DC gets schooled by NSA's Russ Hicks

Russ Hicks went to Washington DC in May 2009 to teach a class of student SLPs at George Washington University on Friday and do an adult workshop for the NSA on Saturday. The trip was amazingly successful!
There were two separate events that weekend. The first event was a three hour presentation to the student SLP class at George Washington University on Friday morning. The professor for that class was very instrumental in arranging the world class facilities for the workshop. One of her student SLPs, who was a covert stutterer, joined Jerome and Matt and myself on a panel discussion for the class. She was amazing and really stole the show!

A bunch of us met for dinner at the Silver Diner in Rockville on Friday night, and we had a great time. Several people were there even though they were unable to attend the workshop on Saturday. It was great to see them anyway.

The second event for the weekend was the actual workshop on the GWU campus on Saturday. There were about 25 adults in attendance. The GWU facilities are absolutely world class, by far the best facilities in which I've ever given a workshop. We felt like kings there!

The workshop got off to a TERRRRRRIFIC start with random personal introductions and "good thoughts" to everyone in the room. This start is planned chaos for this workshop and everyone had a blast going around the room talking to everyone. As is so common with a group of people who stutter, the most difficult time as getting everyone to quit talking and restore order! :) Then we divided everyone into breakout sessions and discussed The Story of the Golden Key which made everyone think about what roles we all play in our stuttering. We arrived at some pretty amazing conclusions!

We broke for lunch around noon and ate at a local restaurant nearby. Lunch is really an integral part of the workshop, and again everyone had a lot of fun just being together and talking about anything and everything.

After lunch we broke up into discussion groups and learned about chickens and alligators - and an infinite number of topics for future NSA chapter meetings. Again, it was hard to get people to stop talking about this even though we hardly scratched the surface of all the topics.

Then it was time for the classic Open Mic session which is probably the highlight of any NSA workshop. And it certainly didn't disappoint us. Every single person got up to talk in front of the entire group - voluntarily - and several people were really outstanding!

We left the GWU campus and the workshop around 5 PM and took the ubiquitous Washington DC Metro (which we rode nearly everywhere) over to an amazing Italian food restaurant where we had a great time and ate like pigs!

To say that this workshop was a success is a huge understatement! Everyone had an absolute blast and made many new friends. Many of the bonds formed at this workshop will last a lifetime.

Here are some comments I've received from some of the workshop attendees...

• It was great to meet all the new faces and voices last weekend. Hats off to Russ, all the NSA folks, and GWU for make this workshop possible. I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in Scottsdale very soon. Stutter well and stay in touch!
• It's a shame we can't do something like the workshop every week!
• It was great meeting everyone. I really enjoyed thought provoking and stimulating conversations/ exercises. It was a stress free (relatively :) ) environment to speak up in front of the group because everyone is very supportive.
  

My special thanks to Jerome Mortman, chapter leader for one of the three DC chapters, and Stephen Kaufman, chapter leader for the Long Island chapter, for hosting this workshop and doing all the really hard work publicizing and organizing it. Thanks guys!

Click here to see the full slideshow...........I hope we will be able to do this or similar workshops in other areas in the country in the coming year.

Russ
RussHicks@mail. com
Dallas, Texas
My home page: http://www.RussHick s.com