TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

August 24, 2001

 

Elementary/Secondary Tactics

    (1)     Stories from the Chalk Face: Travelling Hopefully, Judy Holder

Quote

  (2)  Seneca Proverb

Editors’ Notes

  (3)   Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards

 

ELEMENTARY/SECONDARY TACTICS

(1)            Stories from the Chalk Face: Travelling Hopefully

By Judy Holder, United Kingdom

 

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?

 

QUOTE

(2)        "There is no delight in owning anything unshared." —Seneca

 

EDITORS’ NOTES

(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