Who's responsible for school children?

Thu Mar 8 10:19:36 PST 2001

Dear Viv,
I ran into a similar problem in working in an elementary school in Sweden.
on two different occasions, 6-7 graders and 8-9 graders. We, my collegue and
me, were very strict about the voluntary participation. And that we were not
going to hinder students to leave once they came.
But, the school is responsible for children during there work hours and
could not let the children just leave the meeting place, which was a little
bit away from the school.
So one of the teachers, who was also involved in the facilitation of the
Open SPace, talked to every student that were intending to slip out.
This didn´t work so well on the first occasion, when half of the crowd left
after a couple of hours. They had actually come, many of them, just to get
away from school. Some of their teachers were distrustful of the event and
had not spoken so well of it. On the other hand, there were only 2 students
that left on the second occasion, they and we were better prepared.
So I don´t know about your legal situation when it comes to responsibilities
for the safety of the kids but my conclusion after these meetings is that
we keep the students on the premises, if they don´t have a very good reason
to leave and someone can follow them back to school if they rather be there
for the rest of the day.

Another experience is that young people are very fast and they are used to
classes no longer than 45 minutes. So we shortened the break out groups to
45 minutes, and also shortended the introduction and the convergence.

We are evaluating our work in this school and I will come back when we have
gotten some answers from the students and the teachers.

Good luck!
Agneta Falk

----- Original Message -----
From: Viv McWaters <viv at theReef.com.au>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 12:32 PM
Subject: Who's responsible for school children?

> Hello all
>
> I will soon be opening space at a youth forum exploring how young people
> want to work into the future. My client is concerned about who's
> responsible for teenagers attending the forum - and what's to stop them
> from nicking off for the day! In the spirit of OS, attendance will be
> voluntary and I expect no particular problems - but I can see my client's
> dilemma. Parents will have to give permission for their children to attend
> the forum, (especially as it's during school hours) so it's probably a
> reasonable expectation that someone takes responsibility.
>
> I'd be grateful for any suggestions/experiences.
>
> Cheers
>
> Viv
>
> Note NEW telephone number from 13 March 2001
> 61 3 5261 9498
> All other details remain the same...
>
> Viv McWaters
> Beyond the Edge Pty Ltd
> PO Box 665, Torquay 3228
> Victoria Australia
> Ph/Fax: 61 3 5278 3864
> Mobile 0417 135 406
>
> "Thus the task is not so much to see what no-one yet has seen, but to
think
> what nobody yet has thought about that which everyone sees." Schopenhauer
>
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>From  Thu Mar  8 15:01:38 2001
Message-Id: <THU.8.MAR.2001.150138.0800.>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:01:38 -0800
Reply-To: lisaheft at pacbell.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Lisa Heft <lisaheft at pacbell.net>
Subject: Open Space in smaller packages
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Hello, colleagues --

I am meeting with someone soon to discuss holding space with
staff from two different regional offices of a company.

The two different offices and staff groups do not get along,
do not work well with each other and are spending a lot of
time and energy (and resources) complaining about each other
rather than solving the problems.

After a bit more discussion with this potential client we
may find that Open Space is just the thing to get them
working together and enjoying it before they even know it
(!).

This would be the first use of OS in this organization.

Just in case I do not get the flexibility of holding a two
or 2.5 day event, what would you recommend for the design of
shorter events?  One day, half day...I also know there are
some of you who do what I would call very short Open Space,
of only two or three hours.

What do you find are the adjustments -- logistically or
otherwise -- one might make for the various shorter events
you may recommend to me?

And we had an earlier discussion on OSLIST about the number
of consulting/facilitation days one tells the client s/he
will be paying for.  Do any of you adjust any of this when
discussing a shorter OS, and if so, how?

I appreciate your thoughts on this,

Lisa

Lisa Heft
Berkeley, California, USA

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