Management in a World of Trurtles

[Pannwitz, Michael M]

Dear Pat,
a whole bunch of highschool students that participated in os-events
(yearly student body council weekends and events for entire schools)
here in Berlin are now os-facilitators on their own practicing all
over Europe and organizing training events.
Schools are definitely a grand place full of couches.
Love your story on teaching with os!
Greetings from Berlin
mmp

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 08:26:53 -0600, Pat Black wrote:

>Perhaps we do have enough couches and ashrams already, perhaps we are just
>not recognizing all the available couches as couches.  Yesterday I started
>an art residency in an elementary school where I live, a rural center in the
>very northern midwest US using Open Space.  The residency is a collaborative
>project on slavery.  It is with a 4-5 class which includes kids ages 9-11.
>The teachers feel this is a very immature group and not capable of
>processing the slavery issues and would I cover Civil War Battles instead.
>I said I would not as I am not qualified to handle that but if they would
>trust me I think I could handle the slavery topic with them.  We would look
>at the issues in US history and current global issues and see if we find
>correlations between the histories that would lead us to an action plan to
>address real life slavery issues and of course the design for the art
>project.
>
>So I began the day with these youngsters opening space and 5 hours later the
>kids were finishing up the first stage of this project with designs for
>their individual portions of the project.  By the end of the day that had
>identifed what they knew about slavery, what they were willing to do about
>it, the gifts they had to use in their work against slavery and had created
>an abstract symbolic visual language they could use to direct slaves to
>freedom or direct slave owners to their hearts and the eventual dissolution
>of practices that lead to slavery. We will be working like this for another
>20 hours or so until the project is done. I did not have to ask one child to
>get with the program, not once.  I have taught young children for almost 30
>years and I can say positivly that 5 hours without having to direct anyone
>to the task at hand has never happened before.
>
>So I am suggesting that the unidentifed couches and ashrams are in our
>educational systems which includes the schools themselves, directly working
>with kids and with the adults who work with them.  I did another  mini 3
>hour open space with teachers in a graduate class on intelligence.  I
>thought what better way to talk about intelligence than within a process
>that is the essence of intelligence.
>
>I do think we can get to all 6.5  billion people but I think it can be done
>most efficiently by getting to our youth and the people that work with them.
>Working with youth has the added benefit of access to their open brains.
>They are closer to accessing all biological possibility because those
>receptor sites have not atropied because of lack of use yet.
>Pat Black
>
>Date:    Fri, 18 Feb 2005 07:50:59 -0500
>From:    Harrison Owen <hhowen at comcast.net>
>Subject: Re: Management in a World of Turtles
>
>A number of people have suggested that Focusing and Open Space have much in
>common, or perhaps much to give each other. I can certainly see the point
>after these conversations and having read some of the material. It seems to
>me that Eugene Gendlin's work could be very powerful for use in coaching
>sessions following an Open Space. And as a matter of fact, coaching in a
>variety of forms could and probably should be part of "the package." I
>suppose we all do that in some fashion, but it may be to the point to do it
>more intentionally, or possibly involve colleagues whose passion and
>expertise is in the realm of coaching. I think the problem might be,
>however, that there are not enough really good coaches or sufficient time to
>handle the work that is in front of us. I find myself having similar
>thoughts with the work of Ken Wilber and others who say, (correctly I think)
>that the tools, practices and approaches of what they call Integral
>Psychology will make a major difference in the areas we are talking about. I
>absolutely agree, and then think about the 6 and 1/2 billion potential
>clients and come to the conclusion that we really don't have the couches or
>ashrams in sufficient number to do the job. That doesn't mean we should not
>try -- and for sure it is better to light a single candle than curse the
>darkness. But given the stakes of the game it seems to me that we also have
>some further thinking to do.
>
>
>Harrison
>
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Michael M Pannwitz, boscop eg i.G.
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49-30-772 8000
www.boscop.de   www.michaelmpannwitz.de

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