Hello Rose,
Thanks for your courageous, open inquiry and for sharing your learning
with all of us.
A decade ago, I worked with a group of what we Arizonans call "middle
school" students on a year-long project that was focused on building
community capacity (a very abstract idea, even to most community
leaders :). What I remember about the first meetings was the
tremendous developmental differences, especially between the awkward
12 year-old boys and the 14 year-old girls who loved to flaunt their
beauty and their social power.
The project was funded by the "get the kids to stop smoking" folks who
were willing to experiment with a project design that focused on
resilience rather than trying to stop bad behavior. Early on, the
school principal saw the wisdom of having a self-selected design/
planning team that was made up of students, teachers, parents,
administrators, community leaders, etc.
The principal had already recruited community leaders and had invited
everyone in the school to come to the first planning meeting. She was
surprised and delighted at the number of students (around 30 as I
recall) who showed up to be a part of this team. The students
outnumbered the adults three to one. With such large numbers at the
first meeting, the only thing to do was open the space for self-
organized planning. The students took the lead in many cases, perhaps
because the adults were deliberately stepping back or perhaps because
it was clear that the students were the experts on middle school
culture and what would work best to encourage the largest number of
students to get actively involved in their project, which became an
Appreciative Inquiry into community resilience.
I loved watching a very shy 12 year-old boy team up with a dynamic 14
year-old girl to design the questions they would use for interviews
with community leaders.
Warm wishes from a brilliant Phoenix morning,
Christine
Christine Whitney Sanchez
Collaborative Wisdom & Strategy
480.759.0262
www.christinewhitneysanchez.com
Skype: christinewhitneysanchez
http://www.facebook.com/ChristineWhitneySanchez
On Nov 4, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Rose Tassone wrote:
Hello everyone. I’m wishing to share my experience of facilitating
OST for the first time. It was held in a primary school in Perth,
Western Australia. Surveys administered by the principal earlier in
the year had parents and students report that they were most
concerned about bullying at this school. The principal identified
the question “What do we need to do to respect each other and get
along?’ 73 students, ages 8 to 12, 6 educators and 3 parents
accepted the invitation.
This is what I observed during the OS event: A student was pushed
out of her group when she went to the breakout space even though she
was the one who had initiated the topic; students were physically
fighting, pushing each other and name calling; students who were
being butterflies chose to run around, disrupt and tease those in
the groups even though there was a drawing activity available to
them; the groups tended to compete with each other on how many pages
they could fill with lists of dos and don’ts of how to treat each
other. The energy of the morning was one of palpable violence and
two students were suspended. Teachers who had been briefed by the
principal to allow chaos at the event, so that children could self
organise, finally had to intervene because of duty of care issues.
Looking through the Book of Proceedings the students appear to have
all the knowledge of how to respect each other and get along, though
their behaviour during the event did not depict this. At the
debriefing the principal mentioned that the behaviours that were
shown are what normally occur every day in the schoolyard as they
self organise around individual survival. So it appears that the
proverbial ‘Lucy’ is more than likely a 10 year old bully!
I would really appreciate any comments and/or thoughts.
Kindest regards
Rose Tassone
m: (+61) 0408 944 072
e: [email protected]
p: po box 358 leederville wa 6903
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