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<title>Re: [OSLIST] mental meanderings - you got me going Julie (long)</title>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Dear Chris,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>I discovered something
new today.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>I learned that in
extraordinary moments that active, questing, creative process that I so dearly
love can transform into a deep resonance with another that metamorphoses into stillness
and silence.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>What is left to do or
say in that moment of understanding?<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
</span><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Thank you, every
one.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>There are days I peer out my
window, wondering if I might see a glimmer of change in the physical universe in
response to what has been spoken here.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
</span>I wonder if the deep shifting I feel in myself is mirrored out there in
any way that I might recognize.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>The beauty, intelligence, and wisdom of
this group never fails to amaze and inspire me.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Chris, I can’t
think of a thing more to say to you except to ask when is the publication date
for your book? <span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>It can’t be
too soon for me. <span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>I’m still in
listening mode.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Consider me a rapt
audience.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Please, pontificate away.<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Here, let me help you out with a
question or two:<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>What if wanted to start
an Open Learning Process program for school age youth this summer?<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>What else might I need to know?<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Julie<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma'>-----Original Message-----<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>From:</span></b> OSLIST
[mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On
Behalf Of </span></b></span></font><st1:PersonName><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'>Chris Weaver</span></font></st1:PersonName><font
size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'><br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Tuesday, October 29, 2002
6:48 AM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> Re: mental meanderings -
you got me going Julie (long)</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Julie and Friends,<br>
<br>
Julie, you have such a gift for spinning out questions that are both precise
and open-ended and tantalize us with the secret heart of the matter.<br>
<br>
In fact, your questions about education resonate so with what I am working on
these days that I am squirming with excitement, with the challenge of crafting
a brief response. Here are some of your words again, followed by my own
brass tacks & pigs ear...<br>
<br>
> ...For example, they<br>
> identify three simple beliefs/rules that are imbedded in our educational<br>
> system:<br>
> <br>
> Only experts create
knowledge.<br>
> Teachers deliver knowledge
in the form of information.<br>
> Children are graded on how
much of the information they have<br>
> stored.<br>
<br>
Yes, I too think that these are fundamental rules, or unexamined givens, that
have an enormous effect on how self-organization manifests in schools and
school systems.<br>
<br>
> They hypothesize that the reason most educational reforms don't foster<br>
> much real change is because the underlying beliefs/rules aren't<br>
> changing...<br>
<br>
>...Hence, they say, to deeply change the educational system,<br>
> we must begin by changing the basic underlying beliefs of educators: we<br>
> must change those simple rules/beliefs that educators self-organize<br>
> around.<br>
> <br>
> Aye, there's the rub. I'm wondering if people here agree with that.
<br>
<br>
Yes, I agree with the part of that which suggests, "begin with a new set
of simple rules" (shying away, of course, from the mission of
"changing someone's basic beliefs" - I'd rather set out to roll in
poison ivy.)<br>
<br>
> ...Do we initiate the kind of change we desire by challenging another's
model<br>
> of the world and attempting to replace it with our own, or do we simply<br>
> start with self-organization itself? Arghhh..... scratch that<br>
> question. Faulty on too many levels.<br>
> <br>
> So let me go here..... is it self-evident that self-organization itself<br>
> (as we know it through OST) frequently expands people's beliefs and<br>
> understandings and the rules they operate by? That by providing<br>
> open/safe/voluntary/equal space we're implicitly offering a new set of<br>
> rules and beliefs that can be approached and understood at the level and<br>
> pace each participant is prepared to comprehend? That the process<br>
> itself is the answer to the problems we pose? Or how about this:
That<br>
> what matters is how we relate to each other, how we treat each other,<br>
> how we think of each other. That everything else, every problem we<br>
> think we have, is a vehicle for testing THESE questions.<br>
<br>
Yes, yes, yes...and...<br>
<br>
> I keep asking questions I know the answer to..... so what is it?
Just<br>
> some mental meanderings on a malingering Monday morning? Don't know.<br>
> There's still that unexpressed idea lingering at the edge of thought....<br>
> how to participate politely and lightly in the bettering of it all.....<br>
> finding new layers of comfort in the process we're in..... easing into<br>
> and resting in the goodness and fullness of what we already know.<br>
<br>
Thank you again Julie, because these last words, that "unexpressed
idea," is a good articulation of a many-year search for me. The
search has been restless, because what began within myself was called into the
scale of an elementary classroom, and what I learned in the classroom grew into
questions about the team and the school as a whole, and what was accomplished
in a school waited and grew and ached for three or four years like a seed
wanting to burst.<br>
<br>
You know that feeling? That longing for an invitational methodology that
will catch the right wind and dance in the air like a milkweed pod? (I
trust you do, with all the Open Space experiences that have sprouted in
Fairbanks.) So I have been looking for a way to participate lightly and
politely in the bettering of entrenched schools and districts, and here's the
brass tacks & pig's ear of the moment.<br>
<br>
We have a program called "Self-Discovery Days" at our camp. We
marketed it with a brochure, delivered to about a hundred public schools, all
levels K-12 across an eight county region in the North Carolina mountains.
