OS and AI

Audrey Coward abc at interlog.com
Fri Apr 27 08:43:12 PDT 2001


I, too ,am challenged by the current discussion.It is timely since I
went to Friends of Fast Company Open Space.One of my reasons for going
was to reflect on What is my work?Who do I want to work with?.... I know
Open Space is with me to stay. I am registered at the end of May to
devote four days to learning more about AI. Yesterday many came to the
os event looking for answers and all they received was more
questions.The discussion on the list is bring up many deep questions for
me.I would like to hear more about what this discussion is bringing up
for others. I had the experience of teaching elementary school children
for 13 years. I bring much of that experience to my current work
-Curriculum developmeny
                                                - an appreciation and
understanding of indivual differences
                                                -knowing whatis going on
in the room because of the responsibility of knowing where my students
were and what they were doing and being at all times .I could go on but
this is enough for now,
Audrey Coward
Catalysts for Change
Toronto ,Canada

Chris Weaver wrote:

> I am really enjoying this discussion.  Thanks, Peg, for sharing your
> soul-searching, particularly the gem about the 4 children at Passover.
>
> Harrison, your comments are a touch-stone for me.  In The Power of
> Spirit you talked about being a theory-builder.  I honor you for your
> theory-building, and I am considering your theory that in OST people
> arrive where they would arrive via AI or other processes, but without
> the fuss and without being disempowered by the facilitation.
>
> I'm digging through my own experience to mess-it-around into some
> theorizing.  By far my most extensive experience as a space-holder has
> been in my ten years as an elementary school teacher.  This experience
> can be described as a ten year search for the minimal appropriate
> structure for each child and each community of children to fully
> engage with...well...themselves, their innate spirit to grow and
> thrive and learn and live and love.
>
> Minimal appropriate structure took many forms - an array of
> methodologies.  With some students, I used a lot of structure.  When I
> understood them, and built the structure on this understanding, I
> discovered over time that I was holding space for them well.
>
> Being a facilitator for a group of adults is not identical to being a
> teacher for a group of children.  I wonder:  How is it different, and
> how is it the same?
>
> In another vein, I have had wonderful experiences with adults in
> structures that dictate spending some time in pairs.  Some
> storytelling circles begin this way, and AI discovery process works
> this way.  Being in an AI structure that established that I would
> spend an hour with another person responding to a list of open-ended
> questions, and hearing my partner's responses, elicited a deep and
> valuable experience of a particular kind.  An hour in an Open Space
> meeting yields a different variety of valuable experience.  As a
> participant, I arrive in a different place in each.
>
> Musing about structure, I reflect also on a methodology for
> improvisational movement called Interplay.  Each Sunday afternoon I
> spend two hours in a "playgroup."  In many ways this is Open Space -
> the law of two feet is at work, and at all times, "you are more
> important than the system."  Interplay is minimal appropriate
> structure, and invitation-based.  But it is the help of the system,
> the movement forms, that has opened up for me a profoundly new level
> of engagement with my own body and with other people in movement.
> Interplay introduced me to the idea of "ecstatic following."
> Responding to a diversity of structures provided by a master
> facilitator has opened doors I never could have found on my own.
>
> So much for theorizing...I am only messing around in the mess....
>
>
>      Chris
>
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