This week we had our second visit to Steenrod, but our first visit with the students. We were excited to meet the students and begin our co-creation process.
We had prepared questions and activities ahead of time. We were interested in learning what they liked to play, how they played with each other, what they already knew about sustainability, and their opinions on it. Once there, we began working through our plan.
We started with Human Symphony, an improv game where everyone stands in a circle and passes a psychic ball of energy around. When you receive the energy, you must begin to make a simple noise that you continue to repeat. You then pass the ball while continuing the noise. The game progresses and becomes a collage of everyone’s sound. We talked about the game and heard what the children thought of it. One of the teachers said they felt self conscious. We asked who else felt self conscious and everyone, including us, raised their hands. We said that it was ok and that we all felt that way, that this was a safe space where we could be silly and not judge each other. Hopefully, this helped to create a space where they felt comfortable being honest and playing even with new people like us.
Next we talked to the kids about recycling and sustainability and heard what they did and what they thought were problems. The students told us what their family did and what they think could be better in their community. We had the students do a drawing exercise where they drew what they thought of when hearing about sustainability, then switched the papers and had them draw the biggest obstacle to sustainability. Before leaving, we got recommendations of what they liked to play.
We finished off our week by playing through their recommendations to research and brainstormed ideas, conducting a team meeting where we all expressed what we needed from each other to work effectively, and met with our advisers.