Initiation Activity Facilitator Script

The following is the script for a hypothetical synchronous onboarding of some percentage of the HPL class of 2021.

First, asynchronous: Send a message to students

Greetings, ______! Your presence is warmly requested at our first official meeting of the How People Learn course community, on X date at Y time. We expect our onboarding event to take 30 minutes of your time.

We ask you that you dress festively and to bring a celebratory drink for our first community toast. If possible, this drink should have some special significance to you, if only for the fact that you enjoy it. (Note: it does not need to be an alcoholic beverage!!)

Greatly looking forward to breaking ice alongside trusted community members,

Instructor names

______________________________________________________________________________________--_

Synchronous: Welcome (30 min)

Welcome folks, and welcome to our first official meeting of the HPL 2021 course.

First, we just want to welcome you all to the How People Learn community and thank you for making the time to be here, from wherever you currently are in the world. If you look around you can see some of the faces who you’ll be spending time with over the next six weeks and then ultimately, the next year.

We’re going to do a short activity now - we’re going to split you up into breakout rooms to get to know one another a little bit better. What we want you to do is go into these groups, and each person will share a little information about themself, including the significance of the ceremonial drink you have brought. After you’ve done this, you’ll go around again and each student will share one gift or talent you are excited to bring to the community. We’ll give you between 10 and 15 minutes to do this activity.

*Send participants to breakout rooms of 4 with the following instructions in the chat*

1. Go around the room and share 1. Name, 2. Program, 3. Where you are calling in from, and 4. What drink you have brought and its significance to you. 5 minutes.

2. Then go around a second time. Each person shares one gift or talent you are excited to bring to the community. 5 minutes.

*30-45 seconds after participants enter the chat, send a Zoom message to participants - 5 minutes left for Part 1. Set a timer for 5 minutes and when it’s up, send a second message - Now wrap up and switch to Part 2. You have 5 minutes for Part 2.* Set a second timer for five minutes. Once it’s up, signal to groups that they have 1 minute and 30 seconds left before breakout rooms close. Set a timer to bring students back after 90 seconds*

*After bringing participants back to the main session*

Often when we come together to talk about the world, we frame it in terms of problems. Frequently, this leads us to become too focused on the issues and miss the possibilities that exist amongst us. As a community, we want to stay focused on the opportunities, the gifts, and the social capital we will be co-creating alongside one another in this next period.

In the future, we will talk more about the core values of our community, and we will invite you to reflect on yours. But today, we want to share the success definition for our community with you: and that is, that we will succeed if we can support you to share your gifts, knowledge, and experience, learn and grow, and envision and bring about new possibilities. As members of this year's unique HPL community, we all share a responsibility for making the community the best it can be by contributing our gifts and supporting others'.

You've now heard just a few of the exciting gifts that your classmates are bringing to this year's class and the M.Ed program ahead. The drinks you brought today symbolize the individual talents, experiences, and contributions we all bring to the group. Indeed, this community consists of individuals, and we hope that this course will empower you to seek out significant personal learnings. But today, we would like to toast to the possibilities of all the connections in this room and using those gifts to make our community the best it can be.

As you raise your glasses, and we now ask you to join our HPL course community as an equal co-contributor, co-owner, and co-creator. And here's to enjoying that delicious sip, and every step of the process, together!

Thanks, folks. It's been such a privilege, and we are so eager to begin the process of building our course community with you.