What Is a Facilitation?

The schedule of facilitations is available here.

The facilitations will help us work on two of the course’s learning objectives:

• Engage in attentive and challenging discussions of texts within a community of fellow scholars.
• Practice leading and participating in facilitations led by your peers.

In a small group, you will be responsible for two facilitations in class: one discussion of a main text and one discussion of a secondary source. The facilitation is not a presentation where you tell the class about the text.

Here’s how I would suggest that you approach the facilitation: See if you can identify a question, along with some passages from the text that felt particularly exciting or confusing to you. You can ask your peers to think about the question and passages on their own or in groups, and then everyone can report back to the class about what they’re thinking about your question. This structure will take some of the pressure off of you as well: you can show everyone something that caught your attention or confused you and then ask for help with thinking about it further. 

• You will take fifteen minutes to lead your peers in small group work, informal in-class writing, and discussion.
• During the facilitation, you and your peers will share and add notes to a collaborative google doc. I will create a link to a google doc in the course schedule for that day. 
• Don’t worry if this sounds vague: I will model primary and secondary source facilitations for you in class.

Facilitating a Primary Source Text

For a main text, this might mean:

• Drawing attention to how the reading for that day builds on or complicates conversations or observations that have come up in previous classes. 
• Noticing how the text does this at the level of particular sentences or passages.  
• Making observations or asking questions about historical context with attention to particular examples. 
• Drawing attention to or asking about connections to other primary and secondary sources.

Facilitating a Secondary Source Text

For a secondary source, this could mean:

• Asking about what method of reading the scholarship is using, and what kinds of evidence or examples it uses to establish its interpretation.
• Perhaps noticing how this source positions itself in relation to other methods and other interpretations.
• Reflecting on your own take on the source’s method: what makes it convincing, what does it leave out?
• Taking stock of aspects of the source that feel difficult or confusing. 
• Inviting us to make connections with other primary and secondary sources.