5.3
Identifying Your Communities
Submitted by Janice McMillan
This activity opens up the conversation and makes visible the many different understandings of the term “community.” Its meaning is often taken for granted. Participants also explore how they feel in relation to certain communities or how they exclude certain people from communities they are a part of.
Learning Goals
Develop a nuanced understanding of community.
Critically reflect on practices of inclusion and exclusion.
Instructions
Set Up: Prepare for the Activity
Provide participants with, or if doing this online ask them to have with them, drawing materials, like paper, pens, pencils, and/or markers, if they would like to draw during the activity.
Organize participants into small groups (3-4 ppl).
Begin by introducing the learning goals of this activity.
Step One: Individually Reflect on Community (10 min)
Invite participants to independently reflect on the following questions and write a few thoughts down or draw their response:
What does community mean for you?
What communities do you feel a part of?
Step Two: Generate a List of Characteristics that Constitute Community (20 min)
In small groups, invite participants to share what they have written or drawn.
Have participants reflect on the responses shared as they discuss the following questions:
What for your group makes up “community"?
What are the characteristics of a community?
Ask participants to then generate a list of characteristics that define community for their group. Invite each group to share this list on a board, shared screen, or other surface visible to everyone.
Step Three: Debrief as a Full Group (20 min)
Encourage participants to refer to the list of characteristics generated in their small groups as they discuss these questions:
Do you feel part of the university, workplace, or broader community where you are based? Why/why not?
Are there spaces where you feel like you belong and spaces in which you feel excluded?
TIME
50
min
MODULE
Civic Collaboration
This activity can be completed by any discussion group.
This activity can be used to support facilitation skills. See Sample Facilitation Certificate Program Design to illustrate sample sequencing.
This activity can be used to build trust and interpersonal connection.
Tell us what you think. Rate and review this activity:
Have any helpful suggestions or modifications for this activity?
Share them in the comments below!
0 Comments
Sovi Herring
May 30, 2024 at 6:42:10 PM
This activity is great when a group is comfortable sharing thoughts--but it is modified to be more introspective at first. There are two versions of this, one to recognize "normalized" feelings, the other is labeled "extreme" as the group was practicing navigating high emotion. This first one covers parents, cats, dogs: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IvLsBe_FtDG6twalxiKxBHEdt99gJR1V/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113770591818162655510&rtpof=true&sd=true This one is to recognize more difficult to talk about feelings of fear, disgust, etc.: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NkZoBCJ3iI5VbkqmjqVuW-_I36MBASOW/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113770591818162655510&rtpof=true&sd=true
Sovi Herring
May 30, 2024 at 6:28:11 PM
This activity was modified for a Business & Professional Communication class. It is best when the groups have gone through the guidelines activity to help facilitate how to communicate and even the 3.4 ambiguity. This is a difficult activity if the class is uncomfortable speaking (and in my case they were very adverse to discussing these in any group). Here is how I set it up (along with a print out of the words). It is modified to fit the business world, but worked well as a concept. https://liveduq-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/herrings1_duq_edu/EWr2jxM5HLlNmgWvYA43gwwBmoBYJP9juGJDD4m1M2H0BQ?e=TYnsVb
May 28, 2024 at 1:33:05 AM
May 28, 2024 at 1:31:01 AM
February 14, 2024 at 1:03:34 AM
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January 4, 2024 at 7:22:22 PM
December 12, 2023 at 11:56:40 PM
Lori Britt
October 3, 2023 at 5:00:05 PM
Have done this in the past, but today a group really blew me away. I did this as a Fishbowl with 7 students taking roles. Prior to the converstaion they could seek input from a few other students about what which decision they think the person in their role would support and why. I also asked them to come up with some things that were concerns for them. This 10 minute of prep time helped my role play participants really embody and feel confident in their roles. Great discussion about what deliberation looks like in practice and about how power can impact conversations and how a facilitator can try and minimize these power imbalances. I used the scenario above and assigned these roles (I was not sure my students woul be able to consider roles that would offer different perspectives): • Facilitator (non-voting) • Mayor • High school teacher • 17-year-old high school student • Transportation planner for the region • Local business owner • Economic development office for the region (your community and the surrounding communities served by the train) • 50-year-old who lost his job last year and who has been on unemployment