Kicking it off! | The First Session

June 30, 2021

This week we had our first meeting with the teens!

During this meeting we focused on creating community and establishing collective agreements for future meetings. Our opening activity was to have the teens guess Stephanie and I’s identities and interest just based off of our names and voices.  It was interesting to see how most of our teens were reluctant to assume things about us but in the end it was a fun exercise and helped us teach them about identity and presuppositions!

We then created collective agreements for the group that would help us maintain a safe space and allow for civil discourse to take place.

It was a little difficult at first to get the teens to participate but we realized that when we gave them the opportunity to speak in breakout rooms without facilitators they opened up to each other and were able to dig deeper in to the topics.

I think the best thing we did is have the participants fill out an exit ticket about their experience in the meeting and asking them to highlight the best parts and let us know what didn’t work for them. Slowly we are figuring out what works best for the participants and adjusting our lesson plans for it as well.