"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time." -T.S. Elliot
At the beginning of our TOC experience (first session) we are challenged to solve a conflict using the cloud. The process starts with identifying a situation upon which to practice. How many of us identified a chronic conflict situation during our first class because we couldn't think of a simple day to day conflict in our own lives? I can still remember telling my TOC tutor extraordinaire (Oded Cohen) in the first HTT MSW (TACT) 5 years ago that I couldn't think of a single day to day conflict! All my conflicts, I told him, were either chronic or deep UDE internal clouds. (UDE = a (generalized) undesirable effect in my reality such as "people don't listen to me.")
Of course it made sense that problems become chronic and even reach UDE proportion if you don't fix them when they are simple. But I can't fix something I don't even (seemingly) know exists! What to change?
What prevents us from identifying problems when they are simple? Is it because we usually start by discussing the concept of conflict within the context of our current reality? If we take people into their paradigms of the effects of unresolved conflicts (especially with a Communication Current Reality Tree) do we invoke their intuition, emotion and interest only on day to day conflicts as they currently perceive them- when they have escalated and are becoming complicated? Are we blocked in our current paradigms from perceiving that something is a problem when it is just beginning? Why?
What do you think? Let me know at suerken@nwflt.net. Over the next few
weeks I will be discussing this topic and sharing the story I have written
for session one.
NETWORKING
Activities in Israel
Shalom Dear TOCFED Friends,
I would like to share with you a bit of our POOGI's, from all over our small country, Israel. We have established a TOCFED CLUB. We meet every 6 weeks in a very respectable place. People come from all over the country on Thursday night for 3 hours of meetings. Our main goal is to share our experiences and get some more knowledge of TOC.
Last Thursday, we met for the third time. Thirty-seven education people attended. Most of the people became familiar with each other from our fruitful gathering. Professional friendships have developed and people talk about the meaningful insight they get from talking together without any mask or criticism.
Vardit Wiesboim, one of our best instructors, lectured about her work for the last two years in one of her schools. She has been using three tools of TOC with the whole school staff to operate the system. After the staff chose a goal to achieve for this year (Every student has the opportunity to feel success, both academically and behaviorally), they went over the whole procedure to select a strategy. After creating the IO's, they dealt with each one, exposing the obstacles and got clouds describing the UDE's. The core problem they defined was: "How to evaluate the students- using the traditional tests or using alternative ways." Vardit told us how hard the teachers worked together to find out what their beliefs were and to find explanations for these beliefs. All the information in their minds had to be put between the arrows. Vardit added that it was a very meaningful learning experience and it has taken them a long time to come to the conclusion that they must change the way learning takes place in the classroom. They have to act towards inquiry study. The hard work on this focused issue has brought them up to a better understanding on other educational matters. Many of them said that now they can explain and convince others of their educational direction. Vardit's presentation was exciting and encouraged each one to put more thinking and energy on pushing a holistic process in one's school. I must point out that in this specific school the principal is the one who believes in the idea and leads her faculty to create thinking classes and a thinking culture around the school.
Another teacher, named Zipi Margalit, from Levinsky College, a teaching school in Tel- Aviv, shared with us her work with her students on reaching ambitious targets. She is a computer teacher. Instead of teaching her students technical ways of using the computer, without any meaningful content, she teaches them the prerequisite tree steps, and asks them to choose any historical story, study the details and organize them in the TOC way. For example: Moses brings his people to Israel through the desert, alive and happy, Columbus succeeded in landing in India, or Gandhi frees India from the British rule. In a inquiry learning way, the students have named the obstacles, the intermediate objectives and the logical stadiums to achieve the defined goal. When they have accomplished the content study, they have to develop a suitable presentation using Power Point technology. We saw magnificent transparencies and have started being jealous....
Maia Kalir, who works with elementary school kids on science subjects, shared with us her successes and failures. She is using the transition tree for herself. It helps her explain to the kids the logic of the actions they have to complete. But, Her concern is that she is still not successful in writing a proper transition tree. Many of us have the same feeling. We have to find a better way to do it easily.
We feel that the Club meetings enriched us with more ideas to implement in each of our environments. Our third booklet (56 pages) about resolving day to day conflicts for students (5-8 years old) came to light. Mazal- Tov! It's a beautiful one, we adore the result... It's a pity it's written in Hebrew and we cannot send it to you all, for a good use.
Tali Malek, Nava Wies and I had been working for more than 5 months on this addition. To bring something to completion is not an easy job, but we did it, and we are satisfied knowing that parents, teachers and kids can easily work on it and even fall in love with the cloud. Now when we are asked about TOCFED, we have 3 booklets to show, and need to add very little to explain; the booklets speak for themselves.
