TACTics
Journal
A Publication for and by TOC for Education
Practitioners
January 7,
2005
In this month’s issue:
Connections
(1) TOCFE
Comes to Poland!, Maciek Winiarek and Kathy Suerken
(2) First-Ever TOC Parenting
Skills Workshop, Khaw Choon
Ean
Editors’ Notes
(3) Kay Buckner-Seal,
Cheryl A. Edwards
CONNECTIONS
(1) TOCFE Comes to
Poland!
From Maciek Winiarek, TOCFE Director, Poland
Kathy Suerken
<suerken@cox.net<
We are very excited to share news about the
newest flag posted to our TOCFE world! First, it is my privilege to introduce
Maciek. He previously worked as a financial director
for a international building company but recently he and his wife established a
new business of their own--one connected to the world of education. Why? They
have a 3-year-old son and, in thinking through the future they want for their
own child, they saw a need to bring improvement to education, especially in the
publication of good educational materials.
His search for such led him to
Colin Rose, our Yani publisher, and…. US! Maciek began
to contact me about training programs and publishing Yani through his new
company, “Transfer Learning.”
In November, Zana
Borisavljevic and I conducted a 3-day training for 21
teachers, counselors, preschool owners and consultants followed immediately by a
2-day seminar to create 9 facilitators! Imagine our obstacles: lack of time to
teach, to internalize, to practice, my jet lag, language barriers (if you think
my Spanish is bad, you should hear my Polish!)
What a great opportunity
to use the tools! Zana and I were constantly upgrading
our ambitious target tree, trimming our branches and using clouds to model
collaborative team teaching. Given that the majority of our students were early
childhood educators and the lack of my own personal experience with this student
population, Zana, with her vast experience in using
TOC in preschool curriculum, was the perfect IO. Maciek is very interested to eventually publish some of her
phenomenal work that I hope she will share next August at our conference in
Seattle.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest “aha’s”
of the week was during the facilitator training during intensive cloud practice.
In the 3-day course, although we had showed them content examples, they had only
practiced on behavior examples. But in the faci
training, I only used class exercises from the teacher’s unit on content in the
Yani package. One of which was an informative text example on the wetlands
(drain the swamp/don’t). In formative text, we suggest if you can't come up with
the cloud, to make up a story about a character in that situation. Ania and Isa created an adorable
Shrek example! (Hmmm, can’t you just see TOCFE coming
to a theatre near you?)
Meanwhile….Maciek
remarked that he was having trouble coming up with a solution on his example.
Zana pointed out that when we are using the process to
understand content, a lot of value is derived solely in the analysis of the
content under study before we start evaluating solutions that frequently are
already presented in the content.
“AHA!” exclaimed Maciek, “now I know what has been blocking me. I think most
of us assume that the purpose of the cloud is just to get to a solution. I am so
anxious to use the cloud to solve the problem that I don't focus on the analysis
itself.”
How many times do we, as TOC facilitators in teaching the
process, TELL our students, “Don’t jump to the solution.”? But a more effective
tactic is for the students themselves to verbalize the obstacle and its
underlying assumption. I am wondering if Maciek would
have verbalized this sooner had we started with relevant content exercises
rather than behavior. More Socratic approach? What do you
think?
Meanwhile, Maciek has already written
his TOCFE Ambitious Target Tree for 2005 and we recently discussed progress
toward his IOs. He is working with TOC for Business in
Poland to find funding sources to get Yani translated and published within the
next 6 months. He will bring Zana back in the spring
to upgrade the team. He thinks he may be offering their first local training
within a month. His team is committed to meet regularly for feedback and support
and during the first such meeting recently, he was “blown away” by experiences
shared by Ania and Isa, two
primary school teachers. He said they use clouds and branches all the time in
content and behavior and literally have hundreds of examples already! Here is
one such example and through Maciek’s
words:
“One of Ania's students is a boy, age of
8. He came with grandmother who told to Ania ‘Force
him to eat!’ Ania answered that this is not her job
but she would look into the problem. After few days watching him, she realized
that he doesn't eat the breakfast, lunch or any snacks and he looks worse and
worse. She asked him for ‘therapy’ (their children call the one to one meeting
with her like this!!!). She started with negative branch and he realised that he is disappointing his mother. During
discussion why he behaves like this, he answered that he has younger sister, and
his mother likes her better. She always get some small gifts when she succeeds
with any meal. So, he wanted to take attention of his mother because he also
wanted to get some gifts and love from mom. So he decided not to eat. Than Ania make positive branch with him. From that moment he
started to bring with him full meal everyday and he just ate it in the school.
After few days his mother came to the school and asked Ania, ‘What did you do to my son? He started to eat, he asks
me to prepare lunch for school, he became very calm and polite. He has changed
completely. Thank you’”
Maciek concluded his
mail to me with, “I was amazed, because your stories were from different part of
the globe. These were from the school around the corner.”
