TACTics
Journal
A Publication for and by TOC
for Education Practitioners
September 6, 2002
In this week’s issue:
Connections
(1) “A Goal Is A Dream Taken
Seriously,” Kathy
Suerken
(2) A Week to Remember for the
“A Goal” Academy, Jonathon
Holder
(3) The Moral Code of TOC for
Education
Editors’ Notes
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
CONNECTIONS
(1) "A GOAL Is A Dream Taken
Seriously"
From Kathy Suerken
It has become obvious that the
future leaders of TOC for Education are
beginning to emerge. I refer to
those young people whose actions reflect a
belief that TOC is a means to
achieve something meaningful for themselves
and the world …now and in the
future.
We in TOCFE need to provide
"learning to lead "opportunities for these
children in such a way that the
collaborative synergy among them can
develop. Therefore, we launched
the Avraham Goldratt "Opportunities as
Leaders" (A GOAL) Academy
in July 2002 at our 6th International
Conference. This education
program is established in the memory of Eli
Goldratt's father and, as such,
is grounded in the TOC For Education moral
code in both practice and
spirit. (See article #3 in this week’s TACTics)
This moral code is very much
modeled by the children who participated in
this inaugural class: Cristy
Garza (Mexico), Jonathon Holder (United
Kingdom), Ariff Salahi
Amiruddin (Malaysia), Arturo Garza (Mexico), and Ana
Maria Conde (Venezuela).
Conference participants watched these children
begin their association with
several daunting obstacles: different cultural
backgrounds, different “first”
languages, and the pressure of writing,
producing and presenting a TOC
play to 125 adults within an all but
impossible deadline—48 hours!
The extraordinary play they created is evidence
of what can happen when there
is a cohesive team united by a
common goal. The children
attribute their success to the use of the TOC
tools. Guiding them was a
leader, Francois Moll (Republic of South Africa),
who teaches TOC by example.
In other words, he uses TOC to
empower his students to take responsibility
for their own learning and
behaviors. As we know, the tools enable us to
take responsibility not only
for addressing behavioral mistakes but also for
bringing BIG dreams into
reality. As the goal of a successful play was
replaced by a much higher goal,
the Academy students once more
collaborated on a TOC plan —an
Ambitious Target tree.
And now they are taking actions
to follow through as evidenced by
Jonathon's report. He is 13
years old and has assumed the responsibility of
helping the Academy overcome
communication problems and, as part of that,
has taken on the task of being
a spokesperson.
The Academy students have
verbalized their goal as an Ambitious Target
that reads: "We have an
Academy that is a group of people of ages 11-20
that learn the TOC thinking
tools in order to help them in their future and
back in their community."
If you want to see an example of a dream taken
seriously, go to
www.tocforeducation.com. Click on “learning options” and
then on “files” where you will
find their work.
(2) A Week to Remember for the “A Goal”
Academy
The first class of "A
GOAL" (Avraham Goldratt 'Opportunities as Leaders')
Academy met for the first time
at the Nottingham TOCFE conference on
Sunday 7 th July. We stayed within the
campus of the University of
Nottingham, beautiful
surroundings for an excellent conference. The
accommodation was a brisk ten
minutes walk away from the conference
facilities, if you managed to
follow the (confusing) signposts. There were
five children (Anna Maria,
Ariff, Arturo, Cristina and Jonathon) and one
producer (Francois). For four
of the children and for Francois English was
not their first language, but
it was the only language which everyone had in
common-apart from TOC.
We were all there to create a
play to show the TOC tools. It was Sunday
night and we would perform the
play (in front of the entire conference) on
Wednesday afternoon.
“Impossible! Ridiculous!” I hear you cry. Well
that’s what we said as well,
but we had the tools, the determination, and we
were led by a man with a
mission. Despite finding more than forty obstacles
we managed to script and
rehearse the play by the end of Wednesday
lunchtime.
And then came the performance.
We had just finished our first run
through. We had twenty minutes
before the performance, and so we were
all in a hurry to get back and
get changed. I ran back with the hope of
managing to get something to
eat as well. When I arrived at my room, I
discovered I hadn’t got my
keys. I ran back to the conference room, and
picked up what I thought were
my keys from the table. I ran back as fast as
I could, and in my haste got
lost on the way. When I reached my room, I
discovered that I had Francois’
keys, so again I ran back. “Have I got time to
go and get changed now?” I
asked.
“Don’t worry about it. It
doesn’t matter.”
And so then came the
performance.
The hot stage lights beat down
on us. The whole audience hushed and stared
right through us. You would
have heard a pin drop. We survived the weight
of each scene, and at the end
the applause was deafening…
We had created a play in two
and a half days, but we still didn’t have a goal.
So we couldn’t relax and have a
rest! We could not decide on whether we
should set a very ambitious
goal or a more realistic one. In the end we set a
practical goal working towards
a more ambitious one.
On Friday morning we traveled
to the Directors’ Conference at Ashridge.
We were housed in a beautiful
medieval castle, with state of the art
technology! We didn’t have much
time to admire the surroundings…
When we arrived we got straight
to work on the obstacles and IOs.
Altogether there were 86! Rami
helped us rephrase and clarify some of
them, and then we typed them
up. Cristina and I were up till 12.40 sticking
post-its onto the IO map.
The next day we showed the others
the map, and then we went off to
Whipsnade Zoo. We looked at all
the animals, went round in a bus, and heard
some very interesting animal
talks. We had to come back at three to do
more work. We assigned tasks
and after supper we presented our obstacles,
IOs, cloud about what our goal
was, and IO map. At the end of the day we went home
to get on with it.
This is the first of my many
tasks as spokesperson completed. Thank you Eli
for giving us the opportunity
to make a difference, and for lighting up the
world for so many people. Thank
you Kathy for supporting us and having
faith in children. Thank you
very much Francois for the application of the
branch tool which I used to
write this article (and thank you Mum for being
smart enough to think of using
TOC to write about the TOC academy.
Jonathon Holder
A GOAL Academy Spokesperson
(3) The Moral Code of TOC for Education
The Moral Code can be found
under the “Foundation” key at the TOC for Education Web site:
tocforeducation.com.
The TOC tools were created to
find and implement win-win solutions in which
no one is hurt through our
actions. As we strive toward the goal to bring
significant improvement to
education, the people of TOC for Education will
use the TOC tools in the spirit
in which they are intended.
EDITORS’ NOTES
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
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 cedwards@cedarville.net or
bucknek@earthlink.net.
To view TACTics in its intended
formatting, visit our web site at
www.tocforeducation.com and click on “What’s New.”