Improving the Communication of Social Workers through Theater Techniques

Live Online Training

Saturday, November 4, Sunday, November 5, and Saturday, November 11, 2023
9:00am–12:00pm and 1:00–4:00pm ET (each day)

Participants must attend all sessions to qualify for CE hours.

NYSED and ASWB Approved for 18 CE contact hours

To communicate successfully we start by practicing two basic skills:

• Being present, and 
• Getting rid of distractions. 

We all have needs and wants that we strive to meet every day. These are sometimes called emotional objectives. We may want and need respect, control, or help at times throughout the course of a day. During this step in the training, each participant experiences and identifies needs and wants (e.g., I want respect or approval) in a given situation, a critical step necessary before you begin to listen actively to others. This crucial step grounds participants in an awareness of their motivations, experience, and space, and importantly, enhance each participant’s ability to be present. Building on the skills learned in Step 1 of the training (being present while identifying your own needs and wants), participants then learn in Step 2 how to become aware of the needs and wants of others. Here they will practice many active listening skills using 2 line interactions and shorts scripts, including:

• Using your eyes during this Zoom training to help your partner feel your need when you are talking
• Watching and trying to experience your partner’s needs as s/he is talking. This practice of active listening helps Social Workers improve hearing  the wants and needs of clients
• Getting your own needs and wants to be met when the words and needs match
• Getting your own needs and wants to be met when the words and needs do not match

In the third component of the training, participants learn and practice active empathy via a series of increasingly complicated role-plays in small groups. Active empathy is an essential skill underlying the ability to take another person’s perspective and better communicate with them.  During this component of the training, participants:

• Live inside the stories of characters using increasing 8-line scripts
• Live inside the stories of patients/parents who need to overcome obstacles
• Use role-plays to live inside very complicated stories

Through this progression of empathy training, other people’s stories become deeply internalized as participants experience the point of view of many characters; thus making it difficult to stereotype people who are different from you.

The final component of the training is a role-play in which participants utilize and practice all the skills learned during the entire training. This role-play is different from the others because instead of playing other characters as you do in other components of the training (e.g. mental health professional, teacher, child, or parent that you played while learning active empathy), you will be playing your real-life professional role. For example, you will be yourself as a Social Worker interacting with a patient (played by another social work professional).

Participants will:

• Learn concrete ways to improve the therapeutic alliance
• Develop skills needed by the Social Worker before meeting with individuals, couples, families, and/or children
• Learn active empathy training so that the Social Worker can experience the voice, story, and point of view of one’s client while still keeping boundaries
• Practice being yourself as a Social Worker working with an individual, family member, and/or child(ren) in “lived” role plays

Marjorie Heymann, PhD, Psychology and Education
Director, Communication Through Theater

Dr. Heymann, a former professional theatre director, developed, researched, and implemented the Empowerment Through Theatre® program which is now called Communication Through Theater. It teaches engagement and communication skills that were adapted from theater techniques. The program trains participants to use active listening (by hearing both the words and the needs underneath the words), to empathize with others (by living in fictitious lives through scripts and role-playing), to overcome obstacles (such as depression, anxiety, and physical complaints), to practice anger management techniques, and to advocate for their own needs and the needs of their child, student, patient and/or client. Role plays are used to practice life situations with an emphasis on dealing with conflict and pausing to get instruction and/or training.

Dr. Heymann is a Lecturer at Columbia’s Department of Child Psychiatry; an Associate Clinical Professor at NYU’s Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; an adjunct professor in the department of Global & Lifelong learning at the NYU Siver School of Social Work; consultant for the Center for Educational Innovation, and a consultant for the REACH Institute.

This program has been used with a variety of populations including social workers, parents, teachers, teenagers,  doctors (child psychiatrists, adult psychiatrists, pediatricians, and primary care physicians); social workers; parent advocates; clinic patients, public school counselors, immigrants, prison inmates, ex-offenders, and refugees from the war in the former Yugoslavia and others. The program has been offered in many settings including: The Parent Empowerment Program; the Developing Center on Implementation of EBPs for Children; New York Presbyterian Hospital Pediatric Psychiatry Clinic (for parents of children in treatment and for teenagers over 14 years of age); for the Center for Educational Innovation (which honored Dr. Heymann at the Plaza Hotel in NYC for her work with parents, teachers and communities in 3 schools in Washington Heights: MS 328, MS 324 and MS 322; (plus in 3 failing schools in the Bronx in partnership with the Department of Education); Turn 2 Us and New York-Presbyterian Hospital at PS 128 and PS 4 (which additionally used this approach with English training for Spanish speakers); CARING at Columbia at IS 218 (in coordination with The Children's Aid Society) and at PS 128; the Mayo Clinic (with psychiatric residents); The Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health; The Queens House of Detention for Men (under the Division of Continuing Education and the Adult Learning Center run by LaGuardia Community College); The Women's House of Detention at Rikers Island (through the Board of Education); and for Primary Pediatric Psychopharmacology Conferences, and national CMEs at the University of Buffalo and at Columbia’s Psychiatric Institute.

Dr. Heymann was director of Healthy Schools, Healthy Students, and Learning for Life, a pilot program, which targeted 3rd-grade student behavior and learning in the classroom, plus family outreach by providing access to mental health doctors, parent advocates, and hospital services.

Theatre Director/Sample Shows: NYC - Up! (one of the first feminist plays), Three by Grace (Paley); Summer Stock - Marat/Sade, The Fantasticks.

Website: communicationthroughtheater.com

To register for this seminar, please log in to our Online Registration Portal and select this event from the "All Events & Programs" tab, under the "Conferences and Events" section.

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General Admission: $200.00

If after registering, you determine that you can no longer attend this event, The Office of Global and Lifelong Learning will issue refunds on the following basis:

• Refund requests made on or before October 28 (by midnight): full refund
• Refund requests made on or before November 1 (by midnight): 50% refund
• Refund requests made on or after November 2: no refund

If this event is cancelled, all registrants will be fully reimbursed. To withdraw from and be reimbursed for this event, please complete the event withdrawal form.

NYSED and ASWB/ACE approved for 18 Continuing Education Contact Hours; awarded upon completion of the post-event evaluation.

55 jurisdictions accept ACE-approved provider CE contact hours. ACE is not an approved Continuing Education provider in the states of New York (though NYU Silver is NYSED CE approved in NYS) and West Virginia, unless the event is outside of West VA. ACE only approves individual courses in New Jersey, though NYU Silver is CSWE-accredited and therefore accepted for licensed NJ professionals. Here is a full list of statutes related to social work CE.

Special Accommodations:
Students requiring accommodations have the opportunity to make these known upon registering or by writing to silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu.

Addressing Grievances:
For information on our grievance and complaint procedures, contact 212.998.9099 or silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu.

Note on Accessibility:
It is a priority to make our events inclusive and accessible. For any questions or to notify us of a request, please email silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu at least 72 hours before the event.

NYU Silver School of Social Work
Office of Global and Lifelong Learning
1 Washington Square North, G08
New York, NY 10003

Email: silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu
Phone: 212.998.5973
Fax: 212.995.4497