john korsmo

The 2018 CHA contains the most recent health data and information to provide an understanding of our county’s health status. In this update, we have expanded the CHA to include community-specific health status information as well as countywide health information. The CHA is organized using a population health framework that looks at the physical environment, social and economic factors, health behaviors, access to quality healthcare, and health outcomes. The report presents a general picture of the health of our community, in which health outcomes and disparities are the results of complex interactions between health determinants. This assessment reflects a two-year process that included selection and analysis of over 160 health indicators, multiple community meetings, and interviews with community leaders. This provided information about strengths and challenges, identification of countywide and community-specific assets, and an assessment of the capability of the public health and...

This article explores the beginnings of an informal faculty-student mentorship developed to support each other\u27s quest to become increasingly competent global citizens. Through discussion of embracing global youth work as a joint objects and with first-person accounts, we attempt to encourage readers to do two things: engage in mentoring relationships, and practice cultural humility

This article presents the development and challenges involved in one school-university partnership over a four-year period, to learn what is needed to support teachers, future teachers and schools to be able to gather, understand, and use family knowledge in long term, mutually meaningful, and co-designed family engagement efforts. Here we explore impact on teachercandidate, teacher, administrator, and university faculty understanding in one high poverty, majority Latino, rural elementary school in the northwestern USA. The processes and structures involved in family-school co-construction of informal and formal family engagement experiences are detailed in this case study. The account details the inclusion of knowledge and applied strategies from Early Childhood home visiting (Roggman, Boyce, & Innocenti, 2008), a Human Services emphasis on navigating systems and interprofessional collaboration (Mellin, Belknap, Brodie, & Sholes, 2015), and prioritizing the immersion of teacher-can...

AbstractThis article discusses efforts to align a public elementary school's day-to-day practice with its mission. With increasing diversity within the school community and a growing desire to encourage global mindedness among its student body, this school responded to its mission through incorporation of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme. Insights from veteran teachers and administrators, parents, and students combine to tell the story of the school's efforts.IntroductionIt is suggested here that much can be done to improve the education our children receive if we 'simply' do for them what we already espouse. Written by a variety of stakeholders at Northern Heights Elementary School (NHES), in Bellingham, WA, including the Principal, a program staff member, and two parents, this article tells of recent efforts to align the school's mission with its practice.After careful consideration of how to make improvements on what was already considered a great school, the administration and staff addressed the gap between what it claimed through its mission, and how it actually operated. Most schools already espouse having the best interest of children in mind. However, there is all too often a fundamental lack of alignment between what is stated and what actually gets done. Much has been written about various 'theories in use', and the shortcomings of 'saying one thing, and doing another' (Argyris, C, & Schon, D, 1978; Argyris, C, Putnam, R, & McLain Smith, D, 1985), and yet gaps between what we say and what we do, are prevalent.This may seem like a trite recommendation for such an important and complex issue, but central to many of the shortfalls in our education practices is a discernable gap between what we say we want for our children, and what we actually do. There has recently been much needed discussion relating to opportunity gaps in education (DeShano da Silva, Huguley, Kakli, & Rao, 2007; Milner, 2010; Phelps Deily, 2010), as the gap in opportunity between our high- and low- privilege groups is downright appalling. Work is underway to shed light on this systemic problem, but the gaps between the positively-framed mission and vision rhetoric of the roughly 100,000 public schools around the US, and their day-to-day operations are in need of scrutiny.We can read mission and vision statements, communicate with teachers, tour campuses, and read statistics on just about any school in the US. One parent of three students at NHES, when considering the process of choosing a neighborhood to live in (and therefore a public school to send her children to), compared the task with selecting a meal from a menu:We can read the menu of offerings; we can compare customer reviews, and sometimes can even sample something before we order it... We won't all want the same thing from any menu, but we do want, and expect to in fact be served what we ordered. (S. Friesen, personal communication, March 11, 2011)This is where some schools fall short; they are not providing what their students, and families 'ordered'. Vision statements are arbitrary if the school community is not working to support it. This is not to say that a school should not set lofty desirable goals for itself. On the contrary, our children deserve high expectations. They also deserve schools that uniformly strive to meet those expectations, where all stakeholders believe in and share the work of reaching the vision.There has been considerable research over the past 30 years investigating what is working for 'highly effective' schools (Perez, M & Socias, M, 2008). When considering successes, several questions surface including, 'How does a school community move beyond visionary mission statements on the school walls?' or, 'How does it actualize the words and ensure that the vision becomes reality?' The answers to these questions vary as widely as the schools that respond to them. The mission statements and day-to-day practice should be unique for each school (Davis, Ruhe, Lee, & Rajadhyaksha, 2007), and school communities must be able to set their own goals, based on their strengths and needs. …

This paper presents a process through which its authors are seeking a deeper understanding of how Human Services professionals and educators make meaning of personal points of privilege. This paper emphasizes the methodological use of pre- and post- workshop questionnaires, observation of a group simulation exercise, and personal stories of times when participants did or did not act responsibly with various points of privilege. This is a synopsis of the study to date, providing the reader with an overview of the intents and methods undertaken. Preliminary results are offered to provide the reader with insight into the categorical themes that are emerging from the data.

One challenge experienced by many educators working in pre-professional programs involves designing courses to support students as they learn how to apply subject area knowledge to professional practice. This article describes a successful collaborative community-based project that contextualizes the often abstract and predominately linear theories of human development through the creation of life books for children in the foster care system. The learning activity includes upper division undergraduate Human Services students reviewing case files, contacting, interviewing, and meeting with members of the adoptive child’s families, researching the child’s medical background, and documenting the child’s life story to date. This method supports students’ understanding of human development within the context of the systems in which they will be working.

This article delineates the differences and similarities among four action technologies: action research, action science, action learning, and participatory action research. Each of these methods of inquiry is increasingly used in qualitative research, yet there remains a fundamental lack of coherent differentiation among them. This article succinctly responds to this gap in information, with a comprehensive, yet accessible explanation of the various methods associated with action technologies commonly used in qualitative inquiry.

This paper presents a process through which its authors are seeking a deeper understanding of how Human Services professionals and educators make meaning of personal points of privilege. This paper emphasizes the methodological use of pre- and post- workshop questionnaires, observation of a group simulation exercise, and personal stories of times when participants did or did not act responsibly with various points of privilege. This is a synopsis of the study to date, providing the reader with an overview of the intents and methods undertaken. Preliminary results are offered to provide the reader with insight into the categorical themes that are emerging from the data.