Observations from the Facilitator's End

The Supercomputing Challenge just started with their annual Kick Off Conference in Glorieta, New Mexico. I was a co-facilitator this year, helping out with the middle school Project GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically) track.
I had a Blast! Setting up for a day and then teaching intensively for three is draining, and by the end I had to try hard not to snap at people and to keep smiling, but I love teaching. I know I'm crazy (aren't all teachers too?), but I just can't forget that Aha! moment; the Eureka! when a student finally gets it. I love the light bulbs. Can I think of any more metaphors? Alright, I'm done.

There were some observations I made over the three days that interested me, and some of them bothered me.
As I've said many times to many people, I don't do well in a classroom setting. But I've never really been able to explain why. I realized over the past few days that I don't enjoy the classroom setting as a teacher either, or even in my ambiguous role as tech support and crowd control. I like that last role best, but I'm still bothered by how... Inactive so many people seem.
I once heard one of my co-facilitators say something along the lines of not being able to stand when kids are idle. Reading a book or doing something even vaguely productive on the computer didn't seem to bother her. I'm not surprised to find that kids sitting in a classroom doesn't seem to bother her, but I have to ask the hard questions: Why? Isn't sitting still without doing anything the definition of being idle?
So it turns into something I argue about all the time. The obvious answer to the above questions is that they are doing something. They're learning. But are they really?
There were a rather large number of sponsoring teachers and parents and probably some other people who ended up sitting in at the back of the classes. I wish now that I'd asked at least one of them what they'd learned in the class. If they hadn't learned anything, how could they possibly expect their kids to have learned something?

What did the parents and the sponsors learn from being in class with their kids? They certainly caused some tension. Mostly doing for the kids what the kids were expected to do for themselves. So they should have learned, right? If they were in the class and doing for their kids what the kids were supposed to? I still wish I'd asked one. Put them on the spot and, with any luck, made them look at it in a different way.
I think that the teachers and parents need to have their own class. In fact, I would volunteer to facilitate it, young as I am. They need to have a wake-up to what their kids need from them, and how they can best support them. Taking their notes for them in not going to help. They also need to understand that the point of this is to Learn.
There was speculation that this last was what the problem was. Neither students nor parents seemed to understand that there may not be an answer, or that the instructor may not know the answer, but the answer was missing the point. The Point was the asking of the question in the first place and the process of Finding, or at least Looking, for an answer.
The parents do need to be involved. If they're not involved, we run a high risk of them saying "Oh, my kid could never do that." When what they really mean is that they don't understand it and are therefore afraid of it, which too often leads to them not encouraging their kids or even pulling them out of the project. Which isn't what we want at all.
A class for accompanying adults would serve a number of purposes:
1. Keep the parents and difficult teachers out of the facilitators' hair.
2. Readjust their focus to be on the questions and the process rather than on having a right answer (or any answer).
3. Give them an idea of how they can best help their kids reach their goals, without doing it for them.
4. Help them to better understand what it's all about and what makes a successful project.
5. Keep the parents and teachers involved. Doing this without strong support last year was an eye-opening experience, but I'm not willing to do it again.
I know that the parents maybe don't need to be there at all. But I'd like it if they were there and making themselves useful. Or learning. What they're learning is irrelevant next to the fact that they're learning at all. Learning is the point for the students, and that should be reflected in what everyone is doing; teachers, parents, facilitators, students.

The last session I sat in on was a very small group, since the two big schools on that track, Monte del Sol and Capshaw, had to leave early. We had two students from Bosqué, two of their accompanying adults, Celia and Irene who are on Consult, myself, and Juliet, who is Irene's daughter. It was Wonderful! The class was supposed to be a Teamwork session, where we go over what it means to be an effective team. I had previously found it quite dull, to be perfectly honest. The first one I was to facilitate I was cranky enough to take away someone's PSP. (It was distracting him, and me, and the former at least is a valid reason, but I could have been more lenient.)
This one was different, I think, because we had a pretty even balance of students, teachers, and facilitators and a couple people in flexible roles. We told stories and played bingo and were quite the intimate group. The accompanying adults came in a little late, and there was a noticeable difference in their students. The students had been talkative and telling us stories, and when the teachers came in there was a Stop.
The situation seemed quickly overridden, however, and one of the students was even comfortable enough to suggest that if the teachers were tired they shouldn't give so much homework, so that they would have one less thing to worry about. I wanted to shout out "Yes!" and cry and hug him. In itself it may not have been a particularly good solution to the stated problem (tired teachers), but it demonstrated active listening, active problem solving, constructive criticism, and a very gentle suggestion of the way he was feeling about the subject of homework, if not a reason for that feeling. Which are the tools of the conversationist and the problem solver. I wish I had been ready to push that discussion, but I was too tired and drained, and didn't feel like shaking things up. Is that selfish?
We need more groups like this; with a mix of people and a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. This is how discussion comes about. This is how problems get worked out, how revelations are found, how things are learned.

There was another teamwork session, the same in which I took away the PSP. The group of boys who I had taken it away from were sitting right in front of me as the class was being wrapped up. They ended up turned around talking to me. They obviously had the PSP on their minds, but they started asking questions: "How old are you? Did you do the Challenge before?" Questions I was used to and answered without a problem. So we started talking, and one of them mentioned that I looked tired. And I told him that most of the facilitators had been there since Saturday, and also that having to be on your toes, on the watch and trying to explain things is Far more tiring than just sitting there. And they seemed surprised by both those answers. I was, once again as it's happened before, outraged that no adults had been honest with these kids as to what their state was.
Kids are perfectly capable of relating to us, but we have to be sincere. Some teachers seem to think we need to be flawless. Hell no. That's too much work, not worth it, and in many cases counter-productive. But if we're tired, the kids will observe that. And they are capable of understanding the reasons behind that if we choose to give them reasons.
Look at me. I'm even calling them kids. I'm considered a kid in plenty of situations, so maybe I'm the wrong person to talk, but... I hate it when adults (as though they're a different group too now, I'm hopeless) think I'm blind to the obvious just because I'm young. I can't imagine the kids that I'm teaching feel much different. Why can't we all just be honest about our state? About our reasons for that state? We're all human, we can relate to a lot of the same things, so what's the problem?

Overall, I, personally, learned a lot from this. And I have more ideas about what I saw in Glorieta that haven't yet become words. Those may come later. I've never been this intimately or officially on the facilitator end, so I don't really know how it compares to past years. I'm definitely happier as a facilitator than as a student, but the system of the teacher at the front leading the class by the nose or lecturing I still find boring and hard to deal with. Perhaps harder to deal with, since what I told the middle school boys about which role is more draining is absolutely true from where I'm looking.
I will certainly push the idea that the parents need to be kept involved and should have their own classes to go to. And I will volunteer myself if I'm given enough freedom to do it in a way that works well for me. The main selling point is to keep them occupied, and if I accomplish only that it should be worth it. If I show them something about how they can support their kids, even better.