TACTics Journal
A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners
March  2007

 

In this issue:

 

-  A Welcome Note by the Editor

-  Thoughts about the 1st TOCFE international Conference                          

                                                     Eleanor May-Brenneker,  UK / Holland

-  "You Ask for help/I blow up" Lynn Stockbridge, with introduction by  

                                                     Kathy Suerken, USA

  

A Welcome Note by the Editor

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

While preparing this issue of the TACTics journal, I was thinking how each issue is so different from the rest and how each time I do it I am not sure until a few days before it is due to go out what it will look like. It is quite an interesting experience for me. All my life I liked writing and it was just recently that I realized how much it had to do with the fact that writing allows me to create something where only I decide how things will happen, and everything can be just the way I want it to be. When first thinking about editing the TACTics journal, I thought that would be easy because – I love writing! But editing this journal isn’t much about writing (except the Welcome Note bit where I treat myself J). It is more about connecting with people, creating space and inviting people into it to share, waiting for things to happen, rather than making them happen, not panicking if things don’t happen…  a learning process.

I remember a few years ago when I was receiving the TACTics journal how I used to take it for granted that it will arrive in my mailbox with some interesting things to read in it. I did send something in once or twice, but mostly I was happy to sit and wait for someone else to do it and for me to read it.  Partly it was because I thought I had nothing of interest to share and partly it was just inertia. I know that most people are like that so in the last few months I have been contacting people I know asking if they have something to share for the journal (thank you everyone!) but there are so many people I don’t know who I cannot contact individually who I would love to hear from. You don’t have to have a story to tell, perhaps just a comment, a question, a piece of information.  Or a joke! You know that one about how many psychotherapists are needed to change a bulb? The answer is: One, but the bulb needs to want to change. Well, how about trying to think of an answer to: How many TOC practitioners are needed to change a bulb?  Please send me your suggestions! Either that or in the next issue I give you TOC crosswords (hmm, not a bad idea, actually!).  On a more serious note – I think it will be nice if you feel encouraged or encourage someone else to share in the TACTics journal.

This time we have Eleanor May sharing about her memories of the very first TOCFE international conference she experienced 10 years ago, and Lynn Stockbridge sharing about more recent experience with TOC tools in relationship with his daughter. Enjoy it! 

Zana Borisavljevic  jana.b@talk21.com 

 

 

Thoughts about the 1st TOCFE international Conference                          

                                                     Eleanor May-Brenneker,  UK / Holland

Eleanor is originally Dutch but has been living and working  in England. She is a qualified Linguist, Special Needs/Dyslexia Specialist, Therapist, TOC Trainer, Dir.TOCFE.NL, NLP Practitioner and Brain Gym® Enthusiast.

 

The first ever TOCFE International Conference, 1997 Los Angeles took place soon after I had been trained as a facilitator by Kathy Suerken and Oded Cohen in UK. The flight from London to LA was long and tiring, but once we mixed with other TOCFE delegates the atmosphere made any traces of fatigue evaporate. I was introduced to Eli, who, smoking his pipe, seemed to thoroughly enjoy the buzz all around him. We met people from different parts of the USA as well as Europe and some other continents. I was thrilled to hear during the conference presentations about TOC experiences of my colleagues at any level of education. Everyone had an interesting story to tell. My contribution was my first ever presentation about the values of TOCFE and Dyslexia/ Learning Difficulties or rather ‘Learning Differences’ as I prefer to call them. Here questions were dealt with such as:

‘What is Dyslexia?’

‘What are the possible causes and effects?’

‘What can we, educators, do to help about 10% of our LD/Dyslexic students?’ 

‘Why is TOCFE, with its logical, analytical, structured and systematic thinking tools, so very, very helpful here?’ 

This seminar was well received and triggered off lively debates among the delegates. Even Eli said, “I’ll talk about this with Efrat, she studies Psychology, she knows probably more about this than I do!”

I found myself sitting next to Eli at the dinner table one night. I expressed to him that I found it daunting to start training teachers in TOCFE. He fixed his penetrating gaze on me, the way he does, remained silent, grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote, ‘Just do it’  (I’ve kept this paper as my ‘anchor’.) That was the powerful, productive, professional ‘prod’ I needed. Thus TOCFE became established in The Netherlands with the bottom up approach and is alive and kicking. Watch this space!

My professional life is dedicated to the cause of Special Learning Difficulties/Dyslexia and TOCFE in UK and The Netherlands. TOCFE has provided me with badly needed tools for both students and teachers I work with, and the results are amazing at every level in education.

The whole Dutch drive started there in LA with Eli’s message.

I’ve still got a 1997 group photo and the video that was shot of this first ever international conference, where friendships were cemented and have lasted throughout all those following 10 years.

