On Wednesday 11th February Gail Ferguson, the Director of NUS-USI, presented certificates to student teachers from St Mary's who participated in Diversity and Mutual Understanding facilitation with their peers from Stranmillis University College. The students attended a residential training course in Corrymeela and following this they were involved in co-facilitating workshops for first and second year students.
Pictured above are Eamonn Walls, Ben Ewing (NUS-USI Diversity Officer), Kelly O'Byrans, Nadine Donnelly, Gail Ferguson (NUS-USI Director), Kiera O'Neill, Marianne Brogan and Laura Haggan.
The facilitation training residential is an annual event which is held in the month of September at Corrymeela. This year members from Community Relations in Schools provided the training and all involved felt it was a very valuable learning experience. Students found the residential training to be challenging but very worthwhile:
"The content really forced us to recognise different cultures and background and helped us understand them."
The facilitation strategies had a direct link to the development of active teaching and learning methods:
"I feel all the content covered was really interesting and all methods of facilitating really useful for future teaching."
Student teachers at the Colleges will be invited to apply for a place on next year's training course in May.
Please view presentation for further information: