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I, too ,am challenged by the current discussion.It is timely since I went
to Friends of Fast Company Open Space.One of my reasons for going was to
reflect on What is my work?Who do I want to work with?.... I know Open
Space is with me to stay. I am registered at the end of May to devote four
days to learning more about AI. Yesterday many came to the os event looking
for answers and all they received was more questions.The discussion on
the list is bring up many deep questions for me.I would like to hear more
about what this discussion is bringing up for others. I had the experience
of teaching elementary school children for 13 years. I bring much of that
experience to my current work -Curriculum developmeny
<br>
- an appreciation and understanding of indivual differences
<br>
-knowing whatis going on in the room because of the responsibility of knowing
where my students were and what they were doing and being at all times
.I could go on but this is enough for now,
<br>Audrey Coward
<br>Catalysts for Change
<br>Toronto ,Canada
<p>Chris Weaver wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>I am really enjoying this discussion. Thanks,
Peg, for sharing your soul-searching, particularly the gem about the 4
children at Passover.
<p>Harrison, your comments are a touch-stone for me. In The Power
of Spirit you talked about being a theory-builder. I honor you for
your theory-building, and I am considering your theory that in OST people
arrive where they would arrive via AI or other processes, but without the
fuss and without being disempowered by the facilitation.
<p>I'm digging through my own experience to mess-it-around into some theorizing.
By far my most extensive experience as a space-holder has been in my ten
years as an elementary school teacher. This experience can be described
as a ten year search for the minimal appropriate structure for each child
and each community of children to fully engage with...well...themselves,
their innate spirit to grow and thrive and learn and live and love.
<p>Minimal appropriate structure took many forms - an array of methodologies.
With some students, I used a lot of structure. When I <i>understood</i>
them, and built the structure on this understanding, I discovered over
time that I was holding space for them well.
<p>Being a facilitator for a group of adults is not identical to being
a teacher for a group of children. I wonder: How is it different,
and how is it the same?
<p>In another vein, I have had wonderful experiences with adults in structures
that dictate spending some time in pairs. Some storytelling circles
begin this way, and AI discovery process works this way. Being in
an AI structure that established that I would spend an hour with another
person responding to a list of open-ended questions, and hearing my partner's
responses, elicited a deep and valuable experience of a particular kind.
An hour in an Open Space meeting yields a different variety of valuable
experience. As a participant, I arrive in a different place in each.
<p>Musing about structure, I reflect also on a methodology for improvisational
movement called Interplay. Each Sunday afternoon I spend two hours
in a "playgroup." In many ways this is Open Space - the law of two
feet is at work, and at all times, "you are more important than the system."
Interplay is minimal appropriate structure, and invitation-based.
But it is the help of the system, the movement forms, that has opened up
for me a profoundly new level of engagement with my own body and with other
people in movement. Interplay introduced me to the idea of "ecstatic
following." Responding to a diversity of structures provided by a
master facilitator has opened doors I never could have found on my own.
<p>So much for theorizing...I am only messing around in the mess....
<blockquote>
<br>Chris</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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