Jeff’s Diary for Issue 5
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Dear Reader, New Learner! Once again it is a great pleasure to thank many of the contributors to our Education Network, including those who 1: have helped produce this issue of New Learning - our editors and those who have provided articles 2: participated in our activities at Tyssen Primary School and are playing an active role in creating and developing new opportunities for introducing and applying NLP to Education 3: maintained contact - via e-mail, land-mail and telephone - who are curious about our activities and development, who want to share some of their dreams, enthusiasm and success and 4: joined us at our November Conference |
Transitions: Creating New Learnings for The New Millenium
OK. It’s very nearly the end of one millennium and the beginning of the next, a transition from one period to another. Transitions would appear to fascinate us as human beings – is it because it might represent ‘giving something up’ or ‘leaving something behind’ or perhaps more positively stated, as ‘an opportunity for something new, something different’, ‘another chance to ..’? If this is what fascinates us about transitions, then, presumably, we have such opportunities every second of our experience, since time itself is transitional.
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) adds a key concept to transitions –
OUTCOMES: ‘What do you want?’ - and provides a structure and process to creating our future, by clarifying our outcomes. The following approach to clarifying Outcomes will be familiar to those who might describe themselves as ‘NLPers’ :|
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P ositive: state your outcome in the positive – what you want. For those that find this difficult, and relate to ‘what I don’t want is…’ then that’s OK too – simply state what you don’t want and then answer a very simple follow-up question - ‘What do you want instead?’! |
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O wn it: describe your outcome in terms of what you can do (not someone else) – what you will do to achieve it, now, later … |
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W hen, Where, with Whom: describing precisely the qualities of your outcome makes your associations with it, the ways in which you identify with it powerful. |
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E vidence and Ecology: how will you know when you’ve got it, and what (else?) might happen if you get it – eg to others around you? |
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R esources and Route: what resources do you need to achieve your Outcome(s) and what Route will get you there? |
Imagine, as a teacher, a lecturer, a head (of department, school), an adviser, a researcher … that Power Outcomes were an integral part of planning your curriculum, your agenda, your schedule, … In particular you might be describing:
- the learnings that your students, clients, colleagues will be taking on-board
- what part you would be playing in assisting them in this learning
- the evidence - what you would be seeing, hearing and feeling - as they took on-board these learnings
And here is another aspect of the magic provided by NLP. Having described the quailities of your Outcome(s) and imagined the evidence, your brain, your imagination, will begin to create the path to get you there, seeking out the opportunities to create your outcomes - and thus create your desired future!
As your read this, some of you might be saying to yourselves ‘Well, I already do that in my head!’ Well NLP is based on modelling such excellence, providing structure to the process and describing and teaching it to others. So, well done!
Those of us who are taking on-board NLP know the Power of applying these simple principles to our life; imagine the impact making Power Outcomes an intrinsic part of education; imagine every student, teacher, manager and leader, every school, every LEA and The DfEE (Department of Education and Employment) having open, explicit Power Outcomes!
For those of you who are cute readers, or perhaps I might describe as acute readers, this idea might lead to another important question - ‘If all these people and all these organisations have clearly expressed outcomes, how do we get an agreement, a concord, an alignment?’ What a great question! And NLP has some tools and techniques to help create such alignment, and in such a way, that nothing will stop you achieving all your individual and group and organisational outcomes! But more of that in our next issue!
Tyssen Update
One key outcome for our NLP Education Network is to help learners and teachers rediscover the joys of learning and teaching, and leaders and managers rediscover the joys of leading and managing – which, for so many unfortunately, would transform their current experience of education.
Since the beginning of this academic year (September1999) we have begun to establish a working relationship with a Primary School in Hackney, in North-East London. As you might imagine there is an understandably wide variety of responses from the staff to us being there - ranging from ‘intrusion’ through curiosity to a hearty ‘welcome’.
I am writing this report very shortly after a group of our members, six in all, provided some introductory NLP-related activities for nearly all the classes and teachers in the school. We will publish more details of this activity in our next ‘New Learning’ but you might be interested know a little about our approach.
We hoped for the optimum conditions for our activity, and we got them. For those of you who are teachers you will appreciate this scenario - ‘the event’ took place on a Friday and it rained, so wet playtime and dinnertime!
The programme we decided on was a simple one :
- Each of us would work with two classes in the morning and the same two classes in the afternoon
- We would introduce the NLP Spelling Strategy in the morning
- We would introduce some ideas around ‘reading for meaning’ in the afternoon
At a meeting two days before the event, the staff aired many of their thoughts about us, their beliefs and attitudes, their hopes and concerns - and decided that for this one day they would be happy for us to go into their classrooms and, so that they could observe us working, would ask our team to take the whole class.
This was a fascinating and exciting challenge which we were delighted to accept.
We are grateful to Michael Mallows (who had just returned from a trip to America), Mavis Kerrigan (who travelled down from Southampton), Mark Edwards (who travelled down from Bedford), Miles Goodma (who travelled down from Bristol) for accepting the challenge and for giving their time, energy and enthusiasm so freely, and for their wonderful acuity and flexibility. Their response at the end of an invigorating day was very positive and we look forward to their reports in our next issue.
The Next Issue of ‘New Learning’
Our next issue of ‘New Learning’ will focus on some key issues:
Jeff Lewis: October 1999
NLP Education Network
Rediscover the Joys of teaching and learning
For more information on NLP Education Network contact
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