A Different Way of Doing Business

Meetings with the teacher group has been very interesting the last week. We had two staff meeting where the purpose was to write a discipline policy. The interesting part is that this is their first experience of defining a problem and writing solutions. Prior experience has always been a top down approach where the solutions were given to them by the "powers that be."

Not having experience in approaching a problem could have been very difficult. Some thirty questions or ideas to ponder were written by us. We had a bit of difficulty in that the points, even though they were intended as "starter questions" became the only thing looked at. By the second meeting we started to get past that issue.

Discussion was slow at first. By the second meeting things started to take off. It was very interesting to see the experience of discovering that other teachers had common problems unfold. This really seemed to generate the conversation.

Next meeting we will be getting into the "consequences". Hopefully, the concept of collaboration will kick in as well as the power that collaboration can generate. A most interesting experience!