For items relating to popular education for union democracy, including blog entries, etc.
A simple way to record both individual opinions and the sense of the group.
Use color stickers (red, green, blue, purple, brown... stay away from orange and yellow -- too hard to see).
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MOVE THIS TO CHAPTER ONE AND LINK TO IT
My coworkers and I used The Educator's Journey in the Popular Education and Activism Working Group we had in the mid 1990's. I found it helped me better understand my fellow teacher/activists and helped me place my current work as a teacher in the context of my experience. (The activity is universal in popular education. I first learned it from Joao Paulo and Eleanora Castano Ferreira in a workshop for teachers at the old ILGWU Worker-Family Education Program.)
The best way to study popular education is to experience it both as a facilitator and as a participant. Try it out in a small group of people who share your interest. I was lucky to be part of a working group of teachers and organizers who came together to study popular education and organizing. (Their names are all over this handbook!). Popular educators need to create our own contexts, our own support, our own 'schools' in order to deepen and extend our work.
By Matt Noyes. Adapted from "El Tiro al Blanco" in Tecnicas Participativas Para La Educacion Popular, Tomo I.
By Matt Noyes (in collaboration with David Levin, David Pratt, and Steve Downs)
Okay, you have organized a rank-and-file reform group in your union. You are active and presenting a real challenge to the existing union administration. But how strong are you? How strong is the administration that you are challenging? How has your strength (and theirs) been changing? What are your weaknesses? What are theirs? Does everyone in your group share the same assessment? What are the implications for your strategy?
By Matt Noyes (and participants in the National Carpenters conference.)
ADJUSTMENTS COMMITTEE HERE
REWRITE THIS AS A CASE STUDY WITH WHAT WOULD YOU DO TYPE QUESTIONS
(Like much good popular education, this case was the result of painstaking collaborative planning and a spontaneous rebellion of the participants. Thanks to carpenters Michael Cranmer, Susan Cranmer, and Ken Little, to activist writer Dan LaBotz, to Carl Biers, Jane Latour, and Andy Piascik of AUD, and to Mike Orrfelt, popular educator, journalist, carpenter and building trades activist.)
Summary:
By Matt Noyes in collaboration with Carl Biers, Jane Latour, Mike Orrfelt, and Andy Piascik.
By Matt Noyes, from El Camino Logico in Alforja, Volume I.
Not everyone has experience planning actions and democratic, collaborative planning requires some method. This activity can help members of a group work together and develop a shared plan.
Summary:
In this activity, participants have to organize several sets of cards – each representing one part of a planning process -- that form a logical order, or do they…?
By Matt Noyes. (This case study is in the form of a "Problem-Based Learning" activity, an approach that is used often in medical schools to have students work through diagnosing and treating a condition. [[LINK]] Nick Bedell and David Bindman, teachers and fellow union members at the Consortium for Worker Education, introduced me to PBL.)
Summary:
