The Teen Talking Circle Facilitator Training Basic Intensive:

Imagine you had a safe space -- a confidential, intimate space where you felt free to be your authentic self with people who accepted you as you are, where differences were celebrated within a context of shared core values. A space where everyone was willing to be responsibly honest, and work through relationship issues as they come up – a space where you felt free of unnecessary fear, free of judgment, criticism or rejection --where you didn’t need to hide behind a false front, a "tough guise," or mask -- a space so quiet you could hear your own voice and your own inner wisdom. Now imagine you are sixteen years old and have a space like this. How would it have changed your life? How might it change our world? 

A Teen Talking Circle is a rare and precious resource and a gift for everyone involved. It merges an ancient way of holding forums with a 21st Century intention for conscious communication, conflict resolution, understanding, and connection. Most youth who are in talking circles tell us they wait all week for theirs; it is the one place they feel they can truly be themselves. Being a facilitator of Circle requires time, passion, and commitment but above all it means being willing to do one's own work. The TTC Facilitator Training gives adults an opportunity to learn what this means, see where they're at in the process and know if they are ready to take it on. Once you start facilitating, it's hard to stop! But regardless whether you end up starting a circle or not, this is an experience that will give you many life enhancing tools you can use in your personal life, your relationships, and whatever work you do in the world. 

The Training is a profoundly experiential workshop that will prepare you to start, lead, and run a teen circle byfeeling what it's like, and doing the processes you'll eventually teach. Our experienced trainers, including youth presently doing circle, will share with you what we have honed over the past fifteen years in circle. You'll learn the deep practice of Compassionate Listening(SM), one of the most important peace-making skills we've found, as well as how to facilitate Heart 2 Heart processes to renew and repair relationships, and Inappropriate Rants to let off steam! 

You'll learn the nuts and bolts of running circle from planning where best to have it to inviting youth to attend. You'll learn the ethical and legal responsibilities associated with doing Circle from connecting with parents to having professional backup. We'll share with you our way to create safe space, sacred space, share agreements, intentions, and use of a talking piece. You'll experience how we break-the-ice, lead topic-centric meetings, lead check-ins and check-outs.  You'll learn exercises and processes that will help you help young people to strengthen their relationship to their essential self, their core essence, their hearts, as well as to honor that in others and create bridges between our common humanity. Special guests are often part of our training and present their work on myriad topics we feel are critical to your education as a facilitator. Combined with our Facilitator's Handbook and documentary DVD you'll be ready to roll once you decide you're ready to start a circle.

The Training is limited to thirteen people, including the co-facilitators, and is held in the comfort and warmth of a private home. This relaxed setting in a rural, forested setting, near a state park and beach, allows for plenty of physical exercise and opportunities to be in nature. There's space for yoga, meditation, walks, and time to relax and absorb all you'll learn and experience. You'll be served delicious, healthy, home-cooked meals, made with love and as organic, locally grown food as possible, (with vegan options). 

Eckhart Tolle talks about the value of being able to sit alone quietly with oneself and listen into consciousness as it awakens us to our purpose and potential. In our Training we find that this same quality of being with each other and listening into what is wanting to be manifested or simply heard is amplified through the compassion and focused attention of each member of the circle. The beauty of this is that it stimulating the emergence not only of collective wisdom and new ideas, but more importantly unfolds a future of new possibilities, not limited but informed by our stories and past. This is a crucial and visceral understanding that needs to be part of a facilitator's experience so that she/he can create it for the youth they inspire.

Facilitating this training is Linda Wolf, co-founder and director of Daughters Sisters Project and founder/executive director of Teen Talking Circles. Co-Facilitating with Linda will be a member of the facilitation team, possibly Genevieve Wolf Smeeth, currently a co-facilitator of the Bainbridge Island Girl's Talking Circle and co-leader of Women’s Sacred Circle Retreats. Also, a few teen girls (and possibly guys) from our local circles will be on hand during the training to share their personal experience, demonstrate specific processes and exercises, and answer questions. 

Linda Wolf is the Executive Director and Founder of Teen Talking Circles, and co-author of Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women & Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood; and Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century -- Stories from a New Generation of Activists, both published by New Society Publishers. She is a certified facilitator of Compassionate Listening. Compassionate Listening is a service mark of the Compassionate Listening Project.  For more information about Linda Wolf, see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Wolf

Your fees cover all meals and materials, but do not cover lodging. We recommend the Island Country Inn for those wanting a small hotel - phone 206-842-6861. We also recommend Holly Lane Gardens, a wonderful bed and breakfast with nine acres of views which include the Olympic Mountains, flower gardens, woodland walkways, and end-of-the-road quiet. The cottage, private suite in the lodge-type home, and bedrooms and baths feature a hot tub, libraries, grand piano, board games. Contact Patty at 206-842-8959. In some scholarship cases or special circumstances we will do our best to help you lodge close by with friendly neighbors or local participants. 

After the training and for as long as you are a member of TTC, you will have access to those of us in the home office, as well as facilitators around the world through our interactive website, blogs, facilitator gatherings, and conference calls. We are here to help you be as successful as possible in starting and running your own Teen Talking Circle.

Teen Talking Circles started in 1993 with a 10-week focus group of teen girls that turned into a 2-year circle and included several day-long GenderTalks with teen guys as well as a young men’s talking circle. Seventeen years later, we have produced 3 highly valued books, dozens of important interviews with world leaders and consciousness shapers, and hundreds of workshops, trainings, retreats and circles around the world for others to replicate what we've done. Today, Teen Talking Circles, and talking/listening circles in general, are recognized worldwide as one of the most important social technologies available for people of any age.

If you would like to order copies of our books go to:http://ttcpbooks.mollyguard.com

TeenTalking Circles is a 501C-3 nonprofit organization. Today, there are circles inspired by TTC worldwide, and branch representatives in Boulder, Colorado; Seattle, Washington; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; Lopez Island, Washington; Yelapa,Mexico; Culver, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Lagos, Nigeria; and Mumbai, India to name a few --with more starting each year.

We are deeply grateful to the ancestors of many indigenous cultures and women's sacred traditions for their parts in the birthing of circles as a healing process.

Contact our home office for more information: 206-842-3000 or info@teentalkingcircles.org
For more info on Compassionate Listening, go to compassionatelistening.org 

"The circle is not a solution to our problems nor is it a magic wand that makes all our problems instantly better. It is more like a missing piece of social technology, which enables us to tap into a capacity for wisdom, collective support, and insight in all of us... it is an intentional process which creates a sacred space that helps to lift barriers between people and open up fresh possibilities for connection, collaboration, and mutual understanding." Roca