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office (847) 866-7879
fax (847) 328-1212
NarrativeTherapy@sbcglobal.net

Workshops and Training

To register online, go to the Online Store.

To register offline, or for further information, complete the Contact Us form, write, call, or fax.

Level I Five-Day Intensive Workshop

With Jill Freedman

September 22 - 26, 2008

Tuition: paid by July 30, $600; after July 30, $675; student rate $500

These small-group intensive workshops are designed to immerse participants in narrative ideas and facilitate experience with narrative practices. The format is interactive, with opportunities to practice the ideas. Videotape and live interviews are used to demonstrate the work. Our focus includes:

  • Thinking in terms of the narrative metaphor

  • Situating problems in larger political and cultural contexts

  • Engaging in conversations that externalize problems

  • Asking questions to generate experience

  • Developing alternative, thickly described life stories

  • Working as a member of a reflecting team/outsider witness group

  • Using documents, letters, and teams to spread the news of preferred developments

Level II Five-Day Intensive Workshop

With Jill Freedman

October 23 - 27, 2008

Tuition: paid by September 1, $650; after September 1, $725; student rate $550
We offer a discount to those who have already taken a Level II workshop!

Limited to 10 people who have completed a level I intensive or year-long training.

This workshop is designed to help people take the next steps in using narrative ideas and practices in their particular contexts. In this 5-day experience, we collaborate with participants in sharing the joys and difficulties of narrative work in a variety of settings. Each participant will have a block of time that we will organize and shape according to his or her own special interests and projects. We imagine that during this week of collaboration we will interview each other; look together at videotapes, transcripts, documents, or other records of our work; and participate in skill-building exercises. We may consider ways to apply narrative practices in participants' particular work contexts.

Each level 2 workshop is a unique experience. Because of the improvisational and collaborative format, we are always extending each other’s narrative skills and understanding. This means that many people have found it valuable to attend more than one level 2 intensive.

Care-Full Conversations: Narrative Practices with Groups and Families

With Yishai Shalif

October 28, 2008

Tuition: paid by September 1, $80; after September 1, $105; student rate $55

In this workshop Yishai will present principles and guidelines for narrative work with groups. He will focus on the following practices:

  • Experience-near listening

  • Creating guidelines for care-full listening and dialogue

  • Telling and re-telling stories

  • Outsider witness group practices

  • Externalizing conversations

He has found these practices very helpful in creating a reflective space that empowers the participants of groups. Using these practices in orderly rounds seems to facilitate not only preferred personal narratives, but also preferred group narratives that support and empower all of the group's participants. Yishai and his colleagues have facilitated this work with professional groups, families that have lost their homes, families that have lost a member by suicide or terrorist activity, work place groups, staff-family meetings, therapeutic groups, supervision groups and multi-cultural groups. He finds working with groups to be both challenging and rewarding.

The workshop will be collaborative and will blend theory and experiential exercises so that people can experience the practices that will be presented.

Yishai Shalif lives in Jerusalem, Israel. He has an M.A. in School psychology and a post graduate diploma in Narrative Therapy from Dulwich Centre in Australia. He is the director of school psychological services in Modiin Ilit Municipality Israel. Together with Rachel Paran he has founded and heads the Qesem Center. He teaches Narrative Therapy, Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogue in Israel, Singapore and Australia. With his colleagues Yishai has presented in Narrative, School psychology and other conferences and has published articles internationally. He also has a private practice working with families, couples, adolescents and children.

Year-Long Training

With Jill Freedman, Gene Combs & Klaus Boettcher

Limited to 12 people.

4 days every other month, 20 days total: [2008 - 2009 dates not set yet. Contact us if you desire more information]

Tuition: before June 15, 2008, $2000; after June 15, $2,250

The training group will meet in four-day blocks (Friday - Monday) approximately every eight weeks. This format offers the advantage of four days of intensive experience followed by time for reflecting, reading, and trying out the ideas between meetings. The small group size insures supervised practice and makes it possible to tailor our program to fit participants' interests and work contexts. Our focus will include:

  • Learning narrative practices and gaining skills through exercises and
    consultation interviews

  • Understanding the theoretical and philosophical positions that support narrative work

  • Appreciating the people we work with as the privileged authors of their own stories

  • Exploring the role of culture, both in problematic stories and in preferred stories

  • Appreciating the importance of communities in which alternative stories can circulate and take on meaning

  • Thinking about ethics as ways of being that we embody rather than as rules we must follow to avoid punishment

  • Focusing on particular problems and applications of the work tailored to the interests and contexts of group members

Completion of the year-long training qualifies participants for alumni events, such as presenter conferences.

2nd Year Training: Live Supervision

With Jill Freedman & Gene Combs

Limited to 6 people who have completed the year-long training

16 days total: September 2007 - July 2008

Tuition: $2000

The second-year training meets one Saturday and Sunday, every other month in a very small group. This is a chance for therapists who are engaged with narrative ideas and practices to have an ongoing team tailored to their specific concerns, interests, difficulties, and growth. During each two-day meeting, each participant will have a block of time devoted to his or her choice of experience and focus. The format can include live or videotaped supervision, exercises designed to work with particular skills, consultation, coaching, and collaboration, and interviews about participants ongoing stories of their development as therapists.

Group and Individual Supervision

We offer both group and individual supervision by personal arrangement. Contact us if you are interested.

Consultation

We offer consultation to individuals and to agencies. This, too, is by individual arrangement.

Housing/Accommodations

Click here for information about where to stay while studying at EFTC