Reflection
The GALACTIC program was fast-paced, rigorous, and moving. The best part of the week was being able to form deeper and deeper relationships with the scholars in our group -- we had a dynamic, talented, positive, and hard-working set of young people who consistently demonstrated an ability to be open-minded, engage in productive conversations, and support each other through difficulty. And they were so funny! Much charm! A handful of students asked for my contact information, so I hope they keep in touch in the future.
Personal Reflections:
In terms of Sara and my lessons and facilitation, there were things that went well and things that didn't go well. We struggled all week with timing issues, and I don't think we ever really got the hang of anticipating how long a particular activity would last, or knowing how much time students needed to discuss the questions we posed. Sara's headlines activity on the second day, where she introduced students to the global nature of gender injustice, was particularly effective, but unfortunately when we tried to run a similar activity regarding gender-based violence the next day, the energy in the room was lackluster and very few students were engaged in the whole-group discussion. This may have been a result of the difficult nature of the topic, them being bored with the format since they had just done a similar exercise the day prior, a combination of both, or something else entirely. It just demonstrates that teachers need to be able to adjust to their students in the moment, and be willing to change things up/adapt if things aren't working (which is, like, duh).
Another activity that was really effective was when we put students into groups (we made intentional groupings after getting a better sense of their personalities from the first day) and asked them to interact with a variety of resources on gender injustices related to education, art, gender roles & expression, and work. Because we had 21 students, we split them into groups of three & four to look through a packet of materials on one of these topics (and the materials were a mix of visual, print, and digital medias) -- during the whole group discussion, students reported on what they had learned to each other & other groups had a chance to weigh in or ask questions. Throughout the activity, students were talking with each other, discussing their reactions, and taking notes on what they had learned/annotating articles etc. The keys to the success of this activity were 1) small, intentional, focused groups; 2) all resources and materials printed out, loaded onto laptops, etc. so there was no wasted time or confusion 3) scaffolded resources (parts of articles were highlighted so students didn't have to read the whole thing), 4) a diversity of resources, and 5) opportunities to speak with a few of their peers before sharing their ideas with the whole group. In general, whenever students had a chance to talk about their reactions with the people around them BEFORE being asked to share in the larger setting, the discussions were much more productive, insightful, and interesting. This speaks to the power of discussion strategies like think-pair-share, journaling, and other methods of allowing students a chance to practice their responses and think through their ideas prior to taking risks in front of the entire collective of their peers.
The art-making aspect of the course was a challenge -- I can't speak for the visual art that Sara ran because I unfortunately didn't have a chance to interact with many of the students who were doing original drawings, but in terms of the slam poetry, students were really engaged in thinking about their own gender, but not necessarily as invested in thinking through the global implications of gender. I think this was partly because I introduced slam poetry to them through a poem about my experience of gender, so if I had to do it again, I would pair that poem with another one on global gender issues and have a mini-lesson on how to tell our personal stories while connecting those to the larger, systemic, transnational gender issues we discussed throughout the week. I don't want to speak for Sara, but I think we both felt as though there was so much to teach regarding gender injustice/gender liberation that it was difficult to also teach them art processes and give critique & feedback on their work. In spite of this hardship, many students rose to the occasion and wrote beautiful poems about their experiences and those of other people. The group piece about gender liberation was especially powerful, because that group took the time to write about women, men, and trans folks all around the world. Most of the themes from the set of shared poems touched on a different way to construct masculinity, safety for girls and young women, and freedom to express oneself without stigma or stereotype.
The last thing I would like to mention about our group is that our day on gender-based violence was an especially difficult day. A few students shared personal traumas and some of those things had to be reported to higher-ups. In the future, I think it would be a good idea for all facilitators to chat briefly with their students about the boundaries of sharing -- I don't think this will adversely affect student vulnerability; instead I think it will lead to increased trust of the adults in the room, since students will know up front what the protocol is and what action we are required to take in order to best protect them.
Some reflections on the structure of the program as a whole:
There were many dimensions of the program that were great -- I think the training session a month or so before the week began was a good idea, although I have some ideas about how it could be streamlined to allow for more productive brainstorming (Vesna and Amy, I can just chat with you about those ideas sometime at your convenience instead of listing things here). I thought it was really important for us to meet after we taught each day, and I actually would have liked one more opportunity to build community together (or reflect on the week) after the banquet, maybe by grabbing some drinks or having dinner together the next day. I'm not sure that that's something that can be mandated, though.
