Miccosukee Land Co-op, Tallahassee FL, photo by Deborah Bayer

The members of the writing group I facilitate have been together for six months. And the safety of the group is up to me. I no longer consider myself a freshman facilitator. I am a sophomore, or as my father called them, wise morons. The word sophomore derives from the Greek, sophos meaning wise and moros meaning foolish, as in moron.

Some aspects of facilitation have become easier, like time management. Some are getting harder because I failed to set and maintain expectations from the very beginning. To be honest, I didn’t fully understand what it meant to mix two different models. I’m struggling now. My group has strayed from strict adherence to the AWA method. The feedback is supposed to be about the writing, not about how it affects the reader, nor about the person who wrote it.

Why I Went Astray

There are two reasons why I strayed from the AWA guidelines. One, I knew almost everyone in my group. I had written with them in other groups before. There was already a feeling of safety, at least for me. Two, I was creating something new within the AWA world. The I Ching Hexagram #3 warns about the difficulty of combining two things to create something new.

I’m combining Narrative Medicine pedagogy with my AWA groups. In the Narrative Medicine model, the participants are encouraged to be introspective and to describe how a piece of art or writing affects them. I love this part of the workshop. I want to hear the story of what the writing has set off for them.

But that deep discussion is not what is expected for each other’s writing. For each other’s writing, we limit our feedback to what stays with us, what’s strong and working well in a piece of writing. It wasn’t until I sat down to write out my thoughts for this blog that this difference became clear.

Why I Need to Get Back on Track

And there are two reasons why I need to get back on the AWA path. First and foremost is safety for the group. The writing will go deep if the members feel safe. I need to take on the role of a gentle sheepdog. Each time a workshop member says “you” instead of “the narrator” while giving feedback, I need to call it out.

The second reason to return to the AWA method is that I want to be impeccable with my word. If I promised AWA method workshops, that is what I will provide. The first step is the awareness that I am not keeping my promise; I have created my own problem through my lack of clarity.

I still want to combine the AWA method with Narrative Medicine workshop pedagogy. The methods enhance each other. But now, I know how much more clarity and skill it takes to do both in the same setting.

With good instincts and intuition, I will get to model to my group how to get back on the path of safety. I just need to warn my workshop members that sheepdogs can be very persistent.