Sara Halprin, Herb Long 
 

A master's level course on human learning and development at Marylhurst College takes place in Open Space. 
 
In Spring 1996 we co-taught a course called "Human Learning and Development" for a Master's program at Marylhurst College, located near Portland, Oregon. Given the vast subject matter and limited time (three weekends) for the course, we decided to hold it in Open Space. 

 Fourteen students registered for the course. Upon registering, each student received the class syllabus along with a pre-class reading list of four books. Our intent was to prepare students for the approach to learning and development we have adopted. We handed out a more extensive reading list on the first morning. This list offers a map of the vast territory of theories of human learning and development as seen from our multicultural and gender-specific perspective. 

First Day 

 Setting the Atmosphere. We had fresh bagels and cream cheese, coffee, and tea on a checkered tablecloth, a rug in the center of a circle of chairs, potted flowers, crayons and paper, signs on the walls, and charts indicating rooms and times. We welcomed each person individually. Several helped to set things up. 

 Herb welcomed the group, asking everyone to say their names and who they are when they're not at Marylhurst. He spoke about his own ways of learning and developing and asked for others'. A fewpeople spoke about learning out of mistakes, by letting go of expectations, etc. Then I introduced the Open Space format of the course. 

 Stampede. I expected a long silence when I created the marketplace. Just before I did so, one woman said she was feeling anxious; so was I. But there was a general rush for paper, markers, and the bulletin board. I had to stop people putting their topics on the board before they announced the topic, and soon every space was covered and people were starting to negotiate. 

 We went on to the marketplace. There were no problems. A couple of people asked permission to do this or that, and I just beamed at them. They all got the idea. 

 The First Session. I was still feeling skeptical. There was only one scheduled session, and Herb and I both went to it. It started slowly but built magnificently into genuine open dialogue, very stimulating. At one point, I realized I was wide awake and really interested. From that point on, the day just built on itself. 

 By the end of the day a group on art learning had constructed several colorful collages out of the brilliantly colored stick-its we'd brought, and these embellished the walls. One was called "Life's a Rough Draft." 

 Evening News. Everyone was excited and also much less tired than usual for the end of a Marylhurst weekend day. People expressed real pleasure with the format and mentioned that they wished all their classes could be like this one. 

 Late Night Thoughts. Of course, I'm nervous as hell-what if it goes downhill from here? I did mention the need to express any possible grumpiness or whatever, which was well-received, but I believe this group will just go from good to better. Some conflict may and should emerge, and I hope, as one man suggested, that we can disagree without being disagreeable. 
 

Second Day 

 Morning News. Everyone came in full of excitement and bearing gifts-food, candles, hand cream(!), extra computers, angel cards and hearthstones. But when we rang the bell, there was a big silence, which Herb broke by saying, "Here we are at morning news." There was a tendency to ask us for permission, turn to us as teachers. 

 Disagreement. Against the good advice of Harrison Owen and Anne Stadler, I convened a session offering an overview of theories of development. I had some passion for the discoveries of setting up the reading list and wanted to share this. But the role of teacher came up right away, and the issue of evaluation seemed to be a ghost hovering over the group. I adressed that ghost, and right away things got heavy. The discussion went on and on. 

 Eventually, I tried to sum things up and ended up with a woman feeling steamrollered because I would not take sole responsibility for evaluation. We worked on that issue and the group seemed relieved, but the discussion continued. In response to a student's request, I announced that it was time to talk about my topic and did so, whereupon a hot discussion on development, gender, and culture followed. 

 I got us to adjourn for lunch by mentioning that I needed to pee and that I was hungry. 

 Evening News. People were tired. One woman left early, saying she was getting a migraine and needed to get home to deal with it. I suspect the group is poised on the edge of really taking responsibility for their own learning. They need to be helped along by Herb and me keeping space open for that. 

 Musings. Am I sorry I didn't drop my presentation? Yes and no, but ultimately no. If it was a mistake, I certainly learned a lot from it. And several people mentioned that the group had come to community in that session. Next time I will offer such sessions as my own focus of interest, not as a course overview. 
 

Third Day 

 Most people were ecstatic about the weekend, and today was a time of deepening realization. The students were really taking responsibility, even handling the big silence at the start of each large circle. Once someone spoke, everyone spoke, of course. We decided to use the flowers a woman brought as a talking piece- you could speak only if you held the flowerpot. People spoke of being thrilled with this format, happy to take a break and really looking forward to the next gathering, feeling they'd made real friends and learned a lot. 

 Academic Standards. Herb said his professorial side feels nervous about how much actual learning is going on. A woman echoed this and asked that Herb and I share more of our passion with the group next session. I responded by saying the professor in me absolutely believes that the only real learning that can happen is happening in this format, which, like chaos theory, seeks the deep structure underlying chaos. While all is patterned, each pattern is unique and unpredictable. Therefore I look forward to seeing how much learning and development will take place as we all continue in Open Space for the next couple of weeks. (See Herb's 
journal note below concerning this discussion.) 

 There is, clearly, still a strong tendency to look to us for learning as well as direction, understandable in such an academic context. There is also interest in working on that tendency, on becoming more self-aware. 
 

