From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 13 2003 - 11:21:33 EST
February 13, 2003 == FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For Peter De Jong life is about relationships. And he's spent the better part
of his life trying to understand what makes for a good relationship. That quest
has influenced all he does, including his work as a professor of sociology and
social work at Calvin College. Now he's being recognized by the college for his
efforts.
DeJong is the 2003 recipient of Calvin's Presidential Award for Exemplary
Teaching, Calvin's highest faculty honor. The award, which was presented at a
special dinner at Calvin this evening, includes a one-of-a-kind medallion and
provides the winner with a significant financial stipend thanks to the George B.
and Margaret K. Tinholt Endowment fund, set up at Calvin by an anonymous donor
in honor of George Tinholt, a former member of the Calvin Board of Trustees.
DeJong is humbled by the award. But those who know him best say he is a
deserving recipient.
In a letter of support for De Jong, one student wrote: "Professor DeJong makes
learning enjoyable for students. He encourages student participation and
actively listens to ideas students present."
Listening, De Jong has learned, is a critical component in relationships. In
fact, that seemingly simple idea has informed both his teaching at Calvin and
his own nationally recognized research.
In 1998 De Jong wrote "Interviewing for Solutions" with Insoo Kim Berg,
director of the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wis. That book, which
has at its core the idea of listening, has had a world-wide impact on the social
work profession. It has been translated into Dutch, Finnish, German, Japanese,
Korean and Swedish and a second edition was released in 2002. It is used as a
social work textbook by colleges and universities across the country where
students resonate with its easy-to-read, informal style and practical
suggestions.
The book advocates important changes in the way social workers interview
clients.
"Interviewing in social work," says De Jong, "has been based on principles and
techniques largely developed in psychology. These principles assume clients are
there voluntarily and thus the focus is on the details of problems and
pathologies. Social workers most often deal with clients who are there against
their will and resist the practitioner's view of their problems. And so many of
the basic assumptions of the social worker need to be revisited."
So in "Interviewing for Solutions" De Jong revisted the relationships between a
social worker and the client. He turned the old social work model, in which the
social worker tells the clients what they should do, upside down. He advocates
a solution-focused approach that views clients as competent, helps them to
visualize the changes they want and builds on what they are already doing that
works. Interviewing clients effectively is an art, says De Jong, especially
when building solutions with clients that reflect what clients, not
practitioners, want.
DeJong says his change in philosophy came in 1989 when he was working at Pine
Rest as a therapist, in addition to his teaching duties at Calvin (throughout
his career at Calvin, De Jong has worked in the field as well as the classroom
to ensure that his work is not just theoretical but also practical). At Pine
Rest he had a client who was struggling with depression. After reading an
article on empowering clients, De Jong decided to try a new approach with this
woman. And so he began to look at not her failures, those times when she was
depressed, but rather her successes, the times when she was doing well.
Together he and his client analyzed those moments and spent the majority of
their time trying to figure out how to duplicate those positives. The change in
his client, says De Jong, was significant.
Intrigued De Jong began to research this notion further. And in typical
fashion he began to translate what he was doing to the Calvin classroom, asking
his students what was useful in the classroom, what contributed to students'
learning and what made sense to them.
"You have to listen (to students)," he says, "and sometimes you have to push
them a little. You have to be willing to explore. But when you do listen and
push and explore, you find that students have good ideas. It's a very
empowering process for them and for me as a professor. It's a true
collaboration."
Sarah Rhein, a 1993 social work major who now does contract work for Bethany
Christian Services and Criminal Justice Chaplaincy, experienced that
collaborative process when she was a Calvin student. She had De Jong as both a
teacher and as her social work advisor. She says De Jong's approach works.
"I always had a sense he wanted to learn more," she says, "and that it didn't
matter who he was learning from. It could be a colleague or a social worker or
even a student. He had a genuine interest and curiosity. That didn't mean he
was given to every whim and fad that comes along. He has a stability that is
very apparent. But he takes his students and their opinions seriously. He
listens to them."
