Teacher Mentoring Report

Wed Aug 9 18:59:25 PDT 2000

Dear OSLIST,

This is a report on the progress of the teacher mentoring project in North
Carolina.  We are holding our first OS event on August 22-23, and toward the
end of the message I will be asking for advice on the development of this
meeting.

There is a team of people here whose mission is to design and implement a
new system for the mentoring of all of North Carolina's first-year public
school teachers (5,000 plus).  Our work is funded by a big three-year
federal education grant.

I have been an elementary school teacher for ten years.  In March I decided
to leave the classroom in the pursuit of opportunities to promote Open
Space.  Through a synchronicitous (to me, miraculous) series of events, I am
now a member of this design team.

Three weeks ago, I attended our first meeting, in Wilmington.  I came with
the idea, which people on this list had helped me to refine, of forming
collaborative mentoring groups.  Instead of mentoring being a one-to-one
affair, why not bring a bunch of new teachers and a bunch of experienced
mentors together in Open Space on a regular basis?  In this way, new
teachers could receive guidance from a number of mentors in an organic way,
and all the difficult, complex issues that bombard public school teachers
could be addressed in the deep trust and openness of Open Space.

I expected it to be a hard sell, an idea from remote left field.  I hoped
for a chance to pilot the idea on a small scale.  Surprise, surprise!  The
other members of the design team grasped the implications of this idea
instantly.  The meeting hummed with synergy, with all making contributions.
Many of them have been involved in powerful collaborative work with
Professional Development Systems that partner universities and schools.
Though they had not heard of Open Space, they had lived it and worked in it
in other forms.  The group is ready to explore using OS in the mentoring
system on a large scale, now.

Here's the human structure.  The federal grant supports sixteen master
teachers to take a year off from their teaching duties to work with mentors
in a particular region of the state, based at universities.  These people
have been chosen, and they are a powerful group of educators.  My idea is to
train and empower these sixteen people to facilitate OS meetings of mentors
and new teachers in their regions.

In addition, BJ Peters, Susan Wood, and Anne Stadler have all advised me
about the value of integrating Appreciative Inquiry into the system, both as
a foundational process for relationship building and as a way of evaluation.

In an ideal world, the sixteen mentor-leaders would go through a four day
training with the likes of Harrison or Birgitt, and do a full-blown AI
training as well.  It isn't possible (at least not yet).  What we have to
get the ball rolling is a two-day training, on August 22-23.  I am working
with BJ Peters and Peter Donaldson to develop and facilitate this event.  I
have confidence in our little team-of-three...AND we would love to receive
advice from the deep wisdom of this listserv.  How would you design this?
What are some key issues and questions for us to attend to?

Logistics:  We'll be in Charlotte, probably in a hotel conference room.  We
have from 9am Tuesday until 5pm Wednesday.  (We tried to start Monday
afternoon, but too many people are traveling too far to pull it off.)  The
number of participants will likely be between 25 and 35.

Our general vision is to provide the participants with a quality, albeit
short, experience of Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space.  We would like to
create a space where they can deeply consider the meaning and power of
mentoring in their lives, from both sides of the relationship.  We would
like to open the space for them to explore together the value of AI and OS,
and to collaborate about the possible applications of these processes to
their work as mentor leaders.  We would like to emerge from the event with
ideas about the nature and level of support that they will need to go forth
and do good work.  We will meet with leadership on the day after the event
to chart our way into the near future.

I will finish by saying thank you to my valued mentors who are reading this,
and to ask that you keep our efforts in your hearts, that Spirit may guide
us well.

Chris Weaver

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