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Rooted in curiosity, care and attentiveness to diverse histories and voices, the collective offers open-ended impulses that anyone can adapt, question or extend across a growing constellation of educational hubs.
© 2025 Emerging Spcae (CC BY‑NC 4.0)
Each entry offers an A5 print-and-cut card (more on the way) and a brief description that names both its flourishing potential for people, places, and more-than-human ecologies, and the kinds of harm it could cause if applied uncritically.
As you explore, keep in mind that every method is context-sensitive: adapt, remix, or even reverse the steps to fit your own rhythm, culture, and environmental realities. Creators and sources are credited and linked so the knowledge loop stays open and accountable.
Step inside, attend to the human and non-human voices at play, and let these practices evolve through the hands that reshape them.
Method: Cultural Probes for Learners
1. Inquiry Prompt (example; replaceable):
- “How might engaging all seven senses transform the ways we learn and teach?”
2. Community Outreach:
- Students share the prompt via Signal with at least ten people—family, friends or classmates—to invite varied contributions.
3. Gathering Multimodal Responses:
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Text reflections
- Hand-drawn sketches (photographed)
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Photographs or curated images
- Collect all digital files by the deadline (e.g., Monday, 18:00) and assemble them into one PDF.
- In the following class, students showcase selected probes, identify themes or surprises, and discuss how these insights can inform inclusive course design.
Inspired by Dunne & Pacenti Gaver
Check-In: Horizon Compass
This opening ritual supports educators and students in centering growth, respectful exchange, and shared commitments before a course begins.
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Opening Reflection (example prompt; replaceable):
“What personal insight or skill are you most eager to develop on this learning journey?”
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Embrace Growth Potential:
Each participant shares one reason this experience is a chance to learn from everyone—highlighting that all backgrounds and roles bring valuable knowledge.
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Honour Unique Perspectives:
Invite each person to name an aspect of their identity or experience that will shape their engagement—so every viewpoint informs the group from the outset.
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Appreciate the Process:
Ask participants to identify one phase of the upcoming work (e.g., collaboration, experimentation, reflection) they value, reinforcing that growth involves both successes and challenges.
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Record & Revisit:
Co-create two or three guiding principles (e.g., “Listen with curiosity,” “Elevate unheard ideas”) and display them—on a shared slide or whiteboard photo—so the group can return to these commitments at key milestones.
Method: Future Debrief
This future-oriented reflection (e.g., Thursday, 19.12 at 13:45) invites participants to envision a conversation with a peer about the core seminar or mentorship. (Example date and time are placeholders and may be adjusted.)
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Future Framing:
Ask everyone to imagine it’s the specified date and time, and they’re debriefing with a colleague about their experience in the seminar or mentor group.
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Enrichment Reflection:
“Which module left you feeling most inspired or enriched, and why?” Encourage answers that draw on varied backgrounds and roles.
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Immediate Application:
“What idea or technique did you implement right away?” Highlight how insights move from theory into practice.
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Effectiveness Criteria:
“What specific quality made that module a ‘good session’ for you?” Invite naming of values—such as openness, collaboration, or relevance to personal context.
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Document & Revisit:
Capture each response on a shared slide or collaborative note. Revisit these reflections at key junctures to ensure the seminar remains aligned with participants’ evolving needs.
Method: Pre-Journey Reflection
Overview:
After reviewing expectations for our upcoming learning journey through the foundation modules, let’s pause and consider one guiding prompt:
“Which questions do I want to carry forward on this learning journey?”
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Individual Ideation:
Each person silently writes two or three questions they’re eager to explore, drawing on their own experiences and curiosities.
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Pair Exchange:
In pairs, learners read their questions aloud and offer one suggestion for refining each other’s prompts—ensuring every voice is heard and valued.
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Group Clustering:
Small groups (3–4 people) pool their questions, grouping similar themes to reveal common interests and unique angles.
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Collective Spotlight:
Each group selects one question cluster that best represents emerging priorities, briefly explaining why it matters to the whole cohort.
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Shared Display:
Post the chosen clusters on a visible board or digital canvas so the class can reference these questions at key milestones, keeping the journey grounded in participant-driven inquiry.
Check-in: Compass Anchor
This opening activity invites learners to surface and share the core questions that will guide their upcoming journey.
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Question Generation:
Each student quietly writes two or three questions they’re eager to explore, drawing on personal interests and experiences.
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Peer Refinement:
In pairs, participants read their questions aloud and suggest one way to deepen or broaden each prompt—ensuring every voice adds value.
