opening space at the Beethoven Highschool

Sun Sep 16 11:45:39 PDT 2001

Dear colleagues!
Last Thursday I reported on the result of the deep discussion the
planning group for the open space on "The future of Beethoven" had
with the principal of this local highschool on whether to go ahead
with the event in the face of the heinous terrorist attacks in the US
 with the result to have the event even though there were voices
asking to postpone it.
About 90 students (aged 12 through 19), parents and teachers met at
2pm on Friday. The principal informed the group of the discussion,
the parent spokeswoman of the planning group opened the space and I
introduced the group to the os-technology(being closely followed by a
reporter from the German National Broadcasting System, very
unobtrusively).
After that it worked just like any open space I facilitated in the
past...as it progressed I kept sensing more intense spirit even
though it looked like any old open space.
People produced 36 issues, 29 documents emerged from the 3 sessions
that began at 3:30, 4:45 and 6pm.
At 7:30pm Irmi Grünsteidel and I (never having done it this way
before and actually designed only that afternoon) asked the group to
jointly look at the 29 documents that we had spread out on pinwalls
around the gym and to sort them into "issue families" and to give
each of the clusters a heading. They did this completely
selforganized  in 20 minutes in what looked like chaos most of the
time but also had the flavor of something that I dont really know the
taste of yet, maybe a dose of the open space-organization or the
integral organization or the interactive organization.
It was a very spirited, high energy performance resulting in 6 "issue
families:
Different Ways of Learning/Different Ways of Teaching
Discipline/Wellbeing
Identification with purpose and mission of our school
Constructive culture of conflict resolution and communication
Marketing
School-Spaces
They then all grabbed felt tipped markers to put down further ideas,
suggestions, proposals for action, etc. on large posters positioned
next to each of the "issue families" under the heading "tips".
After intense evening news ("this event has changed my view of what
is possible in this school"....."I never imagined that students,
parents and teachers could collaborate in such productive
fashion"...) and a standing ovation by all the adults for the
students  everyone departed at 9pm with the information that all they
had worked on would be in a document the next morning ready for them
to proceed with action planning.

Friday evening, while we were still in session, some 200 000
Berliners gathered at the Brandenburg Gate to voice their grief and
to demonstrate their opposition to terrorism and to show support for
the people of the United States. This was the largest gathering of
this kind in Berlin since the wall was brought down.

On Saturday, most showed up at 8:30am for the morning "break", the
event resuming at 9am. At that time more people were present than had
been there at any time on Friday. Right, surprise. And all were eager
to get down to work (Zeigarnik at work?) which they did in the most
intense fashion I had ever seen. After looking at the book of
proceedings (arranged by "issue families", the "tips" included that
we had reduced to regular size in a copy shop over night) they had 30
minutes (eventually expanded to 45minutes) for action planning around
the 6 "issue families" or any other items they wanted to. Agreements
were documented on sheets with the heading "This is how we will
continue:".
18 action plans (10 of them authored by the students) were reported
on, every single one heavily applauded.
After a break I had planned to do the traditional talking stick
round. Well, the group selforganized into a final round including
thankyous to the planning group, the parents who had done the lovely
catering (someone had asked them to come on in, they cried as they
got a standing ovation), the custodian, the people at the copying
machines, the parents who had organized the carpet for the gym,
etc....so I kept still and as invisible as possible and left the
talking stick under my chair.
At 11:55 we all stood in a close circle, everyone looking at each
other as they had done at the beginning of the open space during
"focusing the group", then everyone turned outward, held still for a
minute to feel the group behind oneself and then walked apart.
After icecream for everyone accompanied by two students performing
jazz on their saxophones  some 20 people joined to convert the gym to
its original setting...everyone departing at 2 pm.

I needed to write this down and send it to you all from Berlin in
these otherwise terribly disturbing times.

Love
michael

Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1
12209 Berlin, Germany
FON +49 - 30-772 8000     FAX +49 - 30-773 92 464
www.michaelMpannwitz.de

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>From  Sun Sep 16 21:13:16 2001
Message-Id: <SUN.16.SEP.2001.211316.0200.>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 21:13:16 +0200
Reply-To: florianfischer at ff-wey.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: florian fischer <florianfischer at ff-wey.com>
Subject: Re: A unique opportunity
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"uwe.weissflog" schrieb:

>  I would be willing to help to bring something like this to life in Europe.
> There is a conversation about pro bono work on the german speaking list
> "schneller Wandel", maybe this is a possibility for us in Central Europe to
> fill this with life.
> Uwe

uwe,
ich habe eben die ursprüngliche nachricht von peggy und deine antwort
weitergesendet an eine freundin, die in der medienakademie der evangelischen kirche
deutschland
eine abteilung leitet. mit der frage, ob von dort aus so etwas in gang zu setzen
wäre.
florian

florian fischer
begleitung im wandel
münchener 6
10779 berlin
fon 0049.30. 2116752
fax 0049.30. 2115943
florianfischer at ff-wey.com

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