Lakey's idea of direct education is the unique motivation of each learner and using the group as a "container" encouraging the power of intention and stressing the concept that growth is a personal and individual responsibility. Direct education uses several tools to promote personal responsibility:
- minimize/maximize value of learning
- experience
- goal setting
- goal review
- accountability (whether in a buddy system or to their marginal/mainstream identity)
Addresses all 4 types of learners: kinesthetic, emotional/relational, visual, auditory
and embraces different learning styles. It strives to make learning highly experiential-- making learning vivid and uncomfortable but encouraging lifelong learning.
NOW...how is direct education useful in making the studio program better?
As far as being proactive educators in facilitator training, I noticed some of these things we already did last year. For example...
Icebreakers to lighten the mood? We broke up into groups during facilitator training and did several icebreaker activities with our facilitators and in turn they were able to use these activities with their studio groups.
Buddy pairs and small support groups? Each mentor is assigned at least 2 or 3 facilitators. This group then becomes a support group throughout the whole program, enabling facilitators to voice their frustrations, concerns, struggles, and breakthroughs to an audience that can benefit from them and also give valuable feedback.
Goal setting/ goal review? I encouraged my facilitators to create daily goals for their different groups. Each facilitator had two groups, Group A and Group B. I encouraged them to think about what challenges each group presented to them as facilitators and each day when they met with the group, I would ask them to think of a goal that could help them overcome the challenges- little by little. At the debriefing sessions I would ask them if they met their goal. If not, what can they do to meet it next time--is there a different approach they could try, etc.?
According to Lakey, the facilitator's job is to:
- mobilize confidence
- share tools (for personal growth)
- challenge them to think for themselves
How will we motivate and teach our facilitators to do these things in their studio groups?
-Building a strong container: there will be facilitators who will resist learning during the training. Perhaps instead of quieting those who had objections to the training we should hear what they have to say. Let them express and explore what their issues with the training are. They are responsible for their own learning, so how do they think they will learn best during this training?
Go through that storm in order to become a community.
-Lakey talks about "going into it without a fully planned design...let the design emerge from the group's themes and challenges"
I feel that this was hard for us to do last year, because we had planned day by day-hour by hour what it was that we were going to teach them. We did not take into account the challenges the group felt. (we somewhat took the time for this during question and answer sessions at the end of the day, but by that time some of the facilitators had already left) We knew what we had to cover that day and we did everything we had to do to cover it.
This is challenging because we do have goals for this program and we have obligations that we have to meet. But in reality--isn't this what we encourage our facilitators to do? to let the design emerge as they meet with their groups? After all, they are there to facilitate--not to be an instructor. Yet, do we constrict them from letting their group form their design by giving them a detailed protocol? The issue that then comes up is are we putting the group and its needs first? or are we just trying to meet our obligations?
This is something to think about as we design the facilitator training program.
