Regenerative Educator Training #1: Hosting Talking Circles
A 1-day training for educators who want to enhance their facilitating skills, confidence and embrace the transformative power of hosting talking circles.
Next date: Friday 16th September 2022, 9am-5pm
Location: School 360, Sugar House Lane, Stratford, E15 2RB
What’s on offer?
This one day training, exploring the art of hosting talking circles, kicks off a four-part Regenerative Educator Training, supporting you to develop as a holistic facilitator.
In this training day we develop our ability to host talking circles as a powerful tool to promote self-expression, build compassion and embrace adversity as gateways to healthy individual and collective growth.
You’ll learn the art of hosting ‘council’, an ancient form of talking circle that in its simplest form involves – A circle. A centre. A beginning. One person speaking at a time. Everyone listening. A closing.
Why practice talking circles?
It can feel daunting to open up dialogue with young people about sensitive topics, and yet choosing to ‘go there’ together can be incredibly liberating. Perhaps you see young people struggle with self-acceptance or their self-esteem and you want to better support them? Perhaps you notice they could be more accepting and supportive of one another?
Talking circles offer a powerful gateway to having deeper, more trusting relationships, to young people feeling seen, heard and respected and to creating a shared culture of safety and belonging. Perhaps you see young people bottling everything in and feeling alone with their troubles? Perhaps you simply want to create a safe container to talk about racism, homophobia, rape culture and consent?
Talking circles offer a way to have powerful conversations, creating bonding relationships between young people and adults, and can be used to resolve conflicts or challenges (including challenging behaviour) in the classroom. They help to put into practice many of the values we say we wish to live by e.g. kindness, honesty, respect, compassion, acceptance, courage….
This 1-day practical skills training will leave you feeling more confident in your facilitation skills and fully equipped to bring talking circles (and other similar forms of communication and enquiry) into your education setting.
We’ll walk you through various ‘council/talking circle’ techniques, practice them together, discuss their different use cases, equip you to run them safely and explore the theory that underpins this powerful practice.
Read our blog post to learn more about the psychological and relational benefits when youth feel safe enough to talk.
This is for you if…
- You work with young people (12-30) in a mainstream or alternative education or youth work setting
- You want to support young people to talk about their emotions and topics that really matter to them (e.g. around identity, relationships and culture).
- You want to develop your confidence working with mental health, strong emotions, trauma & conflict
- You want to learn to relate to young people in ways that alleviate their suffering, support their learning and make them feel cared for and appreciated
- You want to be more confident addressing conflict in your life and at work
- You teach the RSHE curriculum in school
- You are a form tutor, mentor, teacher, youth worker, senior leader
- You believe in the transformative power of gratitude, deeper listening and empathy – knowing that an ‘empathy revolution’ is both possible and necessary
You will learn…
- How to facilitate different kinds of talking circles
- The social and developmental value of talking circles, as evidenced by leading neuroscience and child development theory
- How to create a psychologically safe and trusting container
- Learn how to look after the wellbeing of everyone in the space – including yourself!
- Debunking common myths that hold us back from exploring our emotions and sharing our personal ‘stuff’
- The difference between therapeutic spaces and therapy ( and why this isn’t the latter)
- How to maintain safe boundaries and key safeguarding considerations, knowing the limitations of talking circles and your role as the guide
NOTE! Whilst the training is geared towards hosting talking circles with young people, the skills and techniques are highly transferable and can be used with groups of adults too. Perhaps you’ll be able to facilitate a talking circle amongst your colleagues!