Blog Post 3 - Planning vs. Facilitating

My two groups continue to be exceedingly different, and I have more seriously started planning for them differently. For instance, my Tuesday group is very easy to converse with and we always have interesting talks no matter what I come prepared to talk about. However, attendance is a massive issue and sometimes it's just one on one, so the task of preparing anything past potential topics becomes next to impossible. For my Wednesday group though, I can always count on almost everyone to show up, but conversation is still stiff and often falls into a pattern of looking to me as if I'm in a professor position rather than just someone who is part of the conversation, helping to keep it moving. Starting this week, I'm trying something new to get them talking to each other with small games like two truths and a lie-- I hope that will help them to get talking with each other more!

Knowing these massive differences between the groups, the issues of planning vs. facilitating are really different between Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesdays, my facilitating is often unneccessary, but my planning instead might need to go into picking attendance back up now (I'm emailing some of my no shows currently and I'm working on an email to survey them on potential field trips we can do-- maybe this planning will lead to them getting back involved). On Wednesdays however, my facilitating is often more necessary. Whatever I end up planning is easy enough for them to work with, but the flow of the conversation is always a toss up. I'm still trying to figure out what topics and tactics are most effective in getting the group going. 

I'm extremely determined to make the rest of October and November beyond successful with group bonding and conversation flow though. I have new plans in place with games, giving my groups a chance to write some before speaking outloud, and getting out and about so that my groups have extra reasons to attend and so that we can talk about what we're doing rather than just their experiences and stories (which are good, too, but I'm not sure it's enough for my Wednesday crew). 

Wish me luck!