Susila Dharma Education Workshop Report

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Workshop Facilitated by Fernando Fatah Nieva, Mexico as part of the Susila Dharma International Conference

Amanecer July 27 & 28, 2008

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Participants

Fernando Fatah Nieva	Subud Mexico	fernandofatah.subudmx@yahoo.com
Edith Marcela Moreno	Subud Teusaquillo (Bogota)	edithmc-2000@yahoo.com
Beatriz Salama Lopez	Subud Armenia	menaciencias@yahoo.es
Elisa Arcila	Subud Amanecer	mia2121@yahoo.com
Maemunah Torres	Subud Mexico	maemex@hotmail.com
Carlota Barney	Subud Amanecer	jimenabarney@hotmail.com
David McCormick	Subud Cali	davidmccormick@yahoo.com
Ola McCormick	Subud Cali
Liza Ramey	SD USA	laramey@access4less.net
Iskindar Pinzoie	Subud Cali	iskatmac@hotmail.com
Nicheta Piedrahita	Subud Medellín	nicheta35@yahoo.com
Rohanna Castillo	Subud Bogota	rohannac@yahoo.es
Amaliah Giraldo	SD Colombia	susiladharmacolombia@yahoo.com
IrenaMontejo	Subud Teusaquillo	isabelmontejo@yahoo.com
Gustavo Caceres N	Comuna Kopipampa, Peru	comunakoripampa@hotmail.com
Consuela Hernandez	Subud Bogota	consuelahc@yahoo.es
Pedro Vacacela	Inka Samana, Ecuador	ueaitis@hotmail.com
Uraida Vacacela	Inka Samana	uraida-sdi@hotmail.com
Halim Korzybski	France	halimkorzybski@gmail.com
Rossana Silva	Fundacion Amanecer	rossana_mariateresa@yahoo.es
Rasjid Cesar	Tierraviva, Argentina	tierraviva.ong@argentina.com
Eliana Garzon Galazar	Asociacion Vivir	info@avivir.org
Chayatun Valencia	Fundacion Amanecer/Fundapre	chayatunvalencia@hotmail.com
Chandra Betancourt	Fundacion Amanecer	chandrabetancourt@yahoo.com
Victoria Alzate	Consorcio Unidos par la Infancia	vicky80@hotmail.es
Camilla Romero	Entrlazos, Argentina	haromero@yahoo.com
Myriam Ramsey	Subud USA
Miranda Ranger	Vancouver Canada	miranda_ranger@yahoo.com
Rosanna Hille	SDIA, SD Canada	rosanna@susiladharma.org

Ryan Roberge and Fernando Fatah

At the Pan-American Gathering in Amanecer, Colombia, a Subud Educators' Workshop was held on July 27 and 28, 2008. This workshop has been requested by a number of Subud educators from across the Americas who feel they were working in isolation and not benefitting from sharing their experiences with others. The workshop, part of the Susila Dharma International program, was led by Fernando Fatah from Mexico who holds two masters degrees in education. The workshop was funded in part by a grant from Guerrand Hermes Foundation for Peace to assist educators attend the conference.  

Workshop Objectives

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• Create a space for Subud educators of the Americas to share experiences about how they take their latihan experiences into their teaching, school management, research or project development practices.
• Promote mutual support, cooperation, networking, and intra and cross-disciplinary communication among Subud members related with the education field.
• Share experiences of helping students to become more engaged with their own development and growth.
• Lay the foundations of an Educational Knowledge Management System to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge in the educational field among Subud educators.

Workshop Participants

Pedro and Uraida Vacacela

Over the two days, twenty-eight people in total attended the workshop. The participants, members of Subud and others, represented educators working in a range of settings:

• Teachers working with children in pre-school, primary and secondary education (Colombia, Ecuador, USA and Argentina);
• Educators working with education curricula developed for indigenous populations (Ecuador);  
• University educators (Colombia, Canada and USA);
• Adult educators working with English Second Language (Canada), health education (Ecuador), prison education (Argentina) and education in a community development  context (Colombia, Canada, Peru, Mexico).

Workshop Content and Methodology

The workshop was oriented towards building knowledge and sharing experiences among Subud educators about the meaning of education from the Subud perspective and from personal experience. These are the topics we shared:

1. What is my nature as an educator? Where does my desire to be an educator come from?
2. What does Education mean for us as Subud members?
3. How do we take the Latihan into our professional practice?
4. What pedagogical practices help children to discover their own talent and learning natures?
5. Do we as Subud educators need technical knowledge?

(See Workshop Methodology in Annex 1)

Activities and Participants' Discussions
 
Participants were asked to do an exercise: to write an autobiography of the major influences in your early life.

• This self-history creates self-awareness in teachers as learners instead of just working with professional techniques.
• We can't improve others if we can't improve ourselves, so the key thing is to be self-aware.

The origin of the word 'education' is "Enseñar" is 'in-signare' which means to put a mark inside.  How many children have we put a mark inside?

Participants discussed how we use our spiritual practice to help us teach.

• Teachers' work through perception not knowledge. Their first reference is to their personal school experience. Technical knowledge is 3rd in terms of influence on their teaching style.
• One person spoke about using more classical teaching methods with more difficult groups of students and more relaxed methods with more creative groups.  
• Discussion on the difference between the analog and the digital age in how we can educate and how people learn.
• Teachers with biggest influence have passion, enthusiasm and commitment.

