Ch.36 Intern Boot Camp Day One welcome speech
In this Chapter, interns are oriented to market and sell New Colleges; as well, educated to talk with the public
Training interns to meet and educate the public
Interns given the three public documents
When each potential New College intern was interviewed, they were given a college Prospectus (see two chapters back). They were told to put their name and phone on the cover in the space provided. They were encouraged to read it whether they were hired or not.
If hired, the three documents became required reading prior to the three week Intern Boot Camp. They were told to bring the documents to each Boot Camp session. Two blank blue essay booklets were given to each intern each new day of Boot Camp for writing prompts and for personal notes.
2034 Interns Day One welcome-orientation speech ~ The following is from the “Welcome Interns” speech delivered by the Chair of the War Room. It was delivered four times, once to each of the four new groups of 25 interns hired. Training of all groups lasted four months in all.
Excerpts from the actual Day One speech transcript:
INDENT
[open-ended question brainstorm:] Raise your hand if you can tell me what you think the endgame of New Colleges is. [Call on hands. Various verbal responses leading towards…] To graduate more healthy leaders and citizens, who can pilot SpaceShip Earth, sustainably for the next seven generations.
[begin speech:] 70% of you are female. You are early hires in what may prove to be the most culturally significant thing women have attempted in four or five thousands years, certainly since women in the US stood up and demanded the right to vote in 1919. You may not know the terms, but most of you are Cultural Creatives. What we believe is many of you will come to see New Colleges is the project you have been waiting for, the challenge you were born for.
We expect you will succeed in marketing and promoting Experiential Insight Colleges. We also guess a goodly number of you will apply to be classroom teacher-facilitators, to be admin staff there; or, perhaps simply attend as students.
Cultural Creatives are the personality type most naturally interested in and passionate about re-making culture so it benefits the 99% of people more. Having reviewed your applications to work here and personality preferences, we’re convinced most of you have personal preferences towards iNtuitive Thinking and iNtuitive Feeling. A few of you who don’t, have values sympathetic with NF values.
[open-ended question brainstorm:] Raise your hand if you can tell me what the shadow-side, the down-side of Cultural Creatives is? [Call on hands. Various verbal responses leading towards: Over-reach, over-ambition, too high expectations, and burn out.]
Many Cultural Creatives have preferences in a category called Idealists. These are the people most valuable to our project — and — the people most likely to burn out thru over-exertion. We don’t want this to happen. Part of your training will be to learn the routines and rhythms which have saved the War and Writers Room staffs from burning out.
Each of you was handed copies of the NC Prospectus and FAQs. In the next three weeks of full time training, we will orient you more on:
- Course curriculum content and topics,
- Teacher texts and classroom scripts,
- Teacher re-training to impart interactive teaching methods (partner exercises, et al),
- How we are re-making college hierarchy and leadership.
All these have gone thru many iterations. We and reform experts believe these are now workable-sustainable.
After your three-week training, a good number of you will be talking directly with state education chiefs, college president offices and the public with their questions. You will also talk with parents and teachers. This boot camp is to prepare you for all of these conversations, both intellectually and emotionally.
Teachers will ask you tough questions like, “Will I still have a job teaching at my college?” Students will ask, “Will my existing course credits apply to graduation at New Colleges?” and other questions with no easy answers. Some of you will be trained to respond to these technical questions. If you come up with a better response, document these; send them to the Writers Room. We’ll add them to training the next customer service reps hired after you.
“You don’t have to have all the answers. Even myself, working in the War Room, do not have all the answers.
What you can always do, which callers always appreciate, is to respond in a way conveying to callers their question has been heard, take their contact information, tell them you do you best to get them a response or someone to talk to. A large fraction of you will start interning as customer service people responding to general questions. We expect to promote the most competent customer service reps into more responsible and better-paying positions.
You may not believe this yet. We fully expect some of you will end up re-training adults for New College faculty and admin positions.
After lunch today, we will show and spell out the project management milestones for opening five pilot program campuses in Fall of 2035. Before we get to that, I want to continue on with an overview.
Yes, we are re-making the world by re-making colleges
The War and Writers Rooms have the mandate to upgrade classroom materials and teaching methods, from where they had been stuck in narrow, one-sided, left-brain-only group process formats: lecturing and talking heads. Old male-run colleges were not keeping up with the changing needs and job-scape college-age people were facing.
