- Outdoor instructor, Hamilton
Notices
Advanced Facilitation Skills Workshop - Oct 4-6th CHCH
- 1 July 2010
Facilitators: Liz Penman, Claire Wyatt, Chris Jansen
Cost: $495 incl GST
This is a professional skill development workshop for experienced facilitators of adventure based learning which we run only once a year, this time in Auckland.
Content includes:
• a rare opportunity to lead and facilitate activities then receive supportive appraisal from other professionals to enhance facilitation skills
• the chance to extend both understanding and application of more sophisticated adventure based learning concepts
• an opportunity to practice and to fine tune specific facilitation techniques
• purposeful programme design and advanced sequencing ideas
• developing facilitation flow and navigating facilitation ‘pot-holes’
Bag of Tricks Idea:
- 1 December 2007
On one particular day we were spending the day climbing at local crag, exploring a range of grade 13-16 climbs. One young man was clearly hesitant and discouraged all morning, starting several climbs but only ever getting 1-2m off ground before suddenly becoming very anxious and retreating off the climb. Later in the day we noticed that once again he chose a belayer and attempted a climb. This time however he carried on and worked his way up the climb, all of our group watching as this significant achievement unfolded. Finally he reached the top, and we were all surprised when he stood up, facing away from us up into the surrounding mountains with arms held high and shouted to the sky…..”My balloon is F%$#%^en enormous!!!”
To make sense of this outburst we need to wind back the clock a little. Earlier in the day as a part of our front loading for the climbing day I had facilitated a session on trust. I began talking about trust while blowing puffs into a balloon, asking the young people if they could think how what I am doing could be like trust…. Answers emerged like……”it builds slowly like a balloon”, ….”it’s a slow process”, ….”its hard sometimes”….. At this time I had a pin hidden away and without announcing it popped the balloon…bang!! I then picked up a piece off the ground and begin attempting to blow it up again.. of course unsuccessfully. Again I asked, “How is this like trust?”……and they relied…..”Trust can blow up”…, “it is fragile”,… “once broken you can’t just start again”,…. “You only get one chance sometimes”. We continued talking about how often the biggest temptation is to play a trick on someone while they are trusting you, give them a bit of a fright, have a bit of a laugh,….. but then that is like popping the balloon….they will probably never trust you again. We finished by looking ahead to the rock climbing day and the importance of building their “trust balloon” with each other.
Hence…… my balloon is F%$#%^en enormous!!!”
(Note: This is an object lesson I have been using for many years, and I’m not sure if I saw someone do it or if I made it up myself…..if anyone has any information about its original source I’d love to hear from you, Chris Jansen)
