Tag Archive for: professional development

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Te Kura Hōtoke – Winter school 2023

 

Have you enrolled for the 2023 Mantle of the Expert Winter School yet? Last year’s participants described the experience as,

‘powerful, eye-opening learning’ …. ‘wonderful and inspiring’ … ‘Exciting and heartening’ … with ‘a strong sense of passion, perspective and purpose.’

This year’s event will be all of those things again. Indeed it will be extra special with three levels on offer: Foundations, Effective Teaching, and Advanced Practice. Whether you’re an absolute beginner to Mantle of the Expert, or an experienced practitioner andWinter School returnee there’s something for everyone. We’re particularly excited to welcome UK-based Tim Taylor to join us as part of the teaching team. Tim is author of Beginner’s Guide to Mantle of the Expert and a long-standing mentor to many in the Dramatic Inquiry community around the world. Tim will be teaching alongside myself and Whakarongo Tauranga. Whakarongo is well known to many in Aotearoa as co-chair Māori of the Dramatic Inquiry Network Aotearoa Trust and an experienced classroom practitioner. We’d love you to join us!

 

For full details about the event (which is being held at Knighton Normal School in Hamilton from 10-12 July) see the flyer below, then click here to register! 

The cost is very reasonable thanks to support from NEX funding from the Ministry of Education. The fee for two days + introduction / welcome evening is only $120 plus GST. That includes catering and resources.

Winter School is always such a highlight – I love how it provides a bright spot of connection and professional reinvigoration during those colder winter months. This year Tim and I are extending the fun with a road trip of workshops to promote our new book Try This.  More about that in another post …

Hope to see you in July

 

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Try This – New Dramatic Inquiry resource for teachers!

Try This – New Dramatic Inquiry resource for teachers

I’m proud and excited to tell you about a new book I’ve just finished writing with Tim Taylor. Try This … is published by Singular Publishing UK. It has fabulous illustrations by Virginia Warbrick and expert input on local history from Warren Warbrick and Virginia Warbrick: THEN – histories of Pāmutana.

Put simply, Try This … is a set of forty flexible sequences, or ‘keys’ that can be adapted for lots of different contexts. It’s a really practical handbook. For those new to Dramatic Inquiry it’s a gentle introduction. For those with more experience, it provides ways to refresh and deepen your practice.

We asked teachers from all round the world to trial the keys in Try This … See the end of this post to read some of their feedback. Colleagues in Aotearoa have found the keys especially helpful when planning to meet the requirements of the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum.

Each key in Try This … is illustrated with two examples – one from the UK and one from Aotearoa New Zealand. You can use these as a guide and adapt to your own content. With tips on planning and emotional and cultural safety, you’ll have all you need to create hundreds of hours of quality planning using Dramatic Inquiry in your classroom.

Try This … is currently with the printers and will be available for purchase in just a few weeks’ time – watch this space! Tim and I will officially launch it during a North Island workshop tour in July (more about that in a separate post). We’re also developing a dedicated website featuring support material, videos, and a space for teachers to share planning ideas www.trythisbook.org.

Email learningwithimagination@gmail.com for a free sample key to trial in your classroom, or pre-order your copy of Try This …

What teachers are saying about Try This – New Dramatic Inquiry resource for Teachers
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Maker day workshops

Now we’re finally coming out Covid restrictions, it’s great to be experiencing face-to-face workshops again. There’s nothing like the buzz of spending time with colleagues at a really practical, fun workshop, and knowing you’ll go away with new ideas and inspiration for teaching.

The 2022 series of four Maker Day workshops from the DI Aotearoa Network (July – Sept) is going to be something rather special.

The presenters are experienced kaiako who use process drama, drama for learning, Mantle of the Expert and play regularly in their practice. And not only are the workshops face to face, they are also run over a full day, with time and materials provided so you can craft the planning and resources you need to teach back in your own setting. You’ll have a creative, hands-on day and you’ll leave with what you need to implement what you’ve learned straight away.

Full promotion materials are still in development. These will be out on the DI website and Facebook Page next week, but here’s a sneak preview including a link to the enrolment form. Cost is just $50 + GST (subsidised by Networks of Expertise funding from the Ministry of Education)

Maker day workshops are being held in a range of locations across Te Ika a Māui: 22nd July (Whangārei), 30th July (Kirikiriroa), 20th August (Whanganui-a-tara) and 10th September (Kirikiriroa).

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Exploring local history through DI

A moment from the workshop (photo by Vivien Smith)

I really enjoyed co-presenting with Claire Edwards at the Puketāpapa Kahui Ako gathering at Dominion Road school in Auckland recently. The focus of the day was on the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum, and Claire and I took the opportunity to model how frame distance could be used to explore a story from local history from a range of perspectives.

Our starting point was a newspaper account of a dramatic event that happened just down the road from the school in 1872. By the end of the half-day workshop everyone was really engaged with the content … so much so, we hardly had time to discuss the way we’d used DI to teach it!

I wrote up the planning for the workshop in detail, with an explanation of each step for participants. And I thought other teachers might be interested too. Hope you find it useful … You could teach the plan as is (the story of the Cyrus Hayley affair is absolutely fascinating as a window into New Zealand society at the time). Or you could adapt the steps to explore a story from your own locality. I hope you’ll leave a comment, or get in touch to let me know what you create.

One thing to notice is how the planning deliberately avoids inviting participants to step into the shoes of historical characters. Strategies and conventions like “hotseating” and “teacher in role” may not be appropriate where real historical figures are involved. Instead, we can use frame distance to take roles as people with different viewpoints on the event. This allows us to explore the way different perspectives on an historic event change the way it is perceived. I’m encouraging all the teachers I work with to consider frame distance when teaching local histories. More on this in future posts…

Please note the curriculum links at the start of the document, including the comments about the importance of mana whenua engagement.

