I feel I have not blogged propa for ages.I feel a lot more about other things.
I feel ........
I have just been on a two day residential,
what an experience.
About fifty humans,
all housing workers
99% front line worker with young humans with special needs.
Loved it.
The number one is just being amongst them all.
There is a massive multi faith/ethnicity present.
A massive range of origin of birth.
It is so colourful
so personality full
such characters.
I just loved the meal times,
the exchanges of fun and chatter
the in session discussions
the walk to the pub in the rain
the fun-in-karaoke ...... but I don't sing!
Then in the intensity of learning in sessions
I use movie slices with small group work in-between.
The feedback is wondrous.
Here I am facilitating the process
and out comes such wisdom.
I find that, with good stimulus, the front line experience turns into an experience of the whole group 'teaching' one another.
Whatever the movie is - it can be culturally transposed into reality of an urban special needs in a hostel.
Just like the 'Good Samaritan' story never dates, a good 'people movie' never dates. As long as you do the transposition.
I am getting better using the wonderful multi-media which the apple mac provides. With help from a 'digital guru' I have learned how to capture some movie clips, edit them into appropriate clips, and bang them out in the form of the mac Keynote which leaves powerpoint in fading black and whiteness.
All that is the means - what really matters is the life changing impact on humans.
I saw humans desiring change today. Making decisions to work differently, and more importantly, 'be' differently.
How special it - to hear a night manager, who often deals with late night aggression from frustrated and directionless young humans, "I will now see young people differently now - I will stop and give time like I have never considered before".
Can you imagine the impact - a new human who starts on the road of loving the unlovely - the so-called unlovely.
hmmmmmmmm I delight as I do with a cold glass of Champagne - what a Champagne lifestyle I lead.
I have a Greenbelt Trustees day tomorrow. After these clicks I need to wade through a mass of papers for the meeting and prep an hour when I will be facilitating our annual delivery into strategic priorities.
Sunday afternoon + we are having beautiful friends around for a Champagne BBQ - and I am ready for it!
Apologies for non email replies - I have 169 in there ............. and they won't get a look in for a few days.
Summary of my learning this week.
Impossible but - I think, more than anything, that this is a reminder that 'we see a persons behaviour but don't see their experience'.
Today - I made sure that the coach driver had the offer of a meal and a sit down with us for a cup of tea.
He turned out to be a qualified lecturer in genetic engineering!
Inside ever human there is a book to be written - wow .....
