IFP- Consolidation Of Learning

My journey in IFP begun a mere 6 months ago. Although it’s only been 6 months, I personally believe IFP has changed me as a person and has also become an important part of my life.

1) Where is your learning going? How will you apply skills, qualities you’ve developed outside of IFP?

I personally believe my learning is going very far. I’m able to apply almost everything I learn in IFP in other aspects of my life. An example is the mentor group planning session. I applied my new active listening skills and knowledge with the effective planning to ensure we had a fruitful session. I learned about planning activities and facilitating them in the best possible ways. I was easily able to justify the importance of IFP as well as the appliance of IFP learnt skills to real life skills. IFP has made me understand the complexity behind small conflicts and has overall made me a much more open minded individual. I try to apply any useful skills from IFP to my everyday scenarios.

2) What have you learned about collaboration? Have you learned to be more effective when working with others? What’s your biggest obstacle when asked to contribute to a team?

Collaboration is one of the skills I’ve learn and improved the most on. I am a very strong headed person who tends to speak most of the time. IFP has helped me, especially through the Personality activity and the active listening activities. Through the Personality activity I realised how important it is to have a range of personalities in the group to be effective. My biggest obstacle is letting other people talk and not talking the most. I tend to have a lot of ideas that I have to share and sometimes can intimidate others or make others refrain from sharing their thoughts as well. Through the active listening session I was able to understand that even though I may think I’m listening, it may not be actively which can affect the person I am listening to.

3) In what ways have you been a mentor to others this year? Where and when have you shown initiative?

I’ve tried to take on leadership positions to ensure that people can be actively participating. An example of this was in the simulation. There was a moment when nobody was talking and I tried to be a role model by talking to break the awkward silence and fuel a conversation. I have shown initiative and tried to talk to people I have never talked to before. I used to be afraid of going up to people and just start talking but recently I’ve tried to do it more often, especially after IFP. I tried to make people welcomed and in both small groups + larger groups, tried to make sure everyone was actively involved. An example of this is during the lead facilitation, my partner was too scared to talk but I tried to comfort her and taught her some techniques to gain more confidence.


4) Which session has done the most to address your areas for improvement as a peace builder? How did that session encourage growth?

I believe the session that has changed me the most and has had the greatest impact on me has to be the Jah and Kay simulation. This opened my mind to difficulties I may face as a peace builder at a conference or just in life generally. The fact that we were unaware of what the other group was told, the way we were selected to be in a certain group, the way we had a variety of instructions and just working in that simulation. I really feel like it’s made me more conscious of my life choices. It really changed me.


5) What have you learned about leadership & what qualities and skills have you developed in IFP to help  do this?

Personally, I’ve always been a leader so IFP has only helped me enhance my leadership skills. I’ve been active parts of many leadership activities such as MUN and Round Square but none of them are quite like IFP. I’ve developed better active listening skills which was one of my weakest traits. I’ve turned this weakness into a strength. I’ve learnt that being a leader doesn’t just mean I have to be confident and open to ideas in big groups, I have to be a leader in small groups too. I have also begun to understand the importance of checking in to ensure that everyone is involved. I believe I have many facilitation skills but most of them were with large groups. IFP has helped me enhance my smaller group and pair facilitation skills.

 

6) What has your engagement in IFP looked like your peers? What makes you say so?

I think I effectively convey my passion for IFP. I try my best to contribute as much as I can to big group discussions as well as small group ones. I look forward to IFP sessions and try to stay engaged in every session. I talk about IFP to friends outside of just the IFP sessions. I try to link some learning from IFP to that in other areas of my life.

 

Some Posts of Other IFP Sessions that have had a huge impact on me:

IFP – Peace One Day

IFP – Simulation

IFP – Youtube Playlist

Here is a playlist of some videos that are a must watch for IFP.

I believe that all of these videos have made me understand IFP and the topics we discuss in IFP better. It has also helped me relate my IFP learning to what is going on in the real world. It also helps me understand the implications of my actions in the world world through ‘Amanda Todd’s story’, the ‘Syrian Refugee crisis’ helps me gain context on how complicated conflicts are and how it is way more tedious that what we can see on the surface, the ‘how a hashtag defined a movement’ helps me understand how important people’s voices are when trying to build peace, ‘The price of conflict’ makes you think about conflict in a new light and begin to understand the complexity, ‘Malala’s speech’ inspires me to stand up for what I believe in and that any cause is worth fighting for, ‘Water walks’ helps me understand how severe problems are in other places which makes me realise how privileged I really am and finally, ‘Harassment is breaking Twitter’s free speech’ helps raise awareness of the impact of our social media presence and how everything is not interpreted the same by everyone.

