The task we set ourselves in an English for Activists class was to analyze an upcoming local election with major implications for parliamentary elections that would follow later in the year. The context was a recent victory by the Liberal Democratic Party in the Upper House elections and the continuing decline of the radical left/green parties which most of our participants support.
Another way to evaluate a course (or any other activity, perhaps), that breaks from the standard evaluation form format. This one takes the form of a debate over this proposition: "This course is (has been) a complete and total waste of time and money."
Form two teams, choose sides by flip of a coin, one team is given the task of arguing for the proposition, the other against.
I learned this from Emily Schnee and rely on it, especially for academic courses I teach. The form is simple, an interview activity with a report back and a chart to collect the information. But the content is rich: how have we learned well, what does that tell us about how learning is best done, what does that say about teaching and how it is best done? Starting with a skill also helps people recognize themselves as people who have skills and know how to learn, rather than starting where most education starts, with people's ignorance and lack of skill.
The flow:
I learned this game from a fellow teacher in the Intensive English Learning Program at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, who played it as a child.
It's a pairs game (or chain game), where each player picks up from the previous player's contribution.
The joker starts the game, usually with the standard opening, "Unfortunately, I fell out of an airplane."
The next player continues the story, but switches the direction, "Fortunately, I had a parachute."
The joker (or a third player, if it is a chain), continues, "Unfortunately, the parachute had a hole in it."
I thought up this idea for a game to introduce OWS-type consensus decision-making signals, to practice their use, and to spark discussion about the basics of consensus and some difficulties in consensus decision-making.
Circle game, whole group.
Joker first reminds people of the game Simon Says, leading a quick refresher round of the game. In this game, though, Simon doesn't get to give commands, s/he can only make proposals.
So, for example, the joker says, "Simon proposes we touch our noses."
Then, all the players "twinkle":
a) up to show their support
(I learned this at Kani Club, the great "Yes, and..." improv group in Tokyo.)
This game, done in pairs, challenges the listener and the speaker alike to clarify the meaning of words and phrases used. Like all games it is, as Huizinga says, "pointless but significant." The fun is in the pointless interruption and unnecessary explanation. The significance is in the verification of mutual understanding of even the simplest terms.
The flow:
In an English for Activists class on Occupy, Aki Owada had an idea for how to discuss the question: "What is democracy?" Instead of asking people to talk about what democracy is, she asked everyone to give examples of experiences they have had that were not democratic. (This is the same basic idea as the nightmare scenario, using the opposite as an entry way into a discussion.)
Here's what we came up with:
Idea for a warm-up that helps build shared understanding of group's similarities and differences.
Set up is like Red Light/Green Light, with all players lined up at one end of the space and joker at the other end. The joker turns his back and calls out some identity or trait that people might share: for example, "Postal Workers" or "Single Parents" or "people who love John Legend", then says "`1, 2, 3" dragging it out or suddenly speeding it up, then turns and yells, "stop!" Repeat until some player reaches the joker.
So: "People who are union members. 1, 2, 3.... Stop!"
Hegel criticized "picture thinking" (vorstellung) as opposed to conceptual thinking, for some good reasons, but learning finds a good foothold in the creation, description, and analysis of pictures. I think this is because we find in drawings elements produced unconsciously, accidentally. And the drawings we create become objects in common -- something we can look at and to which we can refer in our conversation.
This simple activity can be the opening of a long investigation.
The idea is to take a random object that is utterly familiar but considered unimportant and use it as an object of learning, finding the connections between that object and ourselves. (Reminds me of Marx's question in Volume One of Capital about how two objects can be made commensurable.)
Step one is just to take the bag and answer the question: What do you see? This step requires time and care, it should be detailed and very specific, a close description, a close reading.