The time commitment to the program was significantly greater than I had anticipated, which isn't a bad thing, it's just something that can be better managed on the front end regarding how you advertise the program. In order to do even a halfway decent job, we planned and planned prior to the teaching week & then spent several hours after class tweaking/changing our plans each night. I think that by the end of the week, with teaching/debriefing from 12:45 - 3:15 M - Th (2.5 hours x 4 days = 10 hours) + 2 hours extra each night (8 hours) + 12:45 - 6 on Friday (~ 5 hours), I ended up working over 23 hours, because there were several days that Sara and I got to school to print/copy/make stations around 11:30. That, in addition to the 12 hours of paid prep, and the 5 hour orientation, is around 30ish hours of work for what is technically only 6 - 7ish hours of teaching). Again, this isn't a bad thing (it's actually a good thing -- as any teacher knows, prep is the single biggest determining factor in how successful a lesson or program will be, and that includes responding to your class' needs & adapting the next day's plans) -- I just think that it should be clear to facilitators that this commitment is typical & there is x amount of money from the P-16 Center that can be given out.
The blog is a great source of data collection, and I appreciate that that's its primary function. I don't think the blogger platform is the most streamlined or intuitive blogging/sharing platform, and the expectations around the blog could have been more clear (maybe a one-pager with expectations & deadlines for things). It might be a good idea (for data collection purposes) to allow people to clock in and write a reflection after each class. Additionally, I wonder if it might be better to move the blog over to Canvas instead -- that way, we can have group discussion, upload our documents in a commonly shared space (including any supplemental materials we created, handouts, videos, or photographs we have), and we can have our own page to post things on as well. Since we are funded by the P-16 office anyway and this program runs out of IU, I think it could be a good idea to use the technology many of us are already using in our daily lives, particularly because Blogger is a pretty antiquated blogging platform (like, it doesn't even space things correctly) and I'm pretty sure you can't upload Word docs. Just a consideration moving forward!
LAST -- I can't lie, I did think that there were several aspects of the banquet that could have been improved, which have nothing to do with GALACTIC specifically but perhaps these observations can be helpful for the upcoming year. It was absurd to me that instead of moving students back up to the front of the stage & sitting together by group, they remained at the round tables a significant distance AWAY from the presenters. Not only did this make it harder to hear and move around, it also significantly diminished the energy and connection between presenters and audience. The transitions between program segments were lengthy and lifeless, where five minutes might go by just watching students shuffle onstage and figure out where the microphones would go. I think that it might be helpful for a select student from each group to be tasked with describing whatever course is being presented while transitions are happening, or having the emcee be ready to engage the audience, tell funny stories, or give an overview of what is coming. Finally, because we were all sitting so close to the food toward the back of the house, when dinner was over & the catering staff had to start breaking things down, it was really distracting because (even though they were being heroically quiet), there was a bunch of movement and sound right next to all of us. I don't think the dinner has to be "formal" as in, people can't laugh or joke or be light-hearted, but I do think that a more thoughtful approach to the banquet, its run time, pacing, and personality, would make the event more meaningful. As a teacher, I would have also liked the opportunity to brag on our students a little bit -- even just having a minute to express our gratitude for their hard work would have been a gift. It's a delicate balance between making an event student-centered versus adult-centered, but it's really not co-opting student voice to allow teachers (who have also worked hella hard) a chance to publicly share the fruits of our collective labors, so long as the main focus remains on students and students telling their own stories. Since no teacher had been invited to do that, I felt really uncomfortable taking the microphone to set the tone for the slam poetry that our group presented, but I also felt like I needed to say SOMETHING because I wanted to make sure that people understood how they could react/respond to our students' vulnerability and art (and let them know that we had more art up front & to come check it out!). Ah well, they probably don't want to make the program last any longer than it already does (but with more focus and intention, it wouldn't! And it'd be more fun!)
Anyhow. Despite these last few critiques, the week was truly a pleasure and a gift. To be honest, I had a bit of a bad attitude going into the week (only because I'm an asshole and was lamenting the fact that I had obligations at all during my summer break) and by the end of the first day I was so, so, so happy that I had followed my instincts and applied to be a part of GALACTIC. Amy and Vesna, you two worked incredibly hard to make the week meaningful for all of us and your responsiveness to any and all concerns did not go unnoticed. You really were the unsung heroes of the program & I can't thank you enough for your support and kindness. Sara, I am thrilled that we got to work together & I loved watching you grow and develop as a teacher throughout the week. I saw you gain confidence and form relationships with students, engage in problem-solving, and you were really the backbone of the resources that students interacted with (thank you thank you for your hard work on that front). Best of luck in the future! And to all of the other facilitators, y'all are peaches, angels, dreams, gifts. Every group inspired me with their topics, content, art, and presentation. Yay for us!
