Loveland, CO Sept. 2019

Hello my friends,

We have just completed another successful Train-the-Trainer Co-Facilitated VMC 3-Day DCFacilitators Playshop.

What a wonderful weekend we had with the 36 people who attended our Playshop in Loveland Colorado. With people from Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, and from all over Colorado, you could say this was our Western US Playshop. The Playshop Demographics, below, demonstrates that we had all of the “The Usual Suspects.”

The participants of this training were bright, intelligent, and pushed the Playshop, and us teachers, forward as much as we were pushing them toward the goal of learning how to do all sorts of Rhythm Care.

Nancy Brauhn-Curnes, John Hayden, and I, were the VMC Playshop trainers. Allen Bruni joined us from Los Angeles and became a supportive part of the teaching team as well. He did a lot of floating, one-on-one support and mentoring with the students.

With a 3 member teaching team for this playshop, it lightened our individual teaching responsibility and increased our ability to critique and toss around new ideas.

This is the first triad co-facilitation team-teaching program that we have had in the States, with more than just one other teacher and me, and it worked well.

Thanks to Nancy for putting together and co-teaching this event, and to John for flying down from Seattle to help us out as equal member of our teaching team.

Nancy acquired the City Park Band Shell for our usual closing community drum circle. The Band Shell stage was large enough to hold four concentric circles of chairs, and big enough to accommodate 200 players. And that’s how many people showed up for the event. They came from the ten cities that stretches along the Rocky Mountain’s “Front Range” from the south end of Colorado to the north end.

We all had a an amazing event. Although we planned for a one and a half hour drum circle, there were so many die-hard players who stayed and played to the end, that we all played for an extra half hour.

I loved this minajatwa style of co-teaching and I’m looking forward to the triad teaching team that will be facilitating the DCFacilitators Playshop next week in San Francisco area with Jeni Swerdlow, John Hayden, (again) and myself.

I will also do another triad Co-facilitation TTT Playshop with Kati Gaughan and Mike Deaton in Fredericksburg VA, Oct 4-6.

Here is the promised list of the usual suspects.

DEMOGRAPHICS

8 School Teachers

6 Music Teachers

4 Drum Teachers

2 Music Therapist

5 Elderly related Professionals

2 Adults At Risk Professionals

9 Kids at Risk Professionals

15 Special Needs Professionals

8 Corporate Facilitators

1 Psychotherapist

5 Infant-Toddler Facilitators

4 Medical related, Doctors, Nurses and Health care Professionals

10 School Rhythm Event Facilitators

11 Community Drum Circles Facilitators

13 Drum Makers

5 Professional Musicians

4 Culturally specific drummers

All Recreational Drummers

17 People Connected to nonprofit organizationst

Life is a Dance...

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