Workshops
Workshop sessions involve extensive interaction between presenters and participants around an idea or hands-on experience of a practice. These sessions may also take the form of a crafted panel, staged conversation, dialogue, or debate – all involving substantial interaction with the audience. [45 min. each]
Dancing with the Other: Aesthetic Experience and Ethical Responsibility for Social Change and an Education in a Globalized World
Workshop Presentation Paul Moerman
In this practical dance workshop, modeled on case studies with school children and pre-service teachers, we explore the similar nature of dance and education: as acts of transgression and change, and as efforts to enter into dialogue with the world – John Dewey’s pragmatic as well as Gert Biesta’s post-structuralist view on education. Applying Susan Stinson’s dance teaching method, we explore the basic elements of creative dance: body, space, time and force. No previous experience needed, improvising and composing, we draw on the participants’ imagination of movement and power of initiative, dancing in an educational setting and probing what knowledge, abilities, and attitudes we gain from this. As world-wide conference attendees, we thus explore the possible relevance of an art form such as creative dance in everyday school life, as a mode of aesthetic experiencing, and as a way of building ethically charged relationships facing each other’s otherness, thus attending to issues of democracy and coexistence in an urging global society. We highlight education’s aesthetic, ethical, relational and existential dimensions in a challenging world calling upon us, as teenage learners around the world massively and urgingly do, for dialogue, with the world, materially and socially, for survival.
Emotions in the Classroom: Mind/body Tools to Help Manage Them
Workshop Presentation Suzanne Velasquez Sheehy
This workshop introduces an evidence-based and time and cost-efficient tool designed to help reduce stress and self-regulate emotions that can have a negative impact on both student learning and teacher performance. Participants will learn to apply a technique used to reduce work-related stress and how to introduce the technique to students to help self-manage test anxiety and other academic stressors. As a result of attending this workshop, participants will gain a better understanding of how to neutralize negative emotions and responses that hijack the brain’s ability to focus and concentrate and be empowered to self-manage the daily stress triggers that have a negative impact on performance. Participants will leave the workshop with strategies and resources to support using this technique for personal and classroom use. I will introduce the body’s response to stress triggers and how pre-conditioned responses can be neutralized. Presenter will share research on the effects of academic stress. Participants will learn about the origins of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and uses for EFT in academic settings. Presenter will demonstrate the technique and participants will apply EFT on a personal stressor and track results in real time. Participants will share their experience with a partner. Participants will break out in groups and discuss their thoughts and questions about introducing EFT in their school communities. Conclusion and Discussion: Presenter will share personal experiences using EFT with staff and students. Presenter will provide resources to support implementing the technique in the classroom.
