Tuesday, October 19, 2010

First RAPPORT Workshop of 2010-2011 Reflections

For RAPPORT 2010-2011 schedule we've unveiled two types of regular get-togethers:

RAPPORT Meetings – These are what we sometimes call “RAPP Lite.”  These are times where we continue our work on social justice issues looking particularly at areas of identity that we didn’t focus on as heavily on in RAPP as we did on race, gender, and sexuality.  These include but are not limited to religious differences, socio-economic class, ability, age, and nationality.  RAPPORT Meetings may also involve “field trips” to museums or workshops throughout the city.

RAPPORT Facilitation Workshops – These are where we work specifically on exploring issues, expanding knowledge, and developing skills around peer education and facilitation.  Topics include but are not limited to learning styles, curriculum development, theoretical foundations of social justice education and experiential learning, giving instructions, group development, and supportive classroom management.

Last night was the first RAPPORT Facilitation Workshop of the year!  We had a great time - twelve RAPPORT members participated in the two-hour workshop and were wholeheartedly, FUN-ly engaged.

We spent the initial portion of the workshop doing a series of activities designed to tap into five different ways in which we display intelligences (as posited in Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences).  These five activities helped us continue to get to know each other better, but also challenged us each in different ways.  The group recorded and later reported out how each of the activities felt to them.  By being able to see the ways we reacted differently to different activities the group identified that it was important to lead workshops that not only reach out to different learning styles but also provide participants a variety of ways to express themselves.

Our next get-together is a RAPPORT Meeting on Monday, November 1st.  We've got a great group of RAPPORT folk coming out to meetings, so I look forward to each one!

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