On the 20th September – a late Tuesday afternoon – I had my first values workshop. When I arrived to the classroom, each individual was split up into four groups of roughly ten people. I was in group four and knowing my luck, this unfortunately turned out to be the worst group to be in.
Anyway, on each of the four tables lied a big brown envelope, which had different resources in it. The idea was to create something with the resources inside the envelope that would help a new student to the university. At the start each group was excited and enthusiastic about the task, especially groups one and two as they had so many materials, with group three having slightly less than group two. Meanwhile, my group only had a rubber band, a pencil three paper clips and a post it.
At first, the other three groups were all chatting away and smiling, whilst my group were just sitting there quietly and from time to time complaining about the materials we were giving. It was slightly aggravating when looking around the other tables to see how they had so much, whereas we had so little. Furthermore, what made it even worse was when Derek started talking to the other groups about their ideas and praising them for their imagination. Although Derek was laughing and speaking away to the other tables, however he proceeded to ignore my group in particular and gave us a few dirty looks when we were trying to come up with ideas about what we should make.
During the exercise I do remember a few people in my group saying how Derek was being “grumpy” and they might not come back to his workshops if it’s usually like this. Fortunately it was all just an act.
Though my group struggled at first to come up with an idea of what to make, we soldiered on and made a pencil, with a map of the campus on the post it, with important notes on the other side. This was attached by the paper clips and rubber bands. Obviously I am not doing it justice by describing it here, nevertheless I thought it was just like one of those Disney pens you would buy with the feature attached to the top. 
I thought as a group it was a valiant effort, yet Derek still only gave us a 2/10 after presenting it to the class. If I recall Derek did not even give us a mark to start off with until someone in my group basically had to scream at Derek to finally receive our score.
In the end, Derek finally revealed that this workshop was a set up. PHEW!
Overall, as a class we talked about why this exercise was carried out and how this can be symbolic of education and society as a whole. For example, children come from different backgrounds and do not have the same opportunities, therefore to judge somebody against another individual is poor practice. This is because some pupils might have tutors, more pushy parents than others and just in general be better in that specific subject. Again, this is why as a teacher, we should be supportive to all children, try to give them equal opportunities and not show favouritism to some of the students. This is because the children you are not showing as much attention to will lose self-esteem and suffer by not being treated fairly or the same as the other pupils.
I wonder what Derek would have done if you’d taken a post it note and written ‘we are who we are’ and left the workshop to go and work independently in the library. To me that would be a 10. But then it doesn’t matter what I think does it! Anyway thanks for the post. Really interesting reflections.
I was immediately drawn to this post by the title and after reading it have taken away the moral to your story. You’ve written it out really well in a fun style in a way that people who are not even teachers may be interested to read. Well done and keep writing funny blogs like this, you’re a blogger to watch.
Katie Rebecca
MA2