As for me, such
experiences make me more and more aware of how lucky I am to be able to have
such a meaningful life. For me, all your schools are just around the corner.
THANKS EVERYONE!
NETWORKING
(2) “Thinking Parent, Thinking
Child”: First-ever TOC Parenting Skills Workshop In Malaysia, December2004
By
Khaw Choon Ean, TOCFE Director for Asia
Malaysia’s adventure
into TOC had started in the schoolroom and spread through the education system.
For a long while I was involved in that stream. So when the Newspaper In
Education Training Unit (NIE) approached me to try a TOC Parenting Skills
Workshop, I told myself, why not?
However, it was easier said than done.
I was working full-time and organizing a work-related national conference in
mid-December, it was the long school vacation plus there were 2 major Muslim and
Hindu festival holidays (Aidil Fitri and Deepavali holidays) in
Malaysia all stretching from October to December. Finding a suitable weekend was
a major headache. Nevertheless, we fixed a weekend at the beginning of
December.
I told people I talked with that it was going to be both
thrilling and chilling. After all my experience with TOC and parents were mainly
informal sessions and counseling the occasional child sent me by parents who
knew me. Here I was going to tackle a whole bunch of parents who were strangers
and have never heard of TOC.
Nevertheless, I looked forward to the
challenge. NIE even arranged a press conference but it got lost in a whole lot
of holiday comings and goings. Soon the day came.
I had a nice cozy group
comprising, surprisingly, both males and females. There were Malays, Chinese,
Indians and one white man. The group comprised homemakers, teachers, counselors
for orphanages and abused children, a Ph.D. holder and even an office clerk. I
was amazed by the mixture but they have all one common denominator….they were
all parents. All had children. The lady from the orphanage did not have any of
her own but she cared for a whole children’s home!
The theme of the
workshop was “Thinking Parent, Thinking Child.” First, I explained that they
were all at the workshop not because they lacked parenting skills but because
they wanted to acquire more skills so that they could apply different skills in
their role as parents. That sort of broke the ice, as everyone had been a little
uneasy as a group of strangers meeting together for the first time. Everyone was
there to learn (hey, including myself!).
I introduced the workshop with a
scenario of siblings fighting over a toy. There was general laughter and heads
nodding. Everyone recognized that scenario. I asked how they would usually
settle that. Sure enough the answers fell into expected approaches and none of
them gave the child a responsible thinking role.
The cue for me now was
to introduce my workshop theme of “Thinking Parent, Thinking Child”. We looked
into common everyday problems of children. The over-riding target of the
workshop was turning the most challenging everyday problems into solutions. We
concentrated on behavioral life-skills.
The process would need a shifting
of focus where the responsibility of solving most of the children’s daily
problems was to shift from the parents to the children. A truly alien concept
with the parents but one which they found “eye-opening”, in the words of some of
the parents at the end of the workshop.
The 3 TOC tools, Cloud, Branch
and Target Tree went down very well. One mother who had been signed up by her
spouse said she had braced herself for theories and was pleasantly surprised to
find the workshop so practical. She asked me to have another so she could sign
up her spouse!
We wished we had more time to spend on examples but it
was good to share the tools with these parents. They even worked on a target
tree together and at the end of the workshop they were like long-time friends.
Many shared their real-life situations. We built clouds together for some of
them. One lady was at the workshop to see what she could do to help her youngest
“baby” (He’s 23 years old!). Another vocal mother expressed her eagerness to go
back and try the tools together with her teenage children. What was heartening
was that these parents wanted to try the tools themselves, not just with their
children. Yet again, I found the tools spoke for themselves.
I gave them
the evaluation forms at the end of the course. Most rated the course 9 out of
10. One lady rated it 10 out of 10. Some parents asked for a sequel to the
course. I found the whole experience really fun and exhilarating. I should not
have worried about “chilling”. It turned out that “thrilling” was a more fitting
description. We ended the parenting workshop with a quotation for every parent
to mull on and draw courage from:
"The only man who never makes a
mistake is the man who never does anything." —Theodore Roosevelt
You can
view photos of parents working together to construct Target Trees by opening the
attachment labeled “Parent Pics.” See how engrossed
they are. They didn’t even realize I was photographing them. (You can resize
them!)
EDITORS’ NOTES
(3) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
What a grand way to begin the New Year: Welcome Poland! And,
Khaw Choon Ean, your leadership is invaluable to TOCFE! Three lovely
pictures of the parents who attended the workshop can be accessed by opening the
attached file, which is labeled “Parent Pics.” Thanks
to all for sharing.
Our next issue will be published on Friday, February
4, 2005. So that means you should try to get submissions to us by Monday,
January 31, 2005. Notice that this month only contains two articles. Don’t
hesitate to share with us. We would love to share any new experiences with the
thinking skills, any books, related articles, or quotes, any questions or
concerns. So, please send your articles by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S.
Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or send hyperlink to
cedwards@cedarville.net or
kayseal@comcast.net.