safeTALK Success

I just wanted to say that the safeTALK presentation was a success tonight. Every single time I am always nervous before a presentation (not stage fright)because I want to make sure the participants are engaged. For me, I feel like if the participants aren't engaging in meaningful discussion or dialogue during the presentation that I somehow "failed" or didn't reach them.

However, since we had low numbers for the workshop tonight it really created a sense of community and trust between us trainers and the participants. This is the first time during a safeTALK workshop that I truly felt we had such a strong bond with our participants. All the participants were teachers at our school but they were all new employees. I could tell by the body language and the oral communication we were receiving that the participants were really grasping the main ideas of the safeTALK as well as building a stronger relationship with us.

At the end of the presentation, one of participants went to their classroom and brought me a bunch of notes written by a few students (this was about 1 hour later). They said the safeTALK prompted them to go and look at the student journals and they had found some disturbing notes about self-harm and mourning the loss of loved ones.

She showed me and I immediately suggested who they should contact, what they should do with the original notes etc. I myself was in the same situation as this teacher last year. I would find students literally drawing or writing about suicide or self-harming and I felt so overwhelmed at the time. I'm truly grateful that we were able to make this connection and the presentation triggered a gut feeling in this teacher to look at the journals. The students will be speaking with counsellors tomorrow and go from there.

So it goes to show that it doesn't matter how many people you don't have showing up to your events, presentations etc. It matters who does show up and what positive impacts you can have on those people. This really illustrated the impact of how successful goals can really motivate you for future tasks. The success of the safeTALK boosted my spirits and made me feel good about all the leg work I put into it.

Please click on the image below to see an updated version of my SRL monitoring document.

Over the next few days I will be reflecting on my performance (self-reflection), requesting feedback from my co-trainer and reading the feedback provided by the participants. I will then post another updated version of my SRL monitoring document.