After three days of Wake-Up Call’s Nordic Retreat Emilia and I were given the opportunity to join and assist Oleg on a mission to inspire and train a core group of teachers at JENSEN Södra in Stockholm.
The first day was dedicated to discussions about motivating and engaging students in a classroom setting. In the afternoon Wake-Up demonstrated its concept of the inspirational kick-off that we offer to high schools around Sweden. The second day was an express training in the method of Public Narrative – creating a sense of purpose and motivation through the power of story-telling.
My first impression when we arrived at JENSEN Södra was that the teachers looked so happy! Then I became even more excited about the coming two-days training than I was before. It just makes my day when I start my morning with meeting smiling people!
After the introduction round with expectations and overview of the two coming days Oleg presented Wake-Up Call and its approach to teaching social entrepreneurship and invoking a sense of leadership in young people. I instantly got this warm feeling inside: this is just what I want to spend my time doing! To make young people see their own great potential to become change-makers, to give them support to make their ideas real. Just do it!
Then it was time for Sissa Pagels from ‘Take Action!’ – a happy, energetic and skilled social entrepreneur – to hold her inspired presentation ‘Generation Waking-Up: Young Social Entrepreneurs’, based on the application of Public Narrative.
During the afternoon we had Wake-Up Call’s popular workshop “Redesign the World”. Emilia and I – and all the participating teachers – experienced for ourserlves what a great and effective tool it can be it inspiring young people and helping them launch their own ideas. To build an efficient team to make your project real you need four different types of people: Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur and Integrator. I realised that in my heart I’m an entrepreneur. Although after being a mother for nine years I have also learnt to administrate and to be an integrator: I like when everyone in the room are happy, I want to be on time and I even like to bake a cake! 🙂
We learnt about – and practised – the Elevator Pitch. How can you inspire someone so much that they want to have a meeting with you afterwards? You only have a maximum of 30 seconds – as long as an elevator trip usually takes. Yes, using the right words and and using them efficiently may change your life!
Day Two of the training started with us creating our life maps. Wow, what an exercise it was! How nice and at the same time scary to be forced to think of the good and less good things that have happened in your life. My personal reflection was how little I have actively thought and talked about my past in the last ten years.
After making our life maps we got about ten minutes each to present our whole lives. To keep it short was not always easy!
Then Oleg presented the Story of Self, Story of Us and Story of Now. As Public Narrative can be extended to many days of training, and regarding the fact that we only had one day, we focused on the Story of Self. Each of us prepared and presented a story of one moment that changed our lives, following the method of Public Narrative.
In the afternoon Oleg showed videos with engaging speeches where the method of Public Narrative has been used. One speech I remembered the most was Barack Obama’s at the Democratic National Convention 2004. I realised that this method is really powerful and it actually works!
Afterwards the teachers told us that they would use much of what they learnt during the two-days training. And so will I!
It was inspiring to be a part of these days and great to have met the energetic teachers of JENSEN Södra. Now I cannot wait to meet and start working with the real target group of Wake-Up Call’s products – the high-school students themselves. Lots of new exciting projects at different gymnasiums in Sweden will be coming up soon!
Soon you will hear more about our plans for the autumn. Until then – take care and take action! 😉
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