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One way to do it

October 4, 2012 By Learning, Unschooling One Comment

Just thought I would share this piece of communication from my son’s school.  he attends a middle school that has a unique focus on its approach to learning and character development and there is a lot I like about it.  I especially like the way there are certain traditions that flow, giving a time for mentorship and responsibility.  Check this out:

November 1st Late Start

It has been a tradition  for the grade six class to try and formulate a valid argument (i.e. in the Practical Reasoning class) as to why students should be allowed to come late to school (i.e. 10:30) on November 1st (the day after Halloween). Given that the older students often tutor the younger students with the best arguments over the years, it is a fair bet that the students will win their argument. Just a heads-up, then, that it is almost certainly the case that there will be a 10:30 start on Thursday, November 1st.    Off-island students can therefore board the 10:00 ferry, if they choose. Note that the school will be open at 8:30 am as usual for those students who need to come in early, in any case.

As a life learner, my son has chosen to attend this school as part of his learning in life.  It’s stuff like this that confirms my insticnts about his ability to choose his mentors and his learning opportunities to balance wisdom and fun.

Using Open Space in traditional conference design

October 3, 2012 By Conversation, Design, Facilitation, Open Space 4 Comments

I have used Open Space in almost every way conceivable and what Lisa Heft wrote on the OSLIST today about using it with traditional conferences strikes home.  This is good wisdom, friends:

My experience is that – if doing a mix of ‘traditional’ format conference and Open Space – the most ideal situation is traditional, (recreation day before or after that or after the whole conference) and then Open Space.

I have seen that if Open Space happens first – when there is the switch to traditional, participants feel uncomfortable and ‘edgy’ because they have tasted the power of self-organization and physically being able to move to what they need and find who they need – so they are not happy or focused sitting in an audience listening after that. If you do OS as the last day (or whatever) then there are two extra values of people being able to host conversations about what they are learning and exploring in the previous days of the conference as well as whatever your theme question / task will be. Nice integration and self-organized continuation of learning, networking, community. Plus, the close of the Open Space makes a very nice close for the conference – it really feels like reflection, comment, participant voice to close.

The most difficult thing I know is to start and stop Open Space / break it up within a conference – really, it destroys the reason for doing OS and completely changes what OS can do. When I am told that by a conference I simply switch to some other lovely interactive dialogue stuff – for example I will do World Cafes within a conference with themes that will help participants as they move through the arc of learning and the several days of the conference.

The other most difficult thing I know is to have OS at the same time as other things in a conference – because usually there is not a good, focused opening (for all participants who wish to join), arc of learning and thinking across time, and not a good sense of closure. So it all feels like a big room where conversations can happen but just like any other sort of coffee house environment, no reason to do Open Space. You could just as well give people signs to put on their tables to gather around a self-organized topic whenever they come into that room, if they like. No process or facilitator needed. (this is sometimes referred to as ‘Birds of a Feather’.)

Oh yes and I personally think that all formalities in a conference must be seriously considered – do 100% of the participants need to do that voting or decision, or is that for a small leadership group, do people really need a keynote speaker or is the wisdom in the group, are speeches really good for anyone other than the person speaking ;o) … do people walk away from conferences going ‘gee I loved that formal gala and it really changed how I do my work on Monday’ or do they get more from participant-driven co-learning – all things to consider when deciding on overall conference design

Support for making marriage fully legal

October 1, 2012 By Uncategorized

Wearing an orange equality ring over my wedding ring. In Minnesota last week these were being handed out to people who wanted to show support for marriage equality. There is an initiative on the November ballot that would add an amendment to the state Constitution that declares that only men and women can be married. I’m wearing this orange ring over my own wedding ring in solidarity with those who want marriage to be fully legal in Minnesota.

I cannot understand how a country that prides itself on equality can even dare contemplate denying equal rights to a group if people. I hope voters in Minnesota reject the amendment in November. And I hope that following that, the institution of marriage will be made fully legal in the state.

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Getting beyond the reaction

October 1, 2012 By BC, CoHo, Collaboration, Community, Flow, Leadership, Organization

My friend Bob Stilger writes today from the radiation fields of Fukushima where he has been joining people for the past year in the work of remaking lives after the tsunami and the meltdown.  It’s worth heading over to his blog to follow his ongoing discoveries there, but here are some good bits from today’s posting:

 

People are learning how to co-exist, and more, with the radiation.   One story I heard was about a town that wanted to have a festival with an outside play area for their children.   Playing on the ground has become prohibited.   They spent days and days cleaning one park so that it was radiation free – now, one morning – so the children could play.   Tomorrow will be a different story.   I thought of a learning center in south Texas that partnered with Berkana for a time – Llano Grande.   When I visited there once I listened with interest as teachers organized a trip.   One of the things they took into account in their planning was who was an illegal alien and who wasn’t.   Special arrangements had to be made for the illegals.   That was just the way it was.   Others somewhere might be arguing about immigration policy, but at the community level you just work with what you have.   So it is in Fukushima.   You work with what you have.

My most amazing session of the day was in the town of Minamisoma.   It was a community of 70,000 people.   As the radiation settled more than 50,000 were forced to leave.   Gradually people have been allowed to return and now the population is around 50,000.   Part of Minamisoma is costal and there the tsunami damage has been untouched since 3.11 because of the radiation – it still looks exactly like the costal areas in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures did in the weeks after 3.11.   But people have returned because it is their home.   They have returned to build something new together.

