Mana Shah - Facilitator

  I finally got my driving license renewed! Yay! The freedom that comes with being in control of your own path is exhilarating even if it is only to the neighbourhood market:)  Given this long gap, I noticed today that when I shifted gears I felt a bit of a jerk. When I drive and when it is the right time for the gear to change, it just shifts so smoothly as if it was calling you out to change!  I remember when I was learning driving, my brother in law made me really sense what was happening with the gears.....so if I stayed in a lower gear longer than needed, the car made a weird screeching sound. If I changed to a higher gear before it was needed, I felt a jerk. He told me (this was 19 years ago and I still remember!)...."Mana, listen carefully.....what is the car telling you..."  Today as I was driving, I realised how deeply this is connected to facilitation. One of the skills we have is to sense what is the the next right move. We may come up with a very detailed...

As the year was winding down and I began to visualise what I wanted to see in my facilitation practice, one realisation came was that I wanted to invest in my own learning. I have been following some groups for a while and I decided to spend a certain percentage of my annual income on learning experiences that appealed to me.  Two weeks down, 6 online sessions, a board full of stickies, a stack of learning notes (mostly drawings!) and 23+ global connections later I am so happy I chose to sign up for the online  "expedition" on game storming.   Why GS for me? I wanted to get more comfortable with a more complicated visual platform that offers a bigger canvas for collaborative working.   I wanted to get better at convergence.  I wanted to integrate more "methods"/ "games" more consciously into my process to offer a diverse set of ways for participants to explore, innovate, discuss, decide together in an engaging way.  I wanted to experience what it feel...

  My son's learning space (https://aarambhwaldorf.in/) has thankfully not had any online classes the whole year. He is 9 in grade 3. Teachers worked with parents and we learnt (sometimes happily and sometimes annoyingly) to take the curriculum to kids in a joyful, purposeful way. One great thing about this was that we got a inside experience of the curriculum itself and how it is brought to the children.  The "work" starts with a verse. Always. In fact even in a community meeting, parent meeting, class group meeting, training etc at Aarambh we always start by reading a verse. (above is a verse Ayan and I read at home before we get to "work").  Why read a verse before starting? I will talk about what it does it us first. When we look at the verse, it makes us pause, it gives us a minute to realise that we ended what we were doing before and are now starting something else. As we read the verse together, the words slowly sink in (in Aarambh, Ayan says the children...