Strategies

As a learning circle facilitator, your job is not to teach, but instead to guide, build community, help each learner achieve their goals. It certainly is helpful to be excited or passionate about the learning circle topic, however you are not expected to be a content expert.

Good facilitation requires a lot of different tasks:

• Listening to learners
• Asking clarifying statements
• Providing good feedback
• Keeping discussions on task
• Probing assumptions and evidence
• Eliciting viewpoints and perspectives
• Mediating conflicts
• Summarizing and presenting findings

Group Activities

There are also many other ways to support dialogue between participants, taking the pressure off of you to be a teacher.

• Goal setting
• Ice breakers
• Have feedback sessions during the meeting
• Present final work to one another other or to the public
• Come together weekly to problem solve around common issues
• Go on a field trip
• Host a local speaker

That’s a lot, but don’t worry, nobody is expecting you to be perfect from day one, and it will become much easier with practice.

Further Reading

If you want some more feedback from our community, take a look at all our activities and share your own with us on our community forum. You can also read and watch more on the facilitate section of our website.

---