Among the advances made as a result of listening to students are Calvin's
role-playing interview labs. Here current social work majors who are juniors
work closely with senior majors and recent graduates, who serve as lab
assistants. The interviews are based on practical problems brought to the
classroom by the recent grads. And so the students are able to cut their teeth
in a realistic setting on real problems. All interviews are videotaped and
recorded so that the interviewer can watch his or her sessions again for
additional insights.
For De Jong such attentiveness to his students also springs in part from his
having been a student recently.
In 1986, 19 years after having earned his bachelors degree from Calvin, De Jong
earned a master's in social work from Michigan State, adding the degree to a
vita that already included a master's and doctoral degree in sociology. His
reasons for returning to school? He felt he had the foundation, the theoretical
base, as a Ph.D. in sociology. But he wanted more, the practical applications.
And moreover Calvin, which had just a minor in social work, needed to be able to
offer a major. So De Jong decided to lead the efforts to introduce a social
work major at Calvin, beginning with his own return to school to earn a
master's. And over a decade's worth of graduates, about 500 in all (and
counting), are glad he did.
Those alumni are working all over the world for agencies whose goal it is to
help others. They are in child welfare and child protective services,
gerontology, community mental health, crisis intervention, community planning
and family services.
They are building families for Bethany Christian Services, assisting children
through Michigan's Child Protective Services and helping kids at local schools.
And they are pleased to have learned their craft from De Jong.
Jill Mikula, a 2001 social work graduate, now is a supervisor for Catholic
Social Services, working with the Families First program which does crisis
intervention with families in danger of losing their children. She says the
Calvin social work program provided superb preparation for the important work
she now does.
"Calvin has a terrific reputation locally," she says, "and Professor De Jong is
a big part of that. People here think very highly of him and Calvin. In fact
when we have job openings the Calvin resumes are starred. They get flagged when
they come in simply because they're from Calvin."
Mikula says De Jong's interviewing class was a highlight of her time at
Calvin.
"I wouldn't have the interviewing skills I do without that class," she says.
"I wouldn't have been able to move directly from graduation to being in the
field without it. That class was a highlight. Professor De Jong helped me
learn so much."
Some students have had the unique experience of helping De Jong learn his craft
after their graduation.
Rhein had a chance to supervise De Jong when he became an intern for a year to
learn the details of foster care case management. She says the experience was
enjoyable. De Jong, she notes, came to Bethany Christian as an intern fully
expecting to learn all he could about foster care case management. "He didn't
come in expecting different treatment than the other interns," she says. "He
came in humility, eager to learn all he could. It was a typical approach on his
part."
De Jong says simply that the experience was necessary for his teaching at
Calvin. "Our students," he says, "will become foster case workers." But, he
adds, it also was critical to for work he's doing with the state of Michigan to
rewrite social work handbooks and training manuals. That work also has seen him
spending time with social workers in Saginaw County in Michigan, hearing
first-hand from the field about the challenges inherent in repairing
relationships.
His work with the Family Independence Agency (FIA) of the State of Michigan is
aimed at introducing strengths-based, solution-focused ways of doing social work
to the state's workers.
"I have written training manuals for FIA's Office of Staff Training and
Development and its Child Welfare Training Institute," says De Jong, a certified
state of Michigan social worker. "Over the past two years, with colleagues, I
have continued to work with FIA to develop new practice tools in Children's
Protective Services, to research practice outcomes and to revise practice
manuals and case documentation requirements along strengths-based,
solution-focused lines."
This, for De Jong, is the real-world payoff.
"It's important work," he says. "It's critical work. I'm happy that I have a
small part to play in it. And I'm very pleased that Calvin graduates are doing
it and doing it well."
Thanks to De Jong they are.
For a photo see http://www.calvin.edu/news/photos/faculty/pdejong.jpg
-end-
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