What a joy when another worldwide reunion takes place at each new annual TOCFE conference and we learn about what new applications, progress and expansion is achieved globally. Continents unite, so do creed, colour and culture.

Many conventions have followed this first LA one. Many we’ve attended. At many I’ve presented my ‘POOGI Spiel’ about the enormous impact TOCFE has made - and is still making - on Dyslexic and Dyspraxic students with tell-tale examples.

I sincerely hope that TOCFE will bloom and blossom for many more 10-year celebrations to come, for many more students and their educators and carers to benefit from, so that this world DOES become a better place for all of us to live in.

With thanks to all of you that have contributed to my POOGI in whatever way.

Eleanor   eleanormay@onetel.com

 

 

"You Ask for help/I blow up"                                                                                        Lynn Stockbridge, with introduction by Kathy Suerken, USA

Lynn has become a TOCfE champion through John Suerken who interested him in THE GOAL (like me!) and TOCfE to the extent that Lynn has volunteered to help us organize and assure any needed IOs for  our October 2007 International Conference.  Since he also wanted to be able to use TOC in his volunteer work with youth, Lynn took substantial personal leave from work to become qualified at the facilitator level and just recently completed the new upgraded facilitator training  taught by Cal Halliburton and me recently in Florida.

This training is being developed to better ensure that participants understand the fundamental TOC paradigm shift and what is needed to sustain it.   In addition to developing a deeper understanding of the basic assumptions of TOC and how those relate to the tools, this seminar also teaches the chronic / repetitive conflict application.    The application to deeper conflict is the one typically needed eventually by most of us and particularly in Mediation and Counselling situations.   Unless we, as TOCfE facilitators, master this and role model this application on a personal level, we can not expect others to do so….starting with our adult participant mentorees and ending with CHILDREN ...especially our own….

 

"You ask for help:  I blow up."

My daughter was sitting in the front room working on her college programming class.  Since a small child she told everyone that she wanted to become an Electrical Engineer like her dad.  I thought she would probably change her career path a number of times but she did not waiver from that aspiration.  She was in her second year of college and was doing great.  Whenever possible I expressed great pride when I told everybody who would listen “She will make a better engineer than her dad.”

I was struggling with my Federal tax forms when I heard my daughter deep in her frustration with homework ask “Dad, I need help with programming?”  I exhaled slowly as I saved my work on my computer and gradually made my way to the couch.  I would have to solve my tax woes later, I thought to myself.

Sitting on the couch with her notebook computer in her lap she handed me a piece of paper.  With desperation in her voice she explained the urgent need to complete the next day’s assignment.  She then told me “I can not get that to work.”  The “...that...” that she referred to was on the piece of paper she initially handed to me.  It was a single line of code.  I had no idea what or where to start “Oh great!” I thought. “This is going to be tough”.

In short I tried to help, but my stress and her desperation increased very quickly.  Finally I exploded and she left the room crying.  Feelings of self disgust and anger raged in my psyche as I stormed out of the house into the night air. 

Outside I began to ask why I could help others so much better than those I loved so dearly.  That is when I resolved to stop this recurring scene that had so frequently arisen between my love ones and me.  Turning around I walked into the house and developed my first negative branch.

When finished I asked my daughter if I could discuss what had transpired.  I then invited my wife to just observe.  With her eyes red and swollen I folded the branch down the middle* (*attached and can be viewed, if needed on web) and showed her the sequenced events of what had happened.   When I finished and before I could say more she jumped in to attack mode, pointed to the bottom and then the top of the page and said “Yes that is what happened. I asked for help and you exploded”.  I had to chuckle to myself when I thought how many times do we just remember the beginning and the end but nothing between in a conflict.

 “Yes Honey, you are correct” I said “but isn’t a conflict better defined with all that happened and not just the beginning and the end?  And what about those thoughts that are not expressed?”  I unfolded the Branch and showed her those things unsaid as I read the full branch to her. When I got to the top and read the last line: “I see the fear in your tear filled eyes and I loathe myself.”  I noticed in the corner of her eyes a tear forming as she wiped it away. “This branch was not developed to justify what happened” I tell her “the whole purpose is to show dispassionately what happened.  But until we find out how to stop this from occurring again we are not finished.” As I pass her the branch I say “So tell me where we can break this series of events?” Quickly she points to the bottom and says “Right here - I should have better explained the problem and that what I did before you came into the problem.”  Beaming with pride for her I ask “what about me?”  “Here” she says “you need to ask questions when the stress begins. Like, why are you getting stressed?”   

We walked away from this experience with a new found respect for each other. 

(PowerPoint version of the branch is a separate document)