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Group Synthesis:
Small groups (3–4 people) combine their questions, clustering similar themes to spotlight shared curiosities and unique perspectives.
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Priority Spotlight:
Each group selects one question cluster that best captures emerging priorities, briefly explaining its relevance to the whole cohort.
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Display & Revisit:
Post the selected clusters on a visible board or digital canvas so everyone can return to these guiding questions at key milestones.
Method: Map Your Learning Partner
Overview:
This paired exercise invites learners to explore each other’s emerging visions for designing learning environments—with respect for unique backgrounds and roles.
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Pair & Prepare:
Choose the person next to you. Agree to a five-minute exchange focused on how each envisions shaping future learning spaces, acknowledging that you’re both at the start of your journey.
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Empathetic Portrait:
Spend two minutes sketching or jotting down a brief portrait of your partner—highlighting their strengths, interests, and any contextual factors (culture, prior experiences) that shape their outlook.
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Three-Sentence Summary:
Take one minute to craft a concise, three-sentence statement describing how your partner imagines designing learning environments—foregrounding their values and aspirations.
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Positional Mapping:
On a shared matrix (e.g., “Individual vs. Collaborative” and “Structured vs. Exploratory”), place your partner’s vision. This visual anchor helps surface where your approaches align or differ.
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Respectful Recap:
Conclude by reading your summary and mapping back to your partner. Invite any clarifications, honouring their perspective and ensuring the exercise remains a mutual discovery.
Inspired by Renato Soldenhof
Method: Brainstorm & Dot-Vote
This collaborative activity helps the group surface and prioritise core themes in a way that honours every voice and perspective.
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Individual Ideation (10 minutes):
Each participant reflects quietly on themes they find essential and writes one theme per sticky note—drawing on personal experiences and recognising varied contexts.
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Display & Cluster:
Post your notes on the shared wall or board. Together, group similar ideas into clusters—being mindful that some insights may emerge from less-heard backgrounds.
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Equitable Voting:
Everyone receives 3–5 dots (votes). Distribute your dots to themes you deem most important, considering both widely voiced concerns and those from marginalised perspectives.
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Facilitator Theme Listing:
After voting, the facilitator records the highest-scoring themes in a visible list. These become the focus topics for upcoming sessions, ensuring the group’s diverse priorities guide the journey.
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Group Reflection:
Briefly discuss the top themes: Does this selection reflect the full range of experiences in the room? Are any voices or issues still missing? Adjust as needed to maintain an inclusive agenda.
Use this method to co-create a shared roadmap that’s grounded in collective insight and respect.
Method: Mundane Method
This exercise invites participants to treat everyday routines as generative design methods, honouring diverse contexts and lived experiences.
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Select & Observe:
Choose a routine activity—such as commuting or cleaning—and spend two minutes silently observing its key actions and decisions.
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Visual Sketch:
On paper or digitally, draw a simple flowchart or storyboard that captures the main phases and interactions of the chosen routine.
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Step Definition:
List 4–6 clear steps needed to carry out the activity, using neutral, accessible language so anyone—regardless of background—can follow.
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Method Mapping:
Describe how this routine could function as a design tool (e.g., “Commuting” might teach time management and spatial awareness; “Dancing” could model iterative feedback loops).
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Outcome Reflection:
Note one insight or skill this method surfaces—such as improving empathy by understanding others’ daily patterns—and consider how it might inform inclusive teaching strategies.
Examples: Commuting, Dancing, Cleaning, Cycling ...
Sensitivity Reminder: Daily practices differ widely across cultures, abilities, and circumstances. Honour each person’s context and avoid assuming any single routine represents everyone’s experience.
Inspired by Florian Wille
This co-creative activity helps learners map and shape their emotional engagement with course content—recognizing diverse perspectives and shared responsibility for the learning journey.
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Orientation Snapshot (5 min):
Present a concise visual of the upcoming content. Ask each participant to place marks on the map using bold labels:
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Question for areas of confusion or curiosity
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Excitement for topics they look forward to
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Challenge for sections they expect to stretch themselves (like stepping onto a springboard)
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Avoid for content they’d rather skip
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Question for areas of confusion or curiosity
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Peer Interpretation (5 min):
In small groups, share and interpret each other’s marks. Discuss what these choices reveal about different backgrounds, experiences, and learning needs.
