Dear Kathleen, Like Peg and BJ I am fascinated with your idea. I am working in a state school system that also is conservative and test-driven. Like you I know how many teachers yearn to deepen their practice, to support one another, to open to spirit in their work with children and in the balance of their lives.
I believe that your vision could emerge powerfully as a community unaffiliated with any school system or structure. An invitation with a theme such as "deepening our practice, deepening our lives," or "spirit in our lives and teaching practice," would surely have attracted me as a teacher. An OS community independent of school systems could develop naturally and at its own pace. Interfacing with school structures invites a paradigm-clash that might be too disruptive to the community you imagine, at least initially. As you may have read, I am working on using OS within our North Carolina educational system. Our explicit purpose is to provide a community mentoring structure for new teachers. It looks promising that many new teachers will meet in Open Space every four weeks this year. At this point I am imagining our theme to be "becoming the teacher you dream to be." "Opening to spirit" cannot be our theme in our context, but of course it will be our practice. Thus far we have been very fortunate to have an Opening in the state system that embraces the idea, but navigation gets tricky at times. Please keep us posted as your wonderful idea moves into the world. Chris Weaver * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html =========================================================== osl...@egroups.com To subscribe, 1. Visit: http://www.egroups.com/group/oslist 2. Sign up -- provide an email address, and choose a login ID and password 3. Click on "Subscribe" and follow the instructions To unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@egroups.com: 1. Visit: http://www.egroups.com/group/oslist 2. Sign in and Proceed