Post 36. Expressions.

And so, now I suppose is a perfect time to publish; I've arranged to take some time from my M.Ed program, the paradigm shift in our community is tangible and visible both in terms of intelligence and in terms of education, it's a time period that is also filled with the ending of President Obama's term in office and much is being accomplished in political terms, young people are taking to the streets to express their concerns about our education, and I've noticed that earning an M.Ed right now would not aptly demonstrate my academic skills.

So, I'm taking the next 365 days to publish my work instead of dedicating more time to academic pursuits that understate my base of skills and knowledge.

It is time to share the story.

The website at www.dxed.org represents most of my work in writing and in terms of my nonprofit contributions to education. Hopefully, for a year things will settle in, and the writing sample provided on the site will expand into a newly published work that helps to empower students and improve public education philosophy in much the same way that www.apstr.org seeks to create a higher standard of blended learning classrooms in public education.

Clicking on the goat pictured here will take you to the website that has been designed to support and share my efforts.

Post 35. New Images.

Please also remember that you can follow the progress of APSTR on both www.apstr.org and on the Google+ business page for [APSTR]

You can donate to APSTR via PayPal with this button.

APSTR's humble beginning, along with our very first donated pc in the images.

Post 34. Classrooms.

I had an idea, to create a blended learning environment that also has asynchronous components, discussion forums that build communities around classroom learning groups. The following writing describes what this might look like. The document was created as a part of a Master's in Adult Education and Training Program at the University of Phoenix. If you'd like to cite the document, it may be easiest to check the references in the document, but the following citation should do. Hixson, S. (2014, November 17). Community of inquiry: Facilitating social presence [Assignment for a course on adult education]. School of Education, University of Phoenix.

