By Jeanette Romkema and Christine Little Interpreters are crucial partners when facilitating dialogue in multilingual groups. The goal of any training, workshop, presentation or meeting is to build…
A Few New Axioms
You are going to have to walk slowly to keep up with me! is my warning offered to those who dare to go for a walk with me these days. Another new axiom I am living by is Keep your eyes off the clock! Both of these speak to my predilection for “busy," for “productive,"...
10 Tips for Using Guidelines
Using guidelines during a learning or work event can be extremely helpful (and sometimes paramount to a successful session!). Below are a few things to keep in mind for ensuring they are relevant, needed, and meaningful. Use Guidelines for especially difficult groups...
10 Tips for Co-Facilitating
Teaching, training, or facilitating with someone else is very different from doing the same work on your own. Here are some tips to ensure you are successful: Check in with each other in advance. As soon as you know you will be working with each other, get together to...
The Gift of Knowing – Da’at
I learned something this week: Da’at is the Hebrew word for knowing, knowledge that is powerful, participative, productive. Da’at is cognitive, affective, psychomotor knowing: ideas, feelings, actions interwoven and effective towards new...
Naming the Work: Employing Verbs in Facilitation
I collect verbs. Until recently I assumed I was the only eccentric out there, engaged in doing so, but then I was introduced to Darlene Goetzman’s Voracious Verbs cards for facilitators. She, too, collects verbs. The verbs I collect come from...
Manage Your Power in the World – Dialogue Education and Parenting?
Usually we’re talking about workshops or courses or change initiatives when we talk about Dialogue Education, and the fact is, for as much as Dialogue Education is about learning, its roots in Paulo Freire’s theories of “liberation education” mean it’s also about...
What Do You Think Causes Malaria? Asking Questions Appropriately
The other day I had a conversation with an international DE practitioner who really got me thinking. She said: The GLP approach is great -- I believe in dialogue and open questions to make dialogue happen. But, people also need information! Especially in the fields of...
The Value of Design: A Student and Instructor Reflect on Why It Matters
“The design bears the burden.” This is one of our favorite axioms of Jane Vella’s. Our experience with this truth came through a college graduate course entitled “Teaching for Transformation.” Before the class began, we realized we had a major problem with the WHEN....
10 Axioms for Learning Design (and just what IS an axiom, anyway?)
If you’ve been kicking around Dialogue Education circles long enough you’ll have heard a bunch of axioms bandied about. You might have read Dr. Jane Vella’s A Few New Axioms, about the new truths that have become apparent to her during her retirement years, or seen...
What Good Are Warm Ups?
When I was in 9th grade I attended an encounter group weekend designed to get us teenagers more comfortable with ourselves. The first thing we did was a “warm-up” exercise so we could “get to know each other.” What did we do? We stood in a circle and passed an orange...
The Surprising Truth About Moving Others: An Interview with Author Dan Pink
Recently, bestselling author Daniel H. Pink took some time out of his wildly crazy schedule to answer GLP's burning questions about his compelling new book To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others. Why should you care about sales? You'd be surprised...