Mark helps teachers develop their skills at using the advanced experiential technique Real Life Rehearsals®. Teachers have many responsibilities and one is helping students develop a set of social communication skills such as how to:
- Refuse the offer of a drink — yet retain prestige among peers;
- Refuse a lift with a drunk driver, or anyone you don’t want to go with — despite high-spirited friends urging you to ‘hop in’;
- Say ‘no’ to sexual harassment — confidently and leave no doubt that you are serious;
- Be appropriately assertive — even when what you have to say may not be well received;
- Perform well at a job interview — even when the interviewer is rude;
- Say ‘no’ to unsafe sex or to being involved in anything sexual at all — no matter what the pressure or persuasive tactics of others;
- Deal with difficult people — effectively, efficiently and appropriately;
- and the list goes on.
A common approach to skill development is the use of traditional role-plays. These have their place but teachers and others know their shortcomings and they deserve something better. The answer is Agent Provocateur Role-Plays® and Real Life Rehearsals®. Mark provides presentations, workshops and demonstrations (yes, right in your classroom, on a school camp or on a retreat) on how to use Real Life Rehearsals.
Mark is an experienced teacher — 8 years in the classroom, 2 years delivering education in schools with Family Planning Association, 1 year at the NSW Board of Studies, guest presentations in his role in TAFE, Health and Police, and is an approved ‘relief teacher’ (NSW). He has been using advanced role-play techniques, behaviour rehearsals and the advanced technique Real Life Rehearsals® for over 30 years with: teenagers; teachers; parents; nurses; youth workers; police; and front-line staff of organizations such as Housing NSW.
Mark provides both public and in-house presentations and workshops. His in-house presentations and workshops can be for individual schools or groups of schools, and at conferences or other professional learning events — whatever you like.
Check out where Mark is holding his public courses or ask him for more information.
A resource: Party Without Pain — a step-by-step description of Real Life Rehearsals
New Resource: “Party Without Pain. The use of Real Life Rehearsals® to help teenagers control their drinking.”
Party Without Pain is straightforward, pragmatic and easy to read. It contains: 
a rationale for why a new approach is needed; the reality of direct and indirect social pressure; why teenagers need both a set of realistic and personalized strategies and the social skills to deliver them in the real world; why traditional types of role-plays ‘just don’t cut it’; and the details of each of the 10 steps of Real Life Rehearsals as applied the situation of ‘helping teenagers use diplomacy, assertiveness and planning to keep their drinking under control’. $29.70 ($27.00 + GST) To purchase or order Party Without Pain. To learn more, ask Mark.
See how Mark can help students.
See how Mark can help or parents.
Download a PDF: How to teach any social communication skill you like, right across the curriculum