Kyle and I presented our topic last Wednesday. I am absolutely not a fan of public speaking, not something you would expect from an extrovert, right? We had been preparing for a couple of weeks and definitely hit some stumbling blocks in the form of content. Luckily, we pulled through and had a successful class.
My favorite parts of teaching this class were the first 5 minutes and the last five minutes. We chose to assign seats- conduct a social experiment and turn it into a discussion to wrap up the presentation at the end. We placed students in the opposite location of their usual spots and with different classmates than their usual clusters. Jason greeted students by the door and alerted them to the switch. Some looked confused but remained quiet, while others said "I haven't sat anywhere else in three years" or the blatant "I hate this"
I turned to Kyle while the misery unfolded onto our unsuspecting classmates and I said "We have to write these responses down" I knew that some students would later say that they didn't mind- and I wanted those raw responses to prove the resistance to such a small temporary change.
We continued the presentation like nothing was different.
To wrap up we asked the class a series of questions on our last presentation slide. "How did it feel to be asked to change seats? Did you view changing seats as an opportunity to sit with someone new or as an uncomfortable or undesirable change?" Kyle then read aloud the quotes we had saved. Everyone laughed and further explained their reason behind resistance. As we expected, most like tradition. We didn't blame them for feeling this way, change is new and new is unknown and unknown is scary. Perhaps they even internally went through the Kubler Ross change curve of grief/loss. I hope the class took away what we hoped they would.
that was great that you thought to write down the responses! Very clever, simple exercise
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