Born to Read Trainers

As the year 2007 draws to a close, we look ahead to our 4th annual Trainer Reflection Retreat in February.

While most of the details of the retreat are yet to be planned, we have confirmed the dates for Wednesday, February 13th and Thursday, February 14th, 2008. Instead of the Arboretum in Augusta, we will be meeting this year at Hallowell’s beautiful Maple Hill Farm.

The Maine Humanities Council has been in touch with Betsy Burtis, Manager of Training and Development for the Southern New Hampshire Health System, who gave a wonderful workshop called “The Art of Facilitating: A Look at Group Dynamics” at the Council’s recent Literature & Medicine conference, which drew participants from all over the country. Now the Council is bringing her to Maine so that her workshop may benefit facilitators of all Council programs, including Born to Read. The plan is to have Betsy present her 3-hour workshop twice—an early evening/supper workshop on Wednesday and a morning workshop on Thursday—so that participants, who will be coming from all over the state, can choose the time that works best for them.

This is an exciting opportunity for our trainers, and we are delighted to be able to add this to our Retreat program. As we said, there are many details to be worked out. One scenario we are considering is to  have Born to Read trainers and ed. specialists meet during the day on Wednesday, leading up to Betsy’s evening workshop, then have our Children’s Literature Seminar facilitators meet following Betsy’s workshop on Thursday.  If you want to weigh in with your opinion/availability on the schedule, or send any other recommendations for retreat content and format, we welcome your thoughts! (Feel free to post your ideas as comments to this blog entry.)

We will be in touch early in the new year with more confirmed details, and we look forward to seeing you in mid-February—when we trust the heavy snow activity of this month will be at rest!