Community of Inquiry: Facilitating Social Presence Part 1: Learning Orientation and Framework      As a teacher, this writing will demonstrate that facilitating confidence in group interaction among learners who are collaborative stakeholders in a community of inquiry, can also facilitate group competence in the subject material by encouraging epistemic engagement as individuals are self-identified as collaborators within a group. Learner-centered participatory environments based on orientations that view knowledge as a collaborative social construction help to facilitate self-directed learning and engagement, as teachers are more able to understand the individual needs and personalities of students through effective communication in personal learning environments (Conradie, 2014). Teachers who are comfortable in nurturing connections between his or her own presence, the social presence of learners in the classroom, and the cognitive presence of students in the classroom, are able to increase student knowledge and satisfaction with courses offered online (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). Continually, teachers who are able to foster connections between teacher presence and social presence in a blended learning environment, increased the cognitive mindfulness of their students in a way which improved a sense of self-efficacy and accomplishment that is thought to improve effort and increase epistemic engagement (Shea & Bidjerano, 2010).      In terms of demographics, the age of learners is increasing in higher education, and online classrooms are thought to meet the needs of the aging population of learners (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). Age as a factor in education also can be described as a ratio of competence, as adult learners age they accrue more cognitive strategies and experience that applies in a constructive learning environment among learning group members (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009).      The age of students is increasing, and this may also increase the expected specialization and complexity of teaching methodologies employed in modern classrooms. As technology evolves, teachers must be able to maintain an awareness of current technologies as well as the content of course material, as well as the contextual and social elements of the classroom environment in order to nurture epistemic engagement among learning groups (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). Learning spaces themselves may contribute to engagement and creativity as the presence of objects and artifacts connected to modern culture may increase curiosity in classrooms (Goodman, 2014).      Group membership as a process of intergroup differentiation increases motivation through a process of increased self-esteem that is related to group goals and ideals, based on differences between-groups, group members idealize positive in-group characteristics of group membership as a quality that motivates group participation according to group prototypes (Tasdemir, 2011). Learners who can self-identify with a learning community or group may experience increased motivation and self-esteem.      The culture of The United States is considered a low-context and individualized culture, which differs from high-context culture according to the nature of group participation (Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Collective cultures tend to view group participation as implied, and self-identification as a group member is a higher priority than emphasis on individual accomplishments within the group context, individualistic cultures tend to focus on achievement in the workplace outside of demographics and view perceived competence as a concept that is equal to capability and that influences self-perceptions of efficacy in work settings (Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cross-cultural dimensions can affect the sense of self-efficacy among students in learning groups.       Thoughts about self-efficacy can serve to benefit learner motivation if an individual perceives herself or himself as effective and capable of influencing events that change the outcomes associated with their actions, or create negative cognitive affects if an individual’s self-appraisal does not render a sense of efficacy (Bandura, 1989). A person’s motivational, cognitive, and affective processes can be influenced by the sense of self-efficacy, and people tend to select environments that contribute to efficacy and optimal outcomes (Bandura, 1989). The ability to nurture the appraisal of positive self-efficacy provides for self-directed behavior, by appraising the ability to influence current and future outcomes socially and cognitively, and external environments also influence the self-regulation of and promotion of efficacy (Bandura, 1989).      In summary, the awareness of knowledge is a social construction that is collaborated upon among members of social groups, that can be influenced by the external environment and intentionally encouraged in collaborative blended learning environments, which are inhabited by groups who foster a sense of membership that increases self-esteem and motivation, that is supported by teaching professionals who are able to create student-centered social and cognitive spaces for learning presence and learner collaboration in diverse populations. In the context of The United States, learning as a participatory practice enhances the sense of competence and self-efficacy, as competent learners are able to collaborate on and shape the outcome of learning activities in a formal setting, thereby delineating learning group membership that increases self-esteem and motivation. Part 2: Classroom Design      This writing was created to meet the needs of a course on foundations of adult learning, and the coursework related to the assignment provides two options. This document is written to meet the second example prompt, which is a teaching activity designed to meet the needs of 35 adult learners ranging in age from 17 years old to 70 years.      It has been established in this writing that group presence and collaboration are key elements to learning, which can be inclusive across age demographics and also increase retention. Presentational classroom environments are teacher-centered and offer a space for student listening only, some classroom orientations offer a perspective called performance-tutoring, which are environments that offer group participation but that is largely based on existing formal structures for learning; epistemic engagement is a process in which learners collaborate on the methods, language, and strategies for learning course material (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). My goal is to create a learning environment that supports teaching that engages both the social and cognitive elements of the classroom through teacher presence, that is collaborative and that maintains a record of group activity, and that creates an active blended learning environment that facilitates individual learning and contributes to group participation and epistemic engagement. This can be accomplished with technology, as shown in figure 1. Figure 1. Blended Learning Classroom Format (Smartdesks.com, n.d.).      As shown in figure 1, classrooms can be equipped with touch-screen workstations that can also be used as conventional learning spaces. Because the classroom is designed for students of a wide age range, the keyboard and mouse is not a required interface for the technology, hands-on fingertip gestures can manipulate the material presented on the screens, a projector screen at the front of the classroom can present material to the entire group without requiring interaction, on-screen keyboards are less noisy or distracting, and the workstations can employ voice recognition technology that can circumvent the need for rapid typing during class participation. The desks shown are created by a company in New Jersey (Smartdesks.com, n.d.). As shown in figure 2, the desks can be fitted with any type of display including touch screens, and can still offer a traditional keyboard and mouse input for students who require it. Figure 2. Computer Desk Features. (Smartdesks.com, n.d.)      The multi-use desks have the ability to be equipped with computer hardware that is not cost-prohibitive and that becomes the foundation for an effective blended learning environment.      Figure 3 demonstrates the collaborative features of the blended learning workstations for classroom use. Figure 3. Student collaboration during learning activities. (Smartdesks.com, n.d.).      The classroom technology is designed to be a part of the instructor’s presentation, as the instructor presents a set of course materials on the classroom projector, the same materials are accessible from each workstation. In this environment the students are thereby given a copy of the course presentation, which can be manipulated on each workstation going from one slide to the next, or viewing a collaborative document, while taking notes on the course materials. Any notes recorded could be accessible from any internet workstation through a university website.      Blended classroom interaction is recorded by the workstations according to student ID, course, and login. As the in-person elements of the coursework take place, students can submit written comments that are visible to the entire class as well as to the instructor, and a virtual space for student responses to the class can be created. Question and answer format activities can take the form of a single screen presented on the main projector, which presents questions from any of the students participating in question and answer activities. Lastly, the workstations can provide discussion spaces throughout the course material, much like modern online classrooms, that can be accessed asynchronously and provide a space for collaboration and discussion of course material while outside the classroom. As mentioned previously, class participation can be recorded on university internet storage space in a way that can be accessed from a home computer while not attending class, so that classroom discussions are available asynchronously.      Instructor communications are central to creating an adequate space for self-directed learning, as individual learner’s memory and perceptions of the course material are relevant to the foundation of self-directed participation and learning in a personal learning environment (Conradie, 2014). As demonstrated by online learning at the University of Phoenix, individual feedback and communication between the instructor, the social space surrounding the course material, and individual learners can be facilitated through the use of computer technology, in a way that is sensitive to a wide range of demographics. This next step brings the online learning technology into the in-person classroom in a way that combines course presentation, collaboration, and asynchronous communication to form a viable community of inquiry among the participants of each course.      To conclude, each student’s work would be visible and available for viewing by collaborators and by instructors, in a way that contributes to group identity among cohorts within the courses and as members of the university as a social group. This approach can increase self-efficacy and epistemic engagement in a blended learning environment, across demographics. References Goodman, S. (2014, November 11). Does your classroom tell a story? Edutopia. Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/does-your-classroom-tell-story-stacey-goodman?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=blog-does-your-classroom-tell-story-link Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44(9), 1175-1184. Conradie, P. W. (2014). Supporting self-directed learning by connectivism and personal learning environments. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 4(3), 254-259. Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T. (2009). Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster “epistemic engagement” and “cognitive presence” in online education. Computers & Education, 52, 543-553. Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T. (2010). Learning presence: Towards a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and the development of a communities of inquiry in online and blended learning environments. Computers & Education, 55, 1721-1731. Shiraev E. & Levy, D. Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and contemporary applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Smartdesks.com (n.d.). Flip Up / Flip Top PC Computer Desks for Schools and Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://www.smartdesks.com/flipit-flip-up-pc-computer-classroom-desks.asp Tasdemir, N. (2011). The relationships between motivations of intergroup differentiation as a function of different dimensions of social identity. Review of general psychology, 15(2), 125-137.

