Foster Care Training

Storytelling is the individual life-tapestry and the unfolding of the collective narration of a people. In this training, the participant will learn the power and benefit of storytelling from historic and multi-cultural perspectives. S/he will begin to appreciate that everyone has an individual and/or socio-historic story to tell, and when shared, those worldviews and associated behavioural choices make perfect sense. The participant will engage in a series of writing and sharing activities aimed at illumining truth and eliciting compassion. The participant will become skilled at seeing storytelling as an aspect of the creative and alternative healing modalities with particular application to work with traumatized children with preverbal and/or deeply rooted injuries, and chronic trauma experiences. The participant will learn the place of storytelling in oral societies and connections to modern day youth cultures of spoken word, and how to use the formats of self-expression and disclosure for the deconstruction of violence and self-sabotage. Additionally, the participant will gain knowledge of storytelling for the illumination, magnification and promotion of truth and justice for the integrity of self and society, and the development of ethical character therein.

Learning Objectives:

1. The participant will be able to articulate the function of storytelling in multi-cultural settings
2. The participant will experience scaffolding writing activities and diverse responses
3. The participant will see and analyze youth spoken word for deeper meanings
4. The participant will experience shared writing activities and analyze results
5. The participant will practice using timeline to storyboard life experience