Thanks to Claire Edwards for finding the amazing source material about Cyrus Haley and for co-planning and co-presenting – it was great for the teachers to hear from a colleague about the impact DI has had in your school. Thanks also to Vivien Smith for taking video and photo record of the workshop, to Cat Rowlings for coming across town to attend, to participants for choosing the workshop from so many others they could have selected, and to Mike O’Reilly for his invitation to be part of the day.

As with all planning offered freely on this site, these resources belong to the original authors and are not to be on-sold for profit nor distributed in any other form.

Auckland-Kahui-Ako-workshop-2022-VA-and-CEDownload
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Online training event by mantleoftheexpert.com UK

If you subscribe to the UK Mantle of the Expert website, you will have received information about an online training event coming up on 21st November 2020.

Looks like an exciting opportunity. Of course the time difference means it will run in the middle-of-the-night NZ time, but given how many NZ teachers attended the recent ‘Commission model’ talk at 5am, that may not be too much of an issue!

For further information including cost, check out the link below

Mantle of the Expert Online Training Event
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An introduction to the Commission Model

I know a number of teachers in NZ have an interest in Heathcote’s “Commission Model” so I’m reposting this from the UK Mantle of the Expert website about a free event hosted by London Drama coming up next week (Wednesday 30th September) Dorothy Heathcote’s Commission Model of teaching: a discussion led by David Allen. The discussion starts very early NZ time (5am!) but it is free of charge. I’m going to attend (probably in my PJs) as it sounds very interesting… If you want to join me, the enrolment page is here

*UPDATE – A FOLDER OF RESOURCES RELATED TO THIS EVENT – INCLUDING A RECORDING OF THE ZOOM SESSION – CAN BE ACCESSED HERE [Thanks to London Drama for making this available]

About this Event

Dorothy Heathcote stated: “I have a dream that has not yet been realized; I would like students, not to learn what their teachers teach them, but to be people who solve problems in the outside world that their teachers bring to them. … This is actually a radical way of learning. I want students to be citizens of the world. The Commission Model brings Mantle of the Expert to the real world.”

The Commission Model may seem, in fact, to be a logical development from Mantle of the Expert. After all, in Mantle, a fictional client is introduced, with a fictional commission. In the Commission Model, there is a real client, and a real commission. But lots of implications follow from this. For one thing: if it is all real, where is the drama?

Dorothy insisted, in fact, that is a drama mode. This may seem paradoxical. The system works, however, through drama “episodes,” and utilises Dorothy’s “conventions” for dramatic action.

The Commission Model occupies, then, a grey area between real and fiction. This is what makes it so interesting, important and revealing in terms of Dorothy’s work as a whole.

This session will be led by David Allen (Midland Actors Theatre). David is currently leading an Erasmus Plus project on the Commission Model, with partners across Europe. The session will introduce participants to the system; provide examples of the system in practice; and highlight some of the practical drama strategies which the system employs.

Information on the Erasmus+ project can be found on the website www.mantlenetwork.com; and the Facebook group, www.facebook.com/groups/commissionmodel.

David Allen is Artistic Director of Midland Actors Theatre. He undertakes regular schools projects with a particular focus on drama and history. He has been team leader on three Erasmus+ Plus KA201 projects, looking at innovation in education: “Mantle of the Expert”; “Breaking Down Barriers” and “The Commission Model.” He has published numerous articles and books on drama including ‘Performing Chekhov’and ‘Stanislavksi for Beginners’.

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Waikato Cluster meeting on Thursday and conference not far behind!

Greetings! A friendly reminder of two things: Thursday 11th April is our next cluster meeting – 4.30 pm at Hillcrest Normal School. All most welcome… The focus will be on use of Heathcote’s role conventions…. Also a reminder that if you have not already done so, now is the time to get your registration in for Te Kore – the Drama NZ national conference, 26-28 April at University of Waikato. The conference is three days of fantastic presentations and workshops on drama including a number specifically related to Mantle of the Expert. Process drama expert Pam Bowell is one of the keynotes. It’s a great opportunity and very reasonably priced – with special deals for students and day registrations also available  Click here to download registration form

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Mantle Masters summer school brought forward

Quite a few people have inquired when the next Masters summer school in Mantle of the Expert will be offered at Waikato University, and the reply has always been “2015”. However, there has been a change of plan and ALED 515 will now be offered this NEXT summer. Exact details are still being finalised but if you are someone who has been holding out to do this course in Hamilton, then put these dates in your diary for 2014. Oncampus intensive 20-24 Jan, online 3-13 Feb, followup weekend 15-16 Feb.  Will keep you posted…

 

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$500 available to help teachers attend Drama NZ conference

Did you know that Drama NZ is offering two $500 scholarships to support teachers to attend conference this year? One scholarship is for a beginning teacher, the other is for a teacher from a rural school. The $500 will go a long way towards covering fees and accommodation.  Interested? Check out the drama NZ website for more information or email  dnzconference2013@gmail.com

Te Kore – Drama NZ’s national conference for 2013 will be held at Waikato University 26-28 April. The conference suits primary, intermediate and secondary teachers and a number of presentations and workshops will be specifically devoted to Mantle of the Expert.

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Mantle of the Expert course in January

A final reminder that enrolments for ALED 515, the University of Waikato’s postgraduate paper in Mantle of the Expert will be closing soon.

This year the paper will be taught through a combination of oncampus classes (16th to 20th January, Windermere Campus, Tauranga) and follow up work online (concluding end of term one).

The paper offers a combination of practical experience, theory and assistance with planning for your own classroom. Past students have included primary, secondary and community educators. The course has been a fantastic experience in the past and looks like shaping up to be a great group this year too…. Further information is on the attached flier.

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