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::::::::::>>The Mirror<<
  
:One aspect of my work that has been particularly striking to me since I came
in January is something that I don’t do.
  
:I have spent very little time involved in Wonn Refleksyon, the project that
brought me to Haiti in 1997. Wonn Refleksyon is an adaptation, for Haiti, of the
Touchstones Discussion Project. It’s a method of working with a group,
using a certain kind of text and a combination of individual, small group, and
large group work that aims at helping people to take over responsibility for
their own education, to collaborate more effectively, and to develop a healthy
relation to authority – both the authority of a group leader and the
authority of a text.
  
:In all the years since I first came here, Wonn Refleksyon had remained the
main focus of my work, so much so that my colleagues here have really come to
identify me with it. When I’m explaining one or another of the activities
I’m involved in right now, they generally want to know how it relates to
Wonn Refleksyon. How is it the same? How is it different? They even tend to
think of the teaching I do at Shimer College as a spin-off or an adaptation of
the techniques that they know as part Wonn Refleksyon.
  
  And Wonn Refleksyon is alive and well in Haiti. There are groups using the
activity in primary schools, adult literacy centers, and other places where
adults or children meet. A few of those groups are led by people who were
introduced to the activity by me and my first colleagues, but many of them are
not. There are second and third and fourth generation discussion leaders who are
flourishing.
  
  So I’ve been going about my work, quietly smiling about how little use
Wonn Refleksyon really has for me these days. But I suddenly had the chance to
watch a couple of colleagues introduce a group of teachers to Wonn Refleksyon
for the first time, and I jumped at it.
  
  I had been planning a trip to Lagonav since I first arrived here. I needed
to go to Matenwa, because the teachers at the school there and I wanted to read
a book together – a short one by the French psychologist Jean Piaget
– and planning really needed to happen face-to-face. In addition, I have
many friends there, collected over years of visits. Finally, my newest godchild
had been born in Matenwa in August, and I had yet to meet him.
  
  In any case, I wanted to go.
  
  But getting to Matenwa is a nuissance. Just to get to Karyès, where you
catch the boat that takes you from the mainland to the island, is complicated
these days. The combination of busses and pick-up trucks you need to take can
vary depending on which neighborhoods the drivers believe are safer on a given
day. After those rides, there’s a sometimes-rough ride on a boat and an
always-rough pick-up truck that winds from the port city of Ansagale up the
mountain to Matenwa. So when Johna offered me a lift to Karyès in a
comfortable SUV, I was very grateful. I stayed at her office in Delma Friday
night, because she wanted to leave by 5:00 AM Saturday morning.
Johna is a missionary in Haiti, and she supports, among other things, a small
school in a desolate area outside of Ansagale. She had heard about Wonn
Refleksyon and decided to offer the teachers at her school training in it. So
she hired an experienced team from the school in Matenwa, and started a
six-month training at the beginning of February. She was going to attend the
training session on Saturday – she goes every week – so my ride
turned into a way for me to attend as well.
  
  The training was led by Abner Sauveur, the founding director and a teacher
at the Matenwa school, with assistance from another teacher, Benaja Antoine. It
was the group’s fourth meeting, and Abner led it following the guidebook
that a group of us that included Abner had written for the first volume of
discussion texts that we use.
  
  The guidebook suggests that the fourth meeting be devoted to helping
participants start to think about the kinds of questions that they ask. They are
asked to work in groups to articulate short questions about the passages in the
text that strike them most. After sharing all their questions with the whole
class, the class then spends twenty minutes or so discussing whatever points
about the text or about the reflections the text evokes move them.
  
  Abner directed them through the series of the day’s activities with
short and clear instructions. Generally, he let them work on their own,
prefering not to say very much, but he made a point of circulating through the
class when small group work was going on to make ceratin that everyone knew what
they needed to do, and he intervened in the larger discussion to give it focus,
explore ideas the participants introduced, and make space for quiet people to
get into the flow.
  
  After the meeting, he invited me to join a question-and-answer session that
went almost an hour past the time they had been scheduled to end. It was hot and
dusty, and we were outdoors, so the fact that people wanted to stay and talk
says a lot, especially since Abner made a point of inviting all those who needed
to to leave.
The main topic of this concluding conversation was leadership. The main
question was whether anything – Wonn Refleksyon, a classroom, a school, or
anything else – can function without someone who’s the boss. Surely
the question was moved in part by Abner’s very understated leadership of
the group. He is a quiet man anyway, but he also chooses in his Wonn Refleksyon
groups to let others speak more and speak first. It was also surely moved by the
situation at the school: Johna had just fired its principal, and showed no signs
that she planned to replace him with someone else.
  
  Abner, Benaja, and I each argued in different ways that bosses are not
necessary – at least not always. The conversation grew interesting as the
group talked their Wonn Refleksyon group itself. Though Abner was by no means
bossy, he had chosen the text the group would read and every step of the
procedure they would follow. He had led the group.There could be no denying
that.
  
  The discussion ended without a real conclusion – it didn’t
really need one – and we all went about our ways. I followed Anber and
Benaja as they did errands in Ansagale, then the three of us went up the
mountain together.
As I reflected through the afternoon and through the night that followed one
thing struck me strongly: Abner had been so committed to limiting his own
talking, to making his instructions as unobtrusive as he possibly could, that he
had given them without any explanation. In a sense, that was okay. It worked.
The instructions and the steps that they asked participants to follow were
simple enough that they could be accomplished without much explanation.
  
  At the same time, the group left the meeting not knowing why it was
important to work on asking questions, nor why good questions could emerge from
the process he asked them to use. What’s more, without explanation, the
instructions really were just commands. As gentle and unassuming as his manner
was, Abner had set himself apart from the group, reinforcing whatever sense they
had that he is, in the end, a boss. A nice boss, but a boss nonetheless.
  
  Abner and I discussed this issue the next morning, as we drew rainwater for
bathing from the cistern at his home. I think he understood my concern.
  
  Watching a long-time colleague work can be a little like looking at a
mirror. In most of the Wonn Refleksyon groups that Abner has seen me lead over
the years, I’ve said little more than he said in his. Much of the
difference between how much we each talk reflects my relative incompetence in
Kreyol. It takes me longer than Abner to say almost anything. I’ve tried
to minimize my speaking to make space so others can talk.
  
  I think that there’s a lot to be said for teaching that doesn’t
involve talking very much, but I’ve grown to think that a teacher can say
too little, too. If I am to lead a class, I must sometimes tell its members what
to do. But I should take the time to explain my reasons as well. Participants in
groups I lead cannot begin to share authority or responsibility – or they
cannot share either well – if they do not understand the reasonings that
it follows. As quiet and encouraging and inviting as I might be, I do not begin
to bring those I work with into leadership unless I tell them what I, their
leader, think.<UserPreferences><UserPreferences>