Facilation Friday (no jokes I know it’s come to that point)

This week in PLP: We learnt about the 1970s and had yet another facilitation Friday, there was betrayal and intrigue, scoundrels and roughens and best of all sex drugs and rock and roll. 

So a couple of things to clear up. A facilitation Friday is something that is new to PLP as of a couple of weeks ago and takes place at the end of a week of lectures. We have done similar things before in class where a group leads a topic and teaches the class about it. However this time it is up to an individual to give a brief summary of their topic than ask a few questions to open the class up to discussion. I personally really like this model of discussion on topics and lectures and feel with the whole class their to discuss it makes it more memorable and leads to a deeper understanding. 

So on to my topic. I chose to do sex drugs and rock and roll after in all honesty I saw Vietnam was taken. Most of what I knew about this topic I learnt from the documentary that we watched in class. I have actually really enjoyed the CNN decade series so far and the episode we watched on my topic was no exception. The only information I knew up to this point was the Beatles and their involvement and album “sgt peppers lonely heart club band” which I had listened to before. Needless to say I was very invested in the documentary and retained a lot of the information. There were a few stand out moments for me but I think the one I remember the most and that sticks out in memory was a clip from Altamonte. This clip stood out for a number of reasons but I will first describe the scene. It depicts a band onstage being lead by a female singer who was in front of the microphone, when all of a sudden some of the hell’s angels that had been hired for security rushed the stage and started a fight with members of the band knocking one of them out. However it was not this scene alone the stood out. It was the words of the female singer. As all this madness ensued around her, as the hippie movement bleeds out before her eyes she simply raises her arm in the air and says “be kind”. It was not aggressive but calm and collected. This to me stood out because it represented the end of the hippie movement in poetic way. 

After the documentary I felt I had very good grasp of the 60s sex and drug movement. I felt like I had a good sense of not only the history but also the mindset of the time. I knew the origins of the movement and its roots with the beats in the late 50s and with Timothy Leary in the early 60s promoting the use of LSD. But I felt more so a view into the mind of these people. The aspect of love and peace. Some wanted to have a perfect utopia and their government didn’t fit in that equation. But most of all they all wanted to expand their mind. They wanted to tap into a hidden knowledge that only drugs and a simple lifestyle could unlock. They thought they had unlocked a secret way of life and that the “grown ups” just didn’t get it. 

I am fascinated by this mindset and ideals, although I would never adopt them myself. So I let my presentation and discussion reflect that. I was curious what class thought about this and couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like if the PLP cohort had been alive and kicking in the swingin’ sixties. That’s why a lot of my questions reflected on not only their knowledge of the era and movement but also their opinions. On reflection this may not have been a great idea but I feel like I learnt a lot about my friends in PLP and it was engaging for the audience. However I would not change my questions I would change the keynote. I felt like I could have shortened it to more of a brief summary. This is because we had just learnt about the topic just a couple days ago and it was pretty fresh in everyones minds. So I felt like I was spending less time facilitating and more time monologuing about something the class was already familiar with. 

In general I felt that the session went well and that I engaged the class in some thoughtful discussion which to me is the most important part of a good facilitation Friday.