This slice is part of
of the March Slice of Life Challenge on Two Writing Teachers! #sol25. I’m slicing every day in March. Thanks for stopping by!
Once I was on a committee. We met a lot.
These were the old days. So, sometimes our meetings were in huge conference rooms at the Ramada. Sometimes we met in an old room of an old building that was once a school, and now is, I don’t know – nothing?
We met in big groups, we met in smaller groups. We unpacked standards and literally cut them up to tape them on big posters to help us understand what they meant. We created big umbrella understandings and essential questions. We learned so much. We learned about the standards, about understanding by design, about learning, about curriculum, about teaching, about collaboration…
We didn’t always agree. We even argued. I mean sometimes it got intense.
Have you ever been in a room full of teachers who are passionate about their craft?
Oh, we spoke our minds.
Out loud.
Out loud.
At the end of the year an administrator came to our classrooms in all our different buildings and thanked us in front of our students for taking the time to serve the district, even though it meant writing sub plans, and being out of our classroom. Our students clapped for us.
Then the next year, and for something like a decade more, we met, we worked, we disagreed, we learned. I used to joke that we were really practicing the speaking and listening standards that we were unpacking.
You might laugh at me, but once, in the old days, I was on a committee. We met a lot. We spoke our minds. We learned so much.
On a Thought 
hmmm committee, sounds familiar. But distant. Thank you for your service. Keep up the good teacher fight.
I like how oyu crafted this with a similar beginning and ending.
Loved the way you laid this out with the opening and closing and the many varieties of paragraph length. Also, yes, I have been in those rooms and have done that same kind of work. I remember the physicality of the big sheets of paper and tape and markers and moving around the room. I haven’t served in that way for a while. Thanks for the memories.
What a beautiful ode to an important past – it wasn’t just the chart paper and tape, but the connection, conversation and collaboration – the working through the conflicts, the working hard to get it right, because it mattered. Something is different now. Our profession is changing, de-professionalizing (right before our eyes). I’m grateful you reminded us here of where we come from – in such a poetic way.