2009 05 14-17 Educational Services Report

Educational Services Report for Board of Directors In Person Meeting May 14-17, 2009

Marshall Rosenberg, Educational Services Director

Admin. Team assisting Ed. Svcs. Director, Margo Pair and
Valentina Rosenberg

Rita Herzog, Ed. Svcs. Certification Coordinator

Last July and October we conducted trainings to increase the numbers in our assessor team.So what was the former certification team, where we were dealing with everyone speaking English and maybe eight or nine people on a call or at an email meeting, now is a larger team with the inclusion of all the newly identified assessors and the Educational Services Team.We are now a team of about 30 people with the interesting challenge of how to create a team, how to create connection, welcoming, and participation.We are still working on that.

Since last summer we’ve been having monthly teleconference calls with the whole team.The majority of new assessors are in German speaking areas, and we usually get only one or two of those folks on any one call at any given time so we are wanting to look at ways on how to do that differently because it's important for me that all the team members have input into new agreements.We are trying to reorganize and add some new things to the trainer agreement, trainer renewal and to the assessment process.

The team will be meeting by phone just every 2 months, with smaller groups meeting in between, working on specific projects. Some assessors are working individually and most are beginning to forms teams with other assessors.We are going to ask the assessors to submit written reports twice a year.

We want to get more information out in written form and considering language translations to support the team. We have slightly increased the number of minimum days necessary before people go through a final assessment but most people find that they need a lot more than that anyway before they feel ready to really takes that final step.

Fees for the certification process have not been changed, but the assessors have the ability to discuss a range of fees per circumstance with each candidate. The basis of the whole assessment process is to look at the diverse cultures, the different languages, and the different regions of the world - it's a combination of flexibility and consistency.And that means we want the process to be flexible so that it can be usable and useful in lots of different ways but that the end result is understanding and knowing all the concepts and also being able to live it and model it in ones own life, especially when one is doing training. Things are happening but its just taking a lot longer than anyone ever have possibly imagined.

Another big change that we like is that registration will happen directly with assessors, rather than happening with individual coordinators, and that means it can take place in another language, other than English. And the important part is that information will be immediately sent to the CNVC office and whatever parts need to be translated, can be worked out. So the office, for the first time, will have a list (database) of every single candidate who has been accepted to begin the process and that just feels so wonderful to us. If we want to send out a message to all the candidates all over the world there's one simple way to do it.

We are looking at how to provide training for the new assessors and helping them to get started. Registration will not be open everywhere because in some places candidates who've registered in the past have not had any assessors to work with. We want, as assessors become available, to have them pick up all the existing candidates before registration is open for new people joining us. One other thing that Margo is just beginning to implement is that not only will the information about all the assessors – i.e. what their interests are, who they are, photos of them – not only will that be in the certification preparation package on the web site but that will also be listed under the CNVC Governance so that the role they play in contributing to CNVC’s mission can be highlighted and recognized.