Non-Trivial Pursuits
Case studies in basic legal rights. (Any resemblance to persons or institutions living or dead is largely coincidental.)
1. Two Minutes
What does the word "collective" mean in the phrase "collective bargaining?"
When can an individual employee or group of employees bargain their own contract with management?
2. Three Minutes
A circle game adapted from "Se Murio Chicho" in Tecnicas Participativas Para La Education Social Vol 1. (The sentence is from a scene in the John Sayles film "Passion Fish" http://youtu.be/hkcIBvJU8Uk)
Good for: fun, expression, loosening up, paying attention to details.
Setup: people sitting in a circle
Number of people: at least three
Materials: none
Time: 30 mins.
Flow:
Part of the preparation process is the initial dialogue and research that goes into planning -- before we plan, talking to activists, getting the picture...
Use this to check-in, to get people's reactions, to get out of a circular discussion....
Taking turns, each person speaks...
Time...
Rules: good to have rules like no cross-talk...
Listening...
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).
....
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?
