A Peula is an intentionally designed learning experience. - Eyal It's not everyday I do something awesome. However, Friday was that day. Having learned some new facilitative skills while at the Operation Groundswell retreat last month, I wanted to use them. One of such skills was knowing what a peula was, the purpose of using one, and how to facilitate that experience with your participants.
At the retreat there were a few peulot (that's the plural form) and I just couldn't wait to use them in practice! It got me even more excited to start co-leading some amazing adventures this summer! But that is such a long long time away. Oh my goodness, how am I going to wait this long! Turns out, I didn't have to. As part of my Environmental Ethics and Environmental Education module we had to deliver a session (loosely termed) that would educate a target audience on something related to the environment and focuses on a particular environmental ethic. Together with my friend we ran a peula on power and privilege. Participants were randomly split up into 3 teams. One team stayed in the same room we started in and had a lot more arts and crafts material than the other two groups. Those two groups went to a different and smaller room. One of the two groups had a shocking amount of materials (including a broken pencil). As facilitators we acted really nicely to the initial group and were really harsh towards the other two groups. I remember shaking and feeling pretty nervous when I started off the session with a little warm up. I didn't know what to expect. I asked myself over and over again: 'how will they respond? Will they enjoy it? Can I do this? How hard can it be? With the notes in my hand, shaking so much they almost flew away, I introduced the session, and from their it seemed natural, as if I had done this before. 20 minutes flew by, and I thought uh oh, now is where the real effort comes in. Again I was struck with the shaking hands, but I started off the discussion. "So what happened there guys?" We started small and discussed what happened, how the group felt with us being nice to one group but meaner towards the other. What did they notice? What did they not notice? Then, when the time was right, we moved onto the real world connections. "Do you guys see something happen like this today, in the real world?" The discussion went on from there. We brought our ideas back, we used the experience as metaphors to help explain our thoughts, and we discussed current social and environmental issues. We mentioned oppression and our individual thoughts on where we should go from here. I offered a moment of silence to gather some thoughts from the session. "What did you take away from the session?' I asked. The session ended, and participants had the option to share their thoughts with their friends, me, my co, or the group. In the future it would be interesting to try to mix around the rules. For example, maybe give the team with the least amount of stuff, a massive box of crafts but only allow the group who had the most crafts to take things from the box (and as often as they liked). For now, it's time to prepare for the results of the session.
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May 2021
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