End of the Second Weekend 

 Herb and I are both exhausted, and so were several of the students. There was a repeated request for Herb and me to convene more sessions. I declined, and Herb pointed out that he had just convened one. We moved from debate over learning in this course to a discussion of learning and teaching, based on bell hooks' book on radical pedagogy. 

 The group is showing a tendency to want to be together as a whole group and not split into separate pieces. 
 

Third Weekend 

 Saturday started with a strained atmosphere and ended quite joyous and lively, with lots of energy for tomorrow. How did we get there? 

 At morning news, a reference to the atmosphere of the group led us into a discussion of what we have been doing so far. One woman helped by framing the whole discussion in terms of reflections on group work. Another woman brought in her concerns about encounter groups (she doesn't want this class to become one). This led us to discuss the relationships between thinking and feeling in group work and in learning and development. 

 Good sessions followed: one on adult development, then one on safety in groups. A woman brought in two paintings she had done in the aftermath of an anti-gay initiative in Oregon. She spoke of her feelings as a lesbian, then a Latina woman spoke of her anger at feeling repressed by others' requirements that we have a "safe" group. A great discussion of safety, abuse, respect, and other group issues in relation to learning and development. 

 Final Day. At morning news on Sunday, the last day of class, one woman needed to express herself after having felt attacked the day before. She spoke at some length and then seemed to feel better. This was an example of providing safety in groups through increasing awareness. The atmosphere stayed good all day. The group clearly had no intention of splitting up. At the end of the day several people said that it had taken time and trouble to form a sense of group, and they didn't want to split up. 

 Later, Herb and I commented to ourselves about how, from initially looking to us for approval and guidance for just about everything, the group got to the place where they could cheerfully ignore, reject, and discard our suggestions and do what was right for them. 

 The end of the day seemed strained as we tried to figure out how to do evaluation. Then it got silly and ftin as the evaluation evolved into writing comments on our colorful stick-its and attaching them to each other. The campus cop took a class photo of all of us festooned with stick-its. 
 

 Some people expressed interest in having an ongoing group. Several said they were sad to leave. Most expressed great appreciation for the whole experience. Harrison Owen's idea of turning outward and thinking of going out into the world worked well, and we all joined hands and sang "row row row your boat..." very anarchically. On the whole, an excellent experience for all. 

 Questions. Why were Herb and I so exhausted at the end? How can we do this without being quite so drained? I suspect that the more vigorously we keep the space open, for ourselves as well as for everyone else, the more invigorated we will feel. 
 

It was a stretch for us to use the Open Space format for a course on human learning and development. This was especially the case for me. After all, with so much to cover and so little time, how could I possibly expect that students would learn anything if I didn't hold forth, summarizing, critiquing, offering gems of wisdom, and insisting that the students respond with formal research papers? 

 My own ambivalence appeared when I shared my "professorial" concern with the students- that maybe serious learning wasn't happening. Coming from me as a facilitator, such a comment might have sunk the whole effort. But it didn't because a deeper learning was taking place than any I had experienced before in academe. 

 This deeper learning was the result of offering an opportunity for students to reach into their own personal history and make connections between that history and the learning process. They could connect their own development with what they were reading, discussing, and thinking. 

 The context of Open Space provided an atmosphere in which feeling and intellect could combine rather than split off. In a remarkably short period of time, we became a learning community. 

 At the same time, my own passion for teaching was reawakened. That is, Open Space provided me with the same supportive environment as it did the students. I too could begin making connections between my own experience and what I was learning as a result of my passionate involvement in the learning enterprise that engaged all of us. The boundary separating student and teacher became more and more permeable. The same passionate interest in learning transferred naturally into a heightened desire to 
share what was learned. It's as if we were all being enriched in our very beings, and when that richness reached a stage of overflowing, teaching followed naturally as we shared with one another out of our own being. 

 To me, such sharing is the essence of true teaching. It is then that being speaks to being or, as the Psalmist puts it, "deep calls unto 
deep." 
 

The context of Open Space provided an atmosphere in which feeling and intellect could combine rather than split off. 
 

What's Next 
 
 

 The changes we are making in our presentation to the next class are based on feedback from the past year's students, which has been overwhelmingly positive. We are adding Harrison Owen's book on Open Space Technology to our pre-reading fist and changing one of the other titles. We are updating the general reading list, and we have rewritten the syllabus to be more explicit about the nature of Open Space. We are offering the class on a pass-fail basis only. 

 We are also increasing the spacing between weekends by adding a consultation day between the first and second weekend. We hope that students will take advantage of the longer interval to pursue in-depth research on the areas that most interest them. 

 In terms of the most controversial issue that came up for us, the roles of "teacher" and "learner," we are both aiming to feel free-free to be passionate as well as fluid, free to be a teacher when that feels right in the moment, free to be a learner when that feels right. We want to model what we expect. It is our hope that this will leave us with more energy by the end of the course. 
 

Sara Halprin and Herb Long are certified process work therapists who live and work in Portland, Oregon. Sara is also the author of Look at My Ugly Face! Myths and Musings on Beauty and Other Perilous Obsessions with Women's Appearance (Penguin, 1996). They can be reached at 2055 NW Johnson Street, Portland, OR 97209, sarahalprin@igc.apc.org.