During Tuesday’s group work task, classes were split into four groups and each group received an envelope, which inside contained a few stationery supplies, some groups with more than others. We were all given the same task – to come up with something useful to a new student at university, and to make whatever we came up with using the given supplies. My group opened up our envelope and were a bit confused with the contents: some blu tack, a pencil, three paper clips, a single sticky note, and a rubber band. What were we supposed to make with all of this stuff?

After a group discussion and tossing around of ideas, we came up with a map of campus to help a new student navigate their way to important places like the Dalhousie building, the library, and of course, the Union. The groups presented their ideas to everyone else and we all proceeded to bring them to life using our supplies. Once everyone was finished making their projects, we presented them to the class, too, and that’s when we really saw. Some groups had been given enough supplies to make actual boxes full of stationery or booklets for new students, and then other groups made maps of campus and buildings. The groups with more supplies got graded a higher mark out of ten and my group were pretty happy with our 5/10 compared to the 9/10, 7/10 and 3/10 that the other groups were awarded. But then, why should we be graded this way when we all participated and followed the task, and we all came up with good ideas even if we were less fortunate to have the emptier envelopes?

Just as you may have been thinking, there was a deeper meaning to this task, hence the title of this blog post. Everyone gets given the same task, but what we want to do and what we can do are sometimes two different things. The groups with less would’ve probably loved to have made a fancy student survival box to impress the advisor, they just didn’t have the means to create one. I know if I could have made one or thought of making one then I would have (thinking back now I could have used the envelope to make a pencil case but never mind). The point is, you can assign the same task to a group of people and the results will always be varied because not everyone has the resources to make a box and fill it with supplies, they make do with what they’ve got and that’s the main thing. You need to consider that people come from different backgrounds and everyone goes home to different situations. Not only does this happen with children in the classroom but all over the place. There’s always someone who has more than you, but there’s always someone who has less than you too, and that needs to be taken into consideration because you cannot expect to tell a group of people to each go and build a rocket and assume that they’ll all come back with full size ones that can actually take off (one of my fellow students said something along these lines at the group work session and I thought it was a great example). Social inequality is a thing, and recognising how it can affect a situation is very important.

I cannot wait to see what the rest of the Values module is like, because so far it has been a real eye opener for me. Who knew an envelope full of stationery could get you thinking so much?