A cogen is a small, regular conversation where the people in a room work out how to change it.
The name and the practice are Christopher Emdin's. Cogen is short for cogenerative dialogue, and he wrote them up in For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too:
Cogens are simple conversations between the teacher and their students with a goal of co-creating/generating plans of action for improving the classroom.
They fit a Cavendish Space closely. In a cogen, people take part as "experts on their own unique relationship to the social field that is the classroom" (p. 66). The people in a room are the experts on it. And the conversation ends in a plan for the room.
This page is how to hold one with the deck. Why the two fit, and where they part, is on stimpunks.org: Cogens and Cavendish Space: A Crosswalk.
What this is, and what it refuses to do
- A cogen is about the room. Every change it plans is a change to the room, the kit, the permissions, or the pace.
- It is not a behavior meeting. No line of the plan takes a person or a group as its subject.
- Nobody has to speak. A card turned up is a turn. So is a typed line, a message on an AAC device, or a pass.
- Nothing is counted. A need named once is a need. Access is not a vote.
- Sharing stays with the person. Cards go down face-down. The turn is the consent.
Three rules, with the mic made wider
Emdin keeps a cogen to three rules. Here they are in his words:
The rules should be given to students in the most succinct version possible:
- No voice is privileged over another, or, “Everybody eats, everybody speaks.”
- One person speaks at a time; or “one mic.”
- The cogen results in a plan of action for improving the classroom.
We keep all three, and widen the first two.
- Everybody eats. No voice counts for more than another — and a spoken voice does not count for more than a laid card. Everybody gets the mic. Nobody has to take it.
- One mic. One turn at a time. A turn can be words, a card turned up, a typed line, or a pass. The quiet while someone finds their words is part of their turn.
- It ends in a plan. A short list of changes to the room. Not to the people in it.
Before
- Say what it is for, out loud, before anyone lays a card. "We're working out what to change about this room." If spreads will go through an AI later, say that too. Group access needs says why.
- Post the question first. tell me first is the card that most often helps. Try: What makes this room hard to be in? What would help?
- Keep it small. A cogen is a campfire — a few people, not the whole class. Change who comes, so it is never the same few.
- Pick the place. A campfire, with a cave and a way out close by. Zone a room works out whether the room can hold them.
During
- Open with the deck, not with talk. Everyone lays a spread face-down: a place, a weather, a couple of what-helps. Turn up what you choose to share.
- Go round once. One mic. Each turn is a card turned up, a few words, or a pass. you don't have to talk is in the deck for this.
- Watching is taking part. Someone can sit out a round and come in on the next. watch first and not yet are lily pads, not refusals.
- Leaving is not leaving the cogen. let me come and go, i need a minute, coming back. The circle holds a place.
- Mirror it back. Reach for the room, not the person. The same three moves as the facilitator sheet.
- Take the turns that come late. Leave the question open for written answers until the end of the day.
The plan
- The room is the subject of every line. Not "students will stop calling out." Instead: "this room needs a written way to join the discussion." If a line has a person or a group as its subject, rewrite it or cut it.
- Use the room's own words. The seventeen room conditions in Group access needs — quiet, a way out, come and go, written down, another way to take part — go straight into Zone a room.
- Do not vote. Do not tally. If two changes compete for one afternoon, ask the people who will be in the room. That is what the cogen is for.
- Start with the permissions. sit my way, let me stim, let me come and go. They cost nothing.
After
- Carry the plan back. The people from the circle carry the room's changes back to everyone else. They do not carry rules.
- Keep it in the library. Post the plan where the room can see it — the library is where we keep what we've figured out.
- Open the next cogen with what changed. And with what didn't.
When a cogen stops working
Emdin puts the choice plainly: "It essentially boils down to whether one chooses to do damage to the system or to the student" (p. 206). A cogen chooses the system.
- If a cogen keeps producing rules for people, it has stopped being a cogen. Go back to the room. If it's not working, it's not the person.
- If the same voices fill every round, widen the mic. More cards. More time to write. A smaller circle.
Where this goes next
- Lay a spread before the cogen, or during it.
- Group access needs turns a pile of spreads into one brief for the room.
- Zone a room sets the brief beside what the room already has.
- The facilitator sheet covers the deck's other ways to play.
- Cogens and Cavendish Space: A Crosswalk — the argument at length, on stimpunks.org.
License
This page is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0, except the quotations. Quoted material belongs to whoever wrote it. Christopher Emdin's words here come from For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too (Beacon Press, 2016), with the page each one is on. They are quoted under fair use, not given away. If you reuse this page, keep them credited or leave them out. The cogen is his practice. The rest of this page is ours, and now it is yours.