Group Work Stories Celebrating Diversity

Group Work Stories Celebrating Diversity is a most timely book about group work practice and education that highlights the theme of diversity, which encompasses acceptance and respect for various dimensions of difference. Dimensions of diversity include race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical or intellectual abilities, linguistic difference, religious beliefs, international or regional origin, lifestyle, political beliefs, or other ideologies, as well as the varying and complex intersection of these various dimensions. The thirty-one meaningful stories in this book explore these differences, leading to understanding and to moving beyond simple tolerance to mutual empathy, genuine and open encounter, and the celebration of the rich dimensions of diversity. Readers will enjoy this wonderfully intimate and intriguing collection, and will be moved to share them with others to help to spread the word about the importance of embracing, understanding and celebrating diversity. This book, with an international cast of authors - practitioners, educators and students - is a welcome antidote to the divisiveness and suspicion that swirl around difference and have become a sad hallmark of current times. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Social Work with Groups journal.

Andrew Malekoff is executive director and CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, NY, USA, where he has worked since 1977. He has been editor of the quarterly professional journal Social Work with Groups since 1990, and is the author of Group Work with Adolescents: Principles and Practice (1997), now in its 3rd edition (2014).

Introduction Part I: From the Inside-Out 1. When the Trainer Got Trained: Seven Things I Learned About Delivering Diversity Trainings 2. Addressing Internalized Biases and Stereotypes of the Group Leader: A Life-Long Professional Task 3. Invisible People Don't Need Masks 4. "Small" Acts Are Often Not That Small 5. Hope and Sorrow 6. To a Classroom in Botswana (and Back) in Search of Cultural Understanding 7. Exploring Personal and Professional Understanding of Nonmonogamous Relationships: Reflections on a Group Work-Informed Workshop Part II: Growing Up 8. Which Drums Should We Play? 9. Group Work with Gay Male Teens at the Time of 9/11 10. The Watusi Girls: A Legacy of Inspiration 11. Creating Space for LGBTQ Youths to Guide the Group 12. From Profiled to Praiseworthy to Proud Part III: Aging 13. A Different Kind of Sorority 14. Lessons Learned from Ballroom Dancing with Older Adults Part IV: From Medical Model to Social Model 15. "Oh, Don't Get Your Hopes up about That. He'll Never Be the Same" 16. Celebrating Neurodiversity: An Often-Overlooked Difference in Group Work 17. Come As You Are!: Creating Community with Groups Part V: Language 18. "Professors, Why Did You Ask Us to Throw Out All Our Hopes and Dreams?" 19. Working with a Diversity of Languages: Francophone and Anglophone Coparticipants in Groups of Parents of Transgender Children 20. Placing Diversity: Graduate Encounters with Group Work Part VI: In The Classroom 21. Being Black in a Higher Learning Institution 22. Until the Animals Get Their Own Story Teller, the Hunter Remains the Hero of All Tales 23. Recognizing the Needs of Black Social Work Students in the Current Racial Climate 24. Flowers and a Garden, Children and Games, Laughter and Fun: Unity in Diversity 25. Countertransference Challenges in Working with Diversity: A Group Worker Reflects Part VII: Searching for Meaning and More 26. Insiders in an Empty World 27. Women Faculty of Color in a Predominantly White Institution: A Natural Support Group 28. Healing Through Group Work 29. "Being Accepted" and "Being Accepted"? 30. Breaking Taboos: The Power of Group Work for First-Generation Scholars 31. The Village: Still Alive and Necessary