Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg shares some of what compelled her to develop our new TLAN online class, The Art of Facilitation: Roots & Blossoms of Facilitation. The class runs Jan. 15-25, and it’s the first of two classes on powerful facilitation for your community and our ailing world.

Good facilitation can make worlds of difference when it comes to effective (and even joyful) meetings, powerful workshops, and meaningful coaching or consulting sessions. For years I’ve been both teaching facilitation and dreaming up in-depth facilitation training for others. So I’m especially happy to tell you about these facilitation classes.

“The Art of Facilitation: Roots and Blossoms of Facilitation,” an online class I’m teaching with Joy Roulier Sawyer through the Transformative Language Arts Network Jan. 15 – Feb. 25, focuses on whole-self and real-life facilitation as a life-long practice. Designed for writers, storytellers, healers, community leaders, and other change-makers, this class offers practical tools and deep wisdom, including planning, facilitating, and assessing sessions; beginnings endings, pacing and rhythm; and aligning your practice with your core values. This first of two facilitation classes goes deep when it comes to how to be a more effective and soulful facilitator.

The second class, “The Art of Facilitation: Facilitating for Community and Change,” launches this summer, encompasses how to work with diverse people and for meaningful transformation. Because these classes on online, you can do them from anywhere!

Joy and I have over 50 years of combined facilitation experience. She has worked as a a psychotherapist and poetry therapist, and most recently, Joy has led many sessions through Lighthouses’s Denver Public Library, Arvada Library, and Edgewater Library’s Hard Times workshops, designed for those experiencing homelessness or poverty, as well as the Writing to Be Free program, an outreach for women transitioning out of incarceration. I’ve been facilitating community writing workshops tilted toward healing and transformation since 1992, and with my husband Ken Lassman, have led training to help people plan and lead better meetings and more effective group processes. Guest teachers include people with deep experience in facilitation for transformation. More here, and if you want to chat with me about the class, please drop me a line at CarynMirriamGoldberg@gmail.com.