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AT Congress® Berlin 2022

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Event Details

This Workshop-XL has already taken place.

The Experimenters Union: A place to find your unique teaching voice

Are you looking for a rigorous but warm-hearted environment where you can test out your unique teaching ideas and get high-quality, supportive feedback? Do you want to find and clarify your own unique teaching voice?

This workshop, hosted by Clare Maxwell and Eleni Vosniadou, creators of The Experimenters Union, is for you.

We will share our simple yet rigorous formats for teaching and giving feedback; you will bring your courage and your beautiful teaching ideas. Put those two things together, and magic happens.

At least one of the following is necessary for participation:

  • A willingness to learn and explore
  • A teaching idea or experiment for a group or an individual

We will provide the rest!

If you don’t have a teaching idea to share, no worries! Your presence in the “student” role is just as valuable and needed as the “teacher” role, no matter what your level of experience. If no one is ready to step into the “teacher” role at first, we have several different ways to generate teaching ideas on the spot.

Our two simple formats, researched and developed over the course of the last three years, are as follows:

A teaching moment has 3 parts:

1)  Beginning

2) Middle

3) End

Feedback from each individual participant may include, in no particular order:

1)  What did I sense (multi-sensory experience)

2) What did I feel (emotional tone)

3) What did I think (cognitive associations, connections and context) 

Feedback (led by our facilitators) begins from the bottom up, with sensations, emotions, and then thoughts. We call this a non-hierarchical format because no individual is an authority on anything other than their own experience.

The workshop will begin with gently guided open time to arrive and settle into the space together, and end with a quiet moment for integration and rest.

 

About Clare Maxwell and Eleni Vosniadou

Clare Maxwell:

I have been teaching the Alexander Technique for 22 years and studying for over 30, and was active as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer in the experimental dance community in NYC for most of that time. I trained at ACAT/NYC, certified with Jessica Wolf in The Art of Breathing, and am engaged in a life-long study of developmental movement forms. I am the creator of Mobile Body Alignment™, a method of bringing awareness to the self in movement that harmonizes the nervous system, skeleton, and musculature. Mobile Body Alignment™ liberates the practitioner from negative self-consciousness, stiffness, and loss of ease. Inspired by my many years dancing and teaching the Alexander Technique, Mobile Body Alignment™ can be applied to any movement form or activity.

One of my main research interests in The Union is how to get new perspectives on my habitual assumptions, especially concerning the different roles of teaching and learning; a non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer work exchange structure is one way of doing this. I’m also very interested in the plasticity of our body schema, how to practice updating, refining, or changing this self image, and how that kind of practice affects our ability to organize and move ourselves in space.

Eleni Vosniadou:

I have been studying the Alexander Technique since 2006. Growing up in Greece, my first passion was classical music. I came across AT as a percussionist with chronic pain issues related to playing and after recovering through my study of AT I went on to train as an AT teacher in London. In 2012 I became certified as an AT teacher and later moved to Brazil, where I am now happily married. I am the founder and director of Consciência Corporal para Músicos®, an AT learning program for musicians and music teachers, where music makers can go deeper in the study of AT, learning to uncover the freedom and joy in their music making. I am also on the faculty of Total Vocal Freedom, an international program for singers to enhance their music performance skills through the Alexander Technique.

As a member of the Experimenters Union, my primary interest is to explore and research the inner life of the teacher; how common challenges faced by teachers are social issues within the community of education and when it comes to teaching a subject as deep and multifaceted as the Alexander Technique, those challenges can invoke a deeper understanding of AT principles and skills, when addressed without fear and self-judgement. Also, the Experimenters Union is a place where I can freely experiment with crazy teaching ideas and formats and receive a kind of feedback that provides insight different to what I get when receiving feedback from my students.

clare@claremaxwell.com
https://www.experimentersunion.com/

See also: Clare Maxwell and Eleni Vosniadou – Presenter Detail Page

Workshop-XL
Friday, 26 August 2022
10:30 h - 13:00 h (10.30am-1.00pm)
Main Building
Floor: 3.OG (3rd floor)
Room: H 3025

CATEGORIES
Practical Teaching Skills||AT Games||Communication/Verbal Skills

1

WORKSHOP STYLE

Fully Practical

Lecture

OPEN FOR
Teachers||Trainees