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Iterative Feedback Loop (5 min):
Invite participants to propose tweaks—on pacing, examples, or support structures—via sticky notes or digital comments, clustering suggestions by theme.
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Plenary Adjustment (5 min):
Return to the shared map and allow learners to shift their marks if their views have evolved during group discussion.
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Collective Journey Design (5 min):
In full group, review the final map, highlighting “Avoid” zones and areas of uncertainty. Co-create a draft learning pathway that balances healthy challenge, genuine excitement, and clear support.
Contextual Sensitivity & Shared Ownership:
Emotional responses and support needs vary across cultures and identities. Participants are encouraged to steward their own tolerance windows and lean on facilitator support when needed—knowing that genuine co-creation depends on open dialogue, mutual respect, and shared ownership of the learning process.
Method: Twin-Lens Hospitation
This practicum exercise guides student pairs through co-observations in a real classroom, balancing fresh-eyes curiosity with informed insight, while empowering learners and honouring all participants—human and non-human alike.
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Transparent Invitation (5 min):
Before entering the classroom, explain to the children—clearly and respectfully—that you’ll be observing; invite them to opt in or out. This honours their agency and builds trust.
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Fresh-Eyes & Context Scan (10 min):
Each observer separately notes two things:
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Fresh-Eyes: Unfiltered behaviours or interactions, including how learners use objects, space, and materials.
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Contextual Insight: Relevant pedagogical knowledge or cultural factors that give these observations depth—without reducing children to case studies.
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Fresh-Eyes: Unfiltered behaviours or interactions, including how learners use objects, space, and materials.
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Tandem Exchange (5 min):
Compare notes with your partner. Listen first as they describe what stood out, then share your perspective—treating the classroom ecosystem (people, tools, and spaces) as co-creators of learning.
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Iterative Feedback Loop (5 min):
On sticky notes or digital cards, propose one adjustment—for pacing, environment setup, or learner support—that emerged from your dual perspectives.
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Practice Teacher Debrief (10 min):
Meet with the supervising educator to review observations and suggested tweaks. Discuss how to refine the design in situ and how to share insights back with the children in an accessible, age-appropriate way—completing a cycle of respectful, inclusive co-creation.
Ensure informed consent and honour the agency of all participants, including children, educators and the classroom environment, by adapting practices to cultural norms and inviting ongoing feedback for genuinely inclusive co-creation.
Method: World Café
A rotating table exercise that helps participants collectively unpack thematic areas—such as core competencies or course topics—through dialogue, mapping and light research.
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Table Setup:
Arrange four stations, each with two theme cards placed around a simple concentric-wheel template. Provide each station with markers and a brief descriptor for its two themes.
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Station Exploration (10 min):
In groups of four, read the provided descriptions and annotate the wheel by writing associations, questions or examples in each segment. Conduct a quick desk-research (digital or paper) to enrich your notes.
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Rotation & Relay (4×5 min):
After five minutes, three participants move clockwise to the next station, while the “anchor” stays to welcome newcomers and explain the accumulated associations and questions.
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Collective Harvest (10 min):
Once all rotations are complete, reconvene at your original table to review the full wheel. Identify emerging patterns, surprises or gaps across the four sessions.
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Group Reflection & Next Steps (5 min):
As a cohort, highlight two or three priority themes that will inform upcoming design decisions. Note any areas needing deeper exploration or alternative perspectives.
Contextual Sensitivity & Respectful Design:
Observations and insights stem from varied cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. Honour each contributor’s context by amplifying less-heard voices, sharing authority over interpretation, and ensuring every wheel becomes a starting point for inclusive and respectful design.
Inspired by Juanita Brown & David Isaacs
Method: Collective WOOP
An adapted version of Gabriele Oettingen’s evidence-based strategy, reoriented toward shared aspirations and cooperative action.
Begin as an imagination exercise—feel free to close or soften your eyes—and ground yourselves in the shared purpose of your learning journey.
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Collective Wish (5 min):
Together, state one meaningful ambition for your group’s learning path, ensuring it reflects the diverse hopes and contexts in the room.
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Desired Outcome (5 min):
Visualize the ideal result: describe concrete, inclusive benefits that uplift every participant.
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Shared Obstacles (5 min):
Name potential barriers—structural, cultural, or logistical—and honour how different backgrounds shape each challenge.
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Co-Created Plan (5 min):
Map steps that share responsibility and leverage each member’s strengths, embedding mutual‐support checkpoints.
