On Wednesday I attended an event run by Space Unlimited about their work ‘Changing Schools’. I did so with great interest and enthusiasm as working with young people is a key part my background and continues to be a strong passion of mine.
Location: The event took place at House for an Art Lover in Glasgow (nice venue!) and lasted about 4 hours.
Attendees: There were about 30 people in attendance. This group included Space Unlimited Staff; Teachers and pupils from some of the schools involved in the project; and a selection of guests (i.e. people not involved in the project from IRISS (me!), Education Scotland, Care Inspectorate and so on).
Layout: Space Unlimited had drawn two large (4m+) diagrams of their process and pinned these along the wall. As they presented they added key aspects to the drawings so that they were built up by the end of the day. I found this really useful for visually bringing everyone in the room up to speed with their process from the point of planning to the point of action.
Very quickly I felt like I had a grasp of the work they had done, the process they had gone through and their outcomes.
Program: They started the day with an introduction to their ‘Changing Schools’ project.
In summary, Space Unlimited had been visiting schools to bring together teachers and pupils over three days to enable them to work well together and develop pupil/teacher committees.
The facilitators split the group into 4 smaller groups and sent them to separate rooms. Each group consisted of two people from Space Unlimited (facilitator and note taker); two pupils (min); one teacher (min) and three guests (min).
On the floor Space Unlimited arranged quotes from teachers and pupils involved in the project. They then asked those involved (teachers and pupils) to select one that resonated with them the most, followed by the guests.
Each person then took it in turns to talk about the quote they had chosen (40 mins total).
I really liked this method. It gave everyone a voice and something to talk about. Having a chance to read all of the quotes was very valuable also and a garret way to give the guests insight into the project from the participant’s perspective.
I was encouraged to hear quotes about feeling empowered, respected and listed to. The young people (age 13-14) were extremely confident and vocal about their experience with Space Unlimited. When I asked them about it they said they weren’t this confident until they worked with Space Unlimited and were able to see that their teachers cared about them and wanted to listen to them.
“Working with Space Unlimited allowed me to see my teachers care about me.” pupil.
There was a lot of discussion about how the schools could get other teachers/pupils engaged. There was concern that without Space Unlimited returning that it wouldn’t be possible. Pupils felt that they had become so confident that they were at the same level as the teachers and so new pupils would need to repeat that process. They referenced this as being similar to asking English speakers to join a group of Spanish speakers – you need someone to teach you both a shared language. That was what they thought Space Unlimited had done.
There was concern from the teachers that if they left the school they were currently working in that the learning would go with them but may not remain in the school they left.
After this session was a break, during which everyone was invited to write a topic to discuss in the next session. These were stuck on the wall and then everyone had to write their name next to one topic that interested them most.
Only 6 people wrote cards. Three of the people were pupils. I joined the group who had selected my card “how can this approach be embedded”. I wrote this based on the discussion at the start of the day as I felt it hadn’t been resolved and was a key part of the process.
Each of the groups were joined by one person from Space Unlimited (note taker).
Unfortunately there were no pupils in our group. In fact, most of the pupils ended up in the same group.
Our group talked a lot about how to build on and embed the process without Space Unlimited. There was talk about it being difficult to motivate teachers on the value of working with pupils in this way and having to give up their lunchtime or after school time to facilitate the pupil/teacher discussions. Workload was also discussed a lot.
I tried to bring the conversation back to outcomes for pupils and teachers and also (from a policy level) how this approach meets the outcomes of the Curriculum for Excellence. Although the teachers and guests in our group all agreed that enabling teachers and pupils to work together as equals was key, they were concerned again about the views of their colleagues. We did not resolve how this could be embedded.
After this session we returned to the larger group and one person from each group was invited to feedback their discussions.
I was really pleased to see that the pupils wanted to speak first and did so with great confidence.
The event ended with lunch and an opportunity to speak to the people involved. I spent this time with the group of pupils and two of the teachers. The group was extremely positive about their experience with Space Unlimited. The pupils all took the opportunity to talk to me with one telling me they were surprised someone outside of their school was also so interested in their story as well as their teachers.
“I’m surprised that someone other than my teacher would want to hear about what we are doing.” pupil.
This was a fun and engaging event and was really successful in quickly bringing everyone in the room to the same level of knowledge about the project – or at least to a level where the guests could happily engage with the participants. I really like the approach Space Unlimited took. In particular I like the large-scale visuals of their process and the quotes from participants and, of course, the opportunity to speak to everyone involved about their experience.