We Are the World (Café): A Teaching & Learning Philosophy
1. Set the Context: As my students and I mutually engage as learners and teachers, I am able to more successfully serve as a guide, not dictating information, but instead facilitating discussions that offer opportunities for contemplation, creative exploration, and compassionate action. Our classroom thus becomes a World Café, a collaborative process developed by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, in which we situate conversation as the primary means for accessing our collective intelligence. In this spirit, I first embrace the premise that each learner wants to be heard. They want to know their ideas and input matters and they can influence class direction. Second, learners want to be excited about what they are learning; hence, content should reflect their interests and make meaningful connections to their daily lives. Third, they want to be liked. Most students want their teachers and classmates to support their contributions, recognize their work and participation within the course, expressing care if they do not engage. Finally, learners want to be personal. They want their teachers to know their names, to tell their stories, and to approach learning in their own style.
2. Create Hospitable Space: To create a warm, welcoming, and inclusive learning community based on the above ideas, I organize my classes around the following guiding questions: What topics are of greatest interest to us as a group? How can we best connect our reading, writing, conversations, and activities to our lives both inside and outside of the classroom? In what ways do we learn best and how can we integrate diverse learning practices into our course? Perhaps most important to creating a hospitable space is exploring how we can best adapt our environment to be more conducive to discussion. In other words, should we sit in a circle, go outside, dim the lights, or experiment with some other model? In response to student feedback, I developed a process that I call “fireside chats,” wherein students sit in a circle around a mock campfire (decorated with Christmas tree lights) to discuss our learning goals, readings, assignments, or various course themes. Building on this idea, in the spring, my Listening class decided to utilize a “fireside chat” format for the entire semester.
3. Explore Questions that Matter: As the above examples hopefully illustrate, my pedagogy is process-centered. Because each class dynamic is different, I work collaboratively with each group to build all or part or our syllabus or course map, develop group consensus regarding our grading criteria and course policies, and discover our shared interests in each topical area, employing a wide range of engaged learning strategies to support multiple learning styles such as mapping, visual art, performance and role- playing, games, poetry, journaling, and movement. In each of these instances, all assignments and activities are grounded in self- exploration with the goal of enhancing students’ relational awareness. Key to this approach is also highlighting that learning is a lifelong process and one’s work, whether it be writing, a performance, or other project is always “in-progress.”
4. Encourage Everyone’s Contributions: Because not every learner learns best by vocalizing in class, I also employ solo, partner, and group activities, involving self-evaluation, peer feedback, and small group decision-making, designed to bring students into conversation with themselves, each other, and me. I also integrate informal, low stakes writing and arts-based exercises, as well as an “interaction board,” for students to pose questions, make suggestions, plan, map ideas, issue a challenge, and engage with course material and “connector groups,” three to four people leading the group discussion based on their shared interests. Additionally, I conclude many of my class sessions with a “closing” ritual with each student invited to offer a closing statement, thereby formalizing the opportunity for all individuals to participate and reflect on each day’s theme and discussion.
5. Connect Diverse Perspectives: During our time together, I encourage learners to build awareness of identity intersections and individual/collective privilege, while also practicing communication across group differences, engaging in dialogue about difficult subjects, also working collaboratively and compassionately to address conflict and develop practical skills for cultivating empathy, inspiring action, and intervening in unjust discourses as agents of change. By doing so, I hope to celebrate each person’s unique perspective and their ability to impact the community/world, incorporating the power of storytelling as a means to travel into each other’s worlds with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to learn from and be changed by each other.
6. Listen Together For Insights: To listen deeply and empathetically to each other, I integrate a series of activities into my courses, which I refer to as reality checks, designed to highlight the ways in which we construct, maintain, and simultaneously negotiate our shared realities and worlds. By engaging in these exercises, students have an opportunity to learn to sharpen their abilities to look closely and listen more fully as they travel into each other’s worlds as well as to better understand their own beliefs, assumptions, and interactions that make up their worlds. Integral to this process is taking the time to listen for patterns and connections while also slowing down, pausing for reflection, and embracing moments of silence together.
7. Share Collective Discoveries: To better share our learning experiences with each other, I invite each student to reflect on the following: How engaged was I in today’s class? Was I listening? Did I actively participate in all in-class activities? Did I bring the required assignments and materials? Was I late or did I leave early? Did I work collaboratively with my partners or group? Was I open to trying new experiences? Did I respect others' views even when they differed from my own? Did I communicate my learning needs to the group? Have I actively contributed to creating the class I want, while being mindful of others' needs, too? Have I shared my insights, observations, questions, comments, or concerns? Have I allowed space for others to share their insights, observations, questions, comments or concerns? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what would the group have missed had I not been in class? By reflecting on these questions, my hope is that each learner will come to recognize that they are response-able and play an important role in shaping the world (café) we create together through our conversations.