Marli Williams (USA)
Tips, Tricks & Tools for Creating EPIC Virtual Experiences
How to design & delivery highly interactive and engaging online meetings, lessons and workshop experiences.

John Choi (Canada): Problem Solving: Problem Identification
Ville Turunen (Finland): ART and Outdoor Education: a perfect match

Ola Hall (Sweden) & Shannon Burns (USA): Incorporating Motivational Interviewing into your ART sessions

Bengt Daleflod (Sweden): Adapting ART for girls
Mark Amendola (USA): The Benefits of ART and Trauma-Focused-CBT

Given the virtual reality we are living in right now, and knowing that it’s not going away any time soon, many educators, trainers and facilitators are looking for new innovative ways to bring their content to life, engage their audience and stay motivated and inspired while delivering online experiences. With the expertise of master facilitator, Marli Williams, you will learn how to create and deliver online events that make you stand out from the crowd.

As a result of this training you will learn:

• What makes a virtual experience EPIC, and how to create memorable online trainings.
• New ways to really engage people in an online coaching, meetings, training or workshops.
• Tips to use breakout rooms effectively to create more interaction and connection among participants.
• To bring your full self to facilitating memorable and impactful online experiences.

Adding Fun into Learning Problem Solving

Do the youth you work with get “stuck” and wonder why they can’t get things done? Maybe it is because they are thinking too much….

An integral part of SEL is learning responsible decision making, ie Problem Solving Training. This presentation will discuss ways to help them (and yourself) organize thoughts. Part of how this is done is to teach youth through the use of activities related to the lessons…it can be as simple as throwing a ball against a wall and putting pen, or pencil, to paper.
Join me in a simple, straight forward, yet systematic, way to move forward in all the things needed to be solved or done, by clarifying some thoughts and setting some goals.

Looking forward to sharing time together at the Problem Solving presentation. See you there! Remember to have your ball with you!

In his workshop, Ola will be sharing his thoughts on the importance of good relationship between client and trainer, and how it is connected to motivation and willingness to change.

He will discuss some key elements from Motivational Interviewing and how to incorporate them into your sessions.

Ola will provide you with tools for handling resistance as well as for how to increase the chance of make actual change.

After the presentation, you will understand what to “sow a seed” really means.

Adaptation of ART for girls
How can treatment be better adapted to the specific needs of this group?

Methods and the way in which they are delivered must always be tailored to the target group to which they apply whether it is adults or children, people with neuropsychiatric disorders or autism spectra, developmental disabilities, etc.

During this seminar we will take a closer look at how ART can be adapted to meet the specific needs of females. Several researchers point out the need to develop gender-specific methods that better meet the unique needs in girls. The majority of research is done on boys but there are some studies showing that ART can be used to prevent and reduce aggressiveness and antisocial behavior in girls.

The research reveals pathways and multiple levels of risk factors (biological, psychological, developmental, familial and social) that can lead girls into addiction and crime. Treatment should address problems of various kinds of “victimization” and abuse of different kinds, self-esteem, sexuality, domestic violence, gender roles and socialization.

Treatment should focus on building skills to strengthen and repair relationships, regulate emotions, improve social problem-solving skills, address hostile interpretations, promote positive female development, strengthen the family, and address high-risk behaviors such as sexual activities and addictions. Finally, it is important to recruit appropriate staff who receive adequate training in using effective pedagogical strategies and building relationships.

In Sweden, there are several institutions working with girls and the experience from working with girls and ART is quite good. The method and its pedagogy can be adapted to meet girls’ unique needs. The content and construction of moral dilemmas, social skills and focus in anger-control training are also relatively easy to carry out. We will show you some examples of this.

Aggression Replacement Training and Trauma Focused-CBT are cognitive change models that together are an allied approach to address adverse childhood experiences. Trauma Focused CBT allows children to heal from specific traumas in their lives that have created disruption and interrupted the development of healthy emotional relationships. Aggression Replacement Training is an evidence-based model that teaches competencies and skills to improve impulse control skills. Together the approaches create skill sets that allow for healing and healthy relational development.

ART has a large role in treatment for adolescents with severe violent and non-compliant behaviors. We also have an adventure therapy program in our unit. We have added parts of the adventure program to ART program and vice versa. This has been a successful addition to our treatment plan as participants get the opportunity for transfer of learning in various environments than normally would not happen inside our ward. In my workshop, I will share with you and demonstrate how we have been developing ways to integrate ART into our daily living in the EVA unit over the last sixteen years.