A 60-card deck to reflect on our interior condition for democratic culture.
Learning to show up in the world of education with democratic values in mind
How you show up in the world matters. This is why Cards for Democracy are an important tool today. They help us develop our interior condition to support democratic environment in our life and work.
Ready to use the Cards for Democracy? We offer some suggestions for you in the form of loose frameworks in which you can develop your creativity, as an educator, facilitator, or trainer.
These frameworks – we call them “Scenarios” – are intended to help you find inspiration to create your own activities.
L2C will share activities for download regularly in the C4D community of practice: Cards for Democracy Facebook group and on its media pages.
For an Introduction to the Cards for Democracy click here.
Using the cards as learning outcomes, the cards can be used both
• For evaluation: by the teacher/facilitator for evaluation of the efficacy of their lesson/session: were the expected learning outcomes reached? How well did the activity help to develop learners’ competences?
• For assessment: they can be used by participants in the beginning of a course, a lesson or training session, for self and peer assessment activities. They help to assess “where I’m at” at the beginning of a course and then they can be used during or after the sequence to revisit “where I’m at” to tag progression and identify what is needed in order to develop further. They may also be used for goal setting by learners in the context of formative assessment.
Here is an example of such an activity.
Teachers learning with the Cards for Democracy
Make sure you have printed all the cards that you want to use (this may vary depending on what you have explored and how long you want this part of the session to last).
The cards are available in the products section of Learn to Change.
You can become a member by clicking here.
Prepare envelopes and A4 paper for the ‘letter to me’
Prepare the handouts for participants (see below). Make enough copies for handing out one A3 per participant.
Ask students/participants to write a letter to themselves about the kind of person, or professional, they want to become.
They place their letters in an envelope. Collect the letters and keep them in your files.
You may also use a website that will send learners a personal email at the chosen date, for example: https://www.futureme.org.
Distribute the letters and A3 sheets of paper with three human silhouettes drawn on them (see below). Ask participants to read the letters they had written almost a year earlier and to collect keywords from the letter.
Invite them to write the keywords around or inside the first figure on the A3 paper (under “The beginning of my journey”).
They then evaluate their current status using the same keywords and some new ones. They place these around the second figure on the poster (“The status today”).
Finally, ask them to identify relevant keywords or statements and to place these around the third figure, representing the future (“What I want to become”)
Ask participants to distribute the Cards for Democracy amongst themselves and to select cards that could support their development as identified in the third figure.
Ask them to write the text from each card identified on the same A3 paper using a different color.
Invite participants to take turns to describe their journey and give arguments for the cards they had selected. To end, ask participants to create an action plan on how they can reach their desired aim to become the best person (or professional) they can be.
First, they draw their hand on the backside of the A3 sheet of paper and in the palm of the hand they write down their aim…
“My aim is to…”
Participants write five possible routes to their aim, one in each finger, and in the fingertips, they write the time it would take them to get there.
Now, invite participants to share their ideas, either in pairs or trios, either taking turns in the whole group depending on the number of participants/students present.
It is particularly rewarding to use the cards and discuss the meaning behind the statements in depth and to see how learners engage in deep conversation about the content of the cards.
The cards make the assessment activity more meaningful.
By downloading Scenario 5 – Evaluation and assessment, you will have a PDF resource to keep and consult for your activities.
THIS SCENARIO WAS WRITTEN BY
Social psychologist/consultant, Co-founder of Learn to Change, who has worked in the area of intercultural communication, education and leadership training for the past 25 years, in Europe and the USA.
In this article we answer some questions regarding the decision to transform Learn to Change from an association to a collective.
In this article, we talk about what we mean by Collective – the new form chosen by L2C – and how you can join it.
Learn to Change’s members held a General Assembly in fall 2022, in which the decision was taken to transform the association into a less formal, and more agile entity. Therefore, we will change status, going from an ‘organization’ to a less formal entity that we name “The collective”
If you feel you are committed to the vision and mission of the association, then your place is here.
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