanding of the various systematic treatments of the issues written by academics, practitioners, and advocates. The group discussions also provide a way to institutionalize the sharing of students' reflections on activities and other informal experiences and to answer their many questions. Lectures, if desired, can also fit in during these sessions. By the end of the stay in Washington, students typically become fairly proficient on the issues and are eager to see how welfare and housing programs work at the local level. Since a substantial portion of their grade depends on the quantity and quality of their participation in the briefings, group discussions, and other activities, most students participate fully.

Following the work in Washington, a week in another location with an emphasis on local experiences with the federal programs in question provides opportunities to study policy implementation and its various challenges. I have used Chicago as the follow-up city, though any large metropolitan area would provide many of the same opportunities. A rural element might also be included, if time and financing allow. A rural stay might, if taken in, say, the Appalachian area, challenge students to think about poverty separately from race. Any number of all-white or nearly all-white poor communities could serve as the laboratory for studying poverty while holding constant the race of the residents. The possible down-side of this would be a number of additional challenges: transportation in rural areas (rented vans?), housing (a community center or a church basement?), entrée into a potentially insular community, meals, and meeting spaces.

The Chicago side of the trip allows students to see federal housing and welfare programs up close and to witness the federal/local tensions that often develop. Visiting community-based agencies involved in welfare-to-work programs, the students quickly learn about the complexity of many poor people's problems. For instance, solving unemployment requires not only matching the right person to the right job, but also overcoming transportation, childcare, and health-related obstacles. The Washington, D.C.-based policy specialists who speak to the students command an impressive knowledge regarding their particular area of social policy: Section 8 housing, substance abuse intervention, transportation issues, etc. However, their ability to link their respective areas of expertise with those recognized by local workers as vital sometimes falls short of the ideal. The policy contradictions that occasionally arise from these failures to coordinate pose important obstacles to solving complex problems. Congress, with its penchant for insisting on significant control over where, how, and on whom its dollars are spent, from time to time thwarts local initiatives. For their part, local agencies, embedded in local traditions—including racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination— sometimes fail to act in ways that the Federal Government (or majority public opinion) would endorse. Therein lies the rub: How to strike a balance between national and local control to bring to bear the expertise that resides primarily (though not entirely) in Washington while properly appreciating the flexibility required by local agencies? In this sense, the two parts of this course reveal the two very different worlds of social policymaking and implementation in the U.S.

The work in the follow-up city, with its emphasis on specific agencies attempting to carry out specific missions, affords the opportunity to develop deeper understandings of those particular issues. My students have spent hours volunteering at charitable agencies getting to know how they meet clients' needs and how they manage everything from funding issues (often a combination of federal, state, and local grants along with private donations) to staff training and client safety concerns. Some shelters will host small groups of students overnight, giving them the opportunity to help serve the evening meal, set up beds, interact with clients, and sleep alongside the client population. This can be unsettling for students initially, but, with preparation and clear instructions about what to do in case of a problem, this can provide a clearer sense of what homeless people go through on a typical day. With only a little prompting, shelter clients can become great teachers by sharing their personal stories with students.

In Service to Others. Shaw's students preparing food for service by Martha's Table, Washington, D.C.

To say that teaching this course poses some unique challenges dramatically understates the case. Perhaps the most disturbing lesson I have learned as the instructor is how difficult it is to create learning opportunities through visits to poor neighborhoods in a way that remains responsive to the students yet sensitive to the residents of those neighborhoods. Avoiding the appearance of voyeurism is a challenge. To visit Chicago's high-rise public housing projects as a group without appearing as tourists is difficult if not impossible. In 2002 one group of public housing residents declined to meet with the students because they did not want a group of mostly middle-class white people studying them like specimens under a microscope. However, a visit to a dilapidated high-rise public housing complex— walking through its darkened hallways and stairwells, observing the drug trade, talking with residents who cling to these forlorn homes—has a significant impact on students. Some come to tears. Others come away angry. All realize the profound tragedy of housing people in such a fashion. An important first step involves preparing students to be sensitive and open-minded. One way to do this is to emphasize to students that they are there to learn from the local people, not just to be (implicitly superior) spectators. If taken to heart, this can change students' attitudes and postures, leading them to convey more attentiveness and respect as well as to learn more. Emphasizing that one cannot know what it is like to be poor simply by visiting poor neighborhoods may also be necessary for students who are not from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Local organizations can help arrange briefings and site visits. These can, for a fee, arrange housing, meals, transportation, and programming for student groups. Experience has shown that close coordination with these programmers helps ensure continuity between the programming in Washington and that in the second city. Failure to work closely with the hired programmer can lead to a serious mismatch of site visits that does not drive home the desired points of the course. Also, selecting a second city that students are unfamiliar with may dissuade students from asserting their knowledge of the place. Prior claims of familiarity with a lesson tend to undermine the possibility that the lesson can teach something new.

