Old view: Central Expressway (US-75) southbound dominates the view, with a small field, and parking lot (sometimes fun to watch the coppers nab the speeders on the road that parallels the expressway. Beyond that, I can sometimes see the Dallas skyline, and any weather that approaches from the south.

New View: The building next door dominates the view, with Old Glory standing watch. View of the park and water features across the road, and the loop near our office park. Northern view means less sunlight, and if I look off to the left, ad squint I can see the steeple of my church. Lots and lots of water towers too.

But, you might say, didn’t you just get done doing that whole Bob Pike thing.

Uh yuop! you are correct, sir.

The powers that be would like our whole department to be certifiable certified Participant-Centered Facilitators (or some such series of initials), and the pre-requisite requirement for such a certification is to take the Bootcamp, have advanced training, take an assessment and have a classroom facilitation observed and assessed.  I’m doing the steps in a cha-cha-cha fashion, in that the advanced training took place before the bootcamp.

So the last two days were like remedial training for the event that took place two-weeks ago (oh and I took the test already too, scored 90% on it too!)

The training was repetitious for me, but fresh, new and exciting for the other participants, which made it fun for me.  Which is really one of the benefits of a participant-centered (PC) approach.  In a PC classroom, an experienced practitioner of the topic is treated as a resource, instead of a member of the audience.  The acolytes can tap into the experience and knowledge of the more experienced.  It works the other way as well, the vim and vigor of the fresh young faces, refreshes the tired old soldiers into rethinking/reshaping the worn-in pathways of the veteran.

Think about that approach, next time your involved in a class that expects you to sit in your seat and listen, until the time for questions come.  Or wants to by-pass your experiences in order to trot out the speakers talking points.  The PC approach is more than capable of providing a structure for getting those points across, it does so in a manner that honors the participant, and respects his experience.

I’ll have more to share in a few more posts, perhaps giving y’all a way to put participant-centered into your vocabulary, and change the way you share your knowledge with others.

I sure hope it is alergies, rather than some spooky biological warefare agent (aka the common cold). Regardless, I’ll be the one down here snippy and blowing my nose all day.

This is day one of Bob Pike Certification Training for the group I work with, this will be the third or fourth time I’ve done a workshop, and they are always fun and thought provoking. I fear after a while it will become old hat.

For the unitiatied, I’ll leave you with Bob Pike’s Laws of Adult Learning.

• Adults are babies with big bodies.
• People don’t argue with their own data.
• Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have.
• Learning has not taken place until behavior has changed.
• Fu Wu, Wu Yu, Wzu Tu Yu *

* Roughly translated this means: Momma’s having it or Papa’s having it ain’t like baby having it. (or, the best way of knowing you’ve learned something is when you can teach it to others.)

UPDATE: Clartin-D seems to have an effect. and.. CROSSWORD PUZZLE … *ergahd not a simple NYTimes one…but a training jargon one… designed as a learning aid, which is just silly… brilliant.

UPDATE 2: No sneezing since ~9am, so the allergy scenario seems most likey, so call off the Homeland Secuirty dogs…