Study Circle: Six-Week Arc
A six-session study circle focused on a single theme. Two-hour sessions, weekly or biweekly. The most common format for substantive work at the People’s Free School.
See the facilitator guide for guidance on running sessions. This document is the structural template for the arc.
Before the circle begins
- Choose theme and rough trajectory
- Identify facilitators (rotation recommended; same person each week is also fine for a first circle)
- Select material for each session (see suggested arc below)
- Confirm space and schedule for all six sessions
- Invite participants with a clear description of what they are signing up for
- Distribute first session’s reading at least one week before
Suggested arc
The arc moves across the five lenses, allowing participants to build understanding cumulatively. This is one possible shape. Adjust to the theme and the room.
Session 1: Experiential opening
Purpose: Begin from what the room knows. Establish trust. Surface questions that will guide the rest of the circle.
Material: Light. A short reading or a film clip that opens the theme. The point is not the material but the conversation it generates.
Focus questions:
- What is your experience with this theme?
- What questions do you carry into this study?
- What do we already know that we want to understand better?
Session 2: Historical grounding
Purpose: Place the theme in time. Show that what looks permanent was made.
Material: A historical reading, popular history, or documentary. Accessible. Aim for something that gives the room a sense of how the current arrangement came to be.
Focus questions:
- How did we get here?
- What were the struggles, choices, and contingencies?
- What was different before, and what changed?
Session 3: Theoretical I
Purpose: Begin building analytical vocabulary. Engage a foundational text or framework.
Material: A core theoretical reading. Difficult, but worth the difficulty. Choose excerpts rather than full books when texts are long.
Focus questions:
- What is the author’s central claim?
- What concepts do they introduce that help us see what is happening?
- Where do we struggle with this reading, and what is the difficulty doing?
Session 4: Theoretical II or Practical
Purpose: Either deepen the theoretical work (a second reading that develops, complicates, or challenges session 3) or pivot to practical engagement (what is happening on the ground).
Material: Either a second theoretical reading or a practical text. The choice depends on what session 3 surfaced and what the room is ready for.
Focus questions:
- (If theoretical) How does this reading extend or challenge what we read last time?
- (If practical) What does this look like in the world right now? Where are people fighting?
Session 5: Practical or local
Purpose: Connect the theme to the room’s own context. Local organizing, current events, lived experience.
Material: Journalism, interviews with organizers, local case studies, or material brought by participants from their own work.
Focus questions:
- What is happening near us that connects to this theme?
- What are people doing, and what is working or not working?
- What can the room do?
Session 6: Liberatory close
Purpose: Look forward. What would it mean to transform this? What have movements imagined? What disagreements remain in the room?
Material: A programmatic, strategic, or speculative text. Or several short readings representing contested positions.
Focus questions:
- What might it look like to overcome this?
- What disagreements remain among us?
- What is the next thing we want to study?
- What is the next thing we want to do?
The final session also includes a longer reflection on the arc as a whole. What changed in your thinking across these six weeks? What stayed with you? What does the room want to do next?
Single-session structure
Within each of the six sessions, use the structure from the single session template. Welcome, opening check-in, frame, first movement, break, second movement, closing reflection, look ahead.
Between sessions
Light expectations work better than heavy ones. Most adults cannot do hours of reading between weekly sessions and maintain employment, family, and political work. A reasonable target is 30 to 60 pages of reading or one hour of audio/video per session, depending on density.
Consider building in optional supplementary materials for participants who want to go further, without making them required.
Documentation
Keep notes after each session. Across the arc, the notes become a record of what the circle learned and how its thinking developed. This serves the room (you can return to it later) and the school (other groups running the same arc can learn from your experience).
If the circle wants to share back to the broader project, the notes from a six-week arc are exactly the kind of contribution that helps other groups. See the contributing guide.
Closing the circle
When a circle finishes, mark it. The last session should include explicit acknowledgment that this arc is complete. Some groups do a meal together. Some do a longer reflection. Some make a plan for what comes next.
The circle may continue with a new theme. Some participants may stay, others may step back, new participants may join. This is healthy. The school grows by the rhythm of arcs that begin and end, not by perpetual continuity.