Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

B. Critique of the brainstorm session– (10 minutes)Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 20032:10-2:40 Discussion on Training Techniques: Ice Breakers, Brainstorm Sessions,Discussions, Role-plays, Exercises, Critiques and PresentationsA. Student-centered approach to trainingSome things in our curriculum will be familiar to you, but the emphasis and themanner of presentation may be new to you. Please keep an open mind.For instance, you may be unfamiliar with student-centered training that emphasizesskill development and experiential learning instead of just lecturing and listening. Thetraining is skill-based because advocates and leaders will end up working on manydifferent issues in their communities and we could not possibly teach on all thepossible issues. Yet, the skills that the leaders and advocates end up using will besimilar for whatever issue the leaders choose to work on after the training.There are many different training techniques employed in this training. You will beusing many of these over the next couple of days and when you conduct your owntrainings next later on. Please review the following training techniques with thegroup:• Experiencing vs. lecture—Doing is a better way to learn than just listening.There are many exercises throughout the course. Ask the group what theythought of having a short talk on negotiation and then actually doing anegotiation instead of merely having a lecture on how to negotiate.• Advantages of small group work—Small groups are used often in thecurriculum, even though they require more trainers. We think it’s worth itwhenever possible.• Presentations and lectures —Why not do more lectures with moresubstance? Because issues may change—labor issues, housing issues,immigration issues—but the skills required to successfully address thoseissues don’t change.• Icebreakers—Why start today’s training with an icebreaker exercise?Discuss the usefulness of icebreakers generally and especially in regard tohow they help build trust. Ask the participants what they thought abouttoday’s icebreaker exercise.• Role-playing—Role-plays give the participants examples of good and badways to do certain things and help spur discussion on important topics.• Hypothetical examples—Use hypothetical issues, problems and solutionsfor teaching.• Discussion questions—These get more participants involved in thinkingabout the topic. After all, ten brains giving input is always better than justone.The various training techniques are incorporated in the following system:12-11