Education Healing (long)

Larry Peterson larry at spiritedorg.com
Sun Jun 9 07:34:35 PDT 2002


I have to share a story while I'm still vibrating with the excitement
and energy.  (I'll improve the writing and detail for the next OSI
Canada Newsletter coming out soon).

I just finished leading a 2.5 day 350 person Open Space event on
"Realizing the Promise of Public Education" that was wonderful.  Judy
Gast and Audrey Coward volunteered to give super help for a topic they
cared about.  Some other folks who have taken OS workshops and
facilitate events were there, Eric Lillis and Louise Pinet as
participants and Susan Langley and Ruth  Baumann, both trained
facilitators, were also the sponsors.

For the past 10 years Public Education has been under substantial threat
in Ontario, like in many places.  What was touted as one of the best
systems in the world has been cut to the bone and teachers have been
taken on buy a government with strong leaning toward a private system.
During that time the Teacher's Federations have fought among themselves
and the umbrella Ontario Teachers' Federation has had to substantially
downsize (in the last 6 months).

In the face of all this there has been a poisoned, confrontational
climate among the stakeholders.  To begin to address this, the Ontario
Teachers Federation initiated a series of 2.5 hour community forums in
1999.  I was asked to design them and to train teacher-facilitators to
use a process of small group discussions where teachers listened with no
presentations.  The 38 communities that have held the forums across the
province recruited a diversity of participants to the dialogue - and
dialogue not outcome was the focus.  As you might expect, the "outcomes"
of those forums, what people have done as a result of the conversations
and networking have been exciting both for the communities and for the
participants, including the teachers.

These past few days, OTF held a Provincial Forum.  Because of the
downsizing, they cut the expectation to 200 participants.  Because of
great recruiting 320 people from across the province came.

The event began with some presentations, not my preference but what was
necessary for the sponsors.  I then opened and held the space and the
participants self-organized some amazing, healing, joyful, strategic and
momentum building conversations.  The participants were from across
Ontario: parents, teachers, administrators, trustees, provincial
activists, federation activists with education, food banks, healthy
schools, small business people, aboriginal education leaders, a few
Ministry of Education folks, black activists, etc.

For most it was their first experience of Open Space but they carried
with them some of the values and skills from the Community Forums.
There was some attrition by the closing on Saturday morning, as
expected, but those who stayed told of life affirming and changing
experiences: healing conversations between parents and teachers, between
those working from different perspectives on how to move forward,
between local union leaders and business people.  One woman was moved by
here community forum a couple of years ago to run for trustee, and won.
She described how she was moved by the Open Space to stand up for her
community in ways she could not have imagined.  Students loved it.

It was a delight and another step down a path.  More community forums
are planned in areas that have not held them or to take the
conversations to a new level where they have been held.  The next
Provincial Forum in Open Space will be held in a year with a hope to
double the size and it will be right before Provincial Elections.

It's a story I needed to tell my friends this morning.  Thanks.

Larry

Larry Peterson
Associates in Transformation
Toronto, ON, Canada
416.653.4829

larry at spiritedorg.com
www.spiritedorg.com


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20020609/325b74ae/attachment-0016.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list