“The world and I”: a Social Presencing Theater (SPT) Workshop in the middle school

We took the Social Presencing Theatre to schools. A journey through information and prevention that aims to give children the tools to understand the world of the web and exploit its potential, without falling into its traps.

Thanks to the H@ppynet Plus Project the village, the 4D Mapping and the prototyping met middle school students. Preventing online bullying but also all the risks associated with the use of the internet and social networks.
The aim of the H@ppynet project is the prevention of cyberbullying and the promotion of a digital culture, which the PA of Figline and Incisa Valdarno decided to bring directly into schools, in collaboration with the schools.

Context:

This workshop took place within the H@ppynet Plus Project for the Municipality of Figline e Incisa Valdarno organized by For.Ed.A Toscana (the Regional Forum for Adult Education in Tuscany) with the aim of promoting digital education and preventing bullying and cyberbullying.

This school year (2018–2019) was the fourth edition of the project and was more complex than in previous years because we wished to go beyond a sterile classification of the roles of bully and victim and to examine human fragility not only as a problem but also as an opportunity for change.

Five classes (12 to 14-year-olds) and their teachers from three public middle schools in Figline and Incisa Valdarno were involved. Parents were invited too and the conclusion was celebrated with an event open to the public. Intentional/non-intentional learning was interwoven with formal/informal learning in seminars and workshops in a stereophonic research of sense. The starting point, however, was worrying about three reasons: 1) the fourteen-year-olds’ experience of Blue Whale, the online suicide game; 2) the instigation in all classes to perform dangerous or compromising actions; 3) their tendency to insult others during online chat. The students’ definition of “bullying” and “cyberbullying” was perfect, so we presumed they knew what they were talking about, whether as bullies, victims and/or spectators . They described their online activity as between 6–8 hours daily. Parents seemed to be present but mostly just as advisors of a defensive line of conduct.

A visual reflection at the beginning of the project

This year plural disciplines (journalists of mass media, a lawyer to present the legal aspects, visual art, SPT, psychologist) were involved: the distinction between social media and social network was more precisely defined and fake news, information sources and the metacognitive meaning of language were examined. We also did activities based on Social Presencing Theater for the first time and organized creative conflict management games.

The proposed goal for the SPT laboratory was:

• Students: to acquire the perception of one’s own responsibility as a prevention agent towards fellow students and peers.
• Teachers: sensitize on the importance of accompanying students in the process of self-awareness.
• Parents: raising awareness through reflection their own responsibility and attention to the problem.

What I did

I facilitated the workshop “The world and I” where the goal was to work on the group’s awareness of itself and of the context. This was not at the level of mental recognition but rather of an “ah ah” type of experiential awareness. The workshop was divided into two phases, the first of exploration and the second of prototyping. We worked in the gym and not in the classroom in order to have a space which was less codified and freer of objects.

I used eurythmic exercises with a ball for the check-in to soften and ultimately dislodge the pressures of ‘habits and must be’. Then I used the Village (SPT) as an exploration of the field, of the students individually and of their relationship with others. This gave them the opportunity to gain new ways of experiencing the group as a whole, while doing. It was a method to “see with new eyes” and to discover their potential to act in the world. Then they wrote this experience up in a form of constant flow journaling so that they connected the experience of external space with that of their own internal reflective space. Finally, I used the Ninja-Go theatre game as an instrument of use scene and space. This was also a way to approach creative ways of conflict resolution. Only with one class did I try out 4D mapping, because they spontaneously moved to the telling their own experiences of bullying, and so I suggested a 4D mapping as a way to further understand the different roles they were presenting, and they agreed.

For two months we try to use the same format in each meeting. This allowed us to greet each other, move, engage in journaling and generative dialogue. It was more important to move than to speak. One group of the five had enormous difficulty in being present in their bodies and with themselves, while the curiosity of the other four groups led them to make generative discoveries of new attitudes to “bullying” and “cyberbullying”. This allowed them to develop prototypes, some of which had real systemic vision.

• Instagram campaign: telling 360 degrees about different perspectives and actors in bullying and cyberbullying;
• Radio inside the school: with interviews, music and thoughts to raise awareness of the topic;
• Design themed t-shirts and use them when they do after-school sports;
• Propose themed theatre scenes and share them with other classes;
• Peer learning: propose moments in the school’s library to do research together and learn from their own experiences.

The school committed itself to supporting the students in carrying out the prototypes by integrating them into the curriculum of the year.
(Then the Covid-19 arrived…)

As a final harvest of the SPT lab, the students were asked journal about
(1) 3 things they learned from each other, (2) 2 things you want to deepen and (3) 1 thing I reflect on myself.

The sharing was very deep. One surprising aspect was the desire to go deeper into such “apparently” simple aspects as greeting, listening to others, feeling that “there is room for me”. Also emerge was the acknowledgement of prejudice, fear, the need for courage, the lack of presence of parents.

There is a lot of material to work on in the different fields and levels of possible readings. But it exceeds the limits of this article. I share, on a general level, some learnings that give an account of this.

Key learnings

“A seed grows with no sound but a tree falls with huge noise. Destruction has noise, but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence…” Confucius

1. Innovation requires an open mind and internal space that can welcome the new;
2. the container determines the viability of the experience;
3. flexibility allows the presence of discording elements;
4. it is not always necessary to “understand everything”;
5. being part of a social body is not at all obvious;
6. space “Where” and modality “how” are two aspects of actions that influence the work of a group;
7. “internal space” is fundamental to be able to connect with future possibility;
8. a static vertical teacher-centred approach based on information transfer reinforces the positions one wishes to remove;
9. didactic resources with a strong impact on the physical senses are no guarantee of evolving the perception of themselves. They risk blocking the activity in “performance” and so create an illusion of “as if”.

Future development

Next year we hope to continue the project in the schools and to set up workshops with the teachers.

Thank you

A special “thank you” to Federica Giuliani doing possible to take SPT into the middle school, to For.Ed.A. for the support and to Mayor Mugnai of the Municipality of Figline and Incisa Valdarno for her welcome.

Thanks to Susan George for travelling on the journey with me! -and listening at me for hours.

A special thanks to Ricardo Dutra from the PI for encouraging me.

Originally published at https://www.paramitalab.com