Bridges

I'm going to write about teacher community. When we meet we spend probably half the time talking about what's going on in the school, our lives, and in the world. We usually have about 10-15 minutes at most for business. This used to drive me crazy. I thought I was failing to provide this very busy and very brilliant group of teachers with the focus and structure I figured we needed to work together. I'd sit gritting my teeth until I found a moment to jump in with my little agenda. And that's what it was, my little agenda. The team, the team's sense of itself and its work, was bigger than the assignments, planning, and assessments that was our ostensible work. Over time I have begun to relax and let the group's flow move; I enjoy it and I find that when we do turn to business, the business is clearer and we can approach it in a more dynamic way. Our retreat is the culmination of this fertile relational time. We connect as human beings, teachers and students alike. We set up structures for the kids to connect and supporting those connections ripples out to us. Jeanne, witnessing the students' bonding, "what would it look like for us as a faculty to do this?" our role as vision keepers, links between generations of students, holding the issues, the energy, the vision they built up year after year and passing that along to the next generation of students. We can do this because we have been with it for many years. Most teachers don't have the opportunity to do this; most schools don't provide the space for this kind of ongoing, intensive, and integrative collaboration. The model we have developed is closer to a parental model of education, in the sense that we are focused on and invested in our students as whole persons, not limited to their skills, knowledge (or lack thereof) in the subject we teach. That's part of the power of interdisciplinary connections -- the students feel that the connections speak to them as LEARNERS.