Oasis of Peace UK E-Notice Board: Teachers CPD

7 Apr 2009

Day Workshop for Teachers & Education Profs. Brighton 24/4- Conflict- Mediation-Community Cohesion-Global Ed.

British Friends of Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al Salam is a genuine UK registered
charity that provides training for teachers amongst others.
Please forward to Head of RE, Head of History, and headteacher!
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Forthcoming Workshops
24/04 Brighton

I am writing to you about a unique opportunity for teachers to take part in our workshop on 24th of April 2009 in Brighton. We offer the only resource that properly addresses the Israeli / Palestinian conflict and at the same time offers conflict resolution skills to teachers and students alike. You may have heard about us before, but since then we have been praised by a variety of bodies. As such we have only last month been recommended by TES "Peace Teachings on Gaza", and the NUT International team, who carried out research on resources regarding conflict in the Middle East.

Daniel Zylbersztajn
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Event Description

Encounter in Conflict (SfP - Wahat al-Salam ~ Neve Shalom)

A one day workshop introducing the method of encounter used in the School for Peace (SfP) in Wahat al-Salam ~ Neve Shalom (between Palestinians and Jews), as well as practically proposing unique suggestions for your own teaching here in Britain.

For attending teachers and youth workers our fully approved British education resource, "Dealing With Conflict" will be provided, which was featured in The Times Educational Supplement (TES 1990, and Feb. 2009), R.E. Today (summer 2008), and is recommended by a variety of professional bodies like DEA (Global Dimensions), DFES (for R.E.) and NUT (Teaching the Conflict in the Middle East Feb. 09).

This is a most rewarding one day injection of thought for anyone working with groups that are unbalanced and sometimes in conflict. It will give you practical skills that can be applied in a variety of learning environments. To your own students in class it will allow thinking through questions of complex identity, gives comprehension that one event may have different versions of experience and interpretation, it gives them conflict resolution and mediation skills, and a wider global outlook.
Our Teaching resource pack is line with the National School Curriculum Guidelines in keystage 3-5 in the following subject fields:

Citizenship Art
RE Geography
History Literature

Amongst others the education pack includes the only bi-national chronology in English of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict for UK school use, composed in meetings. The pack gives the general Jewish perspective on one side, and the general Palestinian on the other, which teaches students straight away that there are more than one version to each story.

Concepts could be used to fulfil schools obligations in:

Community Cohesion Mediation Skills
Interfaith Global Citizenship

The course will include:

1. Introduction to the method of the School for Peace in Palestinian / Jewish encounter. These include work with unbalances of power-relations between the participants in dialogue, based on post-colonial and psychological model theories as well as questions regarding the interpersonal and the inter group conflict.

2. Thinking behind the concepts disconnected from the Middle East as to what this could mean for your work here.

3. Examples and grasping of concepts from the teaching resource through physical role play.

4. Introduction to the Teaching Resource Dealing with Conflict and highlighting of its strengths.

5. Lesson planning for teachers using Dealing With Conflict

5. Networking with wide range of teachers and related professionals.

Your trainers are Susan Denton Brown, a former Head Teacher and current acting director of the Gandhi Foundation and Daniel Zylbersztajn who is amongst others also a trained mediator and studied violence on doctoral level at UCL until recently.

When?
Brighton, Friends House, Ship Street: April 24th 9.30-17.00

Bookings are requested beforehand, and the rate for a one day workshop is only £70 / £50 (concessions) including the full print teaching pack and lunch. This rate is severely reduced due to funding from an outside body, the normal costs would be in teh region of 300 Pounds.

More details: here (http://www.oasisofpeaceuk.org/5-dwc-01.htm)

and http://sfpeace.org/

Last not least the resource can also be acquired outside the workshop, on its own.

For more details get in contact without hesitation

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16 Feb 2009

CPD for Teachers

February 2009

For immediate Release:

Teachers and Schools offered Dealing with Conflict Programme

We are looking for schools and teachers to work with!

Our teaching pack is suited for Citizenship Education, Community Cohesion, RE, History, English
and Geography.

We offer a number of options of training

a.) two-three hour seminar for teachers on location (e.g. 16.00-18.00) explaining how to use the pack creatively.
b.) a training day for individual teachers on the 9th of March 2009 in central London 9.30-17.00 (with teachers from other schools)
c.) direct work with your young children with our trainer
d.) bespoke special training (for example a series of two shorter workshops)

Details: Our teaching resource is ideal to help students to learn and think about conflict.

The pack has been especially designed for the use in Citizenship Education, RE, History, Geography, and English. Dealing with Conflict is tied in with all learning outcome requirements of key stage
3, 4 and 5.

It suits extremely well all learning areas of community cohesion, inter-faith, and inter-cultural education, as well as intra-religious, and intra-cultural work.

The pack has been recommended amongst others by DEA for global education, in RE Today, the Citizenship Foundation and recently the Association of Citizenship Education.

The entire resource is built upon the work of one of the most famous conflict resolution centres between Arabs and Jews, the School for Peace (SfP), itself based in a one of a kind peace village that runs by the Hebrew / Arabic double name Wahat-al Salam~Neve Shalom which means Oasis of Peace. For nearly 40 years Jews and Arabs have chosen to live together there, and the SfP has been running encounter workshops for young people across the divide for nearly 30 years. Very unique ways of working with people have evolved there. Detailed information on this can be found in Halabi (2004): Israeli and Palestinian identities in Dialogue. Further the village houses a pioneering modern kindergarten and primary school that teaches children bilingually and with respect to accommodating jointly Jewish Israeli and Palestinian cultural needs. Their methods were later adopted by several other schools in the region.

The details about this special place and the infamous conflict between Jews and Arabs itself, which through the teaching resource can be widely illustrated from most subject perspectives (e.g. in English through adding a literature list), are enriched by detailed teachers guidance points, that include nearly 50 suggested games and activities, some abstract, others specific, and all intended to actually discuss issues that affect young people in the schools and classes where the resource is being used, here in London. Work with it can be selective or the entire pack can be taught as a core module.

Some extracts can be viewed on our website www.oasisofoeaceuk.org (select education).

From the beginning in 1999 (this is the second updated 2006 edition) we wanted our resource to be accompanied by training that allows teachers to pick up on basic mediation skills, creative thinking around the subject, and back-ground details. All workshops are led by Susan Denton Brown, a former Head of Religious Education, who is also a trained conflict facilitator for Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam, and nonviolence trainer for the Gandhi Foundation.

If you think this could be of interest I'd be happy to discuss your favourite option from above with you (seminar on location, training with other teachers, etc...).
Below you will find a list of links that tell you more about Wahat al Salam ~ Neve Shalom, the education resource and the School for Peace.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
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