I think that all of these are must watches to further enhance your IFP learning in many different contexts and scenarios.

 

 

IFP- Dear Mentor Group

Dear Mentor Group…..

Here’s what we should do Tuesday:

  • Seth Godin Poem “The work not yet done”
  • Questions will be along the lines? –> How does this poem connect to us? How can we see what is used in our everyday lives? Why would we read this? What is the overall message of this?
  • Protocol –> First a set aside reading time. Then a short discussion as a mentor group on why we read that and our overall thoughts on the poem.
  • Why does this matter?
    IFP has taught me a variety of different conflict management strategies. I have more responsibility that our campus is a peaceful place for everyone and a safe space for everyone.

IFP – Emotionally Intelligent Signage

IFP – Emotionally Intelligent Signage

In IFP on the 3rd of October, we discussed the types of conflict that occur in our school community on a daily basis and where they occur at our school. After coming up with a bunch of different types of conflict that would take place in these certain areas, we discussed ways to effectively create signage using emotions in order to be more effective.

 

              

My group created two emotionally intelligent signages. The first one related to verbal conflicts in the main areas such as plaza, and the fact that people everywhere watch and will spread the news of it. The second one relates to the verbal ongoing conflict between the East and Dover soccer teams as they have an ongoing conflict both on the field and on social media. The cause of this was the 8-2 SEASAC win of last year.

I believe that I really learnt the effectiveness of how hitting emotions and mindsets makes things way more successful as it is less straight up. This is the first time I realised how really important it is to dig deep when trying to be an effective peacemaker instead of straight up telling people to not do this and not do that. This is how we can understand how language and emotions play a huge part in people’s choices and actions.

CAS Learning Outcome: 7- Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions.

IFP – Peace One Day

Sunday 10 September – Peace One Day 

What were the facts from Sunday? What did you do?

On the 10th of September 2017, the entire IFP team from East as well as the entire IFP team from Dover. This was the first interaction between the two teams and that helped us get to know each other better before we work together towards building sustainable piece this year. Last year’s team from both Dover and East had worked all year to facilitate this conference for us named Peace One Day. Throughout the day, we were separated into groups of around 15 to participate in 4 sessions throughout the day. The 4 respective sessions were Violence, Media, Discrimination and Identity. Each session was run by students from last year’s IFP team. Each session had a few energisers along with some icebreakers before entering a session full of activities and information on issues faced that are barriers to peace. We got to enjoy some pizza in the break and we got to meet a lot more people who we have started to build relationships with. We also got the chance to enjoy a peace performance and appreciate the talents within our IFP community.

How did you feel about what happened?

I believe that I gained a much deeper knowledge on different issues that we face that effect peace such as violence in our day to day lives. I think that after the peace one day conference I believe that I have a much better understanding about what little things I can do on a daily basis to help create peace in my communities. We participated in a variety of thought proven activities and we learnt some shocking things. The sessions and the activities have helped me be more open-minded and to look deeper at an issue than just what is at the surface.  I feel like I have a deeper and greater understanding of how complicated peace is and how hard it is to reach sustainable peace.

How will your learning from the weekend shape what you do next in IFP…and beyond?

I’m very glad I got to be a part of the peace one day conference as I believe that it really helped me understand what it’s like to be in IFP and why it’s so essential for me to be involved! It has helped me understand the complexity of issues and I believe that I will use what I learnt at peace one day in every IFP session from now on. I also think that I’ll be able to understand complex issues more thoroughly than I have ever before because I learnt about looking beyond just the surface of an issue. I also believe that after the peace conference, I will be more conscious of my actions and I will try my best to be a peacekeeper in my day to day life. Peace One Day helped me understand that some things we may not realise affect peace. An example of this may be if someone says you’re “good at ___..for a girl” or “boys don’t cry” may not be a compliment at all and may be a terrible thing to say. I had never taught about it in that way and overall I think that I will chose my words more carefully. I am more aware of certain stereotypes and assumptions I have made in my life that might have affected someone negatively and I believe that my knowledge from IFP will now help me prevent such assumptions to be made/said again.

 

               

 

 

 

 

 

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