8.5: Discussion

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1. Does the collaborative experience described in this essay at all resemble any joint activity you have engaged in? A team, a club, a group? Being in a family, working with a best friend to create a project, a world, a fort, or planning an event? Write about any part of this process that you have experienced. What appeals most to you about this structured approach—something that you are familiar with? What about the parts you are unfamiliar with—what would you like to try and why?

2. The essay uses a powerfully successful partnership to describe the possibilities of group work. How can you apply what you know of great partnerships to the process of group work modeled here? Would you want to try working with a partner within a group? How could you apply this same process for working with one other person?

3. As a class, create a survey of previous collaborative experiences based on the questions the essay asked you to write about in the section, “Your Experiences Matter.” Take the survey, tally the results, and discuss as a class what you have found. How can your understanding of your own past inform your construction of the future? What did you notice when you started to talk about your past experiences together?

4. The section, “When Conflict Gets You Stuck,” invites you to see conflict as an opportunity in collaboration. Where do you see this approach to conflict happening in the public sphere? What are some of the challenges and benefits of taking this perspective?

5. What’s your “post-mortem” for this chapter? How can you apply the ideas in this chapter to your own reading/learning experience?