Yes, we are re-writing college Humanities core course content to make it more driven by truly-human values and more relevant to college graduates. We are not asking you to re-make or re-conceive colleges. We are asking you to sell Insight Experiential Colleges to the public. More specifically, to sell it to specific potential communities where pilot program campuses might be built; or, existing campus facilities re-purposed.
“You will be supported in your selling Insight Colleges by War Room and Writers Room staff. The easy way for you to understand what these two resources do — and can do for you — is to experience some of the team-building exercises they did. These exercises will tell you much more about the War Room, Writers Room and New Colleges than any amount of talking or explaining.
“Please stand up if you have read the New Colleges brochure [most will stand up]. Good. Now please stay standing, every one stand up. Please organize your chairs into circles of five chairs. Try to sit with people you do NOT know. Don’t sit with anyone you came with to today’s event.
“Okay, within your circle of five, you have 45 seconds to elect or choose one person to be the scribe, the clerk who takes notes of useful ideas your group comes up with. Go. [Most complete this task within 45 seconds. At 45 seconds raise your hand if you group needs more time to choose a clerk. Assistants go to each group with hands raised to facilitate the choosing. Okay, 15 seconds more to choose one clerk. Worst case is an assistant will take the clerk position as a sixth person. Hand out pads and pens to each Clerk].
“Next, your task is to address the question, “What benefits do you imagine New Colleges could have for high school seniors?” You may use the Prospectus for reference. As best they can, the Clerk of group of five will write down any and all good ideas, rephrasing and merging ideas as best they can. You have ten minutes to come up with as many benefits for students as you can. Quality counts more than quality here.
[At ten minutes, chime them to get their attention] Thank you for cooperating with the instructions Please turn your chairs so everyone can see me.
“Clerks, please come up to the two microphones on either side of the stage. We want to hear what your groups came up with. [The list of benefits form each group is read. The two facilitators capture unique remarks on easel pages.]
[Take comments, Q&A on benefits of NCs]
[Debrief, open mic:] Did anyone learn anything from this exercise so far and wishes to share with the group? [Take sharing as time and schedule permits]
Finally, I want to talk about some FUN things. We fully expect many of you to find friends within this group of interns. You will do creative things outside of work time. We very much encourage you to write skits about the foibles of the New Colleges effort at any level. Let us know when you have a skit to perform or need support from the Writers Room.
We also fully expect many of you will find within your group of interns, lovers, wives and husbands. This is why on each new intern’s bunk bed, contraceptives are included in your Intern Care Kit. [Introduce the Intern Den Mother counselor assigned to handle counseling on how to date other interns; and, contraceptive issues at Intern Boot Camp.]
Is there danger of too much freedom here? Absolutely. If you become pregnant; and, wish to carry your baby to term, given our personnel guidelines, we expect most of you will drop out of interning. We return to this issue later in the section of your training on Core Values for female interns; and, Core Values for male interns.
We’ll do one more exercise before lunch.
[Triad exercise: What are my hopes and fears for the Insight Colleges project?] Demo the tree-person triad. Each of three roles is anchored to three chairs Each person rotates around the chairs clockwise, taking each role in turn. The roles are Client, Facilitator and neutral observer.]
end Q
End of Day One Welcome speech script.
Dating and tension between male~ female interns
Most interns hired to be on-stage presences, hosts, and handle mics with audience members, were female. The few males who were hired as interns added a dimension of sexual tension to the intern group as a whole. That women, not men, held the vast majority of most prestigious facilitating positions was also a cause for tension at times. Most male interns were not hired to facilitate. They were hired to run audio-visual equipment and handle physical logistics of online events and town halls. Only a handful were deemed ready to co-facilitate on stage.
Even tho paid the same, the males and a few women hired to do “lesser” physical work did not mix much socially. Since they did have to work together, relationships were bound to form and this had to addressed early and often.
According to the counselor in charge of intern housing, no more than a normal amount of dating and sex took place. She was grateful all interns were provided with free contraceptives.
BofWE dyad
After lunch, all interns did the BluePrint of WE exercise in a dyad. They were instructed to pair up with someone they did not know before today. This became an oft-repeated request. In partner exercises, if at all possible, always work with someone you did not came with and do not know. If you know everyone, sit with person you know least about. This is how you engage the Angels in your learning, demonstrate you willing to learn something new.
The Plan between now and Fall, 2035
After BofWE, a slide deck presentation of the moving parts of the Project Management. See Project Plan-Roadmap in the just-previous Chapter.
This ended the first day of Intern Boot Camp. The next Chapter outlines the education prepared for interns to speak to secondary education officials and the public.
