(1) Stories
from the Chalk Face: Travelling Hopefully, Judy Holder
Quote
(2) Seneca
Proverb
Editors’ Notes
(3) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
This is the last in a series of “Stories from the
Chalk Face,” by Judy Holder, which is a collection of personal experiences using
the TOCFE tools with students in the United Kingdom. Visit our website at www.tocforeducation.com to read “Dangerous Passions” (TACTics, 8/10/01)
and “The Half Cloud” (TACTics 8/17/01).
Many
of our students have problems with writing, particularly independent
writing. About a week into the new job,
my immediate boss asked me if I’d organise some staff training. She’d just been awarded some money for
training and she did not have the time to do it herself. I would need to plan the project, evaluate
it, and write a report for circulation around the education authority. Fortunately TOC supplied the immediate
answer. …“I’ll have to think about
it. Can we meet next week?”
A: Train teachers in TOC
B: Opportunity to teach T!OC
D: Don’t take responsibility for this
training
C: Acquire credibility
D': Take responsibility for this training
Assumptions B-D:
1.
This is not an opportunity to teach TOC.
2. I
don’t know enough about the topic or the organisation to do it well.
3. If
I do it badly, no one in my organisation will want me to train them in future.
4. If
I don’t do it at all, they may some day be willing to let me train them in the
tools.
5. Even if I do it well, I can’t guarantee to
generate interest in TOC tools
Assumptions C-D':
1.
If I do it, I’ll get a rare opportunity to
practice working with adults, and what is more, adults who teach.
2. By
doing it well, I will acquire credibility.
3. Refusing
to do it will damage my credibility.
4. Credibility
may not guarantee interest; but if I’m not credible I can certainly guarantee
no interest.
I didn’t need to work
through the assumptions too systematically to realise that there was an obvious
injection. Use the tools to plan the
project, and use them to do some of the training. That way I could feel some confidence about planning and about
the quality of the staff training, supply some tasters of how the tools work,
and, by acknowledging the tools in the report, make sure that a few more people
have at least heard of TOC.
To cut a long story
short, I used obstacles and a transition tree to plan the project. Part of what we did was a thirty-minute
meeting to identify obstacles to pupil progress in independent writing and
possible solutions using the ambitious targets tool. There were about 15 people there and there was enough time left
over to explain that I’d given them two for the price of one— not just possible
solutions, but a strategy for uncovering them and to offer a few ideas for
curriculum applications. This meeting
helped me to work out the most logical priorities for relevant training. So what we did on the training morning a few
months later was address identified staff needs and asked staff to plan
specific changes to their own practice.
Along the way, we got to talk about issues around change. I got to show a few clouds and we got to
talk about what makes plans fail.
My boss approved the
project report two days ago. It should
get circulated round the authority in September, together with a name and
contact number for TOC for Education UK.
One of the things that I
found particularly interesting, but that I haven’t yet thought through, is the
way I began to sense the shape of the students’ clouds when we raised obstacles
to progress in writing. It seems that
the obstacles related back to some fairly basic universal needs for feeling
secure, for feeling challenged, for feeling confident in one’s own abilities,
and for knowing what counts as progress.
And, that the possible solutions (the intermediate objectives, if you
prefer to put it that way) relate to actions teachers can take that are
injections to resolve those clouds. I
know that I’ve heard and read about this before, but now that I’ve actually
“discovered” it for myself, it’s starting to make a new kind of sense. Socratic teaching methods can take me so
far. After that, it has to be down to
application, time, and experience.
I got a lot of positive
feedback from the project, so I suppose I should feel pleased with myself. Objectively, I know the work was not bad
going for a part-time teacher with no management responsibilities. In fact, I’m not pleased because I haven’t
reached my goal. There’s still no one
else using the tools locally or asking for them. Which is, after all, the point.
I think I understand the
problem. I work with committed and
competent professionals, who already have in place strategies they’ve evolved
for themselves for solving problems. My
own belief is that the tools make teachers much sharper and that if we teach
them to our pupils and use them to teach, we will help our students to be much
sharper too. But I only believe that
because I’ve tried it, and it works for me.
So
I’ll end with the question I’m asking myself:
What do I try next?
(2) "There is no delight in owning anything unshared."
—Seneca
(3) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards
“What
do I try next?” …Very good question, Judy!
We’d love to share your responses to this question. Send us a connection, an experience, a wish,
a quote, or a thought. You can send by
mail to Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, MI 49719,
USA. Or, you can send hyperlink to
<redwards@sault.com> or <bucknek@earthlink.net.
To
view TACTics in its intended formatting and to read previous issues,
visit the TOC website at: www.tocforeducation.com