Personal Reflections:
In terms of Sara and my lessons and facilitation, there were things that went well and things that didn't go well. We struggled all week with timing issues, and I don't think we ever really got the hang of anticipating how long a particular activity would last, or knowing how much time students needed to discuss the questions we posed. Sara's headlines activity on the second day, where she introduced students to the global nature of gender injustice, was particularly effective, but unfortunately when we tried to run a similar activity regarding gender-based violence the next day, the energy in the room was lackluster and very few students were engaged in the whole-group discussion. This may have been a result of the difficult nature of the topic, them being bored with the format since they had just done a similar exercise the day prior, a combination of both, or something else entirely. It just demonstrates that teachers need to be able to adjust to their students in the moment, and be willing to change things up/adapt if things aren't working (which is, like, duh).
Another activity that was really effective was when we put students into groups (we made intentional groupings after getting a better sense of their personalities from the first day) and asked them to interact with a variety of resources on gender injustices related to education, art, gender roles & expression, and work. Because we had 21 students, we split them into groups of three & four to look through a packet of materials on one of these topics (and the materials were a mix of visual, print, and digital medias) -- during the whole group discussion, students reported on what they had learned to each other & other groups had a chance to weigh in or ask questions. Throughout the activity, students were talking with each other, discussing their reactions, and taking notes on what they had learned/annotating articles etc. The keys to the success of this activity were 1) small, intentional, focused groups; 2) all resources and materials printed out, loaded onto laptops, etc. so there was no wasted time or confusion 3) scaffolded resources (parts of articles were highlighted so students didn't have to read the whole thing), 4) a diversity of resources, and 5) opportunities to speak with a few of their peers before sharing their ideas with the whole group. In general, whenever students had a chance to talk about their reactions with the people around them BEFORE being asked to share in the larger setting, the discussions were much more productive, insightful, and interesting. This speaks to the power of discussion strategies like think-pair-share, journaling, and other methods of allowing students a chance to practice their responses and think through their ideas prior to taking risks in front of the entire collective of their peers.
The art-making aspect of the course was a challenge -- I can't speak for the visual art that Sara ran because I unfortunately didn't have a chance to interact with many of the students who were doing original drawings, but in terms of the slam poetry, students were really engaged in thinking about their own gender, but not necessarily as invested in thinking through the global implications of gender. I think this was partly because I introduced slam poetry to them through a poem about my experience of gender, so if I had to do it again, I would pair that poem with another one on global gender issues and have a mini-lesson on how to tell our personal stories while connecting those to the larger, systemic, transnational gender issues we discussed throughout the week. I don't want to speak for Sara, but I think we both felt as though there was so much to teach regarding gender injustice/gender liberation that it was difficult to also teach them art processes and give critique & feedback on their work. In spite of this hardship, many students rose to the occasion and wrote beautiful poems about their experiences and those of other people. The group piece about gender liberation was especially powerful, because that group took the time to write about women, men, and trans folks all around the world. Most of the themes from the set of shared poems touched on a different way to construct masculinity, safety for girls and young women, and freedom to express oneself without stigma or stereotype.
The last thing I would like to mention about our group is that our day on gender-based violence was an especially difficult day. A few students shared personal traumas and some of those things had to be reported to higher-ups. In the future, I think it would be a good idea for all facilitators to chat briefly with their students about the boundaries of sharing -- I don't think this will adversely affect student vulnerability; instead I think it will lead to increased trust of the adults in the room, since students will know up front what the protocol is and what action we are required to take in order to best protect them.
Some reflections on the structure of the program as a whole:
There were many dimensions of the program that were great -- I think the training session a month or so before the week began was a good idea, although I have some ideas about how it could be streamlined to allow for more productive brainstorming (Vesna and Amy, I can just chat with you about those ideas sometime at your convenience instead of listing things here). I thought it was really important for us to meet after we taught each day, and I actually would have liked one more opportunity to build community together (or reflect on the week) after the banquet, maybe by grabbing some drinks or having dinner together the next day. I'm not sure that that's something that can be mandated, though.
