Instructor: Mike DeMattos

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/37419

Visit Mike DeMattos's UHM web page.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 21

Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 21 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: What I've noticed in the class is that a lot of the students that come from other places begin to understand where they're from with a new lens . . . So despite the fact that they don't have a Native Hawaiian context or a local context, many of them, and in particular the very high performing students . . . find that there are aspects of where they are from that influence them as they are here. And that becomes very powerful not just for them, but also for the class, many of whom are not widely travelled. It creates an interesting exchange. Because of the place-based orientation we have here, it cues me in whenever I go some place else about how I need to be adaptive to their environment rather than demanding they adapt to me.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 20 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: Last year, the senior class, we had the highest percentage of Native Hawaiians in our program second only to Hawaiʻinuiākea, at the University . . . Ninety percent identify as born and raised in Hawaii.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 19 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: [Naʻau] is that inner wisdom, that place . . . Westerners think of their mind [in their heads] . . . Native Hawaiians, your wisdom is in your gut. It's in that place that is your piko.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 18 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: What does local mean? It means location. It means place-based. All of us are local to some place. We define local a bit differently here because you have one population that is a First Nation people. They are indigenous, but you have other people who have made this home, and they've incorporated that notion of place to their identity, too. But, there isn't a place that isn't some place.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 17 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I don't know about political correctness, but I know that sometimes they begin to attend to things because it appears that the instructor prescribed it rather than maybe leaving themselves open to what may be happening around them.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 16 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: Sometimes gut is a very simple way of saying that I've become sensitive to my environment and I pick up things that others miss, and I may call it my gut. As an instructor it gets developed, too, when you see a student, and you're reading their work, and you're struggling to figure out what's working or what's not working, but you see it, or you feel it. You see that this student is really close to producing something that is going to shake my world a little bit.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 15 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: Students that are particularly strong in areas inevitably comment about what they see as deficiencies if they line up positively with their strengths . . . But that's where having three reviewers comes in handy . . . But, sometimes it can be hard when they have the same weakness because you don't see it. All of our senses work on difference.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 14 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: A student goes out to the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center . . . that agency, in that community, is absolutely unique. For many non-profit agencies, despite their want and desire to extend and reach other communities or our want and desire to replicate services in other places, they are not necessarily franchisable. It's not a good way to think about it . . . That program typically develops organically within a particular community to serve a particular population, and the students grasp that relatively quickly. They have to. You couldn't have Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center someplace else and have it be the same thing.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 13 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I would much rather have someone who's oceanic and deep and rich in their thinking who is struggling with grammar and syntax and those types of things . . . than somebody who's a puddle, who is perfect in the way they lay out [their writing].
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 12 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I want [the students] to learn to both accept and dispute what they're finding. Because I want them to do that with themselves, but I want them to do that also with stuff that they are encountering outside of themselves.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 11 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: Every paper I grade, I provide [a rubric] and I'll identify where they are strong and I'll identify where they need to improve . . . So the question is how to learn strategies to become competent, and so that becomes part of the task in the class--to identify your strengths and excel at those, find your weaknesses and make sure they don't' become barriers.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 10 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: In a genogram, they are identifying things like occupation, but they are also identifying particular themes and patterns that they begin to see present. For instance . . . in my own family, you'll see certain hereditary health patterns. But, it's not unusual, most people find mental health issues; they find chemical dependency issues; they find that they are cut off from certain family members; there's things that the family is not allowed to talk about; there are things that they always talk about that keeps a family member on the edge, never invited in. And so, that line, and it's completely imaginary, that we believe separates us from those we serve, slowly gets erased when we start to realize that the difference between us and those we serve is that one of us is receiving services and one of us is providing services. We have life circumstances that could very easily put me on the other side of that chair or desk.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 9 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I believe that we are made and not necessarily born . . . [Writing] is a labor. I can remember times where I've, as a student in high school and college, submitted work that I was unsatisfied with . . . I'm guilty of all of the things that I try to help my students with . . . There's an attitude, a persistence, that says, 'Wait a minute, I've got to make sure that this gets out the way I need it to get out' . . . and you learn that kind of determination. That excites me more than anything else in the students, when they come to me and say, 'Mike, even as I submit this, I can tell you where I need to improve it.'
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 8 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: Most of [the students] go into Social Work because they have had a certain set of life experiences that they think helps them to become better helpers, that predisposes them. And I would argue that they are right. What I typically do is say, 'Look, for the first semester, I want you to suspend your life experiences just for a little while and I want you to focus on research and I want you to focus on data. What I want to see on the back side, when you walk out of here, I want you to be able to fully own and fully have your unique set of life experiences, but I want that also to be understood in a larger context of what the research tells us.'
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 7 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: The dynamic of the class . . . because of the way the class is structured, that cohort becomes much more invested in each other's success . . . You see a different dynamic that gets created . . . Because of that, it lifts the bottom . . . I think those students that struggle get picked up by the structure of the class.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 6 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I teach all of the practice sequence courses, and all of those, because of the psycho-social dynamic of it, anchor back to where a person is from, what their histories are . . . The other course I teach is Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Again, we are talking about environmental conditions. So, they are all place-based in one way or another.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 5 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I enjoyed the design. I think the students respond to it. They've learned to separate . . . the critique of their submitted work from the grade that they receive . . . I've had students who have come to me who have said, 'Mike, I didn't get the grade that I wanted, but I got the feedback that I wanted.' That's been really powerful.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 4 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: When [students] are going through the peer review process . . . what I do is bundle 4 students together. They staple a [rubric sheet] to their paper and they hand their paper to their right. Student reads their paper, reviews it, hand it to the right . . . so for every paper they write, they get 3 independent reviews of that paper. And it's interesting to hear the conversation that goes on not between reviewer and writer but between reviewers about the third person's writing . . . and they are educating each other because they are covering the material in different ways.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 3 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: The students that are good writers--that really write well in whatever they do--their emails are solid, their reports for other classes are solid . . . they generally produce really good work in social work . . . But there is a subset of students that kind of struggle with writing in some ways that still learn specific skills so that their writing within the Social Work profession progresses, that they do in fact become good writers in particular.
Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Social Work, clip 2 of 21
(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; DeMattos, Mike; Henry, Jim; Bost, Dawne
Brief excerpt from interview: I grew up in Waianae. The female in this case grew up in the neighborhood I grew up in. But I went to a small private Catholic school and every day I was faced with these two worlds: one world of privilege and the other was economically suppressed. And I had to navigate that world, and I realized that both of those places shaped me very early on, and it led me to social work. When I was building the course, I wanted to figure out a way to help students recognize how place informs their practice.

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