October
22,1999
By Cheryl Edwards
Seen Flying over the Gulf of
Mexico with the hummingbird migration, Kathy Suerken is headed to Monterrey,
Mexico where she will be meeting with the Secretary of Education, Mr. Jose
Martinez. Mr. Martinez is not only TOC
for Education Director in Mexico, Alejandrina de Garza and TOC for Education
Coordinator in the Secretary’s Office, Marina Rodriguez; he has been named
by the President of Mexico
to be the National Advisor of Education.
By Cheryl Edwards
Larry Till will be teaching
a TACT class offered for State Board Continuing Education Credits at St. Clair
Community College starting in October.
Contact Carol Andre-Nichols at 1.800.553.2426 for registering
information.
Will Stentz presented at the
1999 MARHSS (Michigan Area Residence Hall Student Staff) Conference for college
resident assistants, graduate assistants, and college hall directors. The program title: Achieving Ambitious
Targets.
Doug Roby and Mary Ellen
Bourbeau will be presenting at the Michigan Counseling Association’s 1999
Convention in Lansing, Michigan USA, October 16-19.
By Gila Glatter, Director,
Israel
Many things are happening in Israel with TOCFED. My colleagues and I, are pushing the use of
the tools through teachers' rooms, in order to avoid violence among children,
and to promote thinking process through subject matters in classes. The new concept and way, have caught
teachers and kids. They like it very
much. They use it, as they study it
with our instructors and tell about
it to friends and others.
So, I can say very proudly, we are successful. The point, which bothers me a lot, and keeps my mind busy, is
what will happen after a while, after we will leave the scene?
We, all, know that to get an insight, regarding valued issues and
matters, we have to invest a lot of efforts and energy. In education, we need even more of
these. Teachers, from time to time,
feel they can not carry the heavy burden any more, and they stop and leave ,
even they appreciate the valued treasure they have gotten. I keep my mind busy, for many hours, finding
better strategies that may help assimilate the need and the use of the TOC
way. I feel, deeply in my heart, that
using the tools and adapting the concept, helps us to overcome our reflexive
way of thinking, making our thinking organized, bright, clear and focused. The more we use it the more it is easier to
respond and act cleverly in real situations.
Last Thursday, we opened a TOCFED CLUB, in order to enable our TOC
people to get in touch face to face, to hear about new
implementations in education, to ask questions, and to learn about new chances
for jobs.
38 people participated, (too many for a club) and stayed for 3 hours.
The atmosphere was very solemn.
We tried to define our goal in the club and worked with TOC tool:"
building a team spirit". We have
gone through a very qualitative process, despite the large number of the
people. We came up with unfinished
strategy for achieving the goal. The
people have promised to continue at home and then to pass it to me, as soon as
possible. In another five weeks, I hope
to bring a good strategy to the next meeting, which every one will feel he is a
part of it.
I would like to share with you one unit lesson, in a course I'm in
charge of. I teach in a school collage
named: Talpiot, in Tel- Aviv, Israel.
The course is about strategies in the heterogeneous class. For many years I used to teach this course
in a very successful way, so I didn't even consider to change my way of leading
the students. My TOC knowledge, induce
me to look upon things, with new eyes.... So, I realized that what I give to my
students are answers for how to deal with the complicated situations in the multiplex
class. I have to let them find out what
they want to change. They have to ask
the first question, before they learn how to use tactics and strategies. For 2 lessons, the students raised their
problems in teaching in an un-uniform class.
We organized the problems as conflicts, in cloud diagrams, and after we
described 4 "udies", we specify the core problem.
Problem which almost every undesirable phenomena in the
heterogeneous class can be define and agree with. It was amazing. Even
stories, which in the first moment looked as impossible to define and clarify,
we succeeded to fill in a cloud... Now we all agree that in order to succeed in
our instruction role, we have to keep the framework: norms and regulations, in
one hand, and in the other hand, we have to enable our students to be independent
and responsible. We can not achieve these two needs, while we keep our
dominance on the framework. We have to
transcribe the mastery to the students.
How to do that we will examine through the entire course. The process we have gotten through was so
meaningful to most of the students. So, some of them came to me showing me, how
their specific problems, which in the first look seems so far from the generic
problem, are suitable perfect. Now , we
have to go a long way to study the strategies that are intended to overcome
this problem. Each concept in the
strategies, we will check with TOC tools; thinking cause and effect way.
(Need)- B
- Get from point Y to point X
(Want)- D
- Take the family car
Are the following statements
suitable assumptions for B —D?
• There
is no public transportation available to Y.
• I can’t
borrow a car from my friends.
"When you make the finding yourself, even if you're the last
person on
earth to see the light, you'll never forget it." —Carl Sagan
You asked what can we learn from it? Simple… Our teaching must be Socratic.
I often say, now, that the most difficult person in my audience
makes me
learn the most. Learning
is the best in life. I used to say,
"How negative;”
and dismiss those learning opportunities. My assumption being they had
nothing to offer me but headaches.
I also want to add one of my own: “Albert Einstein is full of TOC
wisdom.”
I love every quote I hear from him. One I always remember and refer to:
"Setting an example is not the main way we teach,
it is the only way." — Albert Einstein
By Kay Buckner-Seal
Many
people enjoyed the lesson submitted last week by Judy Holder entitled: An
Introduction to Clouds. Her lesson was
a model; it was highly interactive, it involved higher order thinking, and it
made relevant connections by the use of the TOC thinking tool… the evaporating
cloud.
I
will share a few responses to Judy’s contribution from the TOCFE family:
“Thanks for the update this week. It was very helpful. I am doing a presentation to 6-12th grade students about understanding feelings
and making positive choices. Then
information from Judy Holder was helpful and some of the ideas I will be
incorporating into my presentation.
Thanks Judy. The focus of my
presentation will be using a cloud to help us solve conflicts that result out
of our feelings. The presentation is
Sunday October 24, 1999 at the Grosse Pointe Memorial Church in Grosse Pointe
Mi. The title of the program is SAVE
OUR CHILDREN and there are two other speakers addressing issues of violence and
substance abuse. I only wish the title
was SAVE OUR CHILDREN USING TOC. I
guess there is more work for me to do.” —Doug Roby <RobyD@gp.k12.mi.us>
“Bernie, is it possible to get Judy to
identify the tunes that are used for the
songs in her "Introduction to
Clouds"? I suspect they're common
ones, but I can't figure them out for the first two songs listed.” —Barbara
Riester <RIESTERBB@vmi.edu>
Judy,
I hope you are reading this week’s TACTics.
Thanks for your article and we look forward to hearing from you with the
title of those tunes. We welcome
contributions from the entire TOCFE family.
Send snail mail to:
Cheryl A. Edwards Kay Buckner-Seal
2253 S. Hill
Island Rd. or 10230 Dartmouth
Cheryl’s e-mail address has
changed. Her address is now: cherylaedwards@aol.com You can also send via e-mail to me at: bucknek@resa.net