Storytime!

Arielle and I went into today full of ideas and a very thought out agenda for our group. We planned on reincorporating the "Who's in the Spotlight" strategy to keep them all focused as well as individualized roles. One of our group members was not there this week, so we chose to have only one Facilitator.

This week La'Tavia was our Recorder. She did some video recording for the group which I think she took pride in doing. She's a little more quiet and shy and I think she felt comfortable being behind the camera and contributing to the group in that way. Next week though she will be back out and contributing to group conversation more. We tried to ask her her thoughts and ideas, but I think she was set in her role; she was behind the camera and that's where she was going to stay. I know she has thoughts and she does talk, so I think that once the Recorder role is passed on she will be more outspoken.

Rowmar was our Facilitator this week and he did a wonderful job of coming up with a question to ask the group and deciding who was in the "spotlight." He asked us to describe one of our birthdays that was the most fun. The stories they had to tell were funny and entertaining!

We then moved into a time of Remembering and Reviewing. It was great to hear all the things they remembered from the week before. I would think it would be hard to remember all the things we did because we only met with them for an hour and it was a whole week ago! They remembered the Pass the Paper activity, the roles, the journal entry, and what we had said we were going to do this week.

Next on the Agenda was to talk about what they chose to write in their journals. Each of them took a turn talking about what problem they chose. They all seemed to lean towards trash, but Brian brought up an incident that happened at his apartment complex (this is where the storytelling begins!). It was an act of vandalism, so I asked the group if they knew what vandalism was. They said yes, but some seemed unsure, so I tried my best to explain what I knew vandalism to be. I then asked if vandalism was a problem. It seemed to a couple of them that it was, and to the other two it wasn't such a problem where they live.

We then went into more stories. It seemed like each student had a story about some act of violence, trash, or vandalism. Some stories though went very off topic. That was probably the hardest part for Arielle and I. We didn't know how to regain focus without interrupting them and basically cutting them off. We did our best though...once they were finished with their long, drawn-out stories. Like Arielle said in our debrief, it's great that they trust us enough to talk to us about their lives, but it's hard because we have limited time and need to keep moving forward.

Another difficulty is the fact that we seem to be changing gears which leaves us still sitting in the issue development stage with 8 weeks left to go. :/ We noticed that though these students expressed interest in doing projects concerning trash/environment at the beginning, their passion to focus solely on that topic isn't there. On one hand it's great because they have this deep passion for some pretty big things, and have faith that they can do something about it, but that means we need to take a step back, which puts us behind in actually creating a project. Arielle and I are planning on encouraging our students in focusing on the area of vandalism because they seem to be passionate about it, though I think they need to grasp a better idea of what it is and where it is in their community.

We did a short question activity that we didn't get to finish, but Arielle and I plan on bringing back in future meetings. There were 7 words that were set up with numbers 1-6 (6 having two words) that would begin questions. The students rolled a die and they used the word that corresponded with the number to create a question that had about the issues brought up in the journals. They asked really good questions like "How does trash effect us?" But we cut the activity short because we needed to move into choosing a specific issue to ask these questions about. They seemed to focus on trash in their journal entries, but Arielle and I weren't convinced this is what they were truly passionate about. That's when we explored more about vandalism and other things they would like to focus on.

We soon ran out of time, and Arielle and I were kind of freaking out because we still had a few things we needed to do before they left. Luckily we had planned a little for the possibility that they wouldn't have agreed on a specific issue by the end of our meeting! So Arielle, being the awesome co-coach that she is, had them write down a journal question for the following week. "What are the causes and effects of vandalism or trash? What is a possible solution?" Then we had a few minutes to quickly talk about HOW TO RESEARCH. We listed different ways to research such as talking to family, friends, neighbors, and teachers, or observing and writing those observations down, or reading books, magazines, and newspapers. Before they left they had to write down three different ways they were going to research to come up with their answers to the journal question. Quick save for the end of the meeting-way to go Arielle!

I left the meeting fearing that like my Public Achievement class last semester, we were going to spend most of our time discussing problems, and leave little time to actually make a project concerning a specific problem. But there is hope. I learned a lot last semester in those discussions, so I know that learning and growing can still happen even if we need to take this step back and reevaluate what we want to focus on. Plus, they need to do a project on something they are passionate about, not something that they feel like they need to focus on because that was the group they were placed in. I don't believe however that my and Arielle's group needs to go down the same road that my Public Achievement class did, and I believe my fear of seeing it do that will help me keep pushing the group to get further.

In debrief we discussed some of the troubles that we had in our meeting, and got some good suggestions. We can ask refocusing questions, add a small "what's our objective for today's meeting?" right after our Remember and Review at the beginning of our meeting, and then remind them of our objective throughout the meeting to keep them focused and on task in all they say and do.

We love to hear their stories and hear about their lives. Unfortunately, we don't have all the time in the world, so we need to be able to reign in the stories to only those that are relevant.
Once again, our goal for next week is to decide on a specific problem to tackle! I plan on doing some research of my own on vandalism so we can all bring to the table some new information that will hopefully get us going in a more productive direction.