Welcome Learners! Start Here
The Roadmap for Our Journey...
This monthly inquiry series is an opportunity for you to reflect on your practice with your colleagues in order to more fully build consent culture in your classroom, school, or institution.
Our first monthly guide will be in your inboxes on December 1st!
This first series includes the following topics:
-
Consent as a Life Skill
-
Consent Culture and Intersectional Liberation
-
Classroom Practices that Honor Consent
-
Body Autonomy and Play
-
Responding to Consent Violation
-
Talking About Trauma
-
Consent in the age of COVID
Educators for Consent Culture will share a monthly guide that includes a text for the meeting, journal prompts, discussion questions, and scenarios based on real-world experience to explore different aspects of consent culture in theory and in practice. The texts may be a video, an article, or a podcast, and are designed to get the group thinking about different aspects of consent culture. We strive to ensure the materials we send are accessible.
We have drawn inspiration from and modeled our inquiry series on the work of Building Anti-Racist White Educators. We recommend you check out their materials and join their mailing list!
How to Start and Run an ECC Inquiry Group
-
Connect with your colleagues. Think about who you have already talked to about issues related to consent culture. Recruiting through one on one conversations is key.
-
Contact school leadership. It is important to have the support of your administration.
-
Invite the whole school to participate.
-
Set a day and time for the group to meet.
-
Prepare yourself to facilitate. Read through the suggested protocol and consider how you might adapt it for your context.
-
Email materials for the meeting with the logistics (e.g. zoom link).
Norms
As you facilitate this work with your peers, it is important to develop some norms. We offer you the abbreviated norms below. For the full version download guide below.
-
The work is personal, so you can choose to opt in to sharing.
-
We are all approaching this series as a learner and it is likely we will move through discomfort.
-
Race, gender, ability, sexuality, religion, and myriad other identities or experiences will come up when talking about consent and consent culture. We invite folks with privilege to take responsibility for their own growth towards being educators and community members. These intersectional conversations all can inform our work building consent culture.
-
This work takes time - we are trying to undo centuries (or more!) of social learning.
-
You are your own best advocate.
Suggested Discussion Protocol
An abbreviated version is below. For the full version:
Welcome (15 minutes)
-
Ritual: Rituals help to form a community! We encourage you to form a ritual as a group that involves your whole body (e.g. a shakedown, breathing, or setting up the space together).
-
Check ins
-
Leaving the Space: Remind folks that they can leave the virtual room for any reason at any point. They may need a drink of water, a bio break, to pick up a phone call, or anything else.
-
Norms: Review the norms. Invite participants to add on.
Journal Prompt (10 minutes)
-
Write: Introduce the Journal Question and give participants 5 minutes to write.
-
Pair Share: Each partner will share for 2 minutes.
Discussion Questions (15 minutes):
-
Discuss the article as a large group, using the questions provided.
Scenarios (20 minutes)
Have a volunteer or volunteers read the scenario presented. As a group, discuss:
-
What is happening in that scenario?
-
What power dynamics exist in the situation?
-
What factors could or will complicate the scenario further?
-
What about that feels realistic or unrealistic? Why?
-
What do you think could happen next to build towards consent culture?
-
What feels challenging about responding?
-
What could make you feel confident to address the situation? What tools do you have? These could be grounding tactics, understandings, relationships, etc.
-
How could you ask for support? What tools do you want to develop?
Closing
-
Thank folks for their time and attention. Acknowledge where the room is at (for example, how did your group handle the scenario). Take a deep breath, a clap, or something else that creates a distinct bookend to your meeting.
Have a Question for the ECC team?
Contact us at: teachingconsent215@gmail.com
Follow us @Ed4Consent
