NETWORKING
(1) Our
Children’s Conference Needs You and Your Ideas, Kathy
Suerken, USA
CONNECTIONS
(2) Texas
Progress, Cheryl
A. Edwards, USA
QUOTE
(3) Robert
F. Kennedy
EDITORS’
NOTES
From Kathy
Suerken
During TOCFE
Conference 2000, Galina Doyla and David Higgins shared their experience in
conducting a highly successful workshop session during a Russian Education
Conference for both children and teachers.
Although intended just for high school students, their TOC session was
so effective that teachers, who had only stopped to briefly observe, stayed for
the entire session as well. What a
great way to teach TOC!
The TOC
session included both product and process as several groups of students
completed PrTs on the highly relevant topic of: We have a democratic
school. David and Galina began their
Russian workshop by providing just the topic to the students and letting them
first brainstorm their ideas. This
methodology, however, David noted, was not leading to any practical and timely
outcome (product). As soon as David
provided the TOC process (PrT— Ambitious Target tool), the discussion and work
became focused and yielded concrete and thoughtful plans which the students
were excited to implement. For those of
us who have been involved in assessments, this example provides a great “pre”
and “post” test evaluative approach.
For Galina,
their experience reinforced the "whys" of her vision to include
children in our conferences as a way of making our adult conferences even more
exciting and effective. The mind
boggles at the potential synergy of providing some joint sessions. Yes, but…
Planning and
implementing such an event is also mind boggling— a supremely ambitious
intermediate objective for TOCFE and one which will not be achieved without
many helpful hands and minds. Is it
sufficiently clear that I mean YOURS?
To begin
that process, I took advantage of a recent stop in London to meet with 4 of our
directors at the same time: Eleanor May Brenneker (Netherlands), David Higgins
(UK), Galina Doyla (Russia), along with— very serendipitously— Jana
Borisavljevic (Yugoslavia). Our group
meeting at Galina’s school was very informal and brief. As we started to brainstorm ideas on this
topic, I was humbled by a most worthy question from Galina: “Kathy, why aren’t
we writing a PrT?”
I just love
it when others remind me to practice TOC!
Given that we only had a very short one-hour to think together on this
exciting project, using TOC is likely the only reason we ended up with
something concrete.
The target
reads: A Successful First International TOCFE Children’s Conference in 2001. It has been decided to hold it concurrently
with the adult conference in Detroit and— due to needs of local targeted
audiences, it likely will be scheduled the last week of June 2001. Date is still tentative until we have a
confirmed venue.
As you read
our list of obstacles, please think of those we may have overlooked and/or
better verbalizations of the ones we didn't.
I offer here only our obstacles because we need you to help us think of
“good enough” IOs and to contribute some creative ideas on how to achieve them. These can be e-mailed to me at suerken@nwfl.net
or to TACTics at redwards@sault.com.
Obstacles:
1. We haven’t identified
children attendees.
2. We don’t
have funding to bring the children.
3. We don’t have
accommodations for the children.
4. Children get bored
easily (unlike adults, of course :-)
5. Children
must be properly chaperoned at all times.
6. Conference is scheduled
during school year in some countries.
7. Conference will be
conducted only in English this year.
8. Sessions
to demonstrate how to teach TOC to children require attendance by children who
have not had TOC. (Is this really an
obstacle?)
9. We
don’t have a children’s agenda or trainers/workshop facilitators for children’s
events.
10. There are legal
obstacles and they vary by country
11. We don’t have a goal for
the children.
This last obstacle “constraint” was very invigorating to us and, as we
excitedly began to discuss ways to overcome it, I think we all intuitively
realized that achieving the needed IO on this obstacle would be a necessary
first step for most of the others.
A GOAL for
the children?
What a fitting and inspiring IO, or should I say, question to ask of
ourselves and of TOC For Education.
(2) Texas Progress
From Cheryl
A. Edwards
Paula Sommer, Dr. Charles Blanton, and Rosemary
Bolden, the principal of Arlington Middle School, will present at the Texas
Education Agency 2001 Administrators Mid-winter Conference on Education. The topic is "Using Thinking and
Communication Tools (TACT) to Master TEKS Content and Achieve TAAS
Success.” Attendees will be
superintendents, principals and school boards.
March
30, 2001
Charlie and Paula will present "Using Thinking and Communication
Tools for Effective Classroom Management" at the Association of Texas
Professional Educators Conference.
QUOTE
(3) “Each time a
person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes
out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples
build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and
resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards
To our TOCFE family, your contributions are
welcomed. Send us successful
applications, humorous connections, favorite quotes, worthy news, etc. Send your contributions by mail to Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, MI
49719, USA. Or send hyperlink to
<redwards@sault.com> or <bucknek@resa.net.