Enduring the marathon...meeting

Wednesdays mean faculty meetings at Kwansei Gakuin Junior High. Last week we were spared because it was a national holiday. I should have seen it coming: this week's was going to be long. 3 hours. In which I didn't say a word. And I understood about 10 words in the meeting. But I've learned a lot from these meetings nevertheless.

Earlier in the month I was getting perturbed when students would sleep in my class. But then I realized that I sleep during these faculty meetings when the principal is talking and he doesn't get his feathers all ruffled up.

Tonight a few teachers discussed an issue for an hour of the 3 hour meeting. It was whether to have the school Christmas parties by class or by house. At our school, each grade is divided into 4 45-student classes. Students move from subject to subject, learning with the same class of students all day long. Houses integrate the grades and classes. But the students do less activities with this group. So teachers were discussing the merits of spending more time in houses or classes. None of the teachers got heated in the discussion, just animated with smiles and a series of points. In the end, the principal said a few comments and the bilingual teacher next to me told me that a concensus had been reached: students would have their party by house.

So I've learned that meetings involving everyone, participated in by fewer, serves to put everyone on the same page of all the issues of the school. I think this helps the management style where there are few people with executive authority on school issues and more people with partial responsibility in a lot of roles at school.

I've changed browsers to compose this post and found that the hotlink option has resurfaced. So now my blogs can get more interesting with some links. I'd like to link you to a fellow English teacher whom I know from Concordia Language Villages. Erinn Groeltz is a JET teacher on the island of Shikoku. Check out her blog here. She seems a little more embedded to the community with her language skills and prior study of Japan. Enjoy!