First day reflection

Because I think this is a place to be as straightforward as possible, I will go ahead and say that yesterday was not what I was hoping for on several counts.


1. The class activities were not data-rich for my purposes, i.e., nobody did any energy theater until the late afternoon.  They did have some good conversations about energy in the morning - the discussion of the OK Go video in room 1, in which participants' talk was rich with energy metaphors - but even the best conversation is just talk, whereas energy theater is talk, body movements, hand signs, timing, responsiveness to one another, etc.  I am addicted.  


2. The small amount of energy theater that participants did was not much to work with.  In room 1 (that's what I'm calling the first-year room), only one group did a "demo" of a scenario by following Hunter's instructions, with the rest of the class watching.  While there were some interesting (mis-)interpretations going on, I saw this more as figuring out the representation than figuring out what was going on with the energy.  (I know they are closely related, but this remains my instinct.)  In room 2, there was a bit of energy theater that I missed, and then a LOT (as in, an hour?) of standing still talking about the scenario.  Many of the participants were checked out; one appeared to actually be asleep.


3. We are understaffed.  Not many people were able to visit in June, so there are just three of us.  It's hard to rotate anyone out of the rooms for processing, especially while Renee Michelle and Melissa Anne are learning the ropes.  We could definitely put six people to good use (once there is more energy theater happening in the classroom).  Thus yesterday was observation and no processing -- no electronic processing and no mental processing, either.  This is just what I was trying to avoid from last summer!


Today I am making sure that we rotate out of the classroom for processing, even at the risk of missing some of the flow of the activity, because if we don't do that, we wind up with an inaccessible heap of lord knows what at the end of the week.  I have a scout in each room whose task is to come running to get us whenever energy theater is imminent.