Flexibility
Each group of students and each project will have different challenges, goals, and strengths. Our students suggest embracing flexibility throughout the process.
- Prompts - clear but open-ended
- Learning as a process
- Adaptability
- Patience
Safety
Our students emphasized the importance of participants feeling safe throughout the process of developing their stories. This allowed them to feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback and taking risks with their ideas.
- Model vulnerability
- Constructive feedback
- Trust
- Small groups
- Establish community guidelines
- Room for reflection
“Safe means respectful, not necessarily comfortable. Discomfort is where growth happens”
Transparency
Our students suggest being as transparent as possible about your expectations and goals, including ensuring students know from the beginning of the project how their work will be shared with others.
- Clear communication
- Realistic expectations
- Consent: Let students know how and with who their work will be shared
Individuality
Our students felt that encouraging individuality and freedom of expression encourages each student to take ownership of their work.
- Encourage personality/voice
- Keep an open mind
