When we started the course in 2011, it was designed for teachers and classrooms.
Its meaning and value has gone through considerable change over the 4 years. Going by the feedback received about what they got from the course, it looks like it could be for anyone. To narrow that audience (which sounds like the whole world), I know that when we are in class, I build a context for whatever is taught around 2 things whenever I present an idea – Group work / Community and Relationships.
All learning appears to happen within these 2 contexts.
Building a better understanding of oneself, and then
Applying it to everything that happens around us.
Over the past 4 years we have had people from a wide variety of walks of life attending. Here is my version of the list:
Passionate people wanting to educate instead of teach, looking to put more meaning into their classrooms, work-life and relationships.
Practicing coaches and facilitators
Mothers wanting to understand their children in a more compassionate way. The days of ‘No’ and ‘Don’t’ appear over. With the wide exposure children have through media, it seems wiser to learn the skills to manage their curiosity, rather than kill it.
Radio and voice-over artistes stepping into education as a career.
Engineers, doctors, psychologists wanting to understand facilitation and process-work to enable them better in their professions.
Outdoor educators, NGO folks, people managing people at organisations.
And then the breed that I love! Minds on the edge! The itch to do something they have always known they loved, but couldn’t pursue. Coming to that place where what they DON’T want becomes a little clearer, and what options they have . . . . Its like standing with feet itching the sand on a beach, looking out to an open sea, searching for that faint silhouette of a ship somewhere on the horizon. It’s there alright! We just have to find it! So many of us are on that beach a lot of the time.
These are some of the reasons people want to do DEEP:
Bring change to self, followed by society so we can have better tomorrow.
I feel my personality has several blocks. I would like to get rid of them. I would like to ‘let go’ (I dont know of what) but I feel this course will help me do so.
I want all the relationships in my life to become more enriched.
I want to restore my faith in humanity and so I want to learn to be more open to people more accepting and less judgmental.
I want to focus on my work as a trainer/educator (experiential) and hence I have set it upon myself to get trained as much as possible for my sessions to become more dynamic and scientific in approach.
This is what they want to learn:
1. I want to become a more effective facilitator. 2. I want to design more effective workshops. 3. I want my workshops to help bring about personal and organisational change.
Learn and practice self-facilitation. Improve effectiveness of my facilitation skills. Use wider methods, techniques and approaches in educational programs.
I want to learn a better way of dialogue with various groups of people on the home front and work front .
Some basic principles of experiential education so as to work with school going kids for teaching them EVS and Ecology.
How to create an environment where a child learns to ‘be’.
To facilitate myself to work more openly with various groups.
What is the exact premise of experiential learning? How could it be facilitated in a real classroom where I work ?
Experiential Education – theories and practices. Learning Processes
Tools for Conflict/Communication Management in Children and in Organizations
Conducting Effective Reflections
Behaviour Management in Children
Team Building tools and modules
Energizers, ice breakers – how to effectively use them and how to train facilitators to use them better.
You will notice almost all of these fit into the categories I mentioned earlier: Group work / Community and Relationships.
The course will cover most of this, and more.