Bricolage

It would be a rare adult educator who didn’t agree that the information the participants bring into a classroom is not important. Yet a recent experience in a hallowed hall of learning reminded me of a discussion that I had had with my seven year old son on what he had learned today.

When he came home from school, he advised me that his friend Kate had brought a rabbit for show and tell. When one of the students had wanted to know whether it was a boy or girl rabbit, the teacher decided to sample the current level of knowledge of the class by asking how could they tell?

As the rabbit was wearing a white rather than a pink or blue ribbon, that test didn’t work.

Knowing the rabbit’s name might have helped – but was Sam short for Samuel or Samantha?

After several other unsuccessful endeavours a bright child came up with a solution that satisfied all of the students – “Let’s vote on it.”

My experience in the hallowed halls was slightly different, but no more productive.

The first forty-five minutes of a workshop was taken up with a discussion on the difference between mentoring, coaching, training, education, teaching – add your own words – I’d be surprised if they didn’t come up too during the time I nodded off.

As the workshop was on mentoring, there was no question that an agreed definition on what mentoring – as to be discussed today – was fundamental. But that definition had to come from the teacher. Because we had come to learn about recent advances in mentoring, and none of us was an expert in the subject, we relied on the teacher (facilitator, leader, whatever) to place some stakes in the ground.

Our various experiences could then be called in to play. But starting the session with a semantic discussion of  what mentoring was and was not, in the opinions of those who came to learn, was for me forty five minutes I could not spare.

Sometimes lecturers wonder why people seem to be disengaged while they are conducting involvement exercises. I don’t wonder why.  

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Ice breakers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.