The time commitment to the program was significantly greater than I had anticipated, which isn't a bad thing, it's just something that can be better managed on the front end regarding how you advertise the program. In order to do even a halfway decent job, we planned and planned prior to the teaching week & then spent several hours after class tweaking/changing our plans each night. I think that by the end of the week, with teaching/debriefing from 12:45 - 3:15 M - Th (2.5 hours x 4 days = 10 hours) + 2 hours extra each night (8 hours) + 12:45 - 6 on Friday (~ 5 hours), I ended up working over 23 hours, because there were several days that Sara and I got to school to print/copy/make stations around 11:30. That, in addition to the 12 hours of paid prep, and the 5 hour orientation, is around 30ish hours of work for what is technically only 6 - 7ish hours of teaching). Again, this isn't a bad thing (it's actually a good thing -- as any teacher knows, prep is the single biggest determining factor in how successful a lesson or program will be, and that includes responding to your class' needs & adapting the next day's plans) -- I just think that it should be clear to facilitators that this commitment is typical & there is x amount of money from the P-16 Center that can be given out.
The blog is a great source of data collection, and I appreciate that that's its primary function. I don't think the blogger platform is the most streamlined or intuitive blogging/sharing platform, and the expectations around the blog could have been more clear (maybe a one-pager with expectations & deadlines for things). It might be a good idea (for data collection purposes) to allow people to clock in and write a reflection after each class. Additionally, I wonder if it might be better to move the blog over to Canvas instead -- that way, we can have group discussion, upload our documents in a commonly shared space (including any supplemental materials we created, handouts, videos, or photographs we have), and we can have our own page to post things on as well. Since we are funded by the P-16 office anyway and this program runs out of IU, I think it could be a good idea to use the technology many of us are already using in our daily lives, particularly because Blogger is a pretty antiquated blogging platform (like, it doesn't even space things correctly) and I'm pretty sure you can't upload Word docs. Just a consideration moving forward!
LAST -- I can't lie, I did think that there were several aspects of the banquet that could have been improved, which have nothing to do with GALACTIC specifically but perhaps these observations can be helpful for the upcoming year. It was absurd to me that instead of moving students back up to the front of the stage & sitting together by group, they remained at the round tables a significant distance AWAY from the presenters. Not only did this make it harder to hear and move around, it also significantly diminished the energy and connection between presenters and audience. The transitions between program segments were lengthy and lifeless, where five minutes might go by just watching students shuffle onstage and figure out where the microphones would go. I think that it might be helpful for a select student from each group to be tasked with describing whatever course is being presented while transitions are happening, or having the emcee be ready to engage the audience, tell funny stories, or give an overview of what is coming. Finally, because we were all sitting so close to the food toward the back of the house, when dinner was over & the catering staff had to start breaking things down, it was really distracting because (even though they were being heroically quiet), there was a bunch of movement and sound right next to all of us. I don't think the dinner has to be "formal" as in, people can't laugh or joke or be light-hearted, but I do think that a more thoughtful approach to the banquet, its run time, pacing, and personality, would make the event more meaningful. As a teacher, I would have also liked the opportunity to brag on our students a little bit -- even just having a minute to express our gratitude for their hard work would have been a gift. It's a delicate balance between making an event student-centered versus adult-centered, but it's really not co-opting student voice to allow teachers (who have also worked hella hard) a chance to publicly share the fruits of our collective labors, so long as the main focus remains on students and students telling their own stories. Since no teacher had been invited to do that, I felt really uncomfortable taking the microphone to set the tone for the slam poetry that our group presented, but I also felt like I needed to say SOMETHING because I wanted to make sure that people understood how they could react/respond to our students' vulnerability and art (and let them know that we had more art up front & to come check it out!). Ah well, they probably don't want to make the program last any longer than it already does (but with more focus and intention, it wouldn't! And it'd be more fun!)
Anyhow. Despite these last few critiques, the week was truly a pleasure and a gift. To be honest, I had a bit of a bad attitude going into the week (only because I'm an asshole and was lamenting the fact that I had obligations at all during my summer break) and by the end of the first day I was so, so, so happy that I had followed my instincts and applied to be a part of GALACTIC. Amy and Vesna, you two worked incredibly hard to make the week meaningful for all of us and your responsiveness to any and all concerns did not go unnoticed. You really were the unsung heroes of the program & I can't thank you enough for your support and kindness. Sara, I am thrilled that we got to work together & I loved watching you grow and develop as a teacher throughout the week. I saw you gain confidence and form relationships with students, engage in problem-solving, and you were really the backbone of the resources that students interacted with (thank you thank you for your hard work on that front). Best of luck in the future! And to all of the other facilitators, y'all are peaches, angels, dreams, gifts. Every group inspired me with their topics, content, art, and presentation. Yay for us!
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