Early in 2012 some friends got together and decided to hold a future festival.   More than 1000 people from the community participated.   Music performances, presentations, dialogs – many different activities to engage people and invite them to think about their future together.   At the end of the day one of the organizers, a woman who runs a local laundry offered a toast:   before 3.11 we had a reputation for being quiet and just waiting for the government to do what they wanted.   Now we know we must do it ourselves.   We cannot wait for government.   We must join hands and create a future together.   And that’s what they are doing.

In June the opened a Future Center on a corner of a neighborhood.   People started to use it immediately.   Those who organized it said we don’t actually know what a Future Center is, but we know we need a place to create a future together – so we started.

The leadership circle is a delight – a truck driver, a laundress, a dairy farmer, a nurse’s aid, a bartender – ordinary people who have come together because something had to be done.   One had been evacuated from Minamisoma to a town several hours to the north.   It took her more than a year to be able to make her way home.   Another spoke of how his family has been torn apart – he and his wife want to stay here, in their home with their children.   His parents accuse him of killing his children and have moved north into Miyagi.   He thinks they will never speak again.   But these people have stepped forward because they must.   This is home.   There are dangers – but there are dangers everywhere and this is home.

They know this is long term work.   One person spoke of how we hold individual future sessions and that is good.   Things happen in them, but what we are really doing is working to gradually change the mindset of the community.   We are helping ourselves realize that we can and will create a future together.

They are just ordinary people who are working together to create a life.   With each other.   Now.

Any person, any where in the world who promotes nuclear energy should be required to come and spend a week in Fukushima.   They should be required to walk through Itakemura and experience its silent desolation. They should be required to talk with the parents who take days to make a playground radiation free for a few hours so their children can play outside again.   They should be made to look at a future made invisible and then explain to people what they will do differently and how they will solve the problems of the soft underbelly of nuclear energy – dealing with the waste.

These people are strong.   They will figure out how to live in a healthy and resilient way here in Fukushima.   They will not be swayed by people who they think know what’s best for people who live here.   It is their own future.   They know they will make it together, working with what they have.   They are amazing.

via Fukushima: Beyond Reacting –Bob Stilger’s Notes from Japan #36 ~ October 1st :: New Stories.

 

A question that might change your life

September 25, 2012 By Being, Collaboration, Community, First Nations One Comment

In a year from now, Vancouver will host a very important gathering of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Back in 1986 I was a young man who had grown up in an affluent neighbourhood in Toronto.  I was unaware of the full story of my ancestry and although I was interested in the world, it was a pretty sheltered upbringing. I had just completed high school and had my eyes set on attending university to get a BA on my way to obtaining a Master of Divinity.  I wanted to be a minister in the United Church of Canada.

As a result of my involvement with youth and social justice issues within the United Church, I was chosen to be one of several hundred Commissioners selected to attend the Church’s biannual policy and decision making gathering, the General Council.  In 1986 the General Council was held in Sudbury Ont., and that year a significant and historical event took place: the Church made a formal apology to Aboriginal congregations for the role the Church played in the residential school system and in the devastating advance of colonization across the Canadian cultural landscape.

This was the first such apology in Canadian history between a non-native institution and indigenous peoples.  It is perhaps not as well remembered that the indigenous representatives who were present deliberated with the Moderator of the Church for a long time before they announced that they were not accepting the apology but instead would release a ststement at a later date.  That statement was two years in the making and in 1988 the response came: the Apology was still not accepted, but it was acknowledged and there was hope that it was sincere and at any rate, “We only ask of you to respect our Sacred Fire, the Creation, and to live in peaceful coexistence with us.”  It was a call to alliance.

During the days of that General Council, I sat next to a Cree minister from Island Lake, Manitoba named Tom Little. At one point Tom turned to me and asked: “What will you do to make the apology real?” I made him a promise that, as I was going to Trent University a month later, I would supplement my history degree with courses from Trent’s highly acclaimed Native Studies program.  Within months of arriving at Trent I knew my path had opened up.  I dropped history and became a full Native Studies major.  My life, work and spiritual path completely changed.  If not for that decision, my great aunt would never have revealed to me my own indigenous ancestry (which is non-obvious in a genetic sense!).  From 1989 I began living a real life of reconciliation, as what one of my teachers called “a living treaty.”

Canadians live in a space in between.  We live within indigenous territories. We take pride in our connection to land, but suffer a terrible blind spot when it comes to knowing and understanding the deepest history, language and culture of the land.  The zeal to recreate our lives – the zeal that all immigrants share – obscures what is already here.  It deprives us of a rich world of thought and meaning that can only make us better humans if we open ourselves to it.  If reconciliation is to be a real thing, it must be transformative for people and for the relationships that we share.

If you are a Canadian, now is the time to open yourself to what the invitation to reconcile really means.  Who could we become as communities and as a country if we allow ourselves to be changed together rather than simply expecting one group of people to change and heal on their own?  What can you do to be an ally?

It doesn’t have to be as life transforming for you as it was for me.  But it could be.

UPDATE: Check out this booklet from Jennifer Ellis that documents a gathering around residential schools called UyidYnji Tl’äku: I Let it Go Now.