Lesson Plan Class 1 March 6 & 7, 2012 Jane Zawadowski, Xihua University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China Class sizes:

s: 13 to 45 freshmen or sophomore university students Goals: By the end of class, students will have: 1) co-created class rules 2) learned about Jane (and Jane will have learned about what they want to learn about her) 3) experienced and learned about Participatory Learning 8:00 a.m. Good morning! Sorry Im late, just got back to China from Thailand this past night at midnight. Im happy to be with you all! See if they know my name. Write Jane Z. on board. (Ive had my warm mental embrace of this building, these students since hours before class this morning.) Write PARTICIPATORY LEARNING on board. They practice saying it after me. Root: to participate. 8:10 Energizer/team creation: Group by a) 3 shoulders, b) 4 hands c) 5 feet. 9 groups of 5 people each (45 students). The groups remained standing in their clusters/groups at the front of the classroom the whole class. It was interesting watching how little they identified with the spirit of play with this caught them by surprise, maybe! If somebody wasnt finding a group, he/she wouldnt try, would just stand there. I would direct them to look around, and I explained to the groups to call out if they had a need for more people. Pick a name for your group. I explain it must be a real word in English. After a few minutes, I write on board and say, Pick 1 person to explain your group name. Leader tells class. (Note #1: I tell the speakers/leaders to talk to each other, their classmates, not just to me. I give them a pep talk, saying dont be shy and we dont lose face in here, even I make mistakes its good and go for it! which they always appreciate. #2: I tell the classmates to listen to the speaker. I ask if their classmate is the teacher at that moment. They say they understand that, yes, they are each others teachers. I say they must practice listening to each other. It is a life skill, need to listen to your boyfriend or girlfriend or they will be angry. If students arent listening, I call on them to summarize what a student just has said, which shows they werent paying attention and that Im serious about this listening business. Or I ask their fellow classmates to provide a summary for their benefit. (First class: tough guy Jane, a bit of fire, this is so different for them.) #3: I synthesized when I heard group Q4s leader, saying that I like how he used the words dream and happy fighting (the names of the other groups) to help explain his teams name. I said it shows he had been listening to and learning from his classmates. #4: I learned about Chinese culture hearing the name and explanation of soy group. If you dont have a purpose, but all want to drink soy, you apparently say, Da jiang you and this is funny. I will talk with some Chinese friends to find out this meaning.) 8:40 Create Questions Each group gets 2 slips of paper (A4 cut into 4 long pieces) and an oil pastel. They must create only 2 questions, asking something they want to know about me, one question per slip. The group must decide together which 2 questions to ask. 8:50 Categorize Questions: The leaders bring the slips to the front, to the whiteboard. The others could have a break if they wanted. The leaders had to organize/classify the questions by topic. I wrote that down on the board and told them verbally. 9:00 Re-categorize Questions: The whole class reviews the categories and the questions, moving one or two over. Making sense of the groupings their leaders had created. There are about 5 categories of questions: personal/gossip; how I like China; where Im from in America; student-classroom concerns; food; pop culture, etc.

