Announcing Our MiiWrap Learning Community Mini-Conference Series 

Humans are social animals. We come into this world observing and mimicking the people around us to learn what to do and what not to do, and we never really stop. Learning is a fundamentally social endeavor, and we learn and recharge best when our learning contains social components. 

This is one of the reasons that our Foundations training has always contained debriefing, group work, and opportunities for making connections with your fellow learners. Even as we transition to an online model, we still require that person to person discussion. It is, after all, how we learn.

It is also one of the reasons that we are starting our MiiWrap Learning Community Mini-Conference series. 

Remember conferences? You go somewhere to meet other people who care just as deeply as you do about something (in this case MiiWrap). You learn from them, you share what you know, and you recharge your batteries so you can go back to your work with new ideas and renewed enthusiasm for your work. 

We want to bring that into the lives of our coaches on a more regular basis. Our first MiiWrap Learning Community Mini-Conference is on February 25^th from 11AM-1PM MST. Here is how it works:

• All certified and certifying MiiWrap coaches are invited. It’s free as long as your certification is current or in process
• The conference lasts two hours, and can be accessed via Zoom
• For this first conference, we have a panel of speakers lined up (see the schedule in the next section)
• For future conferences, we will send out emails getting input so we can select:
  • A topic or problem of general interest that we can have a round table discussion on as a group
  • A couple of presentations of activities, ideas, or anything else that you are doing at your sites to improve your MiiWrap fidelity
  • A success story to inspire everyone
  • And a topic you all would like us to present on and create materials for
• You’ll walk away with new ideas, new connections, and new materials you can implement at your site

Our overarching topic for this first conference is Observing and Debriefing Your Staff to Create Real Learning. Here is the schedule:

Hour 1

• Kick-off Group Discussion, 15 min
• “Helping Staff Overcome Observation Anxiety “by David Duresky, 20 min
• “Integrating Debriefing & Observation into Coaching” by Sharon Webber, 20 Min
• 5 min Bio Break

Hour 2

• Debriefing Master Class by Dr. Jim Rast – 30 min
• Debriefing Activity in breakout rooms, 20 min
• Coach Success Story by a surprise guest speaker, 10 min

David Duresky, MI expert and MiiWrap Pioneer, offered the following teaser to his presentation: 

“I will quit before I let anyone observe me!”

These were the words of a licensed clinician in Miami when told they would be observed providing services by their supervisor.  This would be unthinkable to an athlete whose coach works with them daily, or to a nurse learning new skills. What is it about our field that makes staff so anxious about being observed? This will be discussed, and helpful approaches to lower observation anxiety during this session. 

Sharon Weber is someone who is passionate about helping families find their way to move forward in life. She started High Fidelity Wraparound as a skeptic and became a champion of High Fidelity Wraparound and then Miiwrap! So much so that she overcame hang ups about videoing herself and took on the role of Cassandra for the MiiWrap training videos. As a coach Sharon learned the need to use both debriefing and observations the hard way. In this workshop we’ll take some time to look at the need for integration and what not to do.  

Of course, you all know Dr. Jim Rast. He will be taking lessons from his decades of coaching experience to offer a master class in high fidelity debriefing. This is a rare and exciting opportunity to learn debriefing craft knowledge from the very best in the business.

Our hope is that we can host a Virtual Learning Community Mini Conference every other month in 2022. But the success or failure of this idea depends on our coaches. We need you to show up, to take your turn presenting or sharing, and to give us feedback on what would make this most useful to you.  

We think we’ve reached out to everyone who qualifies directly, but I am sure we missed a few people. If you are interested in attending, reach out and let us know.  And if you are still considering whether or not to implement MiiWrap at your site, keep this in mind for the future. We hope to be offering a lot of these.