Facilitators’ Portal
This guide is for administrators and instructors leading PAL programs at The Fund.
Preparation
Click the headings below for more on the topic. To access resources and more, please click on the purple links found within the sections below.
Train the Facilitators is a workshop in which Administrators and Instructors learn how to prepare, teach, and facilitate PAL via cohorts and PAL Independent. If you have not participated in Train the Facilitators but would like to learn to administer or teach PAL, please reach out here.
Please note: If you’ve been through the training and would like a refresher, you are more than welcome to join a future session.
Check here for upcoming Train the Facilitators Dates and email us here to let us know you’d like to join.
Click here to access the PAL Independent Portal – Coming Soon
Professionals are required to work with a Working Partner. They will need to identify someone during the interview process, even though who the Working Partner might be might change over the course of the cohort.
They will also be paired with a paid Fellows that is contracted from Session 1 through December 31.
Professionals might also choose to hire an Assistant (paid). They are to handle the agreements of their work together, particularly in regards to compensation and dates of service.
All sessions are virtual to promote accessibility for participants.
Fellows are permitted to meet their Professionals in-person at the Waldman Living Room. Email the Waldman Activities Coordinator to schedule a time and date. Fellows might also meet their Professional at another location if their Professional and they are mutually comfortable with that.
Cohort
Each week will consist of 3 hours of class time per week and one-hour consultations outside of class for each Professionals and Fellows pairing each week. Depending on the number of overall participants, these sessions can be broken into segments with smaller cohorts.
When there is no class session, Fellow and Professional spend 2.5 hours together that week, at times according to their mutual schedules.
PAL Independent
Please check back. We’re still constructing this exciting new program.
In many cases, equipment Professionals and you already own—such as computers, smartphones and tablets—can be used for PAL, particularly for the audio and video recording section of the site.
For recording, we recommend a USB microphone, which plugs directly into a computer’s USB port. For editing, use a low-cost or free recording program like Reaper, Audacity, and Garage Band for Audio and iMovie for video and Zoom. Other filming and editing recommendation can be found in the Audio and Video section of the Contributor Manual.
PAL operates to create a safe space during all of our sessions and interactions. This includes during class, with Professional & Fellow/Working Partner/Assistant work, and all other PAL groups and personal interactions. It is through creating this safe space, that we can dare to share through expression, information, stories, essays, blogs, and more.
We acknowledge that everyone comes to PAL with their own lived experiences, visible and unseen. Creating a safe space is a community effort and as such we strongly suggest sharing Community Agreements the first time Professionals and their Fellows/Assistants/Working Partners are gathered (Session 1), you meet with Legal Interns for the first time, and when meeting with the students from the school what will be part of the inter-generational interviews. By bringing these Community Agreements, reading them out loud, and offering folks to add to them if they see something missing, we are creating a common set of expectations about how we, as a community, create and maintain a safe space for PAL.
Click here to download the Community Agreements.
For more on the Community Agreements, please reach out to us.
We recommend matching each Professional with a high school or college student (we call them Legacy Seekers) who will conduct one 1.5 hour interview by phone/Skype/Facetime/Zoom, etc. based on questions the students create with their teacher. This partnership is most efficiently done by creating a relationship with a local school that focuses on the performing arts or that has a club or department focusing on the performing arts. These sessions are not recorded and are confidential. The students and their teacher then select salient moments from the interviews and create a script with their teacher, culminating in a panel with the PAL Professionals and their student Legacy Seekers, either live or remotely, at the end of the term.
Guides
Click the headings below for more on the topic. To access resources and more, please click on the purple links found within the sections below.
Part of the Train the Facilitators program is reading the Community Engagement Guide. It might be a good idea before leading a group, to review the guide once again, especially if it is your first group.
**Note: Click on an underlined phrase to connect to more information.
- For help with Zoom, consult Senior Planet’s online guide. For general tech and other questions, see Senior Planet’s Coronavirus Resource Guide.
- Instructions, tools and tips for creating Oral Histories and Curated Life Reviews can be found in the PAL Contributor Manual.
- StoryCorps offers outstanding guidance on interview techniques and technologies:
If you need refreshers, written and/or video tutorials, or answers to common questions and troubleshooting, check the Contributor Manual which serves as a companion “How To” resource for you as you take the class and build your site. For access, go to “Contributor Manual” under the dropdown menu labeled “Resources.
Have a question that isn’t answered? Let us know here.
In the portals, you will find links to access specific sessions. Many sessions have video tutorials and links to other resources listed and linked under “Text and Video Resources” in addition to “Prep Work” (i.e. homework) and “Session Breakdowns.” Use these breakdowns as a guide. We recommend, in a separate document, creating a lesson plan according to your style and personal notes/tips with our breakdown as the outline.
Make sure you record your sessions and upload them to the PAL Vimeo under your class’ appropriate folder then upload to the appropriate session under Session Archives
If you do not yet have the password for your class’s portal or have editing access to your program’s portal, please let us know.
