English teaching/learning

In this activity from Técnicas Participativas para la Educación Popular participants form a collective understanding of the most urgent problems they face today and the main strengths or positive factors on which they can draw. The goal is to get the group to form a common understanding of their strategic position at a given point in time. This can be helpful for groups of people involved in different projects, or working in different parts of a project.

The Flow:

This is a game in which the group builds an idea by accepting and adding to the previous idea (yes, and...).

The Flow:
In a circle, small or large group.

• Joker asks the group to think of something good.
• When a player has an idea, they start the play by naming their good thing -- e.g. "A cup of hot coffee."
• Next player adds to it, to make it better -- "A cup of hot coffee on a cold morning."
• Third player adds -- "A cup of hot coffee on a cold morning in the mountains."
• And so on. Continue adding as long as the energy is good.
  

Take the checklist of actions and think about who does what? Then think about roles -- which actions are grouped to form roles? And positions -- how do positions and roles overlap (or not)? E.g., as a teacher, I have an institutional position that is material and ideological. Some roles are built into that position, others are assumed but can be removed or redistributed. The point is not to drop the roles or powers, but to redistribute them, to reconfigure the relationships.

How is protagonism a gathering of roles? What roles are needed to constitute protagonism?

A Japanese card game which presupposes inequality both at the outset and as the game proceeds.

The flow:

The players are divided into five groups:

• the very rich,
• the rich,
• the middle,
• the poor, and
• the poor bastards