Facilitator guide: The Disclosure Ladder

Suggested session: 15–20 minutes: 3-minute framing, 6-minute ladder reading, 5-minute safer-next-move writing, and 6-minute debrief.

Preparation

Give learners one fictional ladder card. Make the task about decisions before disclosure, not about asking participants to share why a topic is personally sensitive. A chatbot is not needed.

Facilitation priorities

• Emphasize that a pause point is a reasoned judgment, not a quiz answer.
• Ask learners to name both the useful purpose and the accumulation risk.
• Keep setting separate from content: a detail may be unnecessary even in an approved environment, and a low-detail task may fit a general conversation.
• Use the activity to practice interruption without shame: “What does this task need now?”
• Keep medical, legal, financial, employment, and other consequential questions at the level of disclosure choices, not substantive advice.

Common difficulties

• Learners choose the first step automatically: ask what makes the stated task impossible at that level.
• Learners accept every additional detail: ask which detail materially improves the next response.
• Learners think one broad fact cannot identify someone: ask how the details work together in a small community or organization.
• The group debates a platform policy: record it as a verify question and return to the reusable disclosure judgment.

Evidence of learning

Look for a defensible pause point, a specific explanation of accumulated context, and a repair that preserves the task without pretending a rewrite solves every boundary.

Accessibility and inclusion

Provide ladders as selectable text, read them aloud on request, and allow a written-only response. Use numbered steps and labels rather than color. Do not require personal examples or discussion of participants’ health, finances, family, school, or work.

Provisional timing for facilitator planning

These inherited estimates are starting points for facilitation, not completion targets for learners. Refine them after observing setup, access needs, discussion, and actual participation.

• Lab: 15–20 minutes (short: 10; extended: 30)

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Source: labs/disclosure-ladder/facilitator-guide.md