I was very excited to start chat cafe again! Both of my groups are really awesome. My first group only has 4 people because two people dropped before the first meeting. I find that I always have one or two people that message me saying they accidentally signed up for a group that is the same time as their class. This happened in both my groups.
Anyways, everyone in my first group is very shy so I'm hoping to do more activities to get them to open up. They seem to like writing down their ideas more but I hope to scaffold them out of that because it seems a little too formal. My second group is more outgoing. On the first day, one person was told me that my group was full but he really wanted to join because his friend was in my group, and since he came, I told him that he could join anyways. I liked having a bigger group of 8 because I felt like there was more to talk about. However, sadly he found out that he has another weekly meeting at the same time so he had to drop. There are two girls in my second group that joined together and they do not seem to be comfortable talking to anyone except each other, so I hope to reach out to them individually and have them contribute more to the safe space our chat cafe could become.
Next week I hope to do some minute to win it games that require a more intense set up. Originally, I was going to have them all come to my apartment but then I changed my mind because there are a lot of people and they may not feel comfortable going to a random person's apartment, so I reserved a room in East Hall. I am nervous about being able to find it because East Hall is so big and the room numbers do not go in order. However, I think it will be better than meeting in the Math atrium because I personally would also feel uncomfortable playing those games in public.
I am very surprised but both of my groups this semester has also been very good about sending in absences. Even though half of my second group was absent in the second meeting, they all sent me an email or text at least 24 hours ahead of time and that made me really happy. I hope they will keep this up so I know who is coming to my group each time.
Thanks for the post, Jessica! I'm glad to hear that you like your groups and that they've been good about contacting you about attendance. I look forward to hearing how the challenges go -- getting the one group to move away from writing things first, getting the two friends in the second group to engage more with the others, and finding the room in East Hall...
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