Post 33. Foundations.

It has become apparent to me that the best way to succeed in the supporting of public schools, is to find a niche' that is nonpartisan and that mutually benefits all stakeholders. This is including students, teachers, administrators, and county officials seeking to create new learning implementations that require technology and new technology funding. The result is [APSTR]: [APSTR] Has an associated crowdsourcing campaign to help us found the organization and to get started in terms of making in-kind donations sustainable to local and international businesses. You can click through to donate toward this effort!

Post 32. An Image.

Post 31.

I'm left-handed neurologically. And so having been expected to learn handwriting with my right hand I have learned a number of things about struggling while learning. I've created my own font as well as a website at www.dxed.org to help arrange and gather resources about this and other issues in education, and also to provide updates about the book that I'm writing.

www.dxed.org

The book is about public school, and promises to examine all of the social problems that develop in the context of public education. It supports public education as well as democratic education, and seeks to provide solutions for the escalating symptoms within the environments where learning is carried out.  This writing comes from the perspective of someone who had been expected to fail, and after spending decades researching and understanding the problem, succeeded instead while earning Summa Cum Laude honors. These honors came as a part of a four-year degree earned through the process of understanding the social problems that exist in the context of education, and through the self-discoveries needed to describe the processes of striving and survival in the context of Jefferson County Schools in Jefferson County, Colorado.

Post 30: Creativity.

"Don't imagine, indulgent reader, that I'm talking at you or down to you; or trying to put something over on you. No, no; imagine me, lamb-like and bewildered, muttering softly to myself, between soft groans, trying to make head or tail of myself in my present situation."

--D.H. Lawrence Certain Americans and an Englishman

Striving. I often imagine for myself that there is no perfect way to listen, nor is there a perfect way to handle any particular situation. This is much like the white space in some artwork from Japan, or the spaces in my apartment that I leave cluttered with reminders of an impermanent world. Two things about striving are that one cannot truly begin to strive until the admission that one can no longer struggle; and that striving is a kind of learning that becomes a part of the whole being. There is no perfect way to listen, or to behave, because if there were there would not be a need to improve on these aspects of life. 

My most recent journey brought me through politics, and I experienced firstly the political tensions that exist in Jefferson County, CO; as well as nationally. The pressures that exist are extremely polarized, but often this is an indicator that something will be created that enhances the stability of the community and meets the needs of all parties and stakeholders in a way that can slow or stop the extremism.

A lot of people have written in the context of dynamics, or polarities which develop energy for action. I chose an author who had written in a time that was not as critically aware of the difference between masculine and feminine tones, but in Phoenix II I found D.H. Lawrence to be capable of writing of his own femininity, albeit in a prose that met with the style of the writers of the time. So what follows is an example of the awareness of a trine of forces, between dialectics that create polarity, and their eventual offspring and resolution. 

