The Program:

EASEL®Facilitator program helps you re-calibrate your Social Emotional Skills to better match the demands of your work and adds to your professional toolbox an evidence-based facilitation method for experiential social emotional learning or therapy (depending on your own background education). During the training you create your personal model of EASEL by integrating it into your own professional background and theoretical framework, work context, and personal interests.

EASEL Facilitator – Program is a year-long course comprising of 18 contact days divided into several workshops. They are filled with discussions, theory and psychoeducation, experiential exercises, and individual coaching. You experience EASEL first as a client, then the focus is switched to your work. Part of the required reading material you pick out to suit your specific learning needs. During the second half you spend several months taking what you have learned to work and write a report which is also the course exam. The final workshop is about a year after starting the course, and is a chance to share with the rest of the group what you have learned and how you have integrated it into your own work.

General outline of the year long program:
1. Four days : The first workshop gives you an overview of the EASEL® – model, theory, processes and tools, and how they feel. You experience EASEL as a client starting from the first steps of psy-cho-education and experiential activities and get an idea of how you can use EASEL in your own work.
2. Four days : You will deepen your self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and your ability to feel and understand messages behind emotions and other people’s reactions through the-ory, psychoeducational tools and experiential activities.
3. Four days : You will deepen your social awareness and social skills, and how to assess dynamics in interactions through theory and group activities. You will learn about stress and how to build psy-chological safety into teams and facilitate groups. If you want to work with horses or dogs, in this workshop you will learn how to select, train and care for your EASEL-horses and/dogs. To certify, you need to practice and make a video of you with one own horse/dog through certain activities. EASEL has been designed to be equally effective with or without animal assisted work, but social emotional learning with EASEL – horses and dogs does offer powerful learning experiences, joy and help in staying in the window of tolerance when addressing difficult topics. A video about EASEL and Friendship-based horsemanship can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SxG4xOflI0 It will also give you an idea of what experienced and “talkative” EASEL horses are like.
4. Four days : deepens your knowledge of the theoretical background, facilitation methods and principles, ethics, and process descriptions of programs for various client groups.

Working with own clients and writing the course paper, personal coaching via Skype.

5. Two days : presentations of the course papers and graduation party.

EASEL’s fundamental question is “who am I and what happens when I interact with others?” Social emotional skills are in the core of being human. In our training you create your personal models of EASEL® by integrating it into your own professional background and theoretical framework, work, and personal interests. Every EASEL Facilitator makes EASEL his or her own but all models are recognizable as EASEL from certain elements, processes, tools and principles.

Course fee 5000€ is charged in 1-10 monthly payments, the first nonrefundable part paid to reserve place. 5% discount if the full fee is paid before course begins. The fee includes training, materials (not books), daily lunch and snack & tea/coffee, 2 × 90 minutes individual coaching via Skype, graduation dinner and certificate.

Location : Courses ordered for a specific team can be arranged at a suitable location anywhere in the world. Our own training facility is at Savikko Farm, Luolaistentie 201, FIN 03430, Finland (www.savikontila.fi) An hour’s drive from Helsinki International Airport, Helsinki city (ferry terminal), and 2 hours from Turku (ferry terminal). Assistance in selecting suitable accommodation will be given on request.

If you are interested in the training, please, email us your CV and a letter explaining why you would like to become EASEL®Facilitator and how you think you could integrate it into your work with people (and animals).

Program director Mari Louhi-Lehtio
mari(at)easeltraining.fi

PS.

Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention builds new neural highways in the brain (learning, changing). Old “roads” can be modified at any age, but it requires mindful attention. The “Executive Brain”, necessary for learning, creative thinking and change, turns on when we encounter surprising challenges in a safe enough environment. EASEL’s experiential activities aim to switch on the clients’ executive brain. Getting a sailboat around an island or activities with safe and “talkative” EASEL – horses and dogs are sure to switch-on everyone’s brain in a memorable way but there are many other ways, too. In experiential learning the greatest adventure happens in own mind.

EASEL’s experiential activities are always authentic and valid. Our clients don’t build towers out of balloons for the sake of team building but could do it to study becoming irritated by a stupid task and how it influences the whole team. EASEL’s psychoeducational tools are experiential when applied to self. We can learn Math, fix a bike, play a boardgame, coach a colleague, paint, go for a walk, chair a meeting and so on. The point is how it is facilitated, what happens, how does it feel, what do you learn and what will you take along to your everyday life. So, instead of teaching Math in one lesson and SEL in another, EASEL – trained teachers help children strengthen their social emotional skills while studying Math! The key is HOW they teach and facilitate the learning of Math. The facilitation method, psycho-educative tools, and the experiential activities make it possible to have individual facilitation also in a group and to tailor the facilitation according to each client’s personal needs and goals.