Reflection on the June 8 and
June 15 Discussion
June 8:
I thought the different groups did a
fantastic job making the country diagrams and they generated a lot of
discussion from the guests. The gallery at the beginning was also a good idea and
people seemed to be genuinely interested in viewing the country diagrams.
All the speeches from the guests were very
interesting. Mr. Atungulu told me that he learned a lot from listening to the
other guests’ speech; I was very happy to hear that. It is always
interesting to hear the people of a certain country address the stereotypes
about their country. I myself learned a lot about all the countries. I was
surprised to learn how many different tribes there were in
Changing to the
technical aspects of holding the workshop. there were some problems with the
formatting and things would have been smoother had I planned the ice breaking
and the seating arrangement a little more intelligently:
1)
Ice breaking
-
We
made one big semi circle (Approximately 44 people!) for ice-breaking. Every
person said their name, where they are from, and something good that haf
happened to them recently. This took too long. As a result of this, the
speakers had to rush through their presentations and we did not have time to
listen to Willie and Le-an speak.
-
There
are two things that could have been done differently to make the icebreaking
run more smoothly:
Ø
Everyone
has a 15 second time limit to speak (Recommended in the a Workshop
Facilitator’s Handbook)
OR
Ø
Everyone
could have been divided into 2 or 3 groups for the ice breaking. The big half
circle was not very effective. It was just too big.
2) Presentations
-
For
the presentation everyone continued to sit in the semi-circle which meant that
a lot of students sat very far from the presenter and the country diagram.
Seeing the country diagram was crucial to understanding the presentation.
Unfortunately, over half the MMCE members sat so far away from the presenter
that they could not see the country diagram well not could they probably hear
the presenter well. Everyone should have sat as close to the country diagrams
as possible for the presentations; it would have made the presentations much
easier to understand.
Overall, though, I
thought it was successful.
June 15
June 15 was much
smoother than June 8. I think everyone was more relaxed. On June 8 I spent more
than an hour thinking about what I should do for the ice breaking but for June
15 I spent about 10 minutes before I had decided on an activity! Sometimes,
thinking a little is better than thinking too much!
June 15 was a lot
of fun. It was nostalgic for me to hear Willie and Le-an speak. They reminded
me of when I was a college student and I think that I probably would have said
something similar to what they said! Listening to them also made me feel a little
old; I am no longer college student age! Also, every group seemed to be
enjoying their conversations. None of the groups seemed to have long periods of
silence and I heard a lot of laughing and animated-like speaking. I am looking
forward to reading the groups’ summaries of the discussions.
I am also curious
about how many of the groups were able to attempt the discussion activity on
values. Some groups seemed to do all the items while others did not do any. One
of the difficult aspects of group work is that groups work at different speeds
and in different ways. I thought that giving each group an assigned activity
they could complete and then an optional activity they could do if they had
time left over was the right approach. It would have been nice if each group
could have done the values discussion activity and shared what they talked
about with each other, but we just did not have the time.