Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Wednesday Meeting

We had an ELA department meeting in my building this afternoon. The group consists of two each 6th-8th grade English teachers, two sixth grade reading teachers and a variety of special education and English as a second language teachers. We never have 100% attendance; for example, today there were nine out of a possible seventeen of us there.

These are never happy meetings, basically because our group lacks consensus and a shared vision. It's mostly a result of a failure of leadership on the countywide level, but we have to accept responsibilty for the amount of cyncism we each bring to the group, too. That and passive aggression are pretty much all anyone ever contributes to our twice monthly meetings. In the sixteen years that I have taught at my school, we've been through eight language arts specialists. They have all been lovely people, but not one of them has ever been able to herd us English cats in any common direction.

I would never want the thankless job of leading this group, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I don't have the credentials for the job, anyway. But, instead of demoralizing, I have a sense that the time we spend together could be energizing and constructive, if only we could find the magic format.

Yeah, if only.

1 comment:

  1. Okay--jargon definition time. What's an ELA? I get the gist of it. Makes me really glad I'm independent in some ways--I just have to get the lists of things I'm supposed to teach and then they leave me alone. I don't think I'd have a great time trying to do English By Committee (that's what it sounds like).

    Elizabeth

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