Facilitator Guide
This guide is for anyone preparing to facilitate a session at a People’s Free School. Facilitation is a skill that develops with practice. This document gives you what you need to begin and a framework for getting better over time.
If you have not yet read the Pedagogy document, start there. Facilitation embodies the pedagogy. You cannot facilitate well without understanding what the school is trying to do.
What a facilitator is
A facilitator is not a teacher. The room is not waiting to receive what you know. The room is full of people who know things you do not, and your job is to make a space where what each person knows can come into the open, meet what other people know, and connect to a wider tradition of struggle and thought.
A facilitator is more like a host than a teacher. You set the table. You welcome people in. You keep the conversation moving without dominating it. You notice who has not spoken and make space for them. You notice when the room is stuck and offer a way through. You hold time so that the work gets done within the hours the room has together.
A facilitator is also a participant. You bring your own questions, your own confusions, your own life into the room. The pedagogy does not work if the facilitator pretends to have figured everything out. The pedagogy works when the facilitator models the kind of thinking the room is being asked to do.
Preparing a session
Begin preparing at least a week before the session. Last-minute preparation produces bad sessions.
Choose the material
Work from the theme and lens the session is on. Pull from the themes library. For a single session, one or two readings is usually right. A short reading plus a short film or podcast can also work well. More than this is too much for a single session.
Choose material that:
- Connects to where the room is. What did last session surface? What is happening in the community?
- Has something the room can sink its teeth into. A reading too simple is boring. A reading too complex is alienating.
- Can be read or watched in a reasonable amount of time. Two hours of reading homework for a two-hour session is too much.
When in doubt, choose less material and go deeper.
Read the material yourself, twice
Once to understand it. Once to think about how you will facilitate it. What is the central claim? What is confusing? What will resonate with the room and what will land hard? What questions will it raise? What does it leave out?
If you do not have time to read it twice, you do not have time to facilitate the session. Reschedule or find someone else to lead.
Write a session plan
A session plan is a rough timeline of the session with prompts for each part. It is not a script. It is a structure you can hold loosely and adjust as the room requires.
A typical two-hour session plan might look like:
- 0:00 — 0:15. Opening. Welcome, brief reminders about how the school works, check-in with participants.
- 0:15 — 0:25. Frame the session. What we are reading, why, what questions we are bringing to it.
- 0:25 — 1:00. First movement. Engage the material. Open with a low-stakes question that gets everyone talking. Move to more substantive questions as the room warms.
- 1:00 — 1:10. Break. Coffee, stretch, restroom.
- 1:10 — 1:45. Second movement. Deeper engagement. Connect the material to participants’ lives, to current organizing, to other things we have read.
- 1:45 — 2:00. Closing. Reflection on what shifted, what stayed with people, what to return to. Look ahead to next session.
Write down two or three questions you want to ask in each movement. You will not necessarily use all of them. You will likely improvise others. But having them written down gives you something to fall back on when the room goes quiet.
Anticipate difficulty
Before the session, ask yourself:
- Where is this material likely to be hardest? What is the dense paragraph or the confusing concept I should be ready to help unpack?
- Where is this material likely to provoke strong reaction? Who in the room might find this painful, exciting, or angering, and how will I hold space for that?
- What disagreements is this material likely to surface in the room? How will I let disagreement be productive rather than letting it become combative?
- What am I uncertain about in this material? (Be honest. The room benefits from your uncertainty more than from your performance of mastery.)
Running the session
Opening
Arrive early. Set up the space. Put out coffee or water if you have it. Arrange chairs in a circle if possible. A circle says everyone is equal. Rows say there is a front.
When people arrive, greet them. Especially first-timers. Briefly explain how the school works if anyone is new.
Begin on time, or close to it. Waiting indefinitely for late arrivals disrespects people who arrived when they said they would.
Open with a check-in. A simple prompt works best. Examples:
- “In one sentence, how are you arriving today?”
- “What is one thing on your mind as we begin?”
- “What is something good and something hard from this week?”
Keep check-ins brief. If the group is twelve people and each person takes two minutes, you have used twenty-four minutes before the session has begun. One sentence each is usually the right discipline. People will say more in the session itself.
Facilitating discussion
Some practices that work:
Ask open questions. A closed question can be answered with yes or no, or in a sentence. An open question requires thinking. “Did you find this reading hard?” is closed. “What did you find hardest about this reading?” is open.
Wait through silence. When you ask a question and the room is silent, count to ten in your head before saying anything more. Most facilitators panic in silence and fill it themselves, which trains the room not to speak. Silence is where thinking happens. Let it happen.
Notice who has not spoken. Without putting anyone on the spot, find ways to invite quieter participants in. “I have heard from a few people on this, but I am curious what others think.” Not “Sarah, what do you think?” unless you know Sarah well enough to know she welcomes the prompt.
Notice who has spoken a lot. Gently make room for others. “Thank you. Let me come back to you in a moment. I want to hear from some others first.”
