This document introduces the World Café method for facilitating collaborative discussions. It describes the World Café as having 3 rounds of conversation at different tables to discuss questions that are important for real work. Participants can choose to stay at their table as a host or travel to new tables. After the rounds, participants discuss emerging themes, patterns, and insights from the conversations. The goal is to spark dialogue that can create new possibilities for the future on topics like incorporating international themes into school curriculums.

1. Welcome
to the
World Café

2. Café Conversations are
an easy-to-use method
for creating a living network of
collaborative dialogue
around questions that matter
in service of the real work

3. Café Movements
3 Rounds of Conversation at 3 Different
Tables
Harvest

4. QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

5. QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Avril Orloff

6. Questions are intrinsically related to action, they
spark and direct attention, perception, energy and
effort…
Creativity requires asking genuine questions, those to
which an answer is not already known.
Questions function as open-handed invitations to
creativity, calling forth that which doesn’t yet exist.
-Marilee Goldberg Adams
The Art of the Question

7. Café Round 1:
Share one remarkable curricular idea
or innovation that you’ve used and
that weaves international
understanding into the curriculum.

9. Café Traveling
Continuing the Conversation
• Choose one host to stay
• Others travel to new and separate tables
• Hosts welcome new people to the table
• Wait for what’s next

10. Café Round 2:
What had real meaning for you from
what you’ve heard? What surprised
you? What challenged you?

12. Café Traveling
Continuing the Conversation
• Choose one host to stay
• Others travel to new and separate tables
• Hosts welcome new people to the table
• Wait for what’s next

13. Café Round 3:
What conversation, if begun today,
could ripple out in a way that created
new possibilities for the future of
incorporating interdisciplinary themes
and international understandings in the
curriculum?

15. Harvest
Based on your three rounds of conversation,
what themes, patterns and insights are
emerging?

16. Based on the work of Juanita Brown,
David Isaacs
and the World Café Community
Graphics by Nancy Margulies and
Avril Orloff
Hosted by Donald Proffit,
Thank You
Northeast U.S. Region Steward
1700 Riverside Drive
Trenton, NJ 08618
609-649-9280
proffitprojects@mac.com
www.proffitprojects.com
Larry Hunt For resources and information see
Visual Practitioner
www.theworldcafe.com
The images in this presentation are sourced from the
World Café Creative Commons. Please cite this source if
you use them in the future.