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A Teachable Moment: A Facilitator's Guide to Activities for Processing, Debriefing, Reviewing and Reflection
If you need to know "what comes after the teambuilding activity?" this book is for you!
Jim Cain, Michelle Cummings and Jennifer Stanchfield have collectively been active in adventure-based and active learning programs for almost a century. From their extensive facilitation background, here are the best of their techniques, methods and activities for engaging participants in active and meaningful processing, debriefing and program reviewing sessions. Processing helps learners make connections between their educational experiences and real life and future learning. It helps learners realize that they can apply the lessons they learn and skills they use in a "contrived environment" such as a classroom or challenge course to real life issues such as resolving a conflict with friends, co-workers or significant others. Processing helps create purpose, meaning and focus of an activity it helps learners take advantage of teachable moments. A Teachable Moment is packed with over 120 activities to help you, the facilitator, help your participants transfer their learning back to everyday life. A Teachable Moment is perfect for new, as well as seasoned, facilitators.
Jim Cain, Michelle Cummings and Jennifer Stanchfield have collectively been active in adventure-based and active learning programs for almost a century. From their extensive facilitation background, here are the best of their techniques, methods and activities for engaging participants in active and meaningful processing, debriefing and program reviewing sessions. Processing helps learners make connections between their educational experiences and real life and future learning. It helps learners realize that they can apply the lessons they learn and skills they use in a "contrived environment" such as a classroom or challenge course to real life issues such as resolving a conflict with friends, co-workers or significant others. Processing helps create purpose, meaning and focus of an activity it helps learners take advantage of teachable moments. A Teachable Moment is packed with over 120 activities to help you, the facilitator, help your participants transfer their learning back to everyday life. A Teachable Moment is perfect for new, as well as seasoned, facilitators.
288 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2005
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June 22, 2020This past month I took a deeper look into facilitative leadership by supplementing my September’s reading of “the 9 Disciplines” (a much more theoretical look at the topic) with “A Teachable Moment” written by a group of veteran facilitative leaders: Jim Cain, Michelle Cummings, and Jennifer Stanchfield. Recommended to me by one of my coworkers, “A Teachable Moment” plugs a wide variety of specific approaches, activities and other methods of implementation into the overarching disciplines that group facilitators constantly work to refine. The authors also place significant emphasis on how to tap into the different styles of learning or processing (ex: logical, kinesthetic, visual, linguistic, etc) throughout, and in this way, they offer a broad (yet detailed) “how to” approach to leading nearly any type of group through experiential learning.
While the majority of the book is an encyclopedia of various learning activities, the first portion provides a bit of theory supported by specific steps on how to take a group through a successful learning experience regardless of what it is you are teaching them. This was extremely valuable, as it challenged how I (and others) tend to think of learning traditionally as more of a content sensitive process rather than a context sensitive process. The authors describe the stages of learning that straddle and permeate educational content (group forming, sequencing, reflection, and processing) as essential to the entire process of teaching and learning. With conscious strategy and attentive observation, a true facilitator can bring a group through these four stages in such a way that activates and catalyzes a learner’s attention, motivation, and buy-in to the content or activities present in the learning experience. The authors supplement their analysis of these processes with plenty of examples of activities and mental exercises that a group facilitator can use as tools in implementing them.
These stages—group forming, sequencing, reflection, and processing—are stages of learning that I feel are easy to brush over or neglect when a teacher is focusing on such specific (and important) content. As effective as a teacher may be at communicating a new concept or demonstrating a skill to a new learner, if that learner’s mind is not primed for taking on new information or not given adequate time or space to process and reflect on what they are learning, then that new information is practically useless. This notion relates to many learners working with CTEP members, particularly when the learner is in a new or uncomfortable environment or has other barriers that go above and beyond the basic struggle of learning something new. I have seen its importance a great deal when working with youth in particular, especially when dealing with youth working in larger groups. With this in mind, “A Teachable Moment” will be a great resource to fall back on as I try to constantly improve the learning environments of my classes with young folks.
While the majority of the book is an encyclopedia of various learning activities, the first portion provides a bit of theory supported by specific steps on how to take a group through a successful learning experience regardless of what it is you are teaching them. This was extremely valuable, as it challenged how I (and others) tend to think of learning traditionally as more of a content sensitive process rather than a context sensitive process. The authors describe the stages of learning that straddle and permeate educational content (group forming, sequencing, reflection, and processing) as essential to the entire process of teaching and learning. With conscious strategy and attentive observation, a true facilitator can bring a group through these four stages in such a way that activates and catalyzes a learner’s attention, motivation, and buy-in to the content or activities present in the learning experience. The authors supplement their analysis of these processes with plenty of examples of activities and mental exercises that a group facilitator can use as tools in implementing them.
These stages—group forming, sequencing, reflection, and processing—are stages of learning that I feel are easy to brush over or neglect when a teacher is focusing on such specific (and important) content. As effective as a teacher may be at communicating a new concept or demonstrating a skill to a new learner, if that learner’s mind is not primed for taking on new information or not given adequate time or space to process and reflect on what they are learning, then that new information is practically useless. This notion relates to many learners working with CTEP members, particularly when the learner is in a new or uncomfortable environment or has other barriers that go above and beyond the basic struggle of learning something new. I have seen its importance a great deal when working with youth in particular, especially when dealing with youth working in larger groups. With this in mind, “A Teachable Moment” will be a great resource to fall back on as I try to constantly improve the learning environments of my classes with young folks.
June 21, 2008
This is looking like a great book to understand the debriefing portion of a simulation. Great research and ideas.
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