students in os as part of celebration of women

[john engle]

This past Saturday I had the delightful opportunity of participating in an
Open Space with roughly 110 Haitian High school students and 10 teachers and
school administrative staff.

The theme, translated from Haitian Creole to English, was, "What can we do
to ensure that there is authentic harmony between girls/women and boys/men?"

We were at The Louverture Cleary School which is a private boarding school
for kids who have been assessed as being academically gifted and who come
from desperately poor neighborhoods and households.

I have been doing two to three Open Space meetings with teachers and
administrative staff each year for the last several years. This was our
first Open Space with students. What excites me most is that two young
teachers-both in their mid twenties-who have participated in previous open
space meetings, initiated, organized and facilitated the event.

It emerged from the school's custom of doing an annual two day program for
female students celebrating international day for women. This year, the
female students joined together and said to the teacher responsible for the
program something like this: "If the purpose of our celebrating
International Day of Women is to move forward in realizing a society that
honors the rightful role of women, than the boys have to be a part of the
program, because they are a big part of the problem."

Madame Louis, their teacher, worked with other teachers and students to come
up with a two-day program involving all students in grades 9-12--girls and
boys--calling it: "Celebrate People." They designated Saturday morning, the
second day, from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon as being a time in Open Space. I only
learned about all this after the theme had been created. The two teachers
responsible for the program, one a Haitian women and the other a United
States-ian man, with encouragement from school's leadership, wanted to
facilitate. They simply contacted me to get some pre-meeting coaching and
help with setting up the space.

The meeting was done outdoors in their school's courtyard, protected by
trees from the hot tropical sun.

There were two different time periods, more than 20 subjects posted, notes
from the majority of small group discussions turned in, a talking stick type
exercise from 11:35 to 12:05, and nothing but positive comments about the
morning in Open Space.

On April 10, the entire school-200 students and 30 teachers and staff are
invited by school's leadership to attend a full day in open space on a theme
something like:  "What needs to be a part of our apprenticeship to ensure
that we will be prepared, when we graduate, to help our country move
forward?"


http://www.beyondborders.net/experiment.htm

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