The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland

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Course Description

Groups, Teams and Small Systems Training Program (GTSS)

EXPIRED

October 22, 2009 - June 19, 2010

Program Schedule:
Session I: October 22-25, 2009
Session II: January 7-10, 2010
Session III: April 15-18, 2010
Session IV: June 16-19, 2010**

Please note the program meeting times are 8:30 am - 6:30 pm on Thursday - Saturday, with a 1pm ending time on Sundays.

**The last session runs from Wednesday - Saturday

Overview

This program is an opportunity to deepen and enrich our capacity to work and be in groups, teams and small systems in multiple roles: consultant/coach, facilitator, leader and member. We seek and welcome a diversity of participants working in a wide range of group contexts. We will use our diversity and variety to more fully explore the power of context and the embedded nature of our experience in groups. Our goal is to support each one of us to transform into our next level of competence so as to be better able to support groups to evolve into theirs, in service of making the world a better place.

The learning design will be primarily experiential. We will attend to:

  • growing our understanding of group process in a range of contexts
  • skills for intervening at multiple levels of system
  • facilitating conditions that support a group's overall development and its ability to manage the complexities inherent in group life
  • enhancing our ability to understand our impact and to support both our strategic intention and emergent group figures

Simultaneously we will address:

  • staying present with group process when it is most challenging
  • building greater courage and resilience when we experience our own uncertainty and vulnerability
  • identifying our developmental challenges and growing edges, both as practitioners and as members of groups in our lives
  • deepening our Gestalt understanding of human development
  • how people and groups develop and thrive
  • what the skills and capabilities are that support development at both individual and group levels of system
  • what it means to get beyond individual needs to a greater sense of collective aspiration and striving

What Participants Can Expect

In addition to directly experiencing group and small system phenomena as members of groups built into our structure as a learning community, there will be opportunity to practice consulting to and facilitating groups in a broad array of formats:

  • practice groups created within the program
  • cross consultation between program groups (group-on-group practice)
  • enactments of actual groups that participants are dealing with in their lives
  • intact and zero-history groups that volunteer to join us from outside the program
  • application of skills and learning to back-home groups between program sessions

Mutual learning and self-discovery will be supported by:

  • exploration of Gestalt theory and ways in which this theoretical base is evolving and being influenced by other perspectives
  • occasions for practice and new understanding about groups arising from our own process in building a learning community (an available example of a small-system)
  • the chance to explore one's own personal and professional development, especially as this relates to the challenges presented by working and living in groups
  • opportunity to share aspects of one's own thinking and practice with the rest of the program community and to hear from others

Who Should Attend and What Makes This an Advanced Program

The program is designed for people interested in expanding their repertoires and deepening their capacities to support groups and to navigate in complex fields while in multiple and often fluid roles. We seek and welcome a diversity of participants working in the widest possible range of group contexts--therapy groups, personal development groups, support groups, spiritual groups, boards, ongoing work teams, and temporary task forces, civic and political groups, and small organizational systems just to name some of the more familiar ones.

Acquaintance with Gestalt theory and method will be useful. People with substantial background in working with groups who are well grounded in other approaches and have a strong interest in how a Gestalt perspective might enrich their own are also welcome to apply. It is important to know that development of the practitioner across physical, emotional, mental, ethical, and spiritual dimensions is core to the Gestalt perspective and is as important as the acquisition of new skills, theories and models. Attention to our own development will be an important part of the program.

The faculty for this program is a newly assembled one. It reflects experience across many kinds of groups and small systems. If also contains a range of orientations to Gestalt theory and appreciation of other perspectives and contemporary currents in Gestalt thought that have potential to enrich our practice. We will experiment with bringing multiple lenses to bear on our practice as it has evolved in the Gestalt tradition and to raise questions about how our theory and our practice inform each other. We propose to think afresh about our work and to extend our collective understanding in new ways.

Register online here or request an application from Registrar@gestaltcleveland.org, or call Ele at 216-421-0468.

For more information please contact:
Bob Kolodny rk@kolodnyassoc.com or
Jacquie McLemore jmclemore@gestaltcleveland.net

Fees

Application (nonrefundable) - $150
Tuition - $3,400

Continuing Education: 112 instruction hours

Faculty

Chairpersons

Robert Kolodny, PhD Bio.
Jacquie McLemore, PhD Bio.

Faculty

Elizabeth Bach-Van Valkenburgh, LISW Bio
Cathe Carlson, MEd Bio
Karen Fleming, PhD Bio
Mary Ann Kraus, PsyD Bio
Peter Krembs, MA Bio