Before day two of Girls Inc. staff and volunteer training if you had told me that I had to teach without actually teaching I probably would have looked at you strangely. Much to my surprise it is possible to teach without actually teaching and in many cases it is even more effective. This type of teaching and learning that moves away from the traditional idea of a teacher imparting knowledge on the students is called facilitation and it is one of the core ideals of Girls Inc. Facilitation involves getting students to use their brains to answer guiding questions. It gets students in the habit of figuring things out rather than assuming they will be told how to do something. Facilitation is challenging because one has to think critically about the way that information will be presented so that students will come away with the key points without explicitly telling them those points.
Facilitation is hard for me and a little bit foreign because it requires a lot of creativity and flexibility. I am very much the kind of person that plans a lot and although you can plan some parts of facilitation like the key points that you want to convey and the activities that you will lead, it is almost impossible to predict how people will respond. I think it is going to take me a bit to get the hang of the unexpected part of facilitation but hopefully I’ll be ready by the first day of camp. If not, I guess I will give it my best shot.