//HOW TO START A PEDAGOGY GROUP
The document that follows was handed out by J.E.A., a member of the Pedagogy Group, a New York City-based group of educators, cultural workers, and political organizers who meet regularly to explore, develop, and practice pedagogies that foster cooperative and collective skills and values.* The Pedagogy Group’s activities include sharing syllabi, investigating political economies of education, and connecting classrooms to social movements. Their efforts are guided by accountability to specific struggles and by critical reflection on our social subjectivities and political commitments. Group member J.E.A., wrote and presented the document below and offered it as a handout to all participants at the event.
* “How to Start a Pedagogy Group,” was given to participants who attended a workshop, “Open Meeting for Arts Educators and Teaching Artists” at Hauser and Wirth, New York, NY, May 17, 2019. The event was facilitated by the Pedagogy Group and was the seventh of an eight part series organized by members of BFAMFAPhD.
BFAMFAPhD event at Hauser and Wirth, Open Meeting for Arts Educators and Teaching Artists, May 17 2018.
Facilitator Bio
The Pedagogy Group is a group of educators, cultural workers, and political organizers who resist the individualist, market-driven subjectivities produced by mainstream art education. Together, they develop and practice pedagogies that foster collective skills and values. Activities include sharing syllabi, investigating political economies of education, and connecting classrooms to social movements.Their efforts are guided by accountability to specific struggles and by critical reflection on our social subjectivities and political commitments.
How to Start a Pedagogy Group
“A key aim of our group is to resist the competitive, individualist, and market-driven subjectivities produced by mainstream art education. Activities include sharing syllabi, investigating political economies of education, and connecting classrooms to social movements.”– The Pedagogy Group
We invite teachers, students, and education workers to start new Pedagogy Groups. The initial Pedagogy Group model can be thought of as a prototype. We envision how different teachers, learners, settings, and contexts will lead to diverse and unexpected iterations of the model, while retaining its form and intent. We imagine Pedagogy Groups initiated in public secondary schools, parochial schools, universities, centers of research, for-profit schools, public spaces, and movement settings. Wherever critical analysis, collaboration, and pedagogic interventions are most needed.
Organization and Decision Making
Pedagogy Groups (PGs) are independent, member-led peer support collectives or combines made up of educators working within and beyond institutional education spaces.
While the group can use different collective leadership and decision-making structures, they should be democratic and transparent so that members are accountable to each other.
Membership is determined by the group’s members.
Meeting Spaces
Gatherings are held in spaces that nurture face-to-face communication, are not too loud or distracting, include food and drink contributed by all the members, and have access to restrooms, Internet, and public transportation.
Meetings usually occur in the homes or classrooms of its membership.
Full accessibility is an overriding concern.
Gatherings
Meetings are informal, similar to any regularly scheduled midday lunch date among friends or colleagues. Meetings last three hours.
No two Pedagogy Groups are alike. Each group will develop its own meeting traditions and cultures.
The following two-steps are common:
Check-ins: Before the main discussion, group members take turns checking in with the group, sharing life updates, stories, and details of recent experiences. This can be as simple as sharing a rose (something nice), a thorn (something not so nice) and a seed (something hopeful), or it could be a longer presentation on a more complex dilemma.
Main discussions:
Roughly two and a half hours per meeting are devoted to deeper conversations that may include the following:
Focused discussions—the group addresses a timely theme of general importance in the field, the news, or based on a shared reading or experience.
Group work—this may include collaborative writing, group presentation design, document sharing or writing, and collaborative exercises or presentations.
Guest-led discussions —occasionally a guest is invited to join a meeting, present their work, or facilitate a thematic debate.
Open-ended free-flowing conversations—some gatherings are serendipitous and lack thematic focus. Members will discuss what’s happening with their schools, their lives, their creative projects and careers, or whatever might be bubbling up in the moment.
Themes, Questions, Prompts
Members use critical or strategic questioning to illuminate the roots of complex dilemmas. Themes, questions, and prompts drawing from the traditions of critical pedagogy and popular education anchor pedagogy group meetings and collaborations. Here are a few examples based on past workshops:
Pedagogy is: Rethinking the space of learning. Asking why are we here. Focusing on what we care about and what is urgent. Asking, how do we live together? Acknowledging that social engagement already lives in the world. Structuring our classrooms to address the exclusion of students and communities from our schools. Understanding that presence is pedagogy. Being present and paying attention to what we have at this moment. Understanding that teaching is learning and learning is teaching. Being responsible and prepared to listen and observe.
External Events and Publishing
Sometimes during and in-between meetings, members will develop collaborative texts or articles for journals and books, or public presentations. During such periods members shift their routine to focus on the requirements of collaborative research, writing, theorizing, and presenting. This occurs once or twice per year on average. Complex projects may require longer work sessions, one-on-ones or temporary working groups.
Starting a New Pedagogy Group
If you identify as an organizer, consider:
Scheduling a string of four monthly meetings. At each gathering seek out further collaborators to share the labor of organizing subsequent meetings.
Speaking to the most trusted community leaders you know about integrating a Pedagogy Group at your school, another school, or other institution.
Holding an open information session/potluck/conversation at your school, organization, movement space, or home. This could be as simple as a quick, 20 minute eat-and-meet gathering.
If you do not identify as an organizer, consider:
Testing the waters by inviting one person you trust to meet for tea or coffee to discuss the possibilities of starting a group. Together, map out who else might be interested in the group.
Helping to locate an organizer by having one-on-one conversations with people you know or admire, who seem like a good fit to seed a Pedagogy Group.
Audio accessible on Bad at Sports:
http://badatsports.com/2019/episode-693-bfamfaphd-and-the-pedagogy-group/