Setting up your WWE participants for success
The Walk with Ease self-directed/enhanced model allows a great deal of flexibility for co-creation of the perfect program with your participants. For this program to be successful, participants must feel:
- Confident in their ability to participate.
- Understood and heard regarding their perceptions and ideas.
- Safe with you and their fellow participants.
- Respected and supported in their cultural and social norms and beliefs.
Welcoming and affirming spaces
A welcoming and affirming environment feels safe. It is a space where people can find themselves represented and reflected, culturally and socially, and where they understand that all people are treated with respect and dignity.
To ensure a welcoming and affirming space, we advise that the facilitator gets to know participants individually before or early in the class, asks about their context, their experience, and their concerns and prepares them for what they can expect.
If applicable, the instructor also collaborates with the partner agency to arrange for welcoming, affirming space and learn more about the backgrounds, lifestyles and priorities of the participants.
Click on the resources below for individual pre-course readiness checklists/meetings and for a "session zero" agenda for a group pre-course meeting.
Optimal learning environment
An optimal learning environment enables learners to draw from their own contexts and experiences to grasp new material. It ensures all cultural identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, language, religion, and socioeconomic background) are affirmed, valued and supported as vehicles for teaching and learning. It allows learners to share, practice and approach the edge of their comfort level to grow and develop in their learning. Learners are also teachers within an optimal learning environment through sharing from experience and supporting their fellow learners.