"But life depends on duality and polarity. The duality, the polarity now asserts itself within the individual psyche. Here, in the individual, the fourfold creative activity takes place. Man is divided, according to old-fashioned phraseology, into upper and lower man: that is, the spiritual and sensual being. And this division is physical and actual. The upper body, breast and throat and face, this is the spiritual body; the lower is the sensual.    By spiritual being we mean that state of being where the self excels into the universe, and knows all things by passing into all things. It is that blissful consciousness which glows upon the flowers and trees and sky, so that I am sky and flowers, I, who am myself. It is that movement toward a state of infinitude wherein I experience my living one-ness with all things.    By sensual being, on the other hand, we mean that state in which the self is the magnificent centre wherein all life pivots, and lapses, as all space passes into the core of the sun. It is a magnificent central positivity, wherein the being sleeps upon the strength of its own reality, as a wheel sleeps in speed on it's positive hub. It is a state portrayed in the great dark statues of the seated lords of Egypt. The self is incontestable and unsurpassable.     Through the gates of the eyes and nose and mouth and ears, through the delicate ports of the fingers, through the great window of the yearning breast, we pass into our oneness with the universe, our great extension of being, towards infinitude. But in the lower part of the body there is darkness and pivotal pride. There in the abdomen the contiguous universe is drunk into the blood, assimilated, as a wheel's great speed is assimilated into the hub. There the great whirlpool of the dark blood revolves and assimilates all unto itself. Here is the world of living dark waters, where the fire is quenched into watery creation. Here, in the navel, flowers the water-born lotus, the soul of the water begotten by one germ of fire. And the lotus is the symbol of our perfected sensual first-being, which rises in blossom from the unfathomable waters."

--D.H. Lawrence The Two Principles

I heard someone say that it is always loudest before the dawn. I suppose that is true because all of our respective groups are reaching a level of polarity that is very visible and vocal, and so there must be some creative force derived from the energy that is present in our politics. This is written as a reflection on the transposition from tensions which arise in each individual, to tensions which arise among groups of individuals, as communities in the absence of groupthink we have collective personalities and needs. The pressures which exist between our groups therefore must also have the same creative potential as the pressures which exist within our individual perceptions, and so I see a way for the elections and for our internal conflicts within Jefferson County to develop something new and something bold and supportive, in a way that can empower the community while more aptly fitting our community into the larger national and global communities that we inhabit.  There will be an end to hate and discrimination, and we will find a way to develop true equity in our lives, but this is a creative process and not one of retribution. It's important to recognize the extreme political tensions for what they are, a force of creativity that is motivated toward balance and fairness. The entrenched status quo is likely to take time to erode, much like water takes time to shape the earth. Hatred is not best met by hatred, but instead by the watery forces of transmutation and creation. The eventual state of this process is entropy, and from that state we may again begin seeking individuality and fortitude as exclusion from the others of the world. This process of solution and dissolution is human creativity in social space, I've written of this in Post 9.  The need that I see in society is for an increase in cultural femininity and nurturing, as well as a de-escalation and personal acceptance of distress and uncertainty. Military cultures are deeply masculine, fearful and uncertainty-avoidant cultures. It's time for the war to end, and for most of us to learn how to increase femininity and to teach nurturing, an entropy from which a new energetic and economic development will spring in the years to come.

Post 29: Heroism

Historically, many social leaders have created social disruption in order to achieve the recognition of human and civil rights, and to motivate social change toward our most deeply held and human collective values.


In this post, I am going to demonstrate honesty, and share all of the e-mail writing that has been a part of this action, beginning with this quote from Emerson. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1950) writes of heroism:

"Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore just as wise men take umberage at his act, until after some little time be past; then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol." (p. 253).

In the context of social change, heroism is leadership that at first appears heretical to those who embrace the status quo. Heroism is often at first attacked and criticized as objectionable in the context of history, until society finds a way to express it's needs through the acts which are initially prosocial in nature. Social change is directly a process of demonstrating a need which society has, communicating the shared values and messages that exist in a salient way, and then allowing society to take up the charge of creating contact between the expressed needs and the changes in social systems that will meet those needs.

Telling the truth in Jefferson County has been an act of heroism, and has been summarily attacked, because it changes the way in which the entrenched status quo is perceived and can perceive of themselves. Often social messages such as these are difficult to accept, especially by a county board that has until now remained underneath the radar and completely capable of placing blame and avoiding all culpability in the cause of our collective issues.

