As a Technician, I have only had minimal input into lesson planning, so when faced with the task of delivering a Microteach, the first thing I did was to read the brief and the supporting material closely. I quickly decided on an object, my very worn and continuously mended cashmere sweater, as a lot of my thoughts about teaching are affected by my concerns with sustainability issues in my industry. The obvious approach to a teaching activity was to prepare a workshop around learning the technique of Sashiko mending, the element I wanted to highlight in my object. But in the process of identifying the Learning Objectives I wanted to set, it became clear that what I wanted my cohort to take away from my session was a broader examination of their own personal relationship to mending and the sustainability of their own clothing. I asked myself whether this was possible, given the time restraints and decided to at least make an attempt. I hedged my bets by telling myself I would time a rehearsal of my lesson and if it was too long, I would revert to a workshop style session.
I began by gathering information around the technique of Sashiko itself. Then I expanded my circle of enquiry to the wider issues around sustainability of clothing and cashmere in particular. Having amassed this body of information, I looked at the structure of the lesson and how to present the information in a way that would amplify the physical presence of my object in drawing out conversations, thoughts and discussions. At each step, I tried to imagine what responses I might get from my cohort. I was also conscious not to appear judgemental or to be forcing my opinion on the cohort.
I tested a number of activities for potential learning outcomes; group work around a number of provocative statements about planetary resources, brainstorming, word association and round table discussions. Finally, I arrived at the framework of storytelling to at once remove the judgemental element and to engage the emotional response to the harsh reality of the situation.
I began my microteach with a question: Imagine you have a sweater that you have had for a few years and have just discovered a hole in it. What would you do with it? I asked my colleagues to write down a few thoughts on how they would answer this question, then asked them to hold the thought of this imaginary sweater in their minds as I described my journey of how I went about answering this question. I felt that this would encourage them to approach the information I presented in a collaborative frame of mind and in a mindset of interrogation. In conjunction with the tactile quality of handling my sweater and the visual representation of the time and care that I had taken with it, would provoke a more visceral and instinctive response to the subject. I asked them to examine the sweater and to note the worn patch as an example of ‘before’, and the tiny sashiko stitchings as examples of ‘after’. I talked them through my struggles with finding a sustainable solution to extending the life of my sweater, using this as a framework to introduce facts and information around some of the issues, accompanied by visual images to accommodate neurodiverse learners. And then I asked them how they might now answer the question I first posed to them in the beginning of the session. I was hoping that I had given them enough provocations to spark thoughts and discussion on the impact of sustainability in their own lives.
I did manage to race through my story in under 20 minutes and we did have time to go around the group to elicit individual responses to my ‘lesson’, which as a whole showed engagement with the topic and a real attempt to make some sense of its relevance to their own lives. Although all the themes I covered in my presentation I felt were necessary to build the narrative arc, it resulted in a mild preoccupation with time keeping and less interactivity. I think more pauses for direct discussion at intervals throughout would have drawn out more conscious parallels about how mindset affects behaviour change. I was also aware that there was not as much directed attention to the ‘students’ as I would have liked; eye contact, checking for understanding and gauging levels of attention. There were encouraging responses from the practical, saying that the lesson had shown them how easy mending could be and they would try it, to the philosophical, how it made them think about the affect of their own actions on other people and places. I would have liked a bit more time for discussion to be able to determine the participants responses. I had wrestled with whether to state the learning objectives more overtly at the beginning of the session, but did not want to prejudice how the individual responded. This made it more difficult for me to quantify the outcomes, but felt that overall, the Learning Outcomes were within touching distance, if not fully realised.
The feedback was generally positive and someone suggested that this could be developed into a workshop around thinking about sustainability. I was relieved that I was able to elicit the learning outcomes I had set out to achieve and it has given me some confidence in my abilities as an educator.
As a final thought, I was also interested to note which types of information produced the most thoughts and questions in the cohorts’ minds: surprising statistics, emotive images, hard hitting text or performative storytelling. If there was a way of measuring the response to each of these, I would be interested in which of these educational tools was most effective.