Exercise: Drill Down

Context

This exercise is adapted from the the chapter “How We Meet and Why It Matters” (excerpted from Parker Priyas “The Aert of Gathering”.
Parker, Priya. The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2018.

Drill Down Purpose:

When clients or friends are struggling to determine their gathering’s purpose, I tell them to move from the what to the why. Here are some strategies that help them do so.

Zoom out: If she doesn’t zoom out, a chemistry teacher might tell herself that her purpose is to teach chemistry. While teaching is a noble undertaking, this definition does not give her much guidance on how to actually design her classroom experience. If, instead, she decides that her purpose is to give the young a lifelong relationship to the organic world, new possibilities emerge. The first step to a more scintillating classroom begins with that zooming out.

Drill, baby, drill: Take the reasons you think you are gathering—because it’s our departmental Monday-morning meeting; because it’s a family tradition to barbecue at the lake—and keep drilling below them. Ask why you’re doing it. Every time you get to another, deeper reason, ask why again. Keep asking why until you hit a belief or value.

Let’s look at how we might move from the what to the why of something as simple as a neighborhood potluck:

• Why are you having a neighborhood potluck?

• Because we like potlucks, and we have one every year.

• Why do you have one every year?

• Because we like to get our neighbors together at the beginning of the summer.

• Why do you like to get your neighbors together at the beginning of the summer?

• I guess, if you really think about it, it’s a way of marking the time and reconnecting after the hectic school year.

• Aha. And why is that important?

• Because when we have more time in the summer to be together, it’s when we remember what community is, and it helps us forge the bonds that make this a great place to live. Aha. And safer. Aha. And a place that embodies the values we want our children to grow up with, like that strangers aren’t scary. Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Here is a chart that shows how you can move from nothing to something to meaning. It uses a gathering as an example, but we can apply the same thing to the event or gathering around an experiential learning project in our classrooms:

Gathering type	Your purpose is a category (i.e., you don’t have a purpose)	Basic, boring purpose, but at least you’re trying	Your purpose is specific, unique, and disputable (multiple alternatives)
Company offsite	To get out of the office together in a different context	To focus on the year ahead	- To build and to practice a culture of candor with one another - To revisit why we’re doing what we’re doing and reach agreement about it - To focus on the fractured relationship between sales and marketing, which is hurting everything else
Back-to-school night	To help parents and kids prepare for the year	To help integrate new families into the school community	- To inspire parents to sustain on evenings and weekends the values the school teaches during the days - To help connect the parents to one another so as to make them a tribe
Church small group	To make the megachurch a smaller place	To help everyone feel like they belong	- To have a group that keeps us doing what we say we want to do - To have a trusted circle to share struggles without worrying about appearances
Birthday party	To celebrate my birthday	To mark the year	- To surround myself with the people who bring out the best in me - To set some goals for the year ahead with people who will help me stay accountable - To take a personal risk/do something that scares me - To reconnect with my siblings
Family reunion	To get the family together	To have a time together where no one is allowed to use phones	- To have a chance for the cousins to bond as adults, without spouses and children - To convene the next generation in the wake of Grandpa’s death and create a more tolerant family reunion in line with the younger relatives’ values
Book festival	To celebrate reading	To build community through books	-To use books and a love of reading to build community across racial lines

Exercise

Goal: To understand the WHY of experiential learning for educators in their classroom

1. In small groups begin with the question: “Why do I want to bring interdisciplinary experiential learning to my classroom/school?” 

2. Using the chart above as an example, collectively drill down until you move from the what: “Interdisciplinary Experiential Learning” to the core “Why”. Write this our clearly as a sequence of steps and be ready to commit to the ultimate “Why”. The why should be YOUR personal why, not a societal why.

3. Post your groups work below.

4. Reconvene to share “whys” and explore the process.