Since early September we have served about 1,500 students and their
teachers, primarily in one-day field trips.<br>
<br>
One of our big objectives is, in your own words, to provide
"open/safe/voluntary/equal space, and implicitly offer a new set of rules
and beliefs that can be approached and understood at the level and pace each
participant is prepared to comprehend."<br>
<br>
The process is not OST, but it is a big step towards OST, and marvelous in its
own right. We have dubbed it "open learning process." It
shares with OST: opening circle, talking circles, 90-minute sessions, freedom
of choice for participants, philosophy of invitation, and equality (teachers
participate in exactly the same manner as their students). It differs
from OST in that: in most cases, the offerings, though open-ended and
interactive, are pre-planned by instructor/mentors on our staff; group sizes
have maximums (average ratio of 1:7); participants stay with the session they
choose, and do not move between them. Sessions are all experiential, in
visual arts of all kinds, expressive arts, cooking, outdoor adventure,
gymnastics, edible wild plants...whatever our instructor/mentors want to teach
(and we are adding new instructor/mentors all the time from the community). <br>
<br>
Teachers have signed up wanting a team-building, community-building field trip.
But day after day I have seen their amazement. What can happen with
sixty or a hundred kids in a single day based on a new set of simple rules is
astounding to all - including to me, even after many such experiences.<br>
<br>
We have recently changed our closing circle process into more of a performance.
We have met in a circle three times already in the day as as a whole, so
for the closing meeting we swing the benches from circles into rows in our main
lodge (a fire's going in the fireplace and in the new configuration it suddenly
looks like a church revival back in the woods!) Each group is invited to
present or perform as a group. Students talk about the sculpture they
made, or do back-handsprings, or do a skit, or tell a group story, or dance.
Teachers have told me numerous times that their students open up,
interact, and express themselves in a way that they have never seen before in
their teaching careers.<br>
<br>
To me at this point, what is significant about this work is that I feel we have
found a methodology for a deep experience of self-organization that is not just
palateable but quite delicious, digestable, and healthy for teachers and
students of all ages in mainstream public schools. The experience is
apart from their normal environment, but it is clear that seeds have been
planted and carried back, like wonderful burrs on people's socks, purple and
ringing like bells.<br>
<br>
And of course, the leap from participating in an Open Learning Process event to
facilitating one is not so great a leap (we have a training in development).
And the leap from Open Learning Process to OST, for adults or for youth,
is a short leap indeed (we have facilitated straight-ahead OSTs for high school
student councils this fall too). <br>
<br>
Part of the palatability of Open Learning Process is that it feels <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>safe</span></i> to educators because it keeps intact
the structure of "teacher in charge." To me, this is not just
all right, but necessary. I have personally wrestled and experimented in
emergent curriculum, child-centered learning, democratic schools, and the like
for years. My current belief about the essence of a natural learning
methodology for humans is that: young people need mentors; mentors need
small groups; great mentors have always been space holders; and the better
their technical expertise with the technical aspects of their craft, the better
space-holders they are. Being a space-holder with young people is a
position of authority in the deepest, richest sense of the word, and there are
as many ways to do this beautifully as there are people.<br>
<br>
And that, in a community, the kids need to choose their mentors. And that
in the interactive play of life, they mentor each other continually.<br>
<br>
And that, through a rite of passage (perhaps of their own creation and in their
own time), children in a community transform themselves into mentors...and then
dance back and forth across that boundary for the rest of their lives. Or
something like that.<br>
<br>
Thinking Julie of your questions about to teach algebra or not to teach
algebra...I hope that by the spring we are facilitating events with Open
Learning Process that are on a specific academic theme (algebra would be just
fine), where teachers in a school get together, find some other adults who want
to lead workshops, approach algebra from as many different intelligences as
possible, keep group sizes small and session times long, and open it up.
At the end, you'd have a church revival about algebra...(grin)<br>
<br>
That's enough for this morning. I'm not asking questions in your artful
manner Julie, so pardon my pontificating...but goodness this is exciting stuff.<br>
<br>
</span></font><st1:PersonName>Chris Weaver</st1:PersonName><o:p></o:p></p>
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