The length of the session was quite tough and after presenting I felt psychically drained. The backgrounds, aims and intentions of the participants of the group was really overwhelming. Trying to absorb the variety of different ideas my peers were talking about in the presentations was hard to fully digest. 

During the session the “walls” of the teaching environment or the online teaching space was very apparent. Technical problems, hearing mics left on and the buzz of computer fans described the space. 

The self organisation of the breakout group, the order of play is fascinating. Is it our personality that dictates who puts themselves forward to present first? 

How can your personal emotional state or feeling effect your teaching? It seems obvious that this is inevitable. What was the role of setting the task of random breakout groups in pairs to introduce ourselves with a question “how I might feel”? Was this to encourage empathy? Did it meet the expected aims?

The person I was paired with in the beginning of the group asked how old I was. This made me reflect that it is some peoples aims to purely be teachers. It also made me consider does teaching design have a financial sustainable future for me? Will I eventually be priced out of London? Does that mean my job, my skills I have developed, the knowledge I have, and my albeit limited experience not have value or use in this city? However, does this ultimately help or support the class room activities I need to design? Is it really practical to use time to ask these questions?

Notes on second part of session:

Additional questions as a result of the online session – How to teach empathy?

Use of language critical in promoting empathy.

Telling stories, what stories do you tell?

Starting teaching sessions with who is in the space, the value and knowledge we all have.

This part of the session resulted in me considering did the question “how to teach empathy?” became to focused on the individual or the self. How would the question be suitable in a class.

Other questions brought up during session:

What is the politics of teaching? National and local?

How do you manage distractions in a learning environment?

How do you measure learning?  

How do you use a lack of knowledge to allow freedom of experimentation?

What is pedagogy – how educators can benefit from it?

Potential future sources for further reading:

Roman Krznaric – book on empathy

Design thinking has a problem.. and a way forward – paper

Museum of empathy – https://www.empathymuseum.com