Thank youDear Francis, dear all I am thinking about the story Francis told in Thomas Herman's Caravan in Denmark: about an os-group you divided in two because participants hadn't come voluntarily and so you allowed for the option to participate or not - including the possibility to join in later...
I've got a couple of questions about that for I'm facing an os with mainly young men who will have to participate in an os in Cologne in December. I've evaluated a project-week last year at their school and the results indicated strongly that an os would have avoided a lot of the problems that occurred. So I took it from there to recommend an OS prior to the project-week for this year but as you can imagine - educational systems have a structure that doesn't think much of freedom to participate for fear that nobody will come (and other reasons)... because not everybody is happy with the general topic in sight (again - as last year - to do with anti-discrimination in a broader sense, funnily enough). (It's a sponsored EU-project this school is a cooperating-partner of) Now the objective of the (one and a half day-) os is to find topics they will work on during that week. The first day is supposed to be held open for everything that needs or wants 'airing' and the second day is for action-planning. Since the group will be rather big (400+) it sounded a good idea that alternative(s) are offered for those who aren't interested at all and are only there because they have to (just like your second group, Francis). Of course we have the intention to create an invitation that gets as many as possible interested. Now, how to proceed: Should the alternative already be offered in the invitation? Wouldn't that eliminate the chance to choose to participate at short notice when the opening of space was inviting / inspiring enough (surprisingly)? Just from my guts I'd prefer choice and only let them decide after os-introduction. Huh - but that could become rather chaotic, not? However, is it ok to do it that way - i.e. offer an alternative in the invitation already but allow for choice at short notice also? Problem: That will make the number of participants quite unpredictable - both for the os and for preparing alternative offers... Any ideas/ experience with that is welcome! (I'm writing this before planning-group meeting) ~ Ilse * * ========================================================== 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
