Today’s conference was an excellent experience for me and I am never disappointed with them. Our day was divided into 2 halves and each half provided us with different opportunities to learn different skills. (LO1) The 1st half mainly thought me how to be more considerate of the people around me and also being self-aware. The speaker talked about being cautious of the way you speak during conferences as if you speak too fast, the EAL clients won’t be able to understand what we are trying to say. This especially resonated with me as I am aware that I speak really fast and will need to be aware of it when I present during presentations. I had already known that I do not have any problem public speaking as I engage with debates, however I now know how to effectively communicate my thoughts and that is by just speaking slower. I have already started trying to speak slow when I can and because of this I have found out that when I speak fast, it is because I am anxious. I talk incomplete sentences and convey incomplete thoughts. Today’s conference gave me an area of focus that I would like to develop and this is my weakness which I will try to overcome. For this, I would need to take breaths before I speak and calm down while talking. Moreover, I have become more cautious and will show more awareness when designing presentations as I learn that the words or images you use can have a bigger impact than you think. For example, if we are to give examples of leaders of peace, I will try to include one male and one female or not only have white people as examples. This is what the speaker had tried to emphasize and I found that quite important as well because it was something I never thought of.
(LO2, LO5) Today also helped me in terms of helping me gain the skills required to plan and execute the project. We were given a theory lesson and the points Mr Ravi had made were really good and I could immediately see myself using his tips to plan some projects. This is quite an important skill and it makes me happy that I did not miss this session as learning something like this and then immediately applying It to a simulated project can teach you so much about what you have learned. This will especially be useful for me in the long run as well as when the time comes to plan the various conferences. (LO3) After learning the project planning skills, our team had planned an imaginary world tour trip. We were taken through the planning stages step by step as they could get complicated. It was amazing to know that any good project should have a scope, a time limit and the cost mentioned. We had to come up with a one line pitch of our project that would best summarize our idea. This took our group quite some time as we did not know what would be a logical cost and time for this project. I learned that before even beginning a project it is important to have done some research earlier on as this gives you a better idea of what to expect. We had all worked together and brainstormed all the necessary materials that would be required such as visas, accommodations, transportations etc and we were able to split the work very well between the 4 of us which made it very efficient for us. It was good to see how we were able to finish our plan once one of us took the initiative to lead.
(LO6)I feel that with these workshops I have gained a new understanding of how refugees might feel and how it is our job to help regain their trust. The problem of the language barrier was reinforced on us and we became aware of it and tried finding different ways of tackling it, however I feel that this can only be accomplished if we talk to them one on one instead of in a group. Building relations with refugees of Myanmar or any other place is very important as they have been robbed of their families and lives and have been thought that certain races are bad because of common stereotypes. It is our job through these conferences that we are able to eradicate such thoughts and teach them to live in an inter-racial environment which is inclusive of everyone. I have definitely become more open minded and sensitive to this issue. (LO7) in this conference we had to take into consideration many ethical factors as well because our group will be from areas that might be in conflict so they might not even agree with each other and hate on them. This is important to take not of when groups are being made. Of course, it is important to mix them up but only to a certain extent. We can’t forcefully get them into groups with people they are not comfortable with and also at the same time we can’t let them choose their groups because then the divide will be even larger. This was quite difficult to tackle however we tried thinking this through and suggested that it was imperative for them to know each other and their contexts which will help solve many of our social problems.
