Formation Programs 2020

After successfully conducting two leadership formation programs in March, COVID disruptions suddenly brought everything in the formation arena to an immediate halt.  Uncertainty and frantic rescheduling soon gave way to a realisation that travel and gatherings were off the agenda for much of the year.

As a Liberating Education Team, the first priority has been to ensure new staff are catered for via the A Call to Mission program. This led to the development of an on-line interactive process that gave participants the opportunity to access the first half of the course via both mobile and desk top devices.

The Application platform used presents the program as a series of compact sessions made up of actions, including reading short text, watching video clips, listening to commentary, engaging with images, responding to tasks and, of course, taking some quizzes. As this is a program designed to support people learning from one another, opportunities were built into the process to allow participants to reflect on questions or issues and then share their responses into a blog-like space.  While not as relational as face to face contact, this has served to build a sense of a learning community, even if the people participating are physically distanced.

With some re-alignment of content and tasks, an on-line version of the program has also been made available to new and existing members of School Advisory Councils as a means of introducing them to the context of EREA and its work.

Feedback from both groups utilising these new on-line formation tools has been very positive.

During Term 4 staff in schools will complete A Call to Mission by participating in one of a number of day-long Zoom opportunities spread four weeks within October and November.