Last week I had a meetingwith a bunch of teachers at one of the other schools in the district. We were meeting in one of the teacher's classrooms, which started right after the students were let out and so there were still a number of them roaming the hallways. I was sitting in such a position that I could easily see out of the classroom's open door into the hall, and noticed whenever a student came walking by. There came a point, about thirty minutes into the meeting, when I noticed this young woman come running down the hall on a trajectory for the classroom our meeting was in. As soon as she got to a position that she could see there were 20 adults engaged in a meeting in the classroom, she slammed on the brakes, quietly turned around and left.
Who knows what she wanted. Maybe she had a question she needed resolved, maybe she needed another copy of the homework for the evening, maybe she just wanted to talk with her teacher. The point is, she recognized that there was a meeting in progress, and had the propriety to realize that her needs could be postponed or delayed until there was a more opportune moment to talk with her teacher.
This caused me to chuckle as I reflected on the staff meeting at our school earlier in the week, where a very similar experience took place. We were about 30 minutes into the meeting down in one of the teacher's classrooms on the lower floor of our school. One of her students came thundering down the stairs and burst into the classroom where all of the teachers and administration in the school were engaged in a meeting. Instead of realizing that there was something going on, he called out his teacher from the doorway, announcing that he'd lost his homework and needed another one. So she got up and helped him out.
That's the WB difference - we do what it takes to get the job done, even if our students are completely out of line.
No comments:
Post a Comment