Together We Can Make a Difference: Open Space with Children

On January 20th, 2009 after President Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony 45 third graders gathered in a circle for an Open Space event.

Three students on a planning committee decided the questions that would guide the students’ time together:

• What is something that a group of people working together can change?
• What is something that you think is important in our school or in our world that you would like to discuss?
  

The planning committee started the open space with a poem and a story.
The opening poem by Mila Kopp:


And another student told a story:

Once you get older it’s harder for people to change your mind so you’re not as much of a help to the community when they’re trying to think of something to do or when something’s wrong and they need help and are deciding what to do. For instance, with my grandfather, it’s really hard for people to change his mind because he just thinks one thing is right and if something else is right and someone tells him, because he’s older, it’s a lot harder to change his mind and it might not even happen.

The students were told how the process of Open Space works… and then they got to it, deciding what they wanted to talk about, posting their topics and attending the sessions. Students had paper to take notes and had the option of using a talking piece to facilitate their conversations. Some students were given video cameras to interview and document the process.

This same process was repeated 2 more times with groups of 1st and 2nd graders. Below are examples of topics that were posted, some of their notes, and comments from the closing circles. All of the student's brave spelling has be preserved. For the complete list of Topics, Session Notes and Closing Circle Comments download this document.

Topics Posted

• How to save the animals
• Don’t be rude
• Stop violence, It may cause other bad issues
• Sushi in hot lunch’s
• Don’t kill animals for coats
• Do not be to loud. Try to be silent.
• Save papper saves trees
• Globle Warming – When you have to go a short way, don’t take your car!
• FREEDOM OF CHOICE
• Fair and unfair
• Palushin
• being raspactfoll
• wrcing to gether in socor
• Help stop war
• Bing Nice With Othrs
• Life
• Being helpful
• how to work out prablums
• Welcome people into gam’s

Session Notes

Polution
Notes

• “I think that pollution is rong because I think the earth should be in it’s healtyest condition and everyone should carpull as much as possible.”
• “If you polute, that leads to global waring witch leads to us.”
  

What can we do now?

• “Groups can like get together and pick up litter.”
• “Everyone should always carry a bag with them to carry litter that you find on the ground and picked up.”
  

Globle Warming
Notes

• If you have to go a short way, don’t take your car!
• Put up sines to stop globle warming
  

What can we do?

• STOP Globle Warming (happy voice) in ten years (Deep Voice)

Save the animals
Notes

• Adopt a pet at Cat Adoption Centers and other places
• Look for lost pets
• Look in allys
• Start your own adoption center

How to save the animals
What can we do now?
3. be president and make a law that says you can only kill animals once a year
4. make a complante to the president

Gasoline
What can we do now?

• Walking, biking
• Invent vical that runs on trash or sun, rain
• hybrid
• carpool
  

Bing nice with others
Notes

• Be nice to others
• Telling others to be nice
• Nicely tell others to be nice
  

Talk don’t hit
What can we do now?

• We will say, “Talk don’t hit!” and we will try not to do it ourselves

Being helpful
Notes
Examples

• Yore little brother is skating and you help him.
• Yore little brother got a shot you put a bandade on him

Doing the dishes
Notes

• Save energy by not using dish water
• Tirn off the faucet more
• People make it easier
• sistrs and brothers can help

Help stop war
Notes

• Traiding reciorses

Talk it out
Notes

• We think it is important to talk it out because
• We have a lot of issues to talk out
• if you don’t talk, it sometimes get to step 3 (that’s bad!)
• You need to protect your body

Talking to people
Notes

• Talk to people instead of hitting
• If you are shy talk
• If you are a chatterbox let others have a chance to speak
  

How to stop polushin
Notes

• Not cut down tree
• Rideing bikes ensted of cars
• Don’t wast water
• Don’t kill animals
• Don’t drive bad mpg cars
• Drive hyurids
• Don’t wast paper

Stop Palooting
Notes

• New invechins
• New fuels
  

Playing
Notes

• If someone is playing and made up an idea it could lead to a big problem if they don’t include the other person in the idea
• Playing is dangerus
• You should not exclude other people
  

Closing Circle Comments
What did you find interesting? What did you learn?
Did you hear anything you haven’t thought about before?

• If you want to save gas and not pollute the Earth, you should definitely carpool. I also want to give a compliment to my group for thinking of so much ideas.
• Me and my group came up with pollution. I think I’m sort of helping because I carpool. And I think people should ride bikes and scooters and walk more often then just riding cars. And if you just want to go over to the next store neighbors or the ice cream shop down the road, even though it’s faster to go on a car, you should probably just walk or scooter or bike ride.
• I agree with (another student) that you don’t need that many people, you only need like 5, you don’t need like 15 or 20 or 50. You don’t need huge numbers like that.
• I learned that when everyone pitches in just a little bit, it can make a giant difference.
• I discovered how to keep clean water
• I discovered how pollution can make the air dirty and hurt people and animals
• I learned about factories that are bad for the environment, and the importance of different energy sources
• I learned that a lot of people were thinking about how cars pollute the earth
• We talked about how to stop wars
• I discovered a lot of people have ideas too.
• I discovered that once you think about it, there is a lot more waste
• I discovered there is a lot of things to change and like President Obama, we should start.
• I learned it can actually be pretty fun to work with other people
• Teacher: I learned that you all can have important conversations by yourselves and that you don’t need the adults there. I also learned that you can self-organize what you want to talk about.
  

The Power of Developing New Habits

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?
By JANET RAE-DUPREE

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

“I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit,” Ms. Ryan says. “Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that’s going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain.”

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

“Try lacing your hands together,” Ms. Markova says. “You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.”

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.

But if, during creation of that new habit, the “Great Decider” steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, “you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.

“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”


All of the text and image is from the New York Times article, Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? Image by Christophe Vorlet

A Song Can Lessen the Fear

Sderot, Israel is near the boarder with Gaza and is a city that experienced (experiences?) a constant threat of Qassam rockets being fired into the city. When a rocket is spotted, there is a "Red Color" alert that is sounded warning people to take cover.

Residents of Sderot have about less than a minute to get to a place of safety when they hear the warning "Red Color" announcing an incoming rocket (spotted by those who watch for them). Hearing a Red Color causes panic in many, especially children. ~ Source

“Children experienced real developmental regressions, some began bedwetting,” she said. “They were getting hysterical when the alarm sounded – some freezing in place, unable to seek cover. One day I felt like ‘now is the time’ and I took this song I'd made up to a kindergarten class.” ~ Source

It is not hard to believe that repetitively experiencing alarming threats to one's life from 'out of the sky' would cause trauma for children. The following video is an example of how one woman helped create change for many children. She could not change the threat of the rockets, but she found ways to shape the experience so that the children were not stripped of all of their power and understanding but could, instead, become active participants in the event. The song she created for the children to sing integrates EMDR therapy, somatic exercises and relaxation techniques to help the fear and tension of the warnings move through the children's bodies, and hopefully freeing them from some of the terror.



I am very inspired by this video. I wonder, what simple ways can we each use in our lives and with those whose lives we touch to gently reshape the ways we experience something, decreasing the impact of fear and unknowing?