Dear OSLIST, This is a report on the progress of the teacher mentoring project in North Carolina. We are holding our first OS event on August 22-23, and toward the end of the message I will be asking for advice on the development of this meeting.
There is a team of people here whose mission is to design and implement a new system for the mentoring of all of North Carolina's first-year public school teachers (5,000 plus). Our work is funded by a big three-year federal education grant. I have been an elementary school teacher for ten years. In March I decided to leave the classroom in the pursuit of opportunities to promote Open Space. Through a synchronicitous (to me, miraculous) series of events, I am now a member of this design team. Three weeks ago, I attended our first meeting, in Wilmington. I came with the idea, which people on this list had helped me to refine, of forming collaborative mentoring groups. Instead of mentoring being a one-to-one affair, why not bring a bunch of new teachers and a bunch of experienced mentors together in Open Space on a regular basis? In this way, new teachers could receive guidance from a number of mentors in an organic way, and all the difficult, complex issues that bombard public school teachers could be addressed in the deep trust and openness of Open Space. I expected it to be a hard sell, an idea from remote left field. I hoped for a chance to pilot the idea on a small scale. Surprise, surprise! The other members of the design team grasped the implications of this idea instantly. The meeting hummed with synergy, with all making contributions. Many of them have been involved in powerful collaborative work with Professional Development Systems that partner universities and schools. Though they had not heard of Open Space, they had lived it and worked in it in other forms. The group is ready to explore using OS in the mentoring system on a large scale, now. Here's the human structure. The federal grant supports sixteen master teachers to take a year off from their teaching duties to work with mentors in a particular region of the state, based at universities. These people have been chosen, and they are a powerful group of educators. My idea is to train and empower these sixteen people to facilitate OS meetings of mentors and new teachers in their regions. In addition, BJ Peters, Susan Wood, and Anne Stadler have all advised me about the value of integrating Appreciative Inquiry into the system, both as a foundational process for relationship building and as a way of evaluation. In an ideal world, the sixteen mentor-leaders would go through a four day training with the likes of Harrison or Birgitt, and do a full-blown AI training as well. It isn't possible (at least not yet). What we have to get the ball rolling is a two-day training, on August 22-23. I am working with BJ Peters and Peter Donaldson to develop and facilitate this event. I have confidence in our little team-of-three...AND we would love to receive advice from the deep wisdom of this listserv. How would you design this? What are some key issues and questions for us to attend to? Logistics: We'll be in Charlotte, probably in a hotel conference room. We have from 9am Tuesday until 5pm Wednesday. (We tried to start Monday afternoon, but too many people are traveling too far to pull it off.) The number of participants will likely be between 25 and 35. Our general vision is to provide the participants with a quality, albeit short, experience of Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space. We would like to create a space where they can deeply consider the meaning and power of mentoring in their lives, from both sides of the relationship. We would like to open the space for them to explore together the value of AI and OS, and to collaborate about the possible applications of these processes to their work as mentor leaders. We would like to emerge from the event with ideas about the nature and level of support that they will need to go forth and do good work. We will meet with leadership on the day after the event to chart our way into the near future. I will finish by saying thank you to my valued mentors who are reading this, and to ask that you keep our efforts in your hearts, that Spirit may guide us well. 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