In this week’s issue:
Quote
(3) Branch Rickey
Editors’
Notes
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
(1) The 6th International TOCFE Conference, 2002!
From Kathy Suerken
Imagine yourself spending 4 days in a gated and peaceful parkland
setting by a lake. Imagine enjoying the
culture of Sherwood Forest just outside your gated seclusion. Imagine experiencing unique and profound
learning opportunities to help you achieve your professional goals in life
while surrounded by friends who share them.
Turn this imagination into reality by attending the 6th
International TOC for Education Conference at the University of Nottingham in Nottingham,
United Kingdom on July 8-11, 2002.
Tentative List of Social
Events:
Monday, July 8: A medieval feast followed by a play written
and performed by Francois Moll and a group of International TOCFE
students. Event hosted on university
campus.
Tuesday, July 9: A barbecue social near the sports complex on the university campus.
Wednesday, July 10: Evening theater/shopping expedition into Nottingham.
In addition to many cultural experiences, in the land of Sherwood
Forest are also feasible day and overnight trips to London, Stratford, Oxford,
etc. We will work with local tourist
agencies to provide that information to help you plan possible excursions
before and/or after the conference.
Here are some of the necessary conference details and there will
be more to come in future TACTics and soon on our web page:
Conference dates: July 8 to July 11, 2002 (July 11 concludes at
noon)
Conference Venue: University of Nottingham in Nottingham,
United Kingdom
Location: Nottingham is
approximately 100 miles north of London.
A Nottingham City bus runs at frequent intervals from the conference
venue to the center of town and costs around
$1.50.
Airports:
East Midlands Airport (closest): The international
hub for East Midlands Airport is Amsterdam.
Commuter flights are also available via London. A one-way shuttle taxi to the university
campus from East Midlands Airport takes approximately 20 minutes and costs
around $25.
Birmingham Airport: Approximately
one-hour drive to University of Nottingham.
London Airports: London is served
by three major airports: Gatwick, Heathrow and Lutton. If flying directly into London, you have several
options to get to Nottingham. In
addition to a commuter flight to East Midlands, there is also a good rail link
to Nottingham, which takes 2 hours. By
car, the University Campus is in easy access of the M1.
Accommodations:
If you want to stay on site at the University, TOCFE will have a
private quadrangle of residence halls that includes a private dining hall with
elegant long wooden tables for family-style breakfast and evening meals. Attached to this dining hall is our own
private pub! Lunches will be served at
workshop locations.
Local attendees will register through David Higgins. International Attendees will register and
pay through USA dollars through the home office in USA.
Prices for on site accommodations include room and ALL
meals throughout the conference (including special social events) as well as
daily morning and evening refreshments.
There are three types of rooms within the quadrangle available on a
first come first serve basis. The price
range for international attendees is from approximately $100 per night per
person to approximately $130 per night per person, depending on the type of
room. The university has worked with
government authorities to waive local VAT for our event so there will be no
taxes collected for on site accommodations.
For international attendees who prefer to stay at a hotel in
Nottingham, there will be a conference daily fee of approximately $35 to cover
lunch as well as morning and afternoon refreshments. TOCFE is working with the University to provide information on
local hotels and that information will be published soon.
TOCFE conferences get better and better and your UK conference
committee (David Higgins, Galina Dolya and Linda Trapnell) and I look forward
to meeting those expectations in the enchanting land of Nottingham.
(2) A Content Cloud
Petra Pouw-Legêne, Holland
My name is Petra Pouw-Legêne and I live in The Netherlands. During the first weekend of September, I
gave my first pilot-TOCFE-course. I
invited four friends to our house; three are teaching in primary schools, one
is counseling children with learning problems.
They stayed overnight, which was fun.
We started Friday evening with Session 1 and moved onto Session 2
somewhere halfway into the next day.
I wanted them to learn to use the cloud the way Eleanor
May-Brenneker taught me, after she had been in Detroit this summer
(Content). Because the four friends are
teachers, I thought it a nice start to learn making a cloud by using an already
existing story. It had to be fun and
relevant and also something that could be transferred to another (larger) area
(content). So I browsed through my bookshelves looking for a children’s' book. I found the Dutch translation of E.B. White:
Charlotte's Web.
On the very first page, a little girl gets terribly upset, because
her father, who is a farmer, is about to kill a newborn piglet, who apparently
is too small: It will be too much
trouble and too expensive to take care of it and it will prevent the other piglets
in the litter to get the best treatment.
The girl thinks it's unfair to kill the animal only because it is small
and she almost starts a fight with her father.
I read the story aloud.
There are quite a lot of assumptions of both parties involved. Then I stopped before the book tells which
decision the father takes.
We made the following cloud:
A: Do the right thing to animals.
B: Protect what is small and fragile.
D: The piglet stays alive.
C: Be able to raise a healthy litter.
D': The piglet does not stay alive.
Assumptions B-D:
• I think it's unfair.
• You let me live as well, even
though I am little.
• Equal rights for humans and
animals.
Assumptions C-D':
• It will die anyway.
• It is the best for the litter.
• I have experience.
• It means a lot of extra work
for me.
When we discussed the assumptions, there were a few which were not
necessarily true. For example: The piglet does not have to die. It does not have to be extra work for dad.
Injection:
Put the little piglet apart and have the little girl raise it by
hand.
And, that is exactly what happens in the story. When I continued reading, four people in the
room smiled...
The next morning at breakfast I mentioned the cloud and asked the
women to transfer that little story to a bigger setting. Where else in our society can we apply
this issue?
Within a few minutes we had an interesting Socratic discussion
about the differences between the animal protection organisation(s) and the
bio-industry; the problem of how there had been no win-win solution in solving
the problem of mouth and foot disease in England and Holland, and the issue of
BSE. And, how important it is to be a
good steward over nature.
Together we came up with the following generic cloud:
A: Have a good relationship between man and animal.
B: Absolute respect for the animal.
D: Be able to let the animal live.
C: Be a good steward in relation to animals.
D': Be able to kill the animal
Then each of us gave an example of this generic cloud out of our
own experience.
My students were very much aware of the value of this way of
dealing with a problem. They said:
“This way I feel very much involved.”
“It is not something that is ‘far away from my bed.’” “It really made me think.” “It is nice to work out such a conflict
together.” And etc.
Before we knew it, our breakfast lasted about one and a half
hours. They all agreed, that TOCFE was
not only a tool in the classroom but everywhere, even at breakfast. And my thoughts were: Where better to have
your classroom than at the breakfast table?
(3) "Luck is the residue of design." —Branch
Rickey
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards
The 6th
International TOCFE Conference…
Nottingham, United Kingdom … July 8-11, 2002 … sounds
great! Petra, thanks for your
contribution. To all of you in
the TOCFE family, 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.”