Participants then discussed what pedagogical practices help children to discover their own talent and learning natures.


When we develop any kind of education program, we must be aware of what we want to achieve and develop a clear strategy for how to obtain results.
Research shows that educators use their personal perception and beliefs more than technical knowledge for teaching, designing educational programs and, even more so, in interventions related to social programs. There are a lot of Non Governmental Organizations in Latin America that are working in the educational field, but their educators and staff do not have good educational training nor do they have the chance to build up their knowledge through sharing experiences.
A Curriculum Design Model was presented to the participants to help them develop a clear idea of how to plan education activities using a sound technical approach. This model is just a tool, but a very precise tool. The model was designed by Lopez y Maldonado (1985). It is a simple way to develop a clear path or strategy to reach an educational goal.  It helps to develop awareness of everything that must be "designed" before attempting to apply it in an educational context.
The first part of the planning process helps learners develop a clear framework of their work and to define with precision what they want to develop in the student.

The second step helps us to define the pedagogical process in a very accurate way.  It is the moment to define what we are going to teach and how is going to be taught. The third step is to define with accuracy the operational conditions to reach the goal with the highest efficiency.

The third step is to define with accuracy the operational conditions to reach the goal with the highest efficiency.

And how do we know as educators if we are doing the right thing?  We need to evaluate our programs.

The next two diagrams present information from Diaz Barriga's about variables for Curricular Evaluation. The curriculum must be evaluated internally and externally.

The most important variable is the one that is related to meeting the social needs. Are we as educators helping to develop the kind of human beings that the society needs? Are our programs and educational actions helping to achieve that?  Are we using the Latihan to help us understand how to do that?




There was no written evaluation of the two day workshop, only the comments of the participants, which were generally favourable.  Fernando Fatah felt that the first three objectives of the workshop were met, but not the last one, as there was insufficient time to get to this: "Lay the foundations of an Educational Knowledge Management System to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge in the educational field among Subud educators."

Recommendations

Two recommendations emerged from this Education conference:

• To provide continuity to the effort of developing a Subud Educators' Network so that participants can develop a better understanding of how they work. This can be supported by developing electronic media so we can communicate our experiences and understanding about this with each other. Fernando agreed to work with SDIA on this initiative.
• To develop a cycle of conferences so we can show to the world what Subud members who are educators are doing and learn together how we can improve the human condition through education. A Peace Education in the Americas Conference is currently being planned to take place June 16-19 in Puebla, Mexico. It is hoped that this conference will provide an opportunity for Subud and non-Subud educators, parents, government and community leaders to come together to explore the inner and outer dimensions of creating peaceful societies beginning in the family, school and community.

Report prepared by Virginia Thomas, Rosanna Hille and Fernando Fatah, December 2008

ANNEX 1. WORKSHOP METHODOLOGY

DAY 1 (4 HOURS)

Time	Activity	Goal	Dynamic	Resources
00.00 - 00.05 min	Receiving
00.06 - 00.20	Workshop objectives, themes and   Facilitator   presentation	Introduce to the participants into the frame of the workshop	Individual Presentation	PC projector
00.21 - 01.15	Dialogue space: Pedagogical practices that help the children to discover their own talent and learning natures.	Sharing and knowledge building	Divide to the group into small groups so the individuals will share meaningful experiences about pedagogical practices and its results. Each group will create a concept map as an expression of the dialogue and each group will present the concept map to the other participants.	Paper sheets
01.20 - 02.20hrs	Project Presentation	Sharing experiences and knowledge circulation.	10 min presentation for each presentation plus 10 min for questions and answers. ( 3 projects)	PC projector
02.20 - 02.35	"Building a bridge"	Team building activity (team work)	4 - 6 people groups, the objective is to design and build a cardstock bridge that supports the largest possible weight.	Cardstock
02.35 - 03.55 hrs	Project Presentation	Sharing experiences and knowledge circulation.	10 min presentation for each presentation plus 10 min for questions and answers. ( 3 projects)	PC projector
03.55 -   04.00	Closing

DAY 2 (4 HOURS)

Time	Activity	Goal	Dynamic	Resources
00.00 - 00.05 min	Receiving
00.06 - 00.20	Day objectives, and themes presentation	Present day activities	Individual Presentation	PC projector
00.21 - 01.15	Dialogue space: Pedagogical practices that help the children to discover their own talent and learning natures.	Sharing and knowledge building	Divide to the group into small groups so the individuals will share experiences of how they take latihan and Subud into their professional practice. Each group will create a concept map as an expression of the dialogue. Each group will present the concept map to the other participants.	Paper sheets
01.20 - 02.20hrs	Project Presentation	Sharing experiences and knowledge circulation.	10 min presentation for each presentation plus 10 min for questions and answers. ( 3 projects)	PC projector
02.20 - 02.50	"the square"	Team building activity (trust) and have some fun.	10   people groups, the objective is to make that the 10 people fit in a .75 cm square.
02.50 - 03.50hrs	Networking	Sharing personal data information Planning group communication strategies	Group work	PC projector
03.50 -   04.00	Closing