Facilitation Idea: Quotes about Equity

Barb Novak contributed this post. Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

Click here to access the document above, 

which includes five quotes about literacy and equity.

Facilitating equity-focused professional learning is difficult. It's challenging to find the "right thing" to say. Equity-focused professional learning can be uncomfortable, and it's difficult to decide how far and how hard to push people's thinking. 

I've used this "activity" in a couple of recent sessions focused and equity and decided to share it for your adaptation.

1. BEFORE THE SESSION: Select a few quotes (fewer might be better - maybe four or five quotes) that are related to the goals for the session. Prepare the quotes on a handout (digital or paper).
2. Provide participants with time to read and annotate the quotes.
3. Assign each quote a "place" in the room.
4. Invite participants to move to the part of the room assigned to a quote they want to talk about.
5. Participants choose someone to talk to at their selected quote. Participants can move around the room, as desired.

This works, I think, for a few reasons:

• Participants have choice.
• Conversations are non-threatening because they happen in duos or triads.
• The activity involves some movement.

You might consider repeating the activity again at the end of the session (or the beginning of the next session) to focus on how thinking about the quotes changed as a result of new learning and/or application.