Many areas of health care exist at the cutting edge of technology. Social work, by contrast, relies on one of the most antiquated tools of all: human connection.

“The main tool we have is ourselves,” says Dr. Marion Brown, professor and Dal alum. School of Social Work. “We take information, analyze it and make sense of it, and then we’re meant to be a resource for people and communities.”

While it may sound simple on the surface, the building connection takes care. So is teaching students the awareness, analytics, and techniques they need to do this most effectively.

But dr. Brown, who has helped educate the next generation of social workers at Dal for more than 20 years, relishes the challenge. She says her enthusiasm for teaching has remained constant, even as the field itself has changed.

“There’s something energizing for me about being with students and going to class,” she says. “I can feel it rising inside me. I’m excited.”

Dr. Brown was rewarded for her energy and enthusiasm this year as the recipient of the Dalhousie Alumni Association Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, the university’s top award for teaching.

“Anything is possible”

Part of the success of Dr. Brown with students stems from her own efforts to put some of the principles of her field into practice in the classroom. Namely, building a learning environment that feels comfortable to share.

“This is a process that I spend a lot of time thinking about—how I can bring my students to their fullest and experience the best learning in the classroom,” she says. “I think when we have that, anything is possible.”

A typical first day of one of her classes begins with icebreakers where she and the students get to know a little about each other.

“I tend to say, in true maritime fashion, ‘We’re going to focus on who we are first and what we’re doing here second,'” she says. “It’s not a big ‘Why are you on welfare.’ ?’ discussion because people might feel, “Oh, it’s already an examination, I better have excellent things to say.”

Empathy and understanding form a large part of her approach in the classroom.

Joanna Oginni, a Master of Social Work student from Nigeria, who was in one of Dr. Brown last year, remembers arriving late to class on the first day after accidentally getting on the wrong bus. He worried what Dr. Brown would think.

Instead of being critical, Dr. Brown took the opposite approach.

“After the class, he called me and we talked,” says Joanne. “I didn’t feel judged, I didn’t feel out of place, I didn’t feel like she was criticizing me. These were things that helped me settle into the classroom. It helped me to be calm.”

Another of the key priorities of Dr. Brown at the beginning of each quarter revolves around establishing what she calls “community commitments,” which are agreements about how people will engage with each other in the classroom. These guidelines are set by the whole class during a collective brainstorming session, complete with flip chart and marker.

She says this process usually helps students feel equipped and empowered to learn their best — and to divulge.

From principles to practice

The latter, unlearning, can form a large part of the social work curriculum for some students, says Dr. Brown. She mentions the classic “going home on Thanksgiving” moment, where first-quarter undergraduate students report “some awkward conversations around the dinner table.”

The path of dr. Brown’s foray into social work stretches back to childhood and high school, when she began talking about wanting to work for children’s aid and help struggling teenagers. Part of that desire came from an awareness of her own privilege, something she says she learned from her parents.

“Privilege can be thought of as random, and yet it’s not, because my whiteness is not random,” she says. “I had both gratitude for the comfort I felt in my family and a vision of, ‘Wait a minute, why doesn’t that kid who’s in my class and at my school feel the same comfort that I do?’ That doesn’t seem right.”

The flip side of comforting the afflicted is harming the comfortable through advocacy, she says. She tries to convey to students throughout their degrees that advocacy is part of a career in social work, even though it may not be an explicit component of the 9-5.

“As a social worker, we have to pay attention to the world, the social context, and we have to play a role there,” she says. “Social work is not a hat you put on and take off during working hours, because it is based on values, principles and actions.”

It is this connection between values, principles, theory, practice and advocacy that Dr. Brown finds him most compelling as a teacher.

“I like teaching practicum the most, because that’s where students take everything they’ve learned, all the concepts and histories and theories—they’re taking all of that—and try to figure out what to actually say.”

She reinforces to students that having ideas and thinking about things is different from talking about them; that talking about ideas with peers and colleagues is different from bringing them to clients.

“We have these big ideas and we need to convey them in the most accessible language,” she says. “I love being a part of that journey with students as they figure out how to say the things that might be helpful to another person.”