Group Activity # 1 Your Group Identity Going
Do: Have someone in your group create a post and insert the photo you took at the meeting. Pick a name for your group (2 groups already have done this!) We will add your group to the Community of Practice site as a new group that only the four of you (and Linda and Carol) can see. Suggestion: Print and post the photo in your office or work area as a reminder and support of the work you’re doing.
Goal: Your group is your immediate support for inspiration, vetting ideas and discussing the project. Get to know one another and practice working out assignments with one another as we proceed. Become familiar with the process of collaborating with one another (to create something new) and trusting that each member of the group will be responsible for posting to the Community of Practice site.
Group Activity #2 Create Questions for Community Partner Conversations
Working with the members of your group via email Google docs, and/or your group’s Community of Practice space, generate 3-4 questions you might pose to better understand a potential partner. Consider this activity practice toward steering conversations with partners to lead them to really talk about their goals, their mission, their passion for their work. Use open ended questions, listen, discuss improvements to questions, and edit your drafts to develop questions to engage community members/partners in conversation. Assign someone in the group to post your questions on the Community of Practice group for the entire cohort. Note: Providing and incorporating feedback from within your group and from the entire team is essential to improving the effectiveness the project.
- One question we would like to use (in your own words) is something like “Tell me about your own career path”. Obviously, this wouldn’t be your opening question (you probably need to build the relationship first), but one possible service you might eventually want to consider is having people from your community talk about the career choices they’ve made along their life. This is good practice for learning how to use this question in building that activity.
Goal: Use your group to help generate open ended questions that get your potential community partners sharing about their own interests and how those may impact how they engage with the middle school students and families and you to further the interests of your community.
Feedback: Carol, Linda, Ximena, and/or Stephanie will look at each group’s draft questions and provide feedback before you are asked, in a couple of weeks, to go out and use the questions with potential community partners.