TACTics Journal
A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners
In this week’s issue:
Connections
(1) Grandma Camp!, Gila Glatter
(2) Reader’s Feedback, Denise Meyer
Editors’ Notes
(3)
CONNECTIONS
(1) Grandma Camp!
From
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
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
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
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,
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)
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)
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,
to
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