Design and deliver experiences that account for learners’ needs.
As you work to build trust with your learners through design and facilitation, remember also to cultivate and show genuine care for the people you serve. Care and trust are expressions of each other. Without care, trust can feel like another form of coercion. Without trust, expressions of care ring hollow.
Ideally, it should be easy to show care for your learners. In your role as facilitator, you should want for them what they need and want for themselves. Connecting the work you design to those needs and wants is part of the work we have to do as facilitators. We must not think of ourselves as authorities who know what’s best for others; we are collaborators with your learners and contributors to their life-long projects of learning, building-community, and achieving agency.
You can practice specific habits like these to show care through facilitation:
Make your goals the same as your learners’ goals. Your needs as a facilitator shouldn’t have to compete with the learning needs of the people you serve. In everything you design and facilitate, think of how to deliver the learning your audience wants through activities that make sense to them and empower them. Don’t let ideas like, “we just need to get through this,” keep you from honestly assessing your work and its relevance for your learners. Understand challenges as opportunities to deliver facilitator that’s closer and closer to what works for your learners.
Think out loud. Talk about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Don’t keep your decisions or decision-making process hidden from your audience. Connect the dots between different activities and between concepts, skills, and the materials you use to learn them. Be clear and be clear about needing help when your plans go awry. Make as much of your design visible and understandable to your learners so they are full participants in their own learning stories during your class, session, or workshop. Trust your learners with your designs and trust them to improve your work.
Build in time to help others. When you plan small-group or independent work time, don’t retreat to a podium, table, or side room. Circulate. Ask how things are going. Help troubleshoot technology and clarify anything unclear in your directions. If you’re the lead facilitator, don’t abandon your role while working with the whole group, but build in time during for you to be of help to individuals, as well.
Build in time for reflection. Plan to pause and ask how things are going. After each activity or set of related activities, ask a few questions, give everyone time to think and develop a response individually, and then invite volunteers to share their ideas with the whole group or invite people in table-groups to share their answers with one another. Have a way to collect participants’ answers and ideas about how to improve your work so you can iterate on them later and share your revisions with your learners. Make it clear you are listening and recording responses to help make the work better. Use frequent breaks for reflection to recognize and appreciate your learners’ contributions to your work and professional development. Providing time for participants to imagine themselves leading your activities for their communities in near real-time is one of the most powerful facilitation practices you can offer for retention and reuse.
Build in time for important social practices. In general, find time for breaks and meals that facilitators and participants can share together. Break bread together and give yourselves the opportunity to learn more about each other as people who share an affinity for the work you’re facilitating. More specifically, work with event organizers and potential audience members to learn about social practices that are particular to your audience. For example, if you work with a group like the National Writing Project that tends to begin and end workshops with writing, design your activities and breaks for reflection to include written components. If your audience has a social practice that you are not qualified to lead (such as a cultural practice outside your experience), invite an organizer or volunteer from among your learners to lead that practice at your event.
Essentially, show your care and build trust be opening your facilitation and design. Make your thinking visible to your learners, help them see the connections you see, and invite them to share their feedback, the connections they make, and their social practices with you and one another.
Revisit at least one of the activities you’ve been designing and iterate on it for care. If you have enough time before your next event, iterate on several activities to show your care.
Ask yourself questions like these to prompt revisions:
- Is this activity something my learners need to achieve their goals? If so, have I done enough to make connect this activity to those goals? Do my choices as a facilitator seem well-reasoned to my audience? How can I frame this activity more authentically?
- Have I built in any time for me to help people individually during independent or small-group work time? How can I fulfill my role as a lead facilitator and still seem available to individuals who need help?”
- Have I built in time for reflection? Have I built in time to listen to my learners’ feedback during the day? Where can I pause, listen, and react in ways that make this event better for my audience?
- Have I accounted for important social practices in my design? Are there ways of opening and closing an event that my audience values? Are there particular types of work or language my learners’ embrace or resist that I need to be aware of as a facilitator? Have I asked event organizers or potential audience members about social practices they’d like to see included in the event?