In a couple of week’s time I will be conducting workshops on some interesting themes with school children from Selby. These have been developed for NYBEP who are keen to facilitate relationships between schools and external practitioners from various disciplines. And I must say, working with these guys, I am deeply impressed by their patience. As my work does not slot into a strict category, it can be challenging to present it in a context which ticks the right set of boxes. Having said that, the folks from NYBEP have persevered and we have finally reached the stage when the work can go ahead.
Stress management in schools
Theme 1: Self-awareness and stress management
So what’s going to happen? Well, the workshops focus on two very different themes – breath awareness and language skills. The former is related to my research and the subsequent work I carried out in Japan. The idea is to introduce children to simple stress management skills they can use in any situation. Is it relevant? Most definitely. As I have said many times, I feel stress has become a ubiquitous commodity and there are very few means in mainstream education for students to become aware and manage it. I will go into details about the format in a separate post. I would like to add that this is quite a significant opportunity. Other than than the time I conducted the 12-week pilot study at a primary school in York to evaluate the breath-control ICT device, there has been little opportunity to work with schools in the UK.
Theme 2: Language Skills
The second workshop is focused on language skills. When it comes to speaking, reading and understanding different languages – I am a bit of a mongrel. My Hindi and English are fluent (As most bilingual people tend to, I too have been known to break out into ‘Hinglish’ a weird combination of Hindi and English). I have basic/intermediary Japanese skills and have a limited understanding of Punjabi, Bengali and Urdu. I have recently started learning Dutch (for no reasons other than to have fun making guttural sounds). I feel the act of ‘speaking’ a language is a culmination of a number of soft-skills such as confidence, self-belief and flexible thinking. And as is well established, the ability to speak myriad languages is a gateway to multicultural experiences, knowledge and insights (sounds rather melodramatic but it is true). So what’s going to happen? Well, rather than focus on a particular language or on the tedious bits, I will be working with the children (who are learning French and German) to construct a multi-lingual story via prezi. I hope this will be a collaborative experience, they have as much to ‘teach’ me as I have to them. Incidentally, this is a principal I follow for all my workshops. There is a lot more fun to be had by diving into the session and working closely with the participants, as compared to following the old-school model of standing in the front of the class and issuing orders.
I have a number of activities/games planned. Once again, I will go into the details of the format in a separate post. As I am a fan of using technology (in the right context), I think prezi will come in very handy. As a presentation tool, it can bring words, phrases and sentences to life through simple movements. Take a look at the lazy man’s example I have prepared below. I do hope to create something slightly more sophisticated than this working with children during the workshop.
I am quite excited (and a little bit nervous). As I said, there are a couple of weeks to go, so if you have any advice, suggestions or comments, I would be grateful if you would leave them in the form of a comment underneath this post. Let me know if there is something you don’t understand or if you feel I should incorporate anything particular in either session. Hope to hear from you guys!
