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.