Act. Learn. Repeat.

I arrived in the last five minutes of a session that seemed to be about attitudes; the facilitator spoke a lot about inner strength and power so I assume it had something to with self awareness, consciousness, et ceteraness. The group of 30ish students were not engaged. They held their own conversations, bundled in collectives of three or four. The facilitator needed to shout to get her message across, sometimes they listened. Covering the walls were body maps; each student had drawn themselves, emphasising the important components of their identity. "God forgives, I don't" was the motto draped across the body closest to me. Most of the pictures had some reference to life on the margins, and the carefully scrawled lettering indicated a marginal education.

Ok, I thought, tough crowd. There were only two women in the group, they sat together in front of a pillar. I was nervous, it was hot. Really hot. Today is one of those Cape Town days when the cooling wind abandons the city and you sit in your car with the windows down and the fan on, leaning forward so that your shirt doesn't get all warmly wet and stick to your back. The guys in the room all wore jeans, most of them hoodies and zip-up tops. I knew it would be pointless to ask them to de-hood, so they sat as a barely conscious audience, settled in their sweaty seats, beyond distraction. My session today was one hour, not two, I had my crayons and my newsprint paper, I took a deep breath...

At the end of the session, I shook my head at myself.

The students, in their hoodies and big shoes, had kind of been ok. Maybe more than ok on reflection. I had to repeat the instructions for the first activity multiple times, upside-down and inside-out and in as many different ways as I could think. But they'd done it. Every last one of them. And they'd shared in the big group what they had written and drawn. I won't lie, I was more than somewhat surprised. The point of the session is to teach them an alternate pedagogy, as a tool to approach their experience as learners, not just participants. I had to explain to them that classrooms and textbooks and teachers are not their only avenues into education. And I think they appreciated knowing that they can be an expert, and can get a 'A', on the experiences that they can claim as learning moments.

I forget sometimes, that I went to good schools, that my education affirmed me, it empowered me. I forget that for some people, for a lot of people, education can do just the opposite. It can prove to them how little they know, and how often they fail. Formal education at least. I don't think I'd realised that before today, not really. I've read the literature, hells, I've even written a Masters Degree on knowledge and knowing and its intersections with identity. And I've sat in I don't know how many shitty classrooms, surrounded by shitty textbooks that treat children as idiots, not learners, but it's never really sunk in. I've always known that education does not equal intelligence, but being able to see something shift in the group today somehow made that nugget of knowledge more real.

"So Step one...?" I asked them.
"ACTION!" They shouted back. I laughed; I wasn't expecting such an enthusiastic response.
Ok, I thought, I'll play along. I wound my hand up like a baseball player about to pitch a ball and threw out a "and Step two?"
"REFLECTION!"
"STEP THREE?" I'm really into it now.
"LEARNING!"
"And what. the hell. is the point. of learning. without mo-o-o-o-o-re...?"
"ACTION!"
For a moment it's awesome. For a moment they forget that they're sitting there all cool and hooded up. For a moment they all applaud themselves. I guess it was in that moment, that action, that I learnt what I did today.