July 4, 2014
Summer Institute (Creative professionalism)
NOTES
Influence of the arts by Cheryl MacLean
PauloFreire and critical pedagogy.
Elliot Eisner quote: Binocular vision of art and science.
How can we change the world?
Resiliency
Photo voice -using pics to create our own story
Poverty leads to attendance and achievement issues. But is it poverty or spiritual oppression? I am the life.
Hold onto your spoon!
The importance of telling stories.

REFLECTION
Cheryl  MacLean expounded on the importance of the arts as an expression for education. She referred to the socio/psychologist Paulo Freire. I have read about him and his thoughts in other writings. I am particularly interested in his method for engageing the working class in Brazil. His aim was to encourage them to read. I am reading a book entitled, 'Literacy with an Attitude' by Patrick Finn. It is a great read and explores Freire's work.
 I was fascinated by her work in 'the importancee of telling stories'. She herself had many stories of her work with groups of people. Stories are used as a springboard for exploring people and developing education.

Race and Identity - Mike Corbett and Martin Morrison
NOTES with reflections
To mention race is to be racist. Many people are afriad to mention race for fear of upsetting people. race and talking about it has become a 'bad' thing to do. It is avoided and in avoiding it we avoid the issues surrounding it. Nothing is tackled that is avoided in my opinion.


I See me in the mirror but others do not, they see something else.  Later in the presentation there was an activity that encouraged us to write a word to describe ourselves. I found this very difficult to do as I had to think about it and we didn't have the time. I did put something but I needed more time for it to mean something. The idea behind the exercise was that what we see in the mirror is not what others may see. I may see a man but others may see a privileged white man.

What are you or where are you from? Taken as negative and preconceived views. I ask to make connection. Many people who are often recially discriminated because they are of the minority are often offended when people ask where they are from. it is because others have preconceived ideas about them. I can understand this but I would enquire to make a connection with them.






The stranger activity
Projecting image into personality. This was a small group activity. One person in the group was the stranger and could not speak. The others in the group had to build up an identity of the person from visuable clues. The activity was quite revealing. Some people were offended whilst others were not. Of course some of my group's assumptions about me were right and some were wrong. I did notice the importance of having a voice and what it is like to be judged and silenced. i used to live as a minority in London, UK, China and Tanzania. There were some lonely moments.
The activity itself made the assumption that everyone could see. This was not possible with one member of the audience.

Wicked problems solved through collaboration. Mike referred to wicked problems such as teaching children to read or bullying. They are big problems that need to be addressed collaboratively.

Neutral identity- kimmel video. Humanism approach. Privilege is invisible to the privileged. The video referred to priviledge being invisible to the privileged.

We often identify stronger when away from your group. E.g. we likie to belong to a group.
Often what people see in me is truer than how I perceive myself.


John Sumarah (counselling)
Close encounters with the human kind. The inner space.
Begin the encounter with a greeting.
Vulnerable meets vulnerable then close encounter but when vunerable meets power then clash. What about God with people?
Counselling is process that helps a student answer their own questions. People are not fixed.

Difficult people are the best teachers.
Encourage intuition.
Rewriting in the brain exists when therapy goes well.
Invest in the first 1000 days of life is the best investment.
Dependency on God is his aim.
The counsellor gets to be the orchestrator of the person.
Who is the orchestrator of life.
Try liking the parts you don't like.
When identify something then pay attention.
Give people time.

1. John refers to contact with other people as 'encounters with the human kind' and that encounters with other people are extremely important. He touched on many points but I want to reflect on a couple.
2. The counsellor is the not the perosn with all of the answers but helps the person get to work things out.
3. Counselling strategy:
1. Develop the relationship through questioning and probing
2. Show empathy and understanding of their issue
3. Develop goald and objectives
4. Identify a plan
5. Support and evaluate the plan
4. Listen for content and feelings
5. ABCDE: (the event process and working through it)
1. A: aggrevated event
2. B: belief behind the critical response
3. C: the critical response
4. D: dispute
5. E: evaluation

In all it was a good day!

Simon