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Group Commitment & Iteration (5 min):
Establish an accountability ritual—rotating facilitators or regular check-ins—to revisit and refine your WOOP in response to new insights.
If you find your focus drifting, briefly pause and repeat the visualization step to reinforce the collective vision and strengthen its impact.
Contextual Sensitivity & Respectful Design:
This collective WOOP centers shared agency and respects the full spectrum of participants’ contexts, moving beyond individual goal-setting toward genuinely collaborative, equitable learning designs.
Inspired by Gabriele Oettingen
Check-In: Derive Perception Walk
This sensory-grounding ritual awakens awareness of your teaching environment through an open-ended wander, inviting fresh insights and questioning familiar assumptions.
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Gather & Go (2 min):
Take a notebook or blank A4 sheets and a pen. Set a 15-minute timer and begin walking—indoors or outdoors—without a fixed destination.
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Select a Thread (2 min):
Choose one quality to follow—colour, sound, texture, architectural line, or movement. Let it guide your steps.
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Document Moment-to-Moment (11 min):
Allow yourself to drift and get “lost.” Record observations in any form—quick sketches, frottage rubbings, lists of sensations or words that arise—without aiming for accuracy or a map.
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Small-Group Debrief (10 min):
Return to the room and, in groups of three or four, share your most striking discoveries. Discuss how these sensory moments might shape learners’ experiences and your own teaching designs.
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Collective Reflection (5 min):
In plenary, name one assumption you’re now questioning and one new perception you’ll carry into your next design or lesson.
Cultural & Contextual Sensitivity:
By treating the space as co-researcher and honouring diverse ways of sensing, this activity cultivates an inclusive, respectful approach to designing learning environments that resonate with all participants.
Method: Classroom Time Capsule
This reflective design exercise invites participants to compare today’s classroom with their own school experiences—surface shifts, question ingrained habits, and envision more inclusive futures.
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Illustrated Comparison (10 min):
Show a photo of a contemporary classroom. Individually sketch side-by-side thumbnails: on the left, your memory of a classroom from your school days; on the right, what you see today. Annotate both with brief notes on layout, technology, materials, and social dynamics.
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Guided Prompts:
As you draw, consider:
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How does seating and social grouping differ?
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What role do boards, screens, or maker-materials play?
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How does movement through the space feel possible or constrained?
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What surprised you, and what would you have wished for as a learner?
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How does seating and social grouping differ?
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Tandem Exchange (5 min):
Pair up and present your sketches. Listen for how your partner’s background and identity shaped their school-day memories and current observations.
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Sharpening the Lens (5 min):
In pairs, use two deeper questions to probe one another:
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Which spatial feature best supports diverse learning needs?
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Where might power or hierarchy be encoded in the room’s design?
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Which spatial feature best supports diverse learning needs?
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Plenary Outlook (10 min):
Reconvene to share key insights—avoiding value judgments—and highlight how past influences linger in current practice. Finally, co-create two forward-looking ideas for reimagining the classroom to honour multiple ways of engaging, moving, and learning.
Cultural & Contextual Sensitivity:
By grounding analysis in personal histories and collective reflection, this method fosters a respectful, critically aware approach to designing next-generation learning environments.
Check-In: Dive In & Connect
This three-phase ritual grounds participants in shared reflection, open dialogue, and personal storytelling—attuned to diverse perspectives and mutual respect.
1. Radiant Insights – Scale Alignment (10 min):
Imagine an invisible line from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” across the room. React to each statement by positioning yourself along the scale, then share any quick reflections. Example prompts:
- “I was able to observe without bias.”
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“I felt an immediate connection with the learners.”
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“The classroom matched my expectations.”
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“I found myself surprised by the instructor’s methods.”
- “I developed new questions about the teacher’s role.”
2. Twilight Conversations – Three-Question Mingle (10 min):
On three sticky notes, write open-ended questions that spark meaningful exchange (avoid small talk). In pairs, ask one question, swap notes, then move on to a new partner and repeat—surfacing shared experiences and new insights.
3. Deep Connections – Turning-Point Stories (10 min)
Sketch or list one pivotal moment that drew you toward education. In pairs, tell your partner about that turning point and one key takeaway from today’s observation. Listen actively and honour each person’s journey
A Note on Sensitivity & Respect:
These activities invite all voices—across cultures, identities, and experiences—to shape our shared space. Honour each contribution without judgment, maintain transparency with learners you observe, and remember that genuine connection grows from open curiosity and mutual support.
Inspired by Anamaria Dorgo