Incorporating relevant reading and writing assignments in this type of course might be approached in one of several ways. I indicate the assigned readings on the syllabus and ask the students to produce reflection papers that synthesize the authors' arguments and evidence along with the students' on-going experiences during the course. These papers are due once each week. Asking students to synthesize the arguments of two or more authors forces reflection on the quality of argument, the gaps left by authors, and how their own personal values speak to these debates.

Other Lessons Learned about Travel and Teaching

A few words are in order regarding some other aspects unique to travel courses. These come under the headings of travel agents, budgeting, and recreation. Acting as one's own travel agent probably will produce the best results. Most professional travel agents are not accustomed to arranging the types of off-the-beaten-track experiences this type of course involves. Further, accommodations in this type of course become part of the programming, so selecting the appropriate location has as much to do with teaching as it does with providing shelter. Travel agents can be very helpful in arranging ground transportation, though this is usually expensive. Consider public transportation, if you can afford the time involved in riding trains and buses. Backpacks rather than suitcases ease the navigation of cities on public transportation and on foot. Assume that some of your students are very much novices when it comes to travel. Distributing a list of suggested items to bring may head off personal crises. Do not assume all your students have flown before or that they understand how to read a bus schedule or a subway map. Think about carrying a cellular telephone.

Arranging the finances for a travel course can cause anxiety, though it need not. Depending on the institutional backing available from one's college or university, some of this work can be handled by support staff. At minimum, the instructor must decide how much, when, and where to spend money. The $1,275 students paid to enroll in the most recent offering of this course (May 2002) covered nearly all costs incurred. A few meals were paid for out of pocket. Students appreciate some control over their food budget. Dividing this portion of the money, reserving some of it to cover supermarket visits and the occasional group meal at a restaurant, and giving the rest to the students in small installments, works well. Travelers' checks and automatic teller machine withdrawals eliminate the need to carry large amounts of cash. Bear in mind any daily limit on ATM withdrawals and plan accordingly. Keeping a reserve fund aside for emergencies—everything from unscheduled taxi rides to an unplanned flight home for an injured student—is important.

Depending on the intensity of the curriculum, making adequate accommodations for recreation can give both students and the instructor a much needed break from what can be exhausting course material. Persuading undergraduates to eat nutritiously and sleep eight hours a night is about as likely as getting them to floss regularly. However, other options are within the instructor's reach. Group excursions to a local restaurant, movies, and games may seem frivolous but in fact provide crucial pressure release opportunities that help students build camaraderie that will be useful in other, less amusing contexts and can help compensate for what may otherwise be an intellectually, physically, and emotionally demanding course.

Encouraging students to get to know each other very early in the term is vitally important, as the students will depend upon friendship support when confronting the adversities involved in traveling and the course material itself. I accomplished this by having the students build a shanty from large cardboard boxes (available at appliance stores), plastic sheeting, and duct tape. We situated our structure in the middle of our campus common area, plastered it with informational posters the students made—including facts about poverty and homelessness—and slept in our creation the first night of the term. The students were introduced to studying poverty through making the posters and shanty. This also offered a consciousness-raising opportunity for the larger campus community. Finally, the students became acquainted with each other in slumber party fashion at the beginning of our time together. And yes, local pizza places can be convinced to deliver food to your shanty.

Though the particulars of this travel course pertain to urban poverty, lowincome housing, homelessness, and welfare, the course structure lends itself to various topics. Students could visit one or more Mississippi Delta or Appalachian settings following the stay in Washington to learn about rural poverty. Other public policy areas could also be studied via this format, including agriculture, education, or healthcare. In these cases, the follow-up site visits might include policy relevant locations such as farms, schools, or healthcare providers. State governments may also provide useful insight given their important role in various areas of policymaking.

Moving beyond the lens of public policy in a federal system, successful travel courses have exposed students to Native American reservations and ethnic diversity in major cities, among others. Common to all these courses is the emphasis on experiential learning. Aside from library research, there is very little that college instructors might want to do with undergraduates that cannot be done while traveling, and travel opens numerous possibilities for learning and personal growth (and professional development for sponsoring faculty).