1st Jam

It’s always embarrassing to plan to meet someone somewhere that no longer exists. I organised the first jam at a branch of Tully’s Coffee that no longer exists so had to arrange to meet people in the station at the last minute. We chose Starbucks because it was there and easy to find.

There were three of us: Marc (me), David and Olya. I work across contexts, David teaches university and Olya teaches at high school.

Our chosen stimulus came from a choice of three: a photograph, a lightbulb and a Smurf. We chose the photograph.

 
We then brainstormed alone for two minutes, then together for about five minutes.

  
Using this we came up with a common plan.

  
Then we each planned our own lessons and shared them.

Marc’s:

   

 
Olya’s:

  

David’s:

  
The evaluation:

Starbucks was fine but we could have done this out of somebody’s house or a community hall.

Do we set pre-tasks? David made an interesting point about bringing an activity, be it a warm-up or something, so everyone can share a concrete activity.

Everyone seemed keen for this to happen again and even to facilitate a Lesson Jam or grassroots workshop.

I’m going to call it a success because I’m happy with how things went although there should be more tweaking.