providing information -- (long from Ed Ball)

[Chris Weaver]

Hi Julie and Ed,

This is a marvelous conversation, thank you.

I too am fascinated with Ed's description of the beginning of his class.  To
me what he did in beginning with the departmental and university
requirements was to share the givens with his students, and to allow some
time for them to work with the givens before opening the space to the theme
of the course.  In this way, it seems that the class did become the
"sponsor."

Over my years as an educator, Julie, I too have bristled against the
expectation that it is my role to assign, set required learning outcomes for
others, give grades, etc.  I do not believe that there is something
inherently wrong with structuring learning experiences this way.  But it is
only one way.  I have long employed progressive educational methodologies,
to open more space within the traditional roles and structure.  But recent
years of working with OST has brought the limitations of traditional
teacher/student roles into the sharpest relief.

The notion of working with the givens as Ed did seems to me a powerful tool
for a teacher to use in recasting his/her role as a space-holder.  As I have
learned from Birgitt, an essential part of working with the givens is, after
listing as many possible organizational/situational givens as we can think
of, to go through them and carefully ask, Is this really a non-negotiable
given?  For someone wanting to open space in an educational setting, some of
these questions might be:
Do we REALLY have to meet for only an hour each day (or could it be five
hours once a week)?
Is participation at every session required?  What are the terms?
What curriculum content is non-negotiable?
What are the explicit non-negotiables of grading/assessment?
Can other people who are not enrolled in the class be invited in as equal
participants?
etc.

If I were designing a course I might gather a sponsoring group, including
facutly in the department, an administrator, and students or prospective
students, and ask these questions up front, so that the course title and
description would serve as the "invitation" prior to students' signing up.

The most successful use of OST in a university setting I have done was what
we termed "teacher mentoring circles."  We had a cohort of 30 first-year
public school teachers, who had been through a summer intensive teacher ed
program together.  We met monthly on Saturdays.  I negotiated with the other
faculty for time, and usually got four hours - once I got the whole day.  We
invited experienced mentor teachers as equal participants.  We tried out
different themes - Curriculum Design, Keeping In Balance, etc - but the
teachers would always post topics about whatever they needed the most across
the whole range of the teaching experience.  There was a nice development,
as the new teachers did all the posting at the beginning, and the
experienced mentors would attend and take part in conversation.  But over
time some of the experienced mentors recognized a particular skill or
workshop that would be useful to the new teachers, and they would come
prepared to offer this in a more structured way as a session.

(This is my answer, Julie, to your question about whether OST is right to
teach a particular skill-set:  Yes!  I love it when a convenor stands up and
says, "My group is going to learn how to do xyz."  Whoever comes are the
right people.  At the camp where I work, OST breakouts are often offered in
technical skills - how to belay a rock climber, how to build a loom or split
logs.  And I am curious right now with the question of how to track and
publicly acknowledge progressively acquired skills.  I am using OST in
ongoing settings where learners can direct their own curriculum, but also
where there is a series of technical requirements for different
competencies, say in canoeing, climbing, or the use of various tools.
What's the mimimal appropriate structure for that, I wonder...?)

Anyone who knows how tough a public school teacher's first year can be can
imagine how useful these Saturday OSTs were.  It was a chance to decompress,
to be honest & vulnerable among peers, to re-orient to a deeper magnetic
north (why does this matter?).  The closing circles were awesome.  These
sessions kept some people afloat in some rough waters.

I was facilitator for the mentoring circles, but I was not the one
responsible for the students' grades in the overall program.  Integrating
the grading into the OST part of the course would be a neat challenge.
"Sharing information" in the way Joelle and Romy are talking about would
also be fun to integrate.  And I am in agreement with Michael Pannwitz that
the space-holder is best the space-holder alone, and not a participant.  I
can imagine the designated teacher/"expert" either letting his/her content
expertise go and holding space, or calling in another space holder so that
he/she can participate equally.  Either one is good, but both at once is
problematic.

And yes Ed, I also spent late afternoons dismantling many a circle of chairs
in classrooms, hallways, and on patios, to not irk the university custodial
staff!

Chris Weaver

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20020804/d07d33ba/attachment-0017.htm>