Together We Can Make a Difference: Opening Space with Children

I feel blessed and thankful to live a life that includes so many opportunities to be inspired. On January 20th, 2009 after President Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony I had the opportunity to spend my day hosting 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders in Open Space.

The idea was birthed in a planning committee with 3 third grade students. They decided the questions that would guide the our time together:

and

What is something that you think is important
in our school or in our world that you would like to discuss?

The planning committee opened the 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.

You can read more about the topics they discussed, their notes, and their closing remarks at Educating For Wholeness.

Here are a few of my favorite comments:

• STOP Globle Warming (happy voice) in ten years (Deep Voice)
• make a complante to the president
• Invent vical that runs on trash or sun, rain
• Nicely tell others to be nice
• Help stop war by traiding reciorses
• If you are shy talk
• If you are a chatterbox let others have a chance to speak
• 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 pollution can make the air dirty and hurt people and animals
• I discovered a lot of people have ideas too.
• I discovered that once you think about it, there is a lot more waste
• 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.
• I discovered there is a lot of things to change and like President Obama, we should start.