People live, learn, work and play in groups—often with difficulty. Help your clients, students, employees and colleagues do it better. Train as a group leader with GroupWorks, the unique group-building approach based in social therapeutics. Learn to apply its discoveries about what groups are and what they are capable of accomplishing.

The Need for GroupWorks

GroupWorks is a three-month training program that brings together professionals from diverse fields and disciplines to advance and transform their practices—in the classroom, business meeting, training workshop, counseling session, or community organization. Premised on over twenty years’ experience that people learn and grow most effectively in heterogenous groups, the program is ideal for counselors, educators, youth workers, organizational development and human resource professionals, coaches, psychotherapists, social workers and business leaders.

Participants Will Learn How To

• See and relate to the group as the unit of focus and development.
• Use theatrical improvisation as a group-building and facilitation method.
• Leverage a group’s diversity (even in seemingly homogeneous groups) to
   maximize its emotional, social and cognitive creativity.
• Appreciate and build positively with conflict.
• Support all members to take responsibility for the group’s growth and effectiveness.
• Attract new members and sustain stable group membership.

GroupWorks Faculty

GroupWorks faculty are internationally recognized leaders in the postmodern, theater-based, and activity-theoretic movements in psychology, psychotherapy, education, and organizational development. They offer a unique blend of field- specific knowledge and decades of expertise in group work and performance. The GroupWorks faculty draws upon experience from the East Side Institute, the Social Therapy Group, and Performance of a Lifetime. For a list of faculty click here.

To Apply to GroupWorks

Class and practicum sessions are conveniently scheduled on one weekday evening for twelve weeks. Tuition is $1200. For an application click here. For dates of the fall 2008 semester and more information, contact Barbara Silverman bsilverman@eastsideinstitute.org, 212-941-8906, ext 401.

Social therapeutics is an improvisational, philosophically informed, performance-based approach to human development and learning. Part of the postmodern movement in psychology and education, it is grounded in a social-cultural understanding and practice of human development. Human beings are seen as relational and creative. Development doesn’t “happen to us” but is an activity that we take part in socially with others. As a method for social-emotional growth and learning, social therapeutics is utilized in education, counseling, youth development, medicine and healthcare, organizational development, community development and executive leadership.

Studying at the East Side Institute

The East Side Institute is an international training and research center for new approaches to human development, learning, therapy and community building. All of the Institute’s work is devoted to changing psychology from a diagnostic, evaluative (and often stigmatizing) practice into a positive and creative force for the emotional, social and cultural development of all people and their communities. Drawing from the discoveries of its co-founders—philosopher-psychotherapist Fred Newman and developmental psychologist and learning strategist Lois Holzman—as well as the writings of psychologist Lev Vygotsky and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Institute specializes in creating learning environments that are improvisational, dynamic and profoundly practical. Education at the Institute is for people who are interested in change: changing how we relate to one another, how we teach and heal, and how we lead — in other words, changing our world. GroupWorks is one of several Institute educational programs.