Savannah High School At Savannah High School, our goal was to use frog Design’s Community Action Toolkit (CAT) activities to equip the students with skills they can use to clarify their goals, build a team to reach their goals, imagine and seek solutions, and make their ideas happen. To begin, the students shared Who Inspires Us, and then progressed to considering issues beyond themselves and affects they could produce in their own community. Throughout the weeks of working with the group of students at Savannah High School, we watched the students communicating as a group, sharing with and encouraging each other, and pursuing their goals to affect change. Once the students agreed upon an issue to pursue, they quickly reached an actionable, tangible solution which lent an encouraging wrap up to the end of the sessions.
Adaptation and Time Frame During the course of the quarter, we met with the students for six, fifty-five minute sessions. In general, each session occurred during the students’ second period on Fridays (week 5 we had a Wednesday session and a Friday session). In our facilitation, we made strategic decisions on which sections of the CAT activities would be most successful in class periods that were shorter than the activities were designed for with a varying number each week of between fifteen and twenty students and three facilitators. -Who Inspires Us: Rather than focusing on individuals and contacts, in our first session we asked the students to share what inspires them and pointed out overlapping answers among the four groups. -Find Issues, Uncover Needs: In conjunction with the “In 10 Years” activity we created, we used this one to have students act out their goals and obstacles to their aspirations.
New Activities In the first two sessions, our goal was to create an atmosphere of open communication and begin a connection between the students and us as facilitators. Before participating in the Who Inspires Us activity, we gathered in a circle and played “Yes, and... (Circle Activity 1)” to introduce everyone in the group. One at a time around the circle, the students said their name and something they like to do. We learned a little about what the students like to do for fun and what interested them. For class 2, we created an activity called “In 10 Years”. In the second session, we asked the students to write or illustrate where they want to be in ten years. They also identified two obstacles in their way or that they would be required to overcome to reach their goal. In our final session with the students, we sought to reinforce their enthusiasm
about their successes during the quarter and to encourage any desire they might have to continue being leaders and making change. In “Review (Circle -Skill share: students shared their likes and dislikes to share their personality.
Enthusiasm, Participation, and Challenges The students at Savannah High were enthusiastic and willing to participate in almost every activity we presented to them. The class was made up of volunteers from two separate business classes that were meeting at that time, and this provided us with a unique student dynamic. Along with their willingness to participate, having sessions on Friday definitely added to the atmosphere. On only one occasion did the students not participate; we asked them over the week after session 2, to take photographs of anything they would like to change in their own lives or in their community, a variation of the We Saw, We Heard CAT activity. Though they had one week to complete the assignment and all said they had readily accessible cameras or smartphones, none of the students completed the activity outside of class. We learned through this experience that the subject we tasked them with, taking a picture of anything in their life or community they’d like to change, was far too broad and did not give enough direction and safety for them to feel excited and confident about completing it.
Built Skills and Characteristics Students: critical thinking, collaboration with classmates, listening, communication both written and oral, presenting and advocating for their ideas, disseminating their solutions among their peers Teachers: Experienced the excitement their students exhibited about being an integral part of their own education Designers: Facilitation skills, respect for other processes, planning and processing as a group, and trust building between students and group
Limitations and Recommendation We found the CAT to be effective in a high school classroom setting if modified to overcome certain limitations and used by willing, invested participants. We could not run any of the activities exactly as they were written in the CAT. First, the time constraint greatly constricted the opportunity for discussion and reflection. Second, the CAT is designed to benefit a community group that already have at least an initial goal or purpose in mind. We, however, had to adapt the tools to prompt the students to first develop a goal they wanted, then Clarify, Build, Seek, Imagine, and Make.
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