99 Days of Something – #3 or Society of Legal Scholars Day 1
There was no writing as such do be done today so again the blog is the only writing in my string of writing I am going to do today. Together with the brilliant Dr Kat Langley I convene the Legal Education Subject Section at the Society of Legal Scholars. We had two really good sessions today so here are some of my initial very brief reflections on the contributions.
We started the conference with a brilliant panel of Nick Cartwright, Rita D’Alton-Harrison and Simisayo Olawore on Studying Black in Law School: The intersections of Black Student Life. There was so much in that panel presentation that I am not sure where to start really. We have so much to unpack, think about, challenge if we genuinely want to create inclusive legal education. Hearing from Simisayo about her lived experience as a black female student highlighted really clearly that even when we are trying to be inclusive, our efforts might not be landing how we intend them to. I was thinking about how we get round this issue that presents itself whenever we as experts in a particular field or as educators think that we know what is best or how we can get ideas across. We will always get caught up in the power dynamics of teacher/student that risk silencing some voices, re-enforcing stereotypes or misrepresenting experiences – even with the best of intentions. I think if we genuinely want to tackle this we need to relinquish much more power in the classroom. We need to genuinely listen, co-create, tear down and rebuild our discipline in a way which treats all of our experiences of law as valid and useful starting points for analysis.
In our second session we shifted focus and started with a paper which made me think about how we can use visuals to help us understand and explain complex legal concepts by Tristan Webb. It prompted me to think about how I make sense of complexity. I don’t think I really do visuals. Everything I do is text based in some way. So even my diagrams are text based – more mind map or flow chart than picture. I think in words not in pictures. But that is not helpful for anyone who thinks in pictures rather than in words. So how can I adapt some of my teaching, representations, slides and other materials to help students develop the things, whether its diagrams, pictures, memes, cartoons, objects, whatever it is to help them make sense of the things we are talking about. And seamlessly that linked me to the next presentation about using Lego to help students grapple with contract law doctrine and develop a more nuanced understanding. Marton Ribary and Antony Starza-Allen outlined how they used Lego and a structured series of builds to really get students thinking about the complexities of contract law.
Questions that came up on both of those papers were around how we measure success. How do we know if these things have a tangible impact on student performance. I don’t know the answer to that but I wondered whether we should maybe just stop obsessing about measuring. I wondered if we could just celebrate the fact that students maybe just had fun, that the noise levels in the classroom rose that little bit, that there was more conversation, more laughter, maybe even giggles. Can we just accept that it doesn’t matter if students on average did X% better if they did the thing or used the gimmick or whatever, maybe the increase in the grade is irrelevant. What if what matters is simply that they enjoyed the learning, that they talked to others, collaborated and had fun.
The final paper was a presentation by Dawn Watkins on a game about law for school children and I have more to say on that and no capacity now. It’s time for bed to let me brain do its thing on all of this – more tomorrow
99 Days of Something – #1
Last year I managed a 100 day series of blog posts starting with this one below. 100 Days of Wonder was inspired by having booked tickets to a 100 Years of Wonder Disney on Ice and being 100 days out from our Disney trip. I also had Covid so wasn’t up to doing much and spent a lot of time in my head, watching TV and scrolling through photos. You can read the whole – rather random series by going back through the posts if you wish. I did that yesterday because I wondered about doing something similar again. Yesterday was our 100 days out from our next Disney trip day. This time Disney Paris. I realised I missed the discipline of taking time to reflect and write every day… and then I didn’t actually write anything yesterday.
So, here I am wondering whether it is worth trying again to string a series of blog posts together in a similar way. 99 Days of the discipline of writing, even just a little bit, every day might help keep me focused and might actually help me make progress with some writing projects. What do you need to write well? I have never been one for sitting at a desk. I always had a desk, I rarely sat at one. I am more of a notebook on the sofa, typing away in a coffee shop or lounging somewhere random kind of a girl for writing. But I do spend a lot of time at my desk at home so today I put up some things to make me smile. On the left I framed the packaging from the 3 Disney Coffee bean varieties we bought on our last trip. On the right are 3 postcards I bought in Philadelphia in May. So yeah, my writing and creativity is usually fuelled by Disney, Coffee and the inspirational words of others. Let’s see how this works for the next 99 days.
100 Days of Wonder – #68
It’s about time I introduced Figment. Here he is. He’s usually more purple than that but here he is in his Disney World 50th Anniversary celebration statue look. It will come as no surprise that I like Figment. (If you are now humming the tune from the ride, you are my people). Figment seems appropriate today because this week I have given two very different papers/talks that have left my little grey cells in overdrive. The good sort of overdrive. The sort that sparks the imagination, the sort that makes you optimistic about all of the possible futures and begins to get to work on ways of making them happen. The events have reminded me to dare to dream and that work which takes us closer to our dreams is always worth doing. Sometimes the idea of changing the world seems too big, too impossible. But as I have said before and Walt Disney reminded us ‘It is kind of fun to do the impossible’. And as Figment puts it:
We all have sparks, imaginations
That’s how our minds, create creations
For they can make, our wildest dreams come true
Those magic sparks, in me and you
My Conversations 