Skills development

The teachers who trained as Facilitators gained renewed confidence in their skills.

I feel that I’ve got my life back again. Someone said to me the other day that I look like that I own my own space in the classroom.
 
It has changed the way that I teach. I have learnt skills that I didn’t know I had.

I gained enormously in confidence. It’s changed my teaching practice completely, and I can see the benefits of that. I can see that in my classes. I can see that in my relationships with kids around the school.

The Facilitators have applied drama techniques to their everyday work situations, and their students and colleagues also explored how these techniques could be used.

For instance, one teacher worked on small scenes to ‘bring home’ an issue on Racial Harmony Day and planned to do something similar around the topic of homophobic language.

Students in Year 10 at another school created their own performance about issues important to their year level and produced their own DVD as a way of initiating a dialogue between parents and themselves.

Facilitators also worked in the community and organisational settings. For example, the young people and the Counsellor-Facilitator from the Learning Exchange “an out-of-school program for at risk young people” were so inspired by the program that they plan to incorporate BT work into the Learning Exchange’s regular curricula. The young people also organised to share their performance with local Community Health Centre staff as an awareness and consciousness raising exercise.

Bouverie Centre family therapists and trainers have also incorporated BT techniques into their regular therapy work, student supervision and dealing with difficult organisational issues in staff group meetings.