On the 9th of March 2021, two professionals became ICDP certified facilitators in Tashkent: congratulations to Magdalena Bronnstrom and Valentina Ten, as the first ICDP facilitators in Uzbekistan. They received training online from Nicoletta Armstrong, who described them as extremely receptive, sensitive and enthusiastic professionals who both developed a deep understanding of the programme’s principles.
As part of their training, they implemented the ICDP programme with seven teachers working at Happy Start. Happy Start is a learning center for children aged from 2 to 7 years old. The ICDP training project started on the 14th of October 2020 and ended on the 2nd of March 2021. From the ICDP facilitators’ own report:
All the participant teachers became very involved and interested during the ICDP course. Home-tasks were very effective and reinforced what we taught during the meetings. Role-plays and group discussions made the meetings alive and vivid. Having the ICDP Guide to Facilitators was very useful, because it helped to plan the meetings but at the same time it also gave space for creativity and adaptation; and the research described in it, helped us to explain and confirm the importance of the ICDP guidelines, which was a good theoretical foundation for this target group.
For us as facilitators, it was interesting to work with this target group because they were all working as teachers and this meant that they could go back to their classrooms and apply the guidelines – and afterwards give us feedback on that direct experience. We focused the home tasks on the teachers’ classroom life and thought about the possibilities and challenges they face there to make the home tasks as useful for the teachers as possible. We made our own videos of the participant teachers in interaction with children. The ICDP booklet for caregivers was translated into Russian and while translating we changed the word parent to caregiver; and instead of your child we would put child in your classroom.
With regards to our future plans: Happy Start is on its way to start a new learning center that will be ready in September. We will run the ICDP training for the new staff there, but we are also planning to run ICDP programmes for other preschools, learning centers and schools. And we want to conduct an ICDP programme for parents as well. In order to spread the word about ICDP we have put information about the ICDP programme on the Happy Start’s Instagram page. We are planning to make a booklet about ICDP so that we can give it to people we are in contact with.
Here are comments from some of the participants of the ICDP training:
I realized there are no «difficult» children in our center. It is about how I see the child, My thinking of the child. When something happens first I need to think of something good in the child and make an effort to work on my attitude, because it affects my next steps as a teacher.
I have already been using some of these principles, but I did it unconsciously and not the whole time. Now I have developed a new awareness and I try to apply the guidelines consistently.
I realize the importance of empathy in communication with children. We are not robots, we get tired, sick, in a bad mood. But I still need to remember to be empathic towards a child ,even though I sometimes need empathy myself.
