Pose, Wobble, Flow ice-breaker

I’ve been really thinking a lot about this article we recently annotated via Marginal Syllabus – it draws from yoga and the pose-wobble-flow process, and uses that metaphor for our teaching where we

1. Pose: decide what we want to do, their intention, try it
2. Wobble: finding ourselves not stable, unsure, uncertain 
3. Flow: get comfortable and find a way to make it work

And it’s not a on-time thing. Each time we try something new or try something in a new context, we pose, and we may wobble and hopefully we persist enough to flow. I think the issue is many ppl will let the wobbling set them back and never persist enough to reach flow.

I also think sometimes from one pose to the next we don’t necessarily go up and up. Maybe our first wobble takes u so low down its hard to get up and pose again…but eventually if we persist we may flow ; or maybe we adapt our pose based on what made us wobble.

I will reflect more on this in context of faculty professional development and learning to use technology and parenting. And for student learning even.

But for now, an ice breaker for my class and possibly my critical pedagogy workshop next December. 

Warning: it is an ableist ice breaker. It goes like this

1. Try to balance on one foot for 3 minutes straight 
2. Observe what people do, especially whether they use walls, desks or each other for support 
3. Observe if people find “moments” of balance. Also if some find it earlier or longer than others
4. Observe if some people switch between wobble and pose and wobble then flow.
5. Observe if people modify their poses after each wobble or persist in one particular pose
6. End 3 minutes and all sit
7. Reflect on exercise and what it tells us about learning a new pose, reacting to wobbling, how we seek support, how even flow gets interrupted, etc and extrapolate onto examples related to learning or teaching or such

Let me know what you think