Children & Focusing Roundtable Series - Helping Children Learn How to Focus: Beyond the Techniques and Exercises

Tuesday, February 22, 2022  2:00-4:00 pm EST (New York - US)

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

Today, more than ever, teaching children to focus is of critical importance in the creation of a world that is less violent and more compassionate. To do so, however, requires more than just consolidating and sequencing different ready-to-use techniques and exercises into some program format. There needs to be an understanding of the context within which children’s learning of Focusing skills can be enhanced.

In this Roundtable, we would like to invite you to explore how using the Experiencing/Awareness Scale as a contextual modality can serve as a program design and delivery template. During our Roundtable, we will review the details of the Experiencing Scale and discuss its applications.

Questions and themes we might explore together are:

• How do we assess a group of children’s readiness to engage in Focusing experiences?
• How might the Experiencing/Awareness Scale influence the selection and sequencing of children’s Focusing interactions?
• What might be the implications of the Experiencing/Awareness Scale for our interactions with individual children?

Other topics and themes may emerge from our mutual exploration during the Roundtable.

Who might be particularly interested in attending this Roundtable?

Anyone working with children in groups or classes.  Folks who might be interacting with children on an individual basis.

CONNECTION>CONVERSATION>COMMUNITY

What to expect from Focusing Roundtables: Each Focusing Roundtable is designed to promote informal peer-to-peer conversation. Rather than acting as expert presenters, the Hosts will serve as conversation moderators to encourage sharing and exploration of the topics from the participants’ own perspectives.  All participants’ sharings are welcome and valuable, no matter what level of experience or knowledge you have on the topic. To preserve the nature of informal conversation, the program will be offered live only and no recordings will be available. Registration is limited and on a first-come, first served basis. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer this series of Focusing Roundtables designed especially for members of the Institute. If you are not a member, please join at http://www.focusing.org/membership, then return to this page to register. This program will afford members a valuable opportunity to engage in casual peer-to-peer conversation with other members who share Focusing-related interests.

About your hosts:

Joe Colletti  M.Ed., M.Div., S.T.M., CFT. Joe has been Focusing for more than 12 years and has been certified as a Focusing Trainer since 2013. Over the years, he has been an advocate for Children’s Focusing in educational settings and developed and maintains the website: https://focusingwithchildren.com/ which is a resource for teachers and educators. He is also assists in the design and maintenance of https://www.childrenfocusing.org/. Joe is also actively involved the BioSpiritual Institute’s Focusing education programs design and delivery and serves on its Board of Directors as well as being the webmaster for its websites: https://biospiritual.org/ and https://bsfcompanioning.com/

Laura Bavalics is an early childhood educator, play mentor, and drama teacher. She is a Certified Focusing Professional and a Focusing-oriented educator, who has been working with young children, parents, and professionals for over twenty-five years. She is a professional director of the Pendula inclusive kindergarten program for children in foster care and with special needs at the Világszép Foundation in Hungary. She is also teaching at ELTE University, Hungary, in their College of Education. Laura is a member of the International Leadership Council and the Children's Focusing Advisory Board.

René Veugelers is a Coordinator specialising in Children’s Focusing, with an emphasis on the non-verbal world, René teaches parents, therapists, teachers and others how to be with children in a Focusing way, how to (re)connect to their own inner child experiences and how to integrate creativity and flexibility into their life and work. His work and experiences as a psychiatric nurse and as an art therapist with children, of any age, embraces an expanded richness of creative elements and supports a natural unfolding of creative process. René lives and works in the Netherlands, where he teaches Children Focusing and specializes in working with children with ADHD, ADD, trauma and attachment disorder.