In May of 2014 I wrote the attached e-mail (below) to the Jefferson County school board, after which I became a target. I have now and in the year 2000 been targeted by Jefferson County and I have been victimized through bad police work, blame, and stigmatization. Jefferson County Deputies falsified a police report that had been based on an injury I had earned accidentally while falling into a rock ledge prior to meeting the deputies. I was finding my coping sense and I was trying to find a way to be as safe and vulnerable as I could because days prior I had been poisoned, attacked, violated, and accused of culpability in the hot pepper attack at Jefferson County Open School in Lakewood, CO.

Instead of offering me assistance, and because I have taken up this position with the school board, I have been harmed by the deputies who then filed charges after the victimization because they are seeking to escape accountability. I had not committed any crime of assault, and I allowed the deputies to abuse me much like the abuses I have experienced in my early life from other patriarchal abusers.

Telling the truth has brought me harm, and Jefferson County continues to place blame on others as though we can manipulate the situation. I have found that the shame attached to any accusation from the county indeed comes from it's own guilt. The county accused us of creating false information, but as you can see here and in the fabricated police reports, it was the county creating false information.

The local city has been forthright in it's investigations, honest, and transparent as a part of the process of finding those who would attack our schools. I thank them for being authentic and for helping me to find the people who would threaten the safety of the community that I love so much. I ask that the local municipal governments look out for the safety of our students in Jefferson County, because it has become apparent that Jefferson County itself has not been able to do so.

Telling the truth among the parties of a corrupt government is heroic, and I am glad to see Emerson's words reflect true, as other wise people begin to extol and to listen to the needs of our young people.

In the process of my adventure, and through the storms of stigma, I earned an exceptional degree as a testament to the understanding of mental health and social change. Pictured elsewhere in this blog you will find that I graduated Summa Cum Laude in the field of Psychology at Walden University. I earned this degree through intrinsically motivated learning, and a desire to achieve the foregoing understanding.

I should mention that I am writing a book about growing up in JeffCo, especially since I was born left-handed and am ambidextrous now. The website related to book updates is at www.dxed.org, and the book will contain more of the stories that are a part of this web log.

From: Corey H. <dyetan@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:27 PM
Subject: Jefferson County Schools
To: ldahlkem@jeffco.k12.co.us, jcfellma@jeffco.k12.co.us, jnewkirk@jeffco.k12.co.us, juwillia@jeffco.k12.co.us, kewitt@jeffco.k12.co.us, lgillis@jeffco.k12.co.us,manker@jeffco.k12.co.us, stbell@jeffco.k12.co.us, hrbeck@jeffco.k12.co.us, board@jeffco.k12.co.us, mkelly@coloradocommunitymedia.com, jaguilar@denverpost.com,ngarcia@chalkbeat.org, canderson@coloradocommunitymedia.com, daniel@evergreenco.com, nelson.garcia@9news.com

All,

In 1994 I dropped out of high school due to intense social expectations. I knew very well that there was a huge problem at the state level. I knew this because the lives of all of the people that I had cared about changed in those few days. Your district made a financial decision, to expel all of my friends. I have videos of all of these people from when they were teens, most of these people are either in prison, or fighting very dearly trying to earn a paycheck, some are in other systems.

To make matters worse, I myself was placed in the school to prison pipeline that your district had created. I spent 20 years trying to earn my first bachelor's degree, after attending high school at Jefferson County Open School while in my early twenties. This is the only thing that the division of vocational rehabilitation had ever helped me improve. 

I was told that I was severely mentally ill. For a very long time I would cry to sleep at night, wondering why there was nobody helping me. I am an athlete, at that time I weighed over 260 pounds, and I currently have scars over much of my body due to medication side effects. I have other symptoms that will never heal, as the result of medication. I have been on I believe, every atypical antipsychotic drug that had been available prior to 2010. I was told that I would not ever be able to be in a position in any company, or earn my own paycheck for the rest of my life. Most of my friends also had believed what these mental health professionals and school teachers had said about me, and I have been assaulted many, many times. Sometimes, by people I had considered my dearest friends. 

While in the Fort Logan hospital, I was asked to give up all of my constitutional rights, including my right to bear arms and my right to respect my own religion. If I had described my religious beliefs, or if I had wanted to be a part of reporting any crime I would have been told that I was imagining things, and that I needed different medications.

I would like your district to think very seriously about what high-stakes testing really means to our young people, give them the respect that they deserve, and listen very carefully to their needs. Accountability is not about finances, it is about understanding the best way to educate young human beings who deserve to be in the very best roles within society that they believe is possible and strive to achieve.