Connect threads. When something someone said earlier connects to what someone is saying now, name the connection. “That is interesting because it relates to what David said about the wage form earlier. Can you say more about how those connect?”
Bring it back to the material. When discussion drifts, return to the text. “This is rich, and I want to come back to a specific moment in the reading. On page seven, the author says…”
Bring it back to experience. When discussion gets too abstract, return to the room’s lives. “I want to ground this. Has anyone here had an experience that connects to what we are reading?”
Hold disagreement open. When two participants disagree, name the disagreement rather than smoothing it over. “We have two readings of this in the room. Let me restate what I am hearing from each, and then let us explore where the disagreement actually is.”
Name your own uncertainty. When you do not know something, say so. “I am not sure how to read this part. What are others making of it?”
Closing
End on time. Sessions that run long burn participants out.
Save ten to fifteen minutes for closing reflection. Some prompts:
- “What stayed with you today?”
- “What shifted in your thinking?”
- “What do you want to return to next time?”
- “What is one thing you are taking out of the room with you?”
Closing reflection is shorter than opening check-in usually, but it should not be skipped. The closing is where understanding consolidates. Without it, sessions feel like they ended rather than completed.
Briefly look ahead. What is the next session? What should people read or do before then?
Thank the room. Be the last to leave or designate someone to handle that.
After the session
Within a day or two, write notes on what happened. What was discussed. What surfaced. Who was there. What questions remain open. What worked in your facilitation and what did not. These notes serve the school’s memory and your own development.
If the school keeps shared session notes, contribute yours. If it does not, keep them yourself.
Talk with another core group member or facilitator about how the session went. Other people see things you cannot. Receive feedback as information, not as judgment.
Common difficulties
A participant who dominates
Some people speak more than others, and that is fine within limits. A person who dominates the room, talks over others, or claims authority they have not earned needs to be managed.
In the moment, redirect: “Thank you. Let me hold there and come back to others.” Or, “I want to make sure we hear from people who have not yet spoken on this.”
Between sessions, if the pattern continues, have a one-on-one conversation. Name what you are seeing and ask for their help in making the room more participatory. Most people respond well to being asked to help. People who do not respond well are telling you something about themselves that you should listen to.
A participant who never speaks
Some people listen more than they speak, and that is also fine. A person who never speaks across many sessions may be deeply engaged or may be feeling shut out. You cannot know without checking.
Between sessions, find a moment to ask: “I notice you have been quiet in sessions, and I wanted to check in. Are you finding what you came for? Is there anything that would make it easier to participate?” Sometimes the answer is “I am here to listen and that is what I need.” Sometimes it is “Actually the conversation moves too fast for me.” Both are useful to know.
A discussion that goes off the rails
Sometimes a session derails. Someone says something provocative and the room follows. A side topic takes over. An argument erupts that the room is not prepared to hold.
Facilitator’s job: redirect. Name what is happening if useful. “I notice we have moved a long way from the reading. Let me ask whether we want to stay on this thread or come back to the text. What does the room want?”
Sometimes the off-rails conversation is the conversation the room needs to have. Let it happen if so. Other times the off-rails conversation is avoidance of harder material. Notice the difference.
A topic that surfaces real pain
Sessions on race, gender, work, war, and ecology can surface real pain in the room. Participants may cry, get angry, withdraw, or speak from a place of grief.
Hold space without becoming a therapist. Acknowledge what is happening. “What you are sharing is hard, and I am grateful you trusted the room with it.” Move at the speed the room can sustain. Do not rush past pain. Do not dwell in it past usefulness either.
If a participant seems to be in significant distress, check in with them privately during a break or after the session. The school is not a clinical setting and you are not a therapist. But the school is also a community, and people in distress deserve to be seen.
One tactic that can be used in the moment is to call everyone to make the circle tighter, to bring closeness to the person in distress. Nothing need be said, but holding space and allowing the individual to know that the community sees them and is here for them can provide comfort.
A facilitator who is struggling
If you are struggling with a session, with facilitation generally, with the material, ask for help. Talk to the core group. Pair with another facilitator for your next session. Read the pedagogy document again. The school is collective. No one facilitates alone.
Developing as a facilitator
Facilitation is a skill, and like any skill it develops with practice and reflection.
Things that help:
- Co-facilitate with someone more experienced before facilitating alone.
- Co-facilitation is necessary when the topic explores topics that embody the identity of others that you do not share, co-facilitators who hold the dominant and target identities is usually the most impactful.
- Observe other facilitators when you can.
- Reflect on each session you run. What worked? What did not? What would you do differently?
- Read about facilitation. We Make the Road by Walking is the foundational text for the school. Other useful books include Training for Change’s materials, Beautiful Trouble, and the Highlander Research and Education Center’s resources.
- Talk with other facilitators. The school’s strength is in the conversation among the people who run it.
You will not be a great facilitator your first time. You will not be a great facilitator your tenth time. You will get better. The room will be patient with you if you are honest with it. Be honest with it.