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Facilitating Safe Spaces
Workshop Description Category: Learning Environment/ Character Development Objectives: 1. To understand the basic foundations of designing, nurturing & holding safe spaces for authentic sharing & dialogue Safe spaces are critical to optimal learning. Students cannot learn if they do not feel safe. For authentic and deep learning to take place, students need to feel safe enough to reflect and share their thoughts and their emotions - what they really think and feel, not just what they think is expected of them. Studies have long shown that children are especially vulnerable to stress, which inhibits their ability to learn. The goal of an academic safe place is to create an inclusive and effective learning environment in which opportunities for complex cognitive, intra-personal, and inter-personal development exists for all students. This kind of classroom develops structures that promote dialogue, inclusion and respect. Students can learn and flourish in this environment because they feel empowered to take risks by expressing their unique insights and disagreeing with others' point of view. Safe spaces combined with effective and creative facilitation techniques promote deep understanding and high-order reasoning. It may be also a necessary condition for learning in difficult dialogues. This unique workshop will offer educators and counsellors knowledge and skills in designing and facilitating challenging conversations. The course will cover techniques such as:
1. Emotional Intelligence 2. National Education 3. Character & Citizenship Education 4. Physical Education 5. General Paper 6. Social Studies 7. Service Learning & Values in Action Audience: All Teachers/ School Counsellors
About the Presenters
Elizabeth Teo was a General Paper teacher with Dunman High School from 2008-2014. During her stint there, she was appointed Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) Mentor and re-wrote the curriculum for Years 1-4 and spearheaded the CCE team in Years 5-6. She trained over 200 teachers in Dunman High School to deliver her curriculum. In 2012, she was awarded the Caring Teacher Award (JC, National Level). In 2013, she was awarded the Outstanding Contribution Award for Teaching and Learning of CCE. After leaving the service, Elizabeth has conducted workshops for beginning teachers at the National Institute of Education under the Meranti Programme. She has also conducted workshops at various schools across Singapore and taught facilitation skills to school leaders in the West Zone. Elizabeth is also a certified Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Advanced Trainer and Assessor for Six Seconds © USA. She believes strongly in the all-rounded development of students, helping to enhance students' relationships with themselves, their family and their peers through a whole-school approach which includes engaging parents, teachers, counsellors, school leaders and other stakeholders. She believes strongly in being authentic, never hesitating to share bits of her life story and her vulnerabilities with workshop participants. This has earned her credibility and respect among her students and workshop participants, who find it easy to open up to her. As a teacher and a freelance facilitator, she believes strongly in the power of personal narratives to touch the heart and change perspectives, biases, relationships, communities and lives. She believes that everyone has a story that deserves to be heard. Her dream is to create safe spaces for participants to tell their stories, to feel supported and affirmed. Through listening to their stories, those that require extra support can be surfaced so that appropriate and timely intervention can take place.
Farid graduated with an Honours Degree in Law from the National University of Singapore in 1987. After a stint as an Investigation Officer with the Singapore Police Force and Deputy Public Prosecutor with the Attorney General’s Chambers/Commercial Affairs Department, he developed his interest in multicultural and experiential learning while working in Guyana, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Since then, Farid has had over 30 years of experience in the field of multicultural and experiential learning – primarily as a facilitator, trainer and educator. He has trained over 860 facilitators in the field of multicultural and interfaith literacy in Singapore & Australia.
Farid has been engaged to facilitate and train educators and community leaders in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Thailand, Brunei, Bhutan, East Timor, Australia and Nigeria.
Registration Details Topic: Facilitating Safe Spaces Other Information: School/Cluster Based Workshop Registration
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MR FARID ABDUL HAMID