Written By: Ms. Lilian Bahgat, Review Counsel, Community Legal Aid, Faulty of Law, University of Windsor
It has been a pleasure to be an #OLDFF fellow and to participate in province wide conversations about Humanizing Learning as part of the eCampusOntario -funded #ONHumanLearn project. The workshops created a community of lifelong learners gather to see how we can collectively humanize learning for both the instructor and the student. In exploring the theme of Co-creating Inclusive Communities, we were introduced to the liberating structure based on the TRIZ model. I introduced this technique in my clinic seminar course. My co-instructor and I asked our students to think of the top ten traits of a bad lawyer. We then broke these traits down to things influenced by our personalities and those that are habits. We then spent time reflecting on our current habits and if any of them could be corelated to any of these traits. Building on this, we then committed to three things we could do to change that trait. In doing so, we deconstructed the traits of a bad lawyer and replaced them with skills necessary to create a good lawyer. The students shared their appreciation for being able to take a negative and turn it into a positive. It was a relief to discover things within their power that they could do to work towards that positive.
