TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

October 5, 2001

 

Connections

(1)          TACT Training in Metro-Detroit Area, Cheryl A. Edwards

(2)     TOCFE Meetings in Los Angeles, Denise Meyer

Elementary/Secondary TACTics

   (3)   Curricular Cloud, Denise Meyer

Quote

  (4)  Jimi Hendrix

Editor’s Notes

  (5)   Kay Buckner-Seal

 

NETWORKING

(1)  TACT Training in Metro-Detroit Area

From Cheryl A. Edwards

 

Are you interested in training educators to use TOC for:

·         School improvement,

·         Instruction and curriculum design,

·         Classroom management, including conflict resolution and self- discipline?

Are you interested in the TACT, ETC training as an up-grade?

Anyone who has not attended a conference or upgrade in the last year is required to attend an upgrade to keep a TOCFE Trainers status. 

 

The prerequisites are:

·         You have had TOC/TACT training or equivalent,

·         You have examples of each of the TOC tools, which you have used in an educational setting,

·         You have read, The Goal, It’s Not Luck and Critical Chain by E. Goldratt,

·         You have a group of educators who are eager to be trained.

 

If you are interested in either of the above, then contact Cheryl Edwards:  E-mail: redwards@sault.com, Phone: 906.484.6808 for:

 

TOC for Education Trainer of Trainers

January 2002

Metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, USA

 

 

(2)  TOCFE Meetings in Los Angeles

From Denise Meyer, California, USA

 

TOCLA will hold regular meetings to support, motivate, and share other practitioner’s experiences with the use of the TOC strategies.  Meetings are on Saturday mornings at 8:30 on:

   October 20, 2001

   November 17, 2001

   January 19, 2002

   February 16, 2002

   March 16, 2002

   April 20, 2002

 

ELEMENTARY/SECONDARY TACTICS

(3)            Curricular Cloud

From Denise Meyer, California, USA

 

Denise Meyer has started a TOCFE LA Newsletter.  We are proud to share a cloud written by high school students on the following literature selection, which was featured in the September issue.

 

“The Devil and Daniel Webster,” by Stephen Vincent Bene’t

Context:  The story takes place in early New England.  It was a time when people had many strange beliefs about witches in league with the devil walking the earth.  Jabez Stone is having a very bad time.  Things seem to be going wrong at every turn.

 

He’d been plowing that morning and he’d just broke the plowshare on a rock that he could have sworn hadn’t been there yesterday.  And, as he stood looking at the plowshare, the off horse began to cough-that ropy kind of cough that means sickness and horse doctors.  There were two children down with the measles, his wife was ailing, and he had whitlow on his thumb.  It was about the last straw for Jabez Stone.  “ I vow,” he said, and he looked around him kind of desperate, “I vow it’s enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devil!  And I would, too, for two cents!”

 

Then he felt a kind of queerness come over him at having said what he said; though naturally being a New Hampshire man, he wouldn't take it back.  But, all the same, when it got to be evening and, as far as he could see, no notice had been taken, he felt relieved in his mind, for he was a religious man.

 

The students’ cloud:

One side:

A:         Have a good life.

B:         Have his problems solved.

D:         Sell his soul.

On the other side:

A:         Have a good life.

C:         Not feel empty inside.

D’:        Don’t sell his soul.

 

B/D Assumptions:

1.                    He thinks there is no other way to get help for his trouble.

2.                   He thinks selling your soul will solve your problems.

3.                   Things might get worse for him.

 

C/D’ Assumptions:

1.                    When you do things wrong you get an empty feeling inside.

2.                   Your soul makes you feel whole.

3.                   It’s important to keep your soul.

 

When asked for solutions, students suggested that he should find some other way to solve his problems.  “Jabez Stone needs the TOC tools,” was one suggestion.

 

It is not too difficult to have students make parallels with what types of activities might be an act of selling your soul to the Devil.  When asked, suggestions from students were such things as dealing drugs and stealing.  “Even keeping something that does not belong to you can make you feel like you have a hole inside,” said one 9th grader.  A logical follow-up to this cloud might be a personal cloud:  Take something that doesn’t belong to you./Don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you.

 

Literature selections are full of difficult conflicts that reflect struggles we all go through.  We can help students to see the relevance of the struggles of literary characters to their own lives by having them create personal clouds related to the one in the literature selection.

 

QUOTE

(4)                 "Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." —Jimi Hendrix

 

EDITOR’S NOTES

(5)           Kay Buckner-Seal

 

Through the use of the tools, high school students were able to analyze a character’s motives and then synthesize that information to make useful connections to their own lives.  That is a fine example of authentic instruction!  Denise, thanks for sharing.

 

Feel free to share with us.  Send your responses, applications of the thinking processes, lessons, announcements, and etc. by mail to:  Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA.  Or send hyperlink to:  redwards@sault.com, or bucknek@earthlink.net.

 

 

To view TACTics in its intended formatting, visit our website at

www.tocforeducation.com and click on “What’s New.”