Page 144 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

is the human ability to mentally place ourselves in the past, in the future, or in counterfactual

imagined situations is unique to humans and to free the Morbid self thus self-reflected upon

suggests being able to examine our own thoughts within these contrasts. This can have a

considerable influence on Community Conversations, group behavior and collective ideology.

Teaching Group Theory

I was fortunate to teach three sets of classes in Group Theory at ITT in addition to my

Communication courses. I found the experience of teaching adults learning in a private institution

challenging yet highly rewarding and the group exercises aligned perfectly with my dissertation

research at the time (Jan 2015-Sept 2016) Coordination of group activity I found often presupposes

communication on some level as it reveals shared interests, concerns, goals and perspectives that

my students enthusiastically shared with me I saw can be analyzed through their interactions.

This realization came even more to the forefront during my interview with legendary

critical theorist Ira Shor who emphasized during our conversational interview the importance of

letting the ‘local space’ you are in speak to you imbued in observing the geographic ways and

mores of the participants from their view and on their colloquial terms.

Thus as a recent transplant from Los Angeles to upstate New York I was fortunate to have

this natural sense or intuition to let my students teach me as constituents of the classroom what I

should know, see and learn about the area as a newcomer, it was full of urban banter, jokes and

history about Albany. I learned firsthand how much upstate New York differs from NYC (‘Cita’).

The notion of social structure as relationship between different entities or groups or as

enduring and relatively stable patterns of relationship emphasizes the idea that society is grouped

into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings or purposes.

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