I've kept very detailed records of my journey. I have since been declared healthy and fit, in every possible way. I had never had the disability that I was diagnosed with. I can work for the State of Colorado and help solve the problems in every major social system that I have been processed in.

The following is a communication that I had shared with a number of education organizations, and attached are two pictures. One of myself in 1994, and one of myself in 2001 after being processed at Fort Logan.

***

I have thoroughly documented my early experiences from within the school-to-prison pipeline in the context of the Jefferson County Schools administration. I have a lot of old video footage, every document I had ever written, and some outstanding letters of reference from Jefferson County Open School that refer to integrity.

I'm here to help solve our problem based on my experience, and also the associated problems in the mental health, disability, and vocational rehabilitation systems. My original high school transcripts are posted here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B32eEzpVnqebMFZMMTJYM3JXaUU&usp=sharing

Since 1994, it has been my mission to understand the harm caused by the pipeline, and social expectations that can lead to violence and other larger social problems. Here is some of my original research and other references that apply to the solutions for our collective social problems.http://such411.blogspot.com/

Somehow, I also kept track of every other assignment I wrote at every other university, including the state ones.

I have since been found to be healthy in all respects.

I'm going to stand up for the students today. You can join us.http://standupforallstudents.org/

With Gratitude,

--Corey Hixson

www.linkedin.com/in/model299

http://such411.blogspot.com

The link to my 2000 JCOS Transcripts is here.

Photo 1.

Photo 2. 

I later followed-up to this e-mail with the following information:

September 9, 2014

Hello everyone.

I promised a community update, and I am writing to deliver that update.

I spoke with my friend Jonathon Stalls in a meeting in Denver. He gave me some great advice, he said, keep it simple stupid. I have previously been treated unfairly in many life domains at the same point in time in Jefferson County, these times are things for which there will be a fact-finding process to unearth the gritty details of my life at the time. While this seems awkward I am choosing to be vulnerable and to let all pending investigations yield what they may, I am proud to be a part of a community that fairly investigates and prosecutes crimes, and I would like to find a way for any residual judgmentalism to fade.

When the deputies approached me in May, as cited in this e-mail thread, I had been naked for two hours. The reason I was naked was because I had been attacked and felt betrayed as a political figure at another time and place that made me feel unsafe in the world, and I had been walking for many hours trying to find a sense of safety and communion with the world, before disrobing in a field that was distant from any residence or public place. I had no intention of being found in public naked, but I was, and I avoided the deputies. At no time did I attack them, I had absorbed all of the incoming attacks and taser blasts without causing harm, while politely asking the deputies to stop the harm.

It has become clear to me in other parts of the community that I had been accused of other things which would cause deputies to believe I were behaving criminally, and this may have influenced their judgment in a way that brought out some anger in their behavior. I am not a criminal and those judgements were unfair, but I understand these perceptions that might be happening as people acting to uphold the law serve in difficult times and places.

However, the deputies moved forward and filed charges that were created from a police report that is a fictitious representation of events. I remember the events clearly and I did everything within my ability to avoid harm to the deputies and additional harm coming from the deputies who had initiated the assault with a collapsible baton. I forgive these people, they have difficult lives and difficult jobs and had made hurtful judgments without due process. What I cannot forgive is the misrepresentation of my actions through reports that are dishonest and fabrications that are only based on pre-existing injuries from the previous night. 

I was hurt from a fall, I believe I had been poisoned, I was exhausted walking with no food or water for more than eight hours overnight with no sleep. I had received injuries from the wildlife as well as the terrain. I needed medical attention and I was served injuries instead. While I can forgive the notion that I might have been perceived as culpable in other events in Jefferson County, I am calling on Sheriff's Deputies to be honorable and to tell the truth of these events that are not a part of the other investigations. In this way we can begin a process of justice and healing that can happen instead of creating further mistrust toward governance as it is happening within the larger community, and we can find success as a part of the other investigations that will serve to find those truly culpable in the other crimes.

I have a lot of hope that justice can be served well, and that the public trust can be preserved through this crisis. In a related event I have successfully been heard through the petition at Walden University, and the retroactive withdrawal petition in the attached thread was decided in my favor as well. Let's keep the process of healing growing and allow the process of justice to be something that is empowering in the community and that maintains trust for law enforcement in our lives.