9:02 Prioritize Categories: The groups discuss and decide upon Which top 3 categories of questions do we want answered? The leaders come to the whiteboard and write a #1, #2 and #3 by their top 3 categories. 9:05 Listening to Info about the Questions: I answer their top 3 categories of questions. (Questions Category #1: Which singer (both Chinese and American) do you like best? How about your most unforgettable memory in China? (going to my students very rural hometown, drew how I got there, many buses, walking on the mountain, very far away in Sichuan, rice terraces, they caught fish for us, we saw all their corn and other vegetables, beautiful nature, that it changed my life. They listen intently.) Whats your phone #? (I give my email.) You look fashionable, how do you make yourself look more beautiful? I laugh at myself, saying Ive got on my white elephant Om pants (which they dont know the Om symbol or sound), and my clothes are usually a bit dirty and I dont brush my hair. Category #2: What is the most famous in your country? NYC, I say. Please introduce your hometown. I talk about the mountains and desert of Pueblo, Colorado and that I also love Chicago, Illinois. Category #3: Which country [place] do you like best in China? I say, All of it! and list the provinces Ive been to. Do you think the Chinese men are handsome? Of course! haha In your eyes, what differences exist between us and your children? [They dont know I have children, and the question, I learn, means that they want to know about American university students and themselves, 1st-year university students. Interesting, they view themselves as child-like.] I say and point to participatory learning, that in the U.S. we can discuss ideas and create new things using this. I say that Chinese students have a lot of knowledge, know a lot of things, and copy a lot. I say both ways are good, neither is better, theyre different. Gave names to the categories: I asked What kinds of questions were these? and wrote down culture, personal experience of me in China, my life, and philosophical/funny. I said, I hear that you are really interested in my life as it relates to China, and differences between Chinese and American students. These are really interesting questions, not what I expected. Generated together (I asked leading questions) step-by-step what we did today: How We Learn Together: 1) teams talked about which questions to ask 2) teams decided which questions to write and wrote them down 3) leaders categorized/classified the questions on the board (the backs of the slips had sticky tacky putty on them) 4) the whole group reclassified the categories of questions as needed 5) teams prioritized and voted which categories were best 6) all took a break (resting in-between is important too) 7) students listened as Jane talked, answered the top-prioritized questions 8) reflection (feeling word, journaling about PL and/or content Jane talked about, writing down these steps of how we learned) 9) Jane synthesis, PL explanation I synthesized by saying that PL is about all these steps. And that decision-making and listening (to yourself and others) is at the heart of it. Feeling Word: In 2 of my classes, I get a feeling word reaction from the students. Most use words as excited, comfortable, happy. Only 1 or 2 feel neutral or bored. Mini-lecture/synthesis (?) of Participatory Learning (Tuesday 4:00 and Wed. 8:00 classes): I explained that traditional learning is participatory learning and every culture knows this: villagers would together decide where to build buildings, in China, the dad will teach his son to grow rice, and the daughter learns how to cook from her mom. Even some university classes such as architecture can be participatory. This is something we do when we hang out with friends and learn about each other and ourselves. So we do it in

this classroom also. The alternative is that I will stand in front of the classroom and make a speech for some time and hear their questions one-by-one from the group. And we can do that, I can make it funny, I know what they want to hear, and they can still participate, but in a more limited way. Today, this way of participatory learning, we really co-created what content they wanted to hear, I got to know them better as far as their interests, they had fun, they learned about me, and we still learned and spoke a lot of English. 9:20 Co-create class rules/expectations: I asked them to talk about, in their groups, class rules and expectations. As #1, I write No cell phones, my pet peeve. Hunt for the No In one class, a student muttered she couldnt agree to the rule to participate (that somebody had suggested). I asked her Why? She said because shes bored. Why? Because shes actually tired. Why? Because she didnt get enough sleep last night. Why? Because she was doing other stuff. So if you have a job to be a student in my class, how can you do your part so that you can participate? She agreed to get more rest, make better choices, have her roommate/classmate remind her to be prepared next week. It led to us adding to the class rules about being prepared (the night before/ the morning of). Hunting for the no leads to an ultimately richer agreement and group wisdom surfacing. Rules/Expectations (Co-Created) 1. No cell phones 2. Arrive on time 3. No eating, sleeping in class 4. Participate: a. Listen when anybody talking to the group b. Be energetic, active 5. No copying 6. Be prepared: a. The night before/morning of b. Bring what you need to class: I said they all must have a notebook just for this class. And homework, as assigned. 9:30 Reflection/Journaling: I explained that the course content is created as we go (and I read in Prachas book that one of the dangers of PL is that students can feel they dont know what they learned if its not summarized and synthesized well). And, for the purposes of the exam (oral final), they must know what we talked about today. So, they must write down 1) the steps of learning and 2) all that they remember about today. I wrote on the board, Today I learned about Jane that: ________ and Today I learned that participatory learning is: __________. They spent 5-10 minutes journaling. Wed class: I walked around, saying in a sort-of meditative, slow voice, Today I talked about what kind of flowers I like, and the story of my Chinese family, my Chinese name, that Im not mixed-blood but pure-blood Polish but American in culture, that I took my kids to live in the rest of the world because of my background, the story of how Dave and I met Next week: I will bring a drawing summarizing what we did in class. Will draw map of U.S. (just Colorado and Illinois) and China, etc. Excited to do this!