This past Saturday I had the delightful opportunity of participating in an Open Space with roughly 110 Haitian High school students and 10 teachers and school administrative staff.
The theme, translated from Haitian Creole to English, was, "What can we do to ensure that there is authentic harmony between girls/women and boys/men?"
We were at The Louverture Cleary School which is a private boarding school for kids who have been assessed as being academically gifted and who come from desperately poor neighborhoods and households.
I have been doing two to three Open Space meetings with teachers and administrative staff each year for the last several years. This was our first Open Space with students. What excites me most is that two young teachers-both in their mid twenties-who have participated in previous open space meetings, initiated, organized and facilitated the event.
It emerged from the school's custom of doing an annual two day program for female students celebrating international day for women. This year, the female students joined together and said to the teacher responsible for the program something like this: "If the purpose of our celebrating International Day of Women is to move forward in realizing a society that honors the rightful role of women, than the boys have to be a part of the program, because they are a big part of the problem."
Madame Louis, their teacher, worked with other teachers and students to come up with a two-day program involving all students in grades 9-12--girls and boys--calling it: "Celebrate People." They designated Saturday morning, the second day, from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon as being a time in Open Space. I only learned about all this after the theme had been created. The two teachers responsible for the program, one a Haitian women and the other a United States-ian man, with encouragement from school's leadership, wanted to facilitate. They simply contacted me to get some pre-meeting coaching and help with setting up the space.
The meeting was done outdoors in their school's courtyard, protected by trees from the hot tropical sun.
There were two different time periods, more than 20 subjects posted, notes from the majority of small group discussions turned in, a talking stick type exercise from 11:35 to 12:05, and nothing but positive comments about the morning in Open Space.
On April 10, the entire school-200 students and 30 teachers and staff are invited by school's leadership to attend a full day in open space on a theme something like: "What needs to be a part of our apprenticeship to ensure that we will be prepared, when we graduate, to help our country move forward?"
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