Not Open Space

[John Engle]

Thanks for sharing, Yoav.

I've been in similar situations.

Are you familiar with this page?

http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/netwiki.cgi?OpenSpaceinEducation

Might any of these stories be interesting to any of the others that you're working with?

John Engle


Yoav Peck <yoavpeck at netvision.net.il> wrote:          st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }                     Not Open Space     
  “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”
                                                                     Samuel Beckett
   
  I am co-chair of the central parents’ committee at my daughter’s elementary school here in Jerusalem. We are a relatively young school that began with a handful of kids and now numbers 400. Since losing the intimacy of the school’s early years, a plethora of questions and issues has appeared: about the running of the school, the nature of the parents’ community, educational emphases, student violence, etc. 
  Having participated in several OS experiences and then reading Harrison and obtaining coaching from experienced folks, I led three successful OS events. I am in love with Open Space, the “technology” and the world-view that underlies it. So I quite naturally saw a school-wide Open Space event as something that could respond beautifully to the widely-perceived need to give the parents a chance to express their concerns and to gather them together on the way to voluntary, passion/responsibility – motivated activism in the school. 
   
  Along with the curiosity and openness of some folks, I encountered stiff resistance from others, including the two co-principals. It was expressed in people’s difficulty envisioning what would follow the chaos of the marketplace, and the opposition to “wasting time at an event with no agenda.” I explained, I described, I brought in an outside OS facilitator to explain, I gave out written material. The two principals were particularly nervous about it, and I called other principals who were willing to share their successful OS experience with our principals
. all to no avail. Perhaps I wanted OS too much. Perhaps I was sounding righteous about it. I was even accused of belonging to some kind of OS cult!! Picture me holding out Harrison’s book to my accuser and him refusing to touch it, as though there were worms crawling around the pages. 
   
  What was wrong? Avner Haramati urged me to accept that people could not be “persuaded” to do Open Space. That I had things upside down
 that the proper order of things would be reached when people would own the idea to the point that they would be persuading me that OS was right for us. 
   
  The Parents’ Committee decided to devote an entire evening to deciding what to do. As I listened to the various points of opposition, and along with them the deeply-felt need for some kind of event to take place, I yielded. People wanted structure, they wanted the class representatives to go out to the class parents and cull the central issues people wanted discussed, and then to build an agenda around these issues. They were clearly not prepared to be surprised. 
   
  So that’s where we are now. In early April, we will hold an event that will not be Open Space. I somehow do not feel “defeated
” An organizational consultant, I know that we have to “start where the client is
” I wrote to Harrison and now I am curious about how to build on his advice: 
  Open as much space as you can, and when the walls close in, take a pause until the next opportunity. It will come. The other thing is that Open Space (for me) is less about “doing a program” – than a way of being. It is a style of approach that just opens space for people to share and grow. You don’t even have to sit in a circle! I think that is what you have been doing, and I say keep opening.
  So this now seems to be the challenge: opening space without Open Space. 
  It is exciting to me in a special way, since this feels like living in the real world, a world where suspicion, fear of losing control, skepticism and cynicism reign
 this is where we live, and learning to uncover the keys to opening a closed space feels like an important journey. As we build our non-OS event, there will be countless opportunities for opening space, for making use of the OS distinctions, for softening our fear of the unexpected. 
   
  As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg says, I prefer Succoth to Passover. On Passover, we herald liberation from slavery. Trumpets and glory! But on Succoth we celebrate the dreary tasks entailed in wearily plodding our way through the desert, as we daily build and take apart our little huts on the 40 year schlep to the promised land. At Succoth we celebrate the secrets of living our way through the desert with the promised land in our hearts, sometimes slipping to longing for the fleshpots of slavery, but steadfastly confronting what arises along the way from an inner place that resonates with our vision of what can be. 
   
  I’d be grateful to any of you who have thoughts about any of this. 
  Thanks much, 
  Yoav Peck, Jerusalem
  
  * * ========================================================== OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html  To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist 

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20080219/4a4884d1/attachment-0008.htm>