Premise

Teaching organizes the classroom into a community; this occurs regardless if teachers acknowledge it. Rather than organizing community by default, that is, relying on the unspoken and unexamined structural influences upholding the course, such as disciplinary requirements, outcomes, the positionality of the teacher, etc., participant agreements invite all members of a class to imagine and then organize a learning community supportive of their needs

 Purpose

An objective is to support students in learning how to form intentional communities. Rather than assume groups will just “figure it out,” participant agreements, roles, and workspace design provide students with a systematic approach to developing a learning community responsive to the needs of all members.

 Protocol

1. Participant Agreements: Develop 3-5 Community Agreements based on the National Equity Project’s framework.
2. “Logistical Roles”[1]: Establish clear, personalized roles for each member.
3. Collaboration Space: Create a collaborative workspace to share, engage, and store ideas.

 Premise

Show-and-Tells are a hallmark of early elementary education; they are low-stakes, familiar (if not nostalgic) activities that invite students to share meaningful objects with peers. As an exercise, show-and-tell situates personal experience, interest, and knowledge as a mode of academic discourse (albeit an underutilized one) that helps develop nonhierarchical intimacy and trust among peers. Further, it locates control over what is shared within individual students.

 Purpose

The purpose of this exercise is to invite more students’ experiences into the classroom beyond their intellect in a fun, familiar, and playful way.

 Preparation

Students select a personal object that reminds them of or intersects with the course theme (as they understand it).

 Protocol

Short 60-90-second presentations in which students present an object related to the course theme/title. The activity crowdsources a list of “objects” that then may be analyzed or critiqued later in the course by instructors, GSIs, or students. (Response Option: Students present in writing groups first, then to the whole class.)

 Premise

Not everyone gets to tell stories. In fact, many folks have their stories told for them even though they are capable of telling stories themselves. Some stories are not told at all, while other stories are designed to erase or elide others. Power-mapping is an activist exercise designed to identify who holds power structurally in order to map strategically for campaigns.

 Purpose

The purpose of this exercise is to think about the stories that have been told about you, across the following scales – individual, familial, or cultural.

 Preparation

There are two approaches to the power mapping exercise two individual steps followed by a group share.

1. Generate a list of 5-8 moments…
   1. Option A: when someone told a story about you that didn’t represent you, your family, and/or culture accurately; a time when you felt misunderstood, judged, targeted, invisible, erased, or something else.
   2. Option B: when you told a story about someone, someone’s family, or someone’s culture.
2. Diagram 2-3 moments.
   1. Option A: Describe what occasioned the story. Identify status, privilege, language, and resources afforded to each of the roles in your story.
   2. Option B: Describe what occasioned the story. Identify status, privilege, language, and resources afforded to each of the roles in your story.

 Protocol

• Re-diagram. Choose one of the diagrammed moments and think about what it would require for a different outcome to occur (e.g., changing roles; distributing resources differently; etc.) Remap it to fit this new logic.
• In groups, share both sets of diagrams.