Sorry for the lack of blaaawgifying the past couple of days, I was in a Bob Pike Bootcamp for work the last two days, and was totally wiped by the time I got back home.

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.