The Crane & The Cathedral
Thursday, November 30, 2006
First Workshop Completed!
Yesterday we finished the first train the trainer workshop in Vilanova i la Geltrú. A total of seven people (all women!) completed digital stories and began plans to bring the process to their public health and youth work. They were a pleasure to work with, and it was interesting to see how similar the process was despite the context. The screening was lovely, people were pretty amazed by how their pieces came out and how the personal aspect came through in all despite initial resistance.
One participant has already uploaded her story, take a look here!
http://www.blip.tv/file/108126
As always, it was a bit stressful at the end, and there are a few folks who want to do a bit more work on their pieces. I think we're going to have a follow up day some time next week to let people put finishing touches on and review some of the trickier aspects.
Unfortunately, the computers didn't behave as well as I would have liked. But, on the other hand, I've seen worse. Nothing too prohibitive, just a bunch of slowness.
And, on completely different note, I had a funny exchange with the guy who works at my gym Tuesday. He was making me my swipe card, and said, "you only have one last name?!" And I explained that's how it was in the US, a bit sad. He said, "no no no, your president, that is sad. This is just different."
Yesterday we finished the first train the trainer workshop in Vilanova i la Geltrú. A total of seven people (all women!) completed digital stories and began plans to bring the process to their public health and youth work. They were a pleasure to work with, and it was interesting to see how similar the process was despite the context. The screening was lovely, people were pretty amazed by how their pieces came out and how the personal aspect came through in all despite initial resistance.
One participant has already uploaded her story, take a look here!
http://www.blip.tv/file/108126
As always, it was a bit stressful at the end, and there are a few folks who want to do a bit more work on their pieces. I think we're going to have a follow up day some time next week to let people put finishing touches on and review some of the trickier aspects.
Unfortunately, the computers didn't behave as well as I would have liked. But, on the other hand, I've seen worse. Nothing too prohibitive, just a bunch of slowness.
And, on completely different note, I had a funny exchange with the guy who works at my gym Tuesday. He was making me my swipe card, and said, "you only have one last name?!" And I explained that's how it was in the US, a bit sad. He said, "no no no, your president, that is sad. This is just different."
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Workshop Número Uno, or should I say, Número un?
We’re now done with day three out of four of the first workshops here in Vilanova I la Geltrú. It’s been a lot of fun so far…I’ve been lucky to have a lovely group of women who have been very patient with my destruction of two languages at the same time. So many words to learn….superimpose, dramatic arc, etc. etc. Unfortunately, three out of three days I’ve been consistently preoccupied and have forgotten to take photos. Hopefully I’ll get some tomorrow! Since language has been the biggest difference in this workshop from previous workshops I’ve done, that’s where my reflection will start.
I remember talking to a colleague who had run a few workshops in languages he didn’t speak. I remember being slightly skeptical as he explained how he conducted his “story coaching”, listening to where their pace changed, watching for their body language, all the things you would normally do. However, these “extra language” cues do take on a greater meaning when they are your main recourse! Originally, when I planned this project, I figured I would do the first few workshops in Spanish and slowly transition to Catalán over the course of the year. And yes, I am leading this workhop in Spanish, which is a challenge in and of itself. However, what I hadn’t thought about is that there was no way the participants were going to create stories in Spanish. That means, that while my demos and facilitation takes place in Spanish, I had to facilitate the story circle and help people one on one in a language I have studied for approximately eight weeks:)
A few things I’ve noticed…
Peer support is essential. My first job out of college was teaching in a family literacy program where I had to facilitate parent support groups. I remember people asking about what to do when your kids grind their teeth at night. I had no option but to figure out ways for the parents to help one another, since my experience with teeth grinding was pretty limited, maybe to my own teeth? Anyway, in the story circle participants seemed to catch on to giving feedback to one another more quickly than usual, and I found that I really had to step back as a facilitator because I wasn’t always sure what the key points of the story were. Working one on one, I also found was a lot easier since I can understand the majority of written catalán, as opposed to my listening skills!
They need to use their own words. One difficult thing in coaching people on their stories is that when I make suggestions, and encourage people to put things in their own words, some are likely to put down what the facilitator says in their scripts. However, there is no way that anyone wants to sound like me in Catalán, so this is not an issue in these workshops!
Deeper explanations. Some participants translated, or explained what they meant when there was a portion of Catalán that I didn’t understand. At times, this meant that they had to go another layer deeper in thinking about their stories since they were forced to explain it in another language. Last week, at the conference in Milan, there was a woman who spoke about the advantages of writing in a second language, and it was precisely this point that she made…that you become more precise when going back and forth between two languages, and the process of rethinking the same thought with other words creates a greater articulation of the idea.
Despite these advantages, I’m looking forward to being able to co-facilitate these workshops with native speakers, and to getting a better grasp on Catalán. I will post a few stories if I get permission later this week, with summaries in English!
I remember talking to a colleague who had run a few workshops in languages he didn’t speak. I remember being slightly skeptical as he explained how he conducted his “story coaching”, listening to where their pace changed, watching for their body language, all the things you would normally do. However, these “extra language” cues do take on a greater meaning when they are your main recourse! Originally, when I planned this project, I figured I would do the first few workshops in Spanish and slowly transition to Catalán over the course of the year. And yes, I am leading this workhop in Spanish, which is a challenge in and of itself. However, what I hadn’t thought about is that there was no way the participants were going to create stories in Spanish. That means, that while my demos and facilitation takes place in Spanish, I had to facilitate the story circle and help people one on one in a language I have studied for approximately eight weeks:)
A few things I’ve noticed…
Peer support is essential. My first job out of college was teaching in a family literacy program where I had to facilitate parent support groups. I remember people asking about what to do when your kids grind their teeth at night. I had no option but to figure out ways for the parents to help one another, since my experience with teeth grinding was pretty limited, maybe to my own teeth? Anyway, in the story circle participants seemed to catch on to giving feedback to one another more quickly than usual, and I found that I really had to step back as a facilitator because I wasn’t always sure what the key points of the story were. Working one on one, I also found was a lot easier since I can understand the majority of written catalán, as opposed to my listening skills!
They need to use their own words. One difficult thing in coaching people on their stories is that when I make suggestions, and encourage people to put things in their own words, some are likely to put down what the facilitator says in their scripts. However, there is no way that anyone wants to sound like me in Catalán, so this is not an issue in these workshops!
Deeper explanations. Some participants translated, or explained what they meant when there was a portion of Catalán that I didn’t understand. At times, this meant that they had to go another layer deeper in thinking about their stories since they were forced to explain it in another language. Last week, at the conference in Milan, there was a woman who spoke about the advantages of writing in a second language, and it was precisely this point that she made…that you become more precise when going back and forth between two languages, and the process of rethinking the same thought with other words creates a greater articulation of the idea.
Despite these advantages, I’m looking forward to being able to co-facilitate these workshops with native speakers, and to getting a better grasp on Catalán. I will post a few stories if I get permission later this week, with summaries in English!