   

    With Gratitude,

--Corey Hixson

www.linkedin.com/in/model299

http://such411.blogspot.com

Emerson, R. W. (1950). Heroism. In Atkinson, B. (Ed.), The selected writings of 
     Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York, NY: Modern Library.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/heroism.htm

Post 28: A Mentor's Letter

This image is made from the original letter that my favorite Advisor wrote for me when I completed high school at Jefferson County Open School (JCOS) in the year 2000.      I was I think 22 at the time I graduated high school, but I did so because I had made Bruce a promise.      While the signatures of many Hixsons before me may not have held the same merit, I feel that my name is worth something because I hold high my ethics of integrity.      This was a lesson I was taught through the rites of graduating at JCOS, even after so many difficult years, and learning to trust myself again. I think what others in the local system tried to take from me the most was my sense of trust in myself, which I never lost as a part of this lesson through this man's teaching. So, here is the letter, and the remaining light that empowers my story as an adventure. He proofed it with me on this sheet of paper, before it was put to letterhead. He is an amazing teacher, just as a human being, as well.

Post 27: New Beginnings

I'm working on founding the Non Government Organization (NGO) mentioned in Post 25. Here is the associated campaign! (click through if you want to donate)

Post 26: An Image

Post 25: An Image

Time to help things grow, no more struggle, time to strive.
No more fight, time to heal the wounds I've been given.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/model299
https://www.facebook.com/corey.hixson

Please contact me if you'd like to help me.

Post 24: An Image

Post 23: Coalescing Knowledge

A Lifelong Love of Learning: Centralizing Knowledge From Experience Social Engagement as Self-Transcendence: Education, Culture and Altruism

Post 22. Balance.

Post 22. Balance.

I think that people who place a lot of emphasis on the institutions that grant degree qualifications, rather than the work produced to earn those qualifications, may have a somewhat distorted perception of the abilities of the general workforce in The United States. Education at Walden Univerity I had noted while at the International Democratic Education Conference, required in large part the characteristics of intrinsic motivation that were imbued through my story at Tanglewood Elementary and Jefferson County Open School. I had been in a conversation with Arnie at the time, who I will only refer to as Arnie, because that is the way we were taught to address the teachers in our lives who were all founders of Open School. Internalizing the values of the community and sharing in an appreciation for the community and a desire to help it grow were a part of the "It takes a village" philosophy of the Open School. So, when offered a chance to educate myself and also to enable greater healing in the community, I naturally chose to commit to the work and create the level of education I saw would be successful in my perception and did not choose to simply meet requirements. Overall the education one might receive has not much to do with the learning that one chooses to accomplish.

One example I have is the development of what would intellectually be called a mastery skill, or a skill for constructing and employing dynamics as a part of the learning process. I wrote about this skill once, and I will present it here. What follows is a Google Drive link to the 2014 capstone document that I wrote as a part of the completion of my undergraduate program, as the result of some of the extra postgraduate training I was comitted to. If there can be any doubt about the legitimacy of a man's education, then the internet and the process of information sharing and peer review, serves to disperse that shadow quite well.


Balance
***

I think from a highly sensitized viewpoint, that my career objective is the establishment of symmetry, in life and in various social dynamics. Dynamics in psychology were in many ways first elaborated by Kurt Lewin (1935). I can only hypothesize that these dynamics began through reconstructions of Kant’s transcendental idealism as an epistemology, but in that case at least the geography is almost in alignment. Dynamics throughout my education were something that I learned to reframe as dialectics. As I would talk about various social dynamics or individual dynamics such as with the idea of diathesis-stress that I had mentioned, I began to understand them as reciprocal systems (Hixson, 2012).

These I termed dialectics. Examples of dynamic fields in contemporary writing are widely available. In Soul of a Citizen, Loeb (2010) begins describing social change as the formation of a displacement, the accumulation of awareness and social capital through shared experience, and the eventual discharge or balance of the displacement through the actions of social leaders who empower groups who are ready for the change. Looking at this from a slightly over-rated intellectual standpoint, this collective process is not unlike individual learning processes had been described classically. The Gestalt Cycle of Experience developed by Joseph Zinker (1978), is an individual dynamic of this type. In the Gestalt Cycle of Experience a displacement exists where there is a new opportunity to learn that an individual first senses intuitively, then becomes aware of the opportunity, then mobilizes to balance the displacement, achieves contact between intuition and objective awareness or object of knowledge, then begins to resolve the associations created between the initial polarizations, and then withdraws until a new displacement raises this awareness again (Zinker, 1978). This action that occurs between displaced polarities is a dialectic, and the larger communal action that occurs as a part of the sense of social injustice in the larger community also follows through dynamic changes, as I attempted to show with the previous example.

