Week 6 Team Roles: Drinking Water

Description

To help make your discussions of the class readings more productive and helpful, we will be using a “reading roles” model.[1] This will help give you a more in-depth and effective way to read and discuss the assigned articles in two major ways:

1. Guide your reading by giving you concrete things to focus on and tasks to complete.
2. Structure your group discussion so that you are less likely to run out of useful things to talk about.

In your discussion sections, you will be assigned into small groups of six to 7 people each. You will stay in this same group for the duration of the class. We will create these groups based on your answers from the intake forms on Day 1. Each team has five (5) roles, which will rotate among members of your team – everyone will perform each role at least once. Each role has specific tasks assigned to it, which are described below.

Due Dates

All Team Role tasks will be turned in on Canvas by the following times:

• All Team Role tasks (minus Reporters:) by the start of your quiz sections
  
• Reporters: turn in discussion notes by 11:59 p.m. the following Friday
  

Team Role Summaries & Assignments

Discussion Facilitator

Your job is to develop a list of discussion questions that helps your group dig into the assigned materials. Your questions should focus on helping your group talk draw out the big ideas from the readings, connect them to major themes and concepts from the course, and share their reactions. You will also facilitate discussion by keeping track of time, making sure everyone has opportunities to contribute, and keeping the discussion focused and on track.

• You will turn in: A list of at least three (3) discussion questions relating to the readings/materials with your own notes or brief (yet detailed) answers.

Illustrator

Your job is to make some kind of visualization that summarizes a key idea or central argument from the materials. Your visualization can be an illustration, flow chart, mental/concept map, drawing, cartoon, diagram, collage, video clip, photograph, etc. Feel free to be creative! You can label with words if you want, but in some cases fewer words may be more thought provoking.

• You will turn in: A copy of your visualization, with a short (minimum 200 word) discussion of what it is depicting and how it relates to the readings/materials. If it is something you created by hand, a picture or scanned copy is fine.
• If you use generative AI to create your visualization, include the website and copy of the prompt you used to generate the image, as well as any notes/thoughts you have about your process and how well you think the tool worked for you.

Connector

Your job is to help your group make connections to other important ideas, including ideas from the course and other cultural, social, political, and economic ideas. You can make connections to other articles, books/book chapters, lectures, TV shows, movies, podcasts, artworks, blogs, news articles, etc.

• You will turn in: A list of at least two (2) connections (at least one source must be external to our class), including an explanation of how the sources connect to the readings with 1-2 discussion questions for each source to help your team members make those connections themselves.

Devil's Advocate

Your job is to identify and articulate contrasting arguments to those presented in the readings. This position helps ensure that multiple perspectives are heard and considered, and helps the team keep their minds open to different ideas and address gaps in their own thinking. Examples of sources that provide contrasting arguments can include scholarly publications, interviews/podcasts/articles with people articulating different positions, materials from other classes, etc.

• You will turn in: At least one (1) source that presents a contrasting opinion to the reading(s), including a description summarizing what this contrasting opinion is and how it differs from that presented in the assigned materials. You should also include 1-2 discussion questions to help your team members consider the contrasting argument.

Reporter

Your job is to take notes on the discussion and summarize its main points. You will also orally share the main take-away's from your group’s discussion to the rest of your discussion section. Be certain to also participate in the discussion! You don’t need to write down every detail of what everyone says – think of yourself as an observer of the discussion who is looking for areas of confusion or disagreement that you can bring up for further discussion. Your summary should address such questions as: What did you discuss? What did you agree/disagree on? What readings or ideas did your group find most interesting, or most controversial? How did the discussion go – was it useful?

• You will turn in: Your summary/notes on your team’s discussion (by 11:59 p.m. the next day).
• PLEASE NOTE: You will not receive credit if you turn in a Reporter assignment for a quiz section you did not actually attend!

Readings

This week's readings consider access to drinking water. In addition to the textbook chapter, I am asking you to consider some public-facing work from Raul Pacheco-Vega, a water access scholar who has published quite a bit on the politics of bottled water. Finally, I am including a 3 minute explainer on the Flint water crisis. As you do the readings for this week, reflect on your own water habits - do you drink tap water? Why/why not? What broader events and systems shape your decision whether or not to drink tap vs. bottled/filtered water?

Read:

• "Bottled Water" in Robbins, Hintz & Moore (2014) Environment & Society: A Critical Introduction. Wiley Blackwell. Download "Bottled Water" in Robbins, Hintz & Moore (2014) Environment & Society: A Critical Introduction. Wiley Blackwell.
  • You can also access the E-book through UW Libraries here: LINK Links to an external site.
• Watch: "Flint's water crisis, explained in 3 minutes. Links to an external site." Vox. [Youtube, 3 minutes]
• Raul Pacheco-Vega. 2016. Flint, Mexico and the dangerous, slippery slope from tap water to bottled water Links to an external site.

Optional:

• Raul Pacheco-Vega. 2016. The transnational life of Fiji bottled water Links to an external site.
• Contois, Emily. 2024. "Your resolution to carry a bottle of water has a history." TIME Magazine. Links to an external site.

[1] Thanks to Desirée Griffin and Paul Quick for providing ideas and examples of this model.