Via the 3 booklets, we published, the TOC way of thinking has spread
quickly. We hope to assimilate the tools as a way for a better life, and
prevent more violence. People, who are looking for thinking tools on this
subject, find the booklets and are able to use the process without (almost)
any help from us. We keep moving on. Our next project is another booklet
(for ages 8-12) about achieving an ambitious target. We pray for God's help
in achieving our worthy goals.
Sincerely,
Gila
Editors' Note:
Gila and educators in Israel, we applaud you, your incredible efforts and
successes.
A Response from Father Anthony Ranada:
Thanks to Eleanor May-Brenneker of the UK for the quote: "If pupils aren't
learning the way we teach, then we aren't teaching the way they learn!"
(TACTics 12/3/99) I've expressed the same idea in past issues but nothing
beats the way she expressed it in words. She must be an expert at the
communication skills part of TOCFE. I've used it in my Advent talk to
teachers summarized as follows:
It is said by a sage that "If pupils aren't learning the way we teach, then we aren't teaching the way they learn!" This is a perspective not held by many of us in education. Usually we blame the student. And, there is not much fruitfulness in that as we know from experience. We have to have an alternative perspective if we are to teach better and our students learn better.
Focusing on this Change of Perspective and starting with ourselves, modifying our approach, asking more questions, and seeing things after putting ourselves in the shoes of other people cannot fail to give us new insights, new methods, new ways of understanding and new ways of teaching and acting based on new understandings. There will be more "EUREKAS" (discoveries) in our lives and less resignation and frustrations with our students, and therefore with ourselves.
Are we ready to change? Starting with ourselves, always hoping that if
method one doesn't work, method two may and, if not, method three. When our
students see how serious and yet joyfully creative we are in improving
ourselves, will they not someday say, "What can I do to make learning easier
for me and teaching easier for you?"
CONNECTIONS
Two TOCFE seminars in Singapore (Feb. 24-Mar. 9) will be taught by Kathy
Suerken and Linda Trapnell. The event is sponsored by the local education
system through the National Institute of Education for Thinking. For those
interested in knowing how these connections were created, these seminars are
a result of a one hour presentation given by Cheryl Edwards and Kathy
Suerken at the International Thinking Conference held July 1999 in Edmonton,
Canada. Please consider submitting a proposal to present at one of the
educational organizations in which you are involved! (Kathy is very willing
to share her growing portfolio of abstracts or you may want to ask Cheryl
for a copy of the one she wrote that set Singapore in motion!)
POOGI POOL
Rami Question #8
Can we expose assumptions underlying B-D by exposing the obstacles that
prevent the following target:
B exists even though D' exists?
EDITOR'S NOTE
Were You Too Busy or What Happened?
From Cheryl Edwards
In the last issue we submitted the following article:
"Let's Use the Tools!" - TACTics, 12/17/99:
Many of us have an Ambitious Target that reads something like this: "Set up
a TACTics Training in my school district." Can anyone bring better wording
to this ambitious target? Some of you have already started working on this
PrT. So, what is preventing you from reaching this target? Let's work on
this together. Send in your obstacles to TACTics. We'll organize and
publish them for all of us to consider and come up with (breakthrough)
Intermediate Objectives. Then, of course, we'll publish the IO's, too.
We did not receive a response of any kind. We were wondering if you were really busy (with all of the holiday activities), if you felt the exercise required too much of your time, or the exercise had no real value to you. Please, let us know!
Another Ambitious Target we could work on is "When using the TOC Tools, I am able and confident to empower those within my guidance to take responsibility for their own behavior." Could these or similar Ambitious Targets be useful to work on in your local upgrade sessions? Again, please let us know what you think.
By the way, did you notice the new byline under our title: A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners? Your contributions are what make this TACTics Journal. Please continue to share so that we all can maintain our POOGI. Thanks!
Send HYPERLINK to:
bucknek@resa.net
cherylaedwards@aol.com
Send mail to:
Cheryl A. Edwards
2253 S. Hill Island Road
Cedarville, MI 49719 USA
Kay Buckner-Seal
10230 Dartmouth
Oak Park, MI 48237, USA
QUOTES
From Bev Brown, Ashland, Ohio USA
While reviewing an educational film, I saw the following quote:
"Education is not a process of putting the learner under control, but
putting the student in control of his/her learning."
-Alison Preece
Sounds like TOC talk to me!