Donington Training courses

Current Donington Training courses

Current courses are included in this list.

For more information or to reserve a place telephone John on (01530) 836780 or e-mail training@dpets.co.uk

About Donington Training courses

These courses are being run as Education For Its Own Sake (EFIOS) courses. This means that the courses are free of any external requirements, assessment or exams. Students will work with the tutor to learn whatever is appropriate for them.

The cost of the courses will be whatever each student decides to pay, whatever they think the course is worth and they can afford. It is hoped that on average students will pay a reasonable amount, perhaps somewhere between the cost of local authority adult education courses and private tuition. Students will be able to pay at any class in one sum or several and there will be no check on what each student pays. There will also be no legal contract between the students and the tutor.

The courses use what is called experiential, holistic learning. Experiential means learning from our experiences. Some of these experiences will be of activities in the classes, other experiences will be in students' own lives. Time is spent in the classes looking at situations that students want to talk about, seeing what can be learned from them and how they might be handled differently.

Holistic or Whole Person learning recognises that learning is not just about facts, ideas and practice. Learning also involves feelings and imagination. An important part of these courses is learning to feel differently, for instance learning to feel more confident.

In order to support this type of learning students need to feel safe and supported. Hence we often sit in a circle so that everyone is equal and can be seen and heard. No one has to say anything they do not want to say. We take care to try to ensure that nothing anyone says is misused, we avoid any criticisms or judgements and personal things that people reveal are kept confidential. The atmosphere is friendly and we often have fun.

The courses are generally appropriate for people with all sorts of abilities and background. A lot of the learning comes from students sharing experiences and the more varied those experiences the better. The nature of the subjects and the ways in which they are taught mean that no one will be out of their depth and everyone will be stretched, whether you have never passed an exam in your life or you have a PhD. Reading and writing are not generally necessary for personal development courses although there is plenty of scope for those who want to read and write. Check the individual courses for further information.

Approaches to personal development

Being successful in life has a lot to do with how we get on with other people. There are three main aspects to this:

• Communicating to other people
• Communications from other people
• Our internal thoughts and feelings

Donington Training runs courses that help people to make big improvements in all of these areas.

Communicating to other people

Communicating clearly to other people what we choose to communicate is being assertive. Assertiveness Training courses cover both techniques for communicating effectively and practice in applying these to real situations in students' lives.

Communications from other people

This is to do with listening and it is also about helping others to communicate effectively and say what they really need to say. Often when people are talking it is about difficulties that they are having, decisions they need to make or things that have happened. To respond well usually means responding helpfully, in other words how can we help others to handle things in ways that are better for them, in other words to learn to handle them better. Helping Skills Training courses cover a wide range of ways of helping others to learn both in formal and informal, personal and professional situations.

Our internal thoughts and feelings

It is all very well having information about how to communicate effectively or how to respond to others but when it comes to it we very often find it too difficult to get the right words out. We end up saying or doing what we feel we can do and end up not saying what we want to say or responding unhelpfully to others.

How we feel is mostly what determines what we do or say. Becoming more effective or being able to have more of the life that we want generally means learning to feel differently in situations. I may know that what I need to do is to say “no” to someone when they ask me to do something that I do not want to do. But I can only say “no” when I feel able to do so.

Coming to feel differently is a process of learning. Learning is as much about feelings as it is about facts – learning to uses computers, for instance, involves feeling that we can do it, not feeling scared of computers and ultimately feeling comfortable with using them. Changing how we feel about things, particularly more personal things like how I feel when I get up in the morning or when someone shouts at me, is also the aim of therapy (strictly, psychotherapy).

There are many ways of learning to feel differently. Going to see a counsellor or therapist is one and this is a service that I provide. For anyone who is ready for it Co-Counselling is an extremely effective method for personal development.

Because Donington Training courses work with holistic learning they do lead to students feeling differently. After about 40 hours of classes on Assertiveness there is not much more to learn about the subject. Becoming more assertive after this is all about changing how we feel.

Helping Skills are partly about helping other people to feel differently. To help other people more effectively we need to learn about ourselves and as a result Helping Skills classes have a focus on students learning to feel differently. Part of the way in which this works is that students practice with each other in the classes. In other words they practice helping each other to learn and feel differently.

Another aspect of helping skills is that the subject is very broad and it is possible to go on learning more and more. If students repeat the same course it is different the next time. Although the topics will be the same the experiences students bring will be different and they will build on what they have already learned.