In criminology dynamics began to be demonstrated as an awareness of energies displaced through actions of criminal intent. In Changing Lenses these dynamics began to be described as the fields which build before crime takes place, crime itself, and the acts of restoration that can begin to achieve equilibrium again as a part of a potential change to punitive or retributive justice (Zehr, 2005). Restorative justice principles reflect the awareness of displacement created through crime. Restorative justice focuses on obligations created by the criminal act in society and for the offender to seek balance, the understanding of the harms that describe the crimes and the needs resulting from them, and the civic responsibility to maintain engagement among all stakeholders in criminal events (Zehr, 2002). Victim offender conferencing programs offer the chance for people who have been victimized and the offenders who had victimized them to attempt to achieve a sense of balance through an understanding of the crime and also through the achievement of balance through shared meaning (Amstutz, 2002).

Conflict is best described as dynamics or fields that begin to set up around mutual needs that can be in conflict. The conflicting needs can be survival needs that describe basic resources and security, interest needs in terms of tangible interests and representation and respect in terms of processes for negotiating them, and identity needs related to the sense of group autonomy identity and belonging (Mayer, 2012). The dynamics which motivate actions of balance and imbalance among mutual needs are displacements in relationships in terms of power, culture, personality, or information (Mayer, 2012). So when thinking of dialectics the learning and larger social dialectics mentioned previously would be compared as a T-test in statistics would be compared to a multifactorial ANOVA, but the reciprocal interactions between fields can exist simultaneously.

Dialectics can also be applied practically, some parts of emergency management can be described as fields. Hazard and risk assessment plays a role in the establishment of mitigation and preparedness strategies available to balance the awareness of risk (Haddow, Bullock & Coppola, 2011).

So, putting this all together a lot of fields exist in social space collectively as well as individually. I think that the best perception of my career then is finding ways to establish symmetry. Of course my most current goal is to obtain the degree in mental health counseling, but in terms of application I am seeking the degree in order to begin healing displacements that occurred through the existence of violence and trauma. The idea that I have for this is the application of meaning for experience, and in some cases greater community engagement and awareness in order to help the larger community become motivated to begin mitigating the larger losses that occur from traumatic events (Hixson, 2013). Over the next 5 years I also hope to share the larger message about the meaning and value of experience that I had identified was a way to de-escalate the social energies that I feel are the result of the acceptance of violence as a normative context in our social environments, and through one of non-profit organizations I am committed with I can develop a leadership academy that can begin that process based on the ideas I developed for PSYC-4010-1 this term.

References

Amstutz, L. S. (2009). The little book of victim offender conferencing. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Haddow, G., Bullock, J. & Coppola, D. (2011). Introduction to emergency management (4^th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier.

Hixson, S (2013, December 26). Diathesis-stress, default network, and epigenetics. [Discussion post for PSYC-4010-1]. School of Psychology, Walden University.

Hixson, S. (2014). PSYC-4010-1 capstone presentation: Corey Hixson. [Video Podcast]. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMavqfeueU

Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality (Adams, D. & Zener, K. Trans.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Loeb, P. R. (2010). Soul of a citizen: Living with conviction in challenging times (2^nd ed.). New York, NY: St Martin’s Press.

Mayer, B. (2012). The dynamics of conflict: A guide to engagement and intervention (2^nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Zehr, H. (2002). The little book of restorative justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Zehr, H. (2005). Changing lenses: A new focus for crime and justice. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.

Zinker, J. (1978). Creative process in gestalt therapy. New York, NY: Vintage.

***

Here I present the link to my final capstone document, that addresses violence in the context of The United States as well as the development of new therapies for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

B.S. Psychology Capstone: Choosing a Professional Role

Post 21. Resolutions.

On the first day of 2014 I had created a presentation that addressed violence in the cultural context of The United States, stress, traumatic stress, and the associated interventions. I think one of the best ways to demonstrate mastery of a theory or a concept in social space, is to begin teaching the concept, in a way that also demonstrates the meaningful life experiences contributing to it. The video is academic work related to a degree program at Walden University, but the awareness of larger social problems that it intends to address, was reciprocally communicated as a part of the discoveries I had made and the solutions that I had developed throughout my experiences so far. This includes my education within the larger life-context in Jefferson County, Colorado; as a part of my secondary school program graduation in May of 2000 at Jefferson County Open School.

***

Corey H. - 2014 B.S. Psychology Capstone - Walden University