TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

October 24, 2003

In this week’s issue:

Connections

(1) Grandma Camp!, Gila Glatter

(2) Reader’s Feedback, Denise Meyer

Editors’ Notes

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

CONNECTIONS

(1) Grandma Camp!

From Gila Glatter, Israel

Dear TOC friends,

I would like to share with you a great experience I had, with my six

grandchildren (ages 4-10). I invited them, by e-mail letter, to a Grandma-

Camp vacation in which they would stay for a week with me, without their

parents. The name of the Grandma Camp was “A Journey Following

Inventors and Explorers” or “A Journey for Achieving Ambitious

Targets.” My letter to each one of them included the following directions:

In a personal bag bring:

• Clothes for a week

• A book/story about an inventor or a famous person who has influenced

mankind.

• A dream you want to carry out by end of the week

• A dream you want to fulfill, by the end of the coming year

• Pocket money (for yourself and for sharing with others)

According to my two boys and daughters-in-law, the kids were very excited.

They were busy looking for a good story to bring and two relevant and

authentic dreams to be fulfilled (imagining that I’m going to carry them out

for them). I was told they couldn’t sleep and were changing their minds

every single day—coming up with a better dream and a better story to bring

to Grandma Camp. (By this, I can tell you that I have already achieved a kind

of reward!)

To make a long story short, each day the children were telling their stories

to each other. The stories that they picked were magnificent! My 10-year

granddaughter, Herut, brought the story about the Wright Brothers. The

story was told followed by the 3 questions:

• What was their ambitious target?

• What were their blocking stones?

• And how did they deal with their obstacles?

In her words (I’ll try to translate it from Hebrew), “The Wright Brothers’

ambitious target was to build an instrument, which would allow people to

fly like birds and stay in the air for a while.” It was so focused and so

clearly defined—all by herself! (With that brilliant first question, she

identified their ambitious target.)

She found out their obstacles, even they were not mentioned in the written

story. She mentioned:

• People were laughing at them. No one believed people could fly—only

birds could fly.

• They didn’t have enough knowledge and information about mechanical

things.

• They didn’t have materials to make things.

• They fought and argued—as brothers do.

• They didn’t have a large enough place to experiment their ideas.

• Their actions were very dangerous, so they could get injured or killed.

I asked the kids what they could offer to overcome these obstacles. It was

amazing, even Adi, the 4-year old granddaughter, offered something

meaningful to the discussion, “They can read from books about how to do

things.” Other ideas that were mentioned were:

• They can try to work hard and prove that they are right.

• They can buy and borrow books, on the subject.

• They can use materials they find, and buy other materials at special low

prices.

• They can learn to talk to each other and solve conflicts between

themselves.

• They can look for safer ways to experiment, which would minimize

danger.

Reading the story from the book after analyzing ways to overcome the

obstacles was very fascinating. The 5 other small kids were in the story,

helping with details and asking questions. I was shocked! I was not ready

for such involvement and such success in the first table gathering. The

next activity was looking for airplane pictures on the Internet, then cutting

and pasting them to make their own stories—each one according to his/her

age and ability.

The next day, David, my 7-year old grandson, came up with the story about

Alexander Graham Bell. He defined Bell’s goal as, “To invent a tool, which

will help people to talk to each other, even if they are far away from

each other.”

It was so correct and things went just as I predicted, especially when he

mentioned that Bell built a laboratory next to his house. I asked, “Why did

he do that? What was his obstacle?He made up his mind and answered,

“Many ideas went through his mind day and night, he had to be close to a

place where he could practice and follow his ideas right away.”

Don’t you think that’s a very good answer for a fact that was mentioned in

the story but was not written as an answer to solve a problem? I was

amazed and very satisfied. After we went over Bell’s story about achieving

his target, we were looking for communication instruments, pictures and

stories. We made magnificent instruments, which we were very proud of.

We had many more famous stories to tell and dreams to fulfill, but I don't

want to tire you, but I’m sure that you have got the idea.

The amazing thing was that on my professional job, I decided to apply this

activity. I downloaded 10 great stories from the Internet about great

persons who have influenced the world: King, Ford, Gandhi, Wright, Bell,

Lincoln, Edison, Columbus, Herzel, and Ben-Gurion. At our last workshop with

teachers who were studying TACT, we practiced with these stories by

reorganizing the details and ideas to fit our “Target Tree.” It was very

effective and quite a lot of fun. The teachers announced that they were

going to try the activity with their classes, too!

I recommend this task as a must. Learn from successful persons with the

TOC “Target Tree.” It’s challenging and gives direction to make our

dreams real! Try and see for yourself.

Take Care,

Gila Glatter

READER’S FEEDBACK

(2) Denise Meyer, USA

Bravo to Jonathan! I loved his clouds. They reminded me of the generic

cloud I discovered when I was doing a Jonah program on conflicts of young

people and the resulting violence in an educational setting—an occurrence all

too common in our inner city schools.

A) Have a good learning environment

B) Be safe

D) Put up defenses against others

C) Be open to learning

D') Take down defenses against others

My injection was to teach students strategies to communicate safely in such

a way as to remove the misunderstandings that exist between people—i.e.

teach TOC.

EDITORS’ NOTES

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

Gila Glatter, this was a really fun story. Grandma Camp is a great idea and a

perfect place for young ones to learn about making dreams come true! Gila

and Denise, thanks so very much 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 cedwards@cedarville.net or bucknek@earthlink.net.

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