Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Stand in the Place Where You Live



When I was a kid during the 1980's, I watched a lot of MTV. It was back when the show had music videos on all the time and this weird quirky new band called R.E.M. was coming up and coming on strong. I liked the simplicity and the pep of their early music. Stand is the one above and the one that's singing in my head right now.

Listening to this song through my social worker goggles after reading the National Association of Social Worker Code of Ethics makes it sound like Michael Stipe is singing about how to be a good social worker. On the surface, one is a happy go lucky song borne from college days making music on the side and the other is a serious and methodically thought out conceptual framework on how to steer social work ethical practice.

Below the surface, they are two parallel flavors that inform each other to make people like me a better social worker by offering me the catchy phrases to worm deep into my psyche and also the theory-rich content with which to hang my hat on at night after a stressful day at the office.

It's funny but it's all true. As social workers, need the heavy content but we also need songs like Stand, to keep the pep in our step.




Also: Honorable mention to Andria Ford for being a die-hard MS fan all these years.


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the fun post Jessica. You can always be counted on for thinking outside the box. An excellent reminder that we need to stay balanced and if there is a way to find way to integrate fun and content even better.

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  2. Jessica your connecting relevant music to current reality is wonderful! Music reaches across genres, age, space and peoples' perspectives and can find that 'common ground' that we read about in our coursework this week. Music can take you back in time or bring you to focus in the moment, can make you realize what you believe in ( or hoped in for your future self but forgot)-that is important but may have lost because of the hurried lives we lead...

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