Last Tuesday we had our first values workshop. I went in completely clueless as to what we would be doing for the next hour, and I was eager to find out. Carrie split us into random groups and gave us all a huge envelope. We were told to use the resources inside our envelope to make something that would be useful for a student in their first week of their first year (a situation we were all very familiar with).
I was in group 3, and inside our envelope we had four post- it notes, two pens, 3 pieces of paper, a handful of paperclips and some blue-tac. I did wonder why we had been given so little but it didn’t occur to me to look at what the other groups were given. I thought we all had the same things in our envelopes and that the task would help figure out which group was the most resourceful. After sitting and staring at our resources for a while, we decided to make a survival pack that would help guide a first year student through their first week at university. We designed a map of the Dalhousie Building, created a timetable, wrote a few motivational post-it notes and a list of essentials that should be purchased in your first week of being a student. We presented our creation back to Carrie and the other groups. I noticed Carrie wasn’t overly impressed with what we’d come up with but I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t overly impressed with what we had made either to be honest! What I did start to notice however, was that each group’s resources were of very different qualities and quantities. As I watched group 4 present their idea to the other groups, it dawned on me that Carrie wasn’t even facing their direction. She kept checking her watch and yawning as if she couldn’t wait for them all to stop talking. That’s when I put two and two together and realised that this task was fixed in a way that would create a hierarchy between the groups.
As we packed up to leave I began to think about how I view people who have a lot and people who don’t have anything (which was obviously what the workshop was designed to do). I think I am guilty of not always viewing everyone equally, and I feel that it is really important to view each child at school equally, no matter what their background may be. In a classroom there should be no hierarchy. Just because one child has a flashy iPad and another hasn’t even been provided with a pencil to come to school with, it doesn’t mean they should be treated any differently.
