THE SOLUTION FOCUSED TEACHER: Building Strength, Hope and Collaboration Across the School Community

Pre-Recorded for you to complete at your convenience

Workshop Price: Australian Dollar, AUD88-00 / South African Rand, R820-00

Australian WASFIG/ASFA Members get 10% Discount: AUD80-00

Presented by: Dr Jacqui von Cziffra-Bergs – South Africa’s leading expert on Solution Focused Brief Therapy

Outline:

Solution Focused Practice (SFP) in education is about cultivating hope, resilience and agency – for students and staff alike.  It helps schools shift from problem-fixing to potential-building, creating communities where people see themselves and each other through a lens of strengths, progress, and possibility.  SFP is a natural fit for education because it aligns beautifully with learning, growth and wellbeing principles and works to empower students, build resilience and emotional regulation, enhances teacher-student relationships, supports staff wellbeing to prevent burnout, and encourages a collaborative and hopeful school culture.

Education is evolving – and educators are being called to teach, support, and inspire in new ways. In this workshop Dr Jacqui von Cziffra-Bergs will be joined by her colleague Merritt Watson an Educational Psychologist and School Principal who founded the School of Merit, a pioneering Solution Focused School in Johannesburg, South Africa. Together they will introduce a refreshing, strength-based approach of Solution Focused Practice that empowers educators and mental health practitioners with practical tools and inspiring examples to work collaboratively with students, parents, and colleagues in a hope-oriented way, demonstrating the transformative impact on classrooms, teams and school cultures. Becoming Solution Focused reinvigorates educators by shifting the focus from challenges to possibilities – enhancing professional wellbeing and reigniting passion for teaching.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain a shared framework for solution-focused collaboration and solution building;
• Learn language and scaling questions to identify progress and promote responsibility and engagement;
• Strengthen partnerships with parents and create teacher-child collaboration;
• Learn to be a strength-searcher to help students set their own goals to do things differently;
• Discover practical and creative classroom, counselling, and meeting strategies;
• Do more of what works, nurture hope and prevent burnout by focusing on success and possibility.

Workshop Outline:

This highly engaging workshop comprises five impactful and informative modules designed to empower education professionals to become Solution Builders – doing things differently, working collaboratively, and creating environments where learning and growth are shared activities.

Module 1: Challenging the Status Quo – An Introduction to a Solution Focused Mindset: From ‘problem solving’ to ‘solution building’.

Module 2: A Strength-Based Approach to Working with Children, Parents and Schools: Building relationships with strengths and not problems.

Module 3: Solution Focused Teaching Strategies and Classroom Management.

Module 4: Solution Focused Discipline: Upskilling instead of punishing to encourage children.

Module 5: Solution Focused Parent and Round Table Meetings: Deflecting resistance and creating partnerships of change.

• You will leave this workshop as a ‘strength searcher’ with a solution focused mindset for solution building, not problem solving, to promote engagement and resilience.
• You will set individual and class goals with students and use their strengths to reach their goals.
• You will enhance collaboration between teachers, mental health professionals, parents and students to find a solution that all parties can contribute toward.

Most importantly, you will build on hope and work with children and parents, not against them, while protecting your own wellbeing.