December, 1995
You may be interested to note that the Life Skills Coaches Association of BC’s recently adopted Constitution has made use of the CALSCA Mission Statement.
The L.S.C.A. - Life Skills Coaches Association of British Columbia is committed to:
PROMISES, PROMISES, PROMISES
I recall that last spring in Winnipeg I bravely declared that I’d make sure that the newsletter went out even if I had to do it myself. Guess what? Here’s me doing it again! Amazing! The long delay since the July issue is the result of my wishful thinking that someone else was going to do it. Having recently been finally and thoroughly disabused of that notion, I once again apply fingers to keyboard in the interest of national coach unity. My apologies for the long wait. And if anyone wants to take it on, let me know and you’ll have my full and enthusiastic support, as my other commitments are snapping gleefully at my hindquarters and absorbing great chunks of my attention (or something).
This whole discussion may yet be moot since it begs the question: can we afford a newsletter? At the moment, no, we can’t! We’re
Sally and I have looked over the records and the books and found that perhaps one third of the folks on the mailing list have coughed up their ten dollars for 1995. Due to some small confusion in the turning over and distribution of records we don’t care to commit ourselves to saying who we think did pay for fear of irate commentary from someone who did that we missed. However, you know best. Please go through your memory and your cheque stubs and verify your status. If you can’t prove to yourself that you kicked in your $10.00, please send it off PDQ to Sally. This issue of the newsletter is coming to you courtesy of the dregs of our bank account and a special (repayable) subsidy from some helpful BC members.
Also, it’s time to
Yes, you have the opportunity to save a cheque charge if you’re catching up for 1995 by writing a cheque that includes your 1996 dues too. Your $10.00 for 1996 will go a long way towards ensuring that this newsletter carries on through the new year.
On another front, I’m pleased to report that the mandate given the communications committee to get CALSCA onto the Internet has been carried out. If you’re connected, enter this address and see what you get:
http://awinc.com/partners/bc/commpass/carenet (Don't use this! The new address is: http://calsca.com!)
We also have an email address: info@calsca.com
The CALSCA Website is pretty primitive yet, but the makings
are there for a fine tool for our use. Down the line we’ll have a resource library, a
spot for discussions on topics like ethics, direction, etc., even real-time dialogue for
cheap. Did I say cheap? It may be that we’ll be asked for $30.00 or so next year for
maintenance of the Website, but for now it’s free. Use it, make it work. Email your
suggestions, commentary, questions. Send me your email address and I’ll give you a
hotlink in the page.
Paul Bagordo, who took on the task of contacting the Quebec Association of Life Skills Coaches about holding our 1996 meeting in Quebec, reports that the suggestion is being met with enthusiasm. Janice Newton, 1-514-630-5745, 4 Robinsdale, Point-Claire, PQ, H9R 2J5, is the contact person.
Now we need a meeting date and an agenda. Our BC Conference is scheduled for May 17, 18 and 19, so I’d just as soon not be going to Quebec that weekend. How about the May 24 long weekend? Any other suggestions? Let me know and Janice and I will work it out. My contact info is in the header on the front page.
As for the agenda, please send agenda items to me and I’ll publish them before the meeting (assuming that we can afford a newsletter). Here’s some that have been put forward already:
And that’s that for that! Cheers, Rod Paynter
Accreditation: Alberta has Accredited it’s first four Provisional Mentors! Congratulations to Paula Drouin, Donna Mathewson, John duChalard and Beverly Walters. Each of these four is prepared to take on two Interns, so the Process is off and running in the West.
Designation as a Profession: The Society is well along the road to being designated as a profession in Alberta. This will give the Society control over the title of Life Skills Coach, including the specification of minimum training requirements.
Ethics: Saskatchewan has developed a comprehensive Ethics document. This document, along with ethics statements
from other organizations, will soon be available in the CALSCA InterNet Website to
facilitate discussion of what might be an appropriate statement for CALSCA.
The following former members were not to be found at their addresses of record by the last newsletter (returned marked Moved, Address unknown).
Kathie Bird, last seen in Prince Albert, SK, Valerie Kerr, formerly found in Cowansville, ON, and Stephanie Hunter and D’Anne Matheson, no longer receiving mail in Dartmouth, NS.
If you can contact them, please have them get in touch with Sally and/or me. Thankyou.
MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA AND STANDARDS
by Rod Paynter
Since then it’s been one more time through the FIBRE formula for me, describing attending behaviours to a new Life Skills group. As almost always happens, someone challenged the language. ‘What’s this THOU stuff? Are we getting married here or what? I didn’t come here for Bible talk!’ As always, I didn’t know. That’s just the way I was taught, I didn’t know where it comes from or why. Not very satisfactory to me or my participant, but that’s how it’s been for me throughout my career. Until now!
This morning over breakfast I was reading M. Scott
Peck’s book 'A World Waiting To Be Born' (New York: Bantam Books, 1993). Here’s
what I found on pages 44-45:
"Approximately sixty years ago, the great Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote a dense, scholarly, almost unreadable book whose title has been translated into English as 'I and Thou' (trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970)).
"As its title indicates, Buber labeled the most healthy or mature relationship possible between two human beings as the ‘I -Thou’ relationship. In such an instance, I recognize you to be different from me, but even though you are different - a ’You’ or other - you can still be beloved to me; namely a ‘Thou.’ Such relationships are relatively rare. Indeed, one should not even aspire to too many of them since they require a lot of work. For instance, I do not have an I-Thou relationship with my tax lawyer. I do recognize him to be different from me: a You. Indeed, it is precisely because he is different from me - because he has gifts different from mine - that he is so valuable to me, but I have not yet taken the energy (nor am I likely to do so) to make him particularly beloved to me. Most of the time we go around having I-You relationships. There is nothing unethical about this as long as we recognize and respect the essential humanity of each other.
"But the problem comes, as Buber indelibly points out, when we lose sight of the humanity of the other simply because he or she is other. Consequently, Buber contrasted the I-Thou relationship with what he called the I-It relationship. This occurs when I see you as a subhuman, even inanimate object - an ‘It’ - simply to be used, as we might use a chair or shovel."
I-It, I-You, I-Thou. Like the man says, it takes a lot of work, but that’s the work we’re in. This really helps me focus on just what I’m doing and what I’m asking of my participants. It really helped my group see what I’ve been talking about. I hope that it helps you too.
The next three pages of this newsletter are
lesson plans that are done up in formats that have to date defeated my ability to
appropriately code for Internet presentation. Some day I'll figure it out and they'll be
available in the Resources section.
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