{"id":6986,"date":"2015-07-28T12:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T16:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/?p=6986"},"modified":"2015-07-28T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T16:59:47","slug":"familiar-feeling-fresh-rituals-moving-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/2015\/07\/familiar-feeling-fresh-rituals-moving-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Familiar Feeling + Fresh Rituals = Moving Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Elaine<\/a>
Elaine Zook Barge, MA ’03, and Vernon Jantzi are CJP’s lead instructors for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience. (Photo by Kara Lofton)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Jarem Sawatsky wanted to bring trauma coursework to the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), he turned to two experts he knew well: Vernon Jantzi, who had taught Sawatsky when he was a CJP student a dozen years earlier, and fellow CJP alumnus Elaine Zook Barge.<\/p>\n

As CJP\u2019s lead instructors for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), Zook Barge and Jantzi are in high demand around the world, but they said they couldn\u2019t refuse a request from Sawatsky, who co-founded CSOP in 2009. They accepted it even before they learned that the 2014 session of the school would be Sawatsky\u2019s last as co-director, due to his declining health. (CJP restorative justice expert Howard Zehr also agreed to teach at CSOP 2014).<\/p>\n

From the first minutes of the opening ceremony of CSOP, Zook Barge and Jantzi felt on familiar ground. Similar to SPI, CSOP began with a group ritual and introductions. But the ritual was one they hadn\u2019t seen at SPI, and they loved it.
\n\u201cWe all put some grass seeds into soil within a former oil barrel,\u201d said Jantzi. \u201cWe were told that we were helping to transform this soil into something productive and nurturing.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the closing ceremony that wrapped up the week, everyone could see shoots of grass poking through the soil. \u201cIt felt like the opening and closing rituals were bookends,\u201d Jantzi said. \u201cIt was a moving experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

STAR was popular at CSOP, capped at 24 participants in the class. The two dozen enrollees were predominately female, and their age range was wide, 19 to 85 years. Undergraduates comprised more than half of those enrolled, which is unusual compared to other STAR trainings.<\/p>\n

The undergrads were taking the course for college credit, requiring them to produce two papers. \u201cWe spent a whole lot of time grading papers,\u201d Zook Barge said with a shake of her head, as if \u201cnever again.\u201d She quickly added, though: \u201cA lot of really good personal stuff came out of the papers that wasn\u2019t shared in class.\u201d<\/p>\n

The young adults didn\u2019t have the life experiences that STAR participants usually bring to the trainings, making it difficult for them to connect what they were learning with happenings in broader society, said Jantzi. \u201cBut it was good to see the way they became reflective about their life experiences to date.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jantzi, whose memories of SPI date to its founding years, said the lean staffing at CSOP reminded him of SPI two decades ago, when a tiny group of dedicated people were stretched to their maximum. \u201cAs far as I could see, [co-director] Valerie Smith and two student interns handled almost everything themselves \u2013 registration, food, snacks, taking photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 200 people attended CSOP at some point during its two five-day sessions. The structure of the day was similar to SPI, with coffee breaks that gathered people from all the classes, except that CSOP didn\u2019t restrict these to morning breaks. They had a group break in the afternoon too.<\/p>\n

One other difference: CSOP holds classes for five straight days; almost all of SPI\u2019s classes last for seven days, broken by a weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe copied the opening ceremonies, coffee breaks and group photographs from EMU,\u201d Sawatsky told his EMU friends with a smile. His friends smiled back: that meant SPI was doing its job well, if its tried-and-true model fit other places and peoples too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jarem Sawatsky wanted to bring trauma coursework to the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), he turned to two experts he knew well: Vernon Jantzi,… Read more about Familiar Feeling + Fresh Rituals = Moving Experience<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":6995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1073],"tags":[1278,1194,204,318,622,678],"issues":[1275],"class_list":["post-6986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","tag-csop","tag-cjp","tag-elaine-zook-barge","tag-jarem-sawatsky","tag-star","tag-vernon-jantzi","issues-2014-15"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7169,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6986\/revisions\/7169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6986"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=6986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}