During the process of the IPAR module, Myself and Emma whom I was partnered with for our performance, conducted a workshop in which our peers attended in order to contribute to our ethnographic research. The aim for this workshop was to gather individuals’ views on why we act a certain way for social media, for example adapting our lifestyles. I facilitated in a confident and professional manner when giving clear instructions about the tasks. These tasks being devising tableau’s, commenting on photos which both Emma and I had edited of ourselves then sticking them a piece of paper and a thought tunnel exploring the process of the effort which goes into the preparation for a photograph. This ethnographic research was vital for our performance as we aimed to devise an honest piece of theatre which not only reflects our own experiences of social media in society at this time, but also how other individuals face similar thoughts and emotions surrounding the topic. Throughout both the workshop and performance, we were inviting our audience to question ‘But Why?’ Do we act in this particular way which was a stimulus to get individuals thinking about their own relationship with their social media accounts? Therefore, our topic was extremely fitting within a community and education setting.
Experience in relation to teaching
How this workshop with older people was beneficial in my facilitating journey as it was the first time, I had worked with anyone over age of 10, which will be required in my secondary school PGCE course. The main struggle I had within facilitating in this module was adapting my body language, physical language and energy from talking to primary school children to this age group. This was due to allowing the power hierarchy of not being the oldest in the room allow my confidence and ability to drop. However, once I began to get over the barrier, I put up believing that I wasn’t able to manage a large group of older students, I naturally started becoming stronger in my expression and delivery of instructions and communication. Therefore, this module allowed myself to grow as a facilitator to yet another age bracket. The final step in terms of facilitating within my PGCE course is to combine both the primary school experience I have, along with the university age group of students and devise a medium facilitation model for when it comes to teaching Key Stage three in September.
