Rolling Earth, movement education

A simple way to help people tell a story by providing prompts that keep the story moving and demand richer description and reflection.

Sitting in a circle, participants take turns telling a story with the facilitator (or as Boal says, the Jokerⁱ) providing the links:

Participant 1: "My friend called me this morning and told me she was going to quit school..."

Joker: "because..."

Participant 2: "...she needs to make money and she feels like school has no meaning."

Joker: "But..."
...

This is a simple tool for equalizing participation in small group discussion and raising awareness of how much people speak. It's probably not original, but I can't recall seeing it before.

Flow:
In a smallish group (ten people) in one of my courses, I prepared a set of chits -- small rectangular pieces of card stock (cut up index cards) -- and gave each participant five chits (including me).

Standing/sitting in a circle.

The facilitator starts the game by pretending to pick up and hold in his/her hands an imaginary object. S/he considers the object, then declares, "This stinks!" and wrinkles his/her nose.

Over time, the standard chants and slogans used on picket lines and in demonstrations, protests, and marches, become stale and cliche. The content gets lost and the music becomes sing-song. The chants have no impact. The whole experience becomes disempowering. This activity takes one chant -- What do we want? When do we want it? -- and "reverse engineers" it to open up a discussion of the goals and expectations of individuals and groups. After all, these are the big questions: What do we want? When do we want it? How can we have an impact?

"Popular Education for Movement Building" or マットの英語でデモクラシー（仮）

I will be teaching a course at PARC's Freedom School in Tokyo, Japan, this May. The course is six sessions, from May to July, 2008. The cost (which may change) is 15,000 yen. The maximum number of participants is 15 people. Contact PARC to register.

It is an English course, but the subject of the class is unique. Here is the course description from PARC, followed by my description of the course in English:
-----

Not a new idea, but a particular use of it that has worked very well. The activity revolves around a close reading of a poem by Langston Hughes, using an eraser…

In this activity participants memorize/study the following short poem by Langston Hughes.

My People

The night is beautiful.

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful.

So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Flow:

• write the poem on a blackboard
• ask everyone to read it silently

I am collecting activities I have used in my English for Activists courses and other language teaching for a book on Participatory Techniques for Language Learning. Like Popular Education for Union Democracy, to get access to all the activities, and comment on, ask questions about, and contribute to the book, you need to register on this website. See "how to participate."

The book is here.

BOOKS

Books you must have:

Tecnicas Participativas Para La Educacion Popular The best resource book for popular educators, combines technique (lots of activities) with method and embodies the work of popular educators in Central America.