Love my job

I haven't written much about my job, but the truth is, I love it. I work as part of a co-op of teachers who run a small charter school together. We have no principal, no superintendent, it's just us. Often I look around and think, 'who's in charge here anyway???'. Oh. Us. But it works so nicely. This is only because we have such a spectacular team. There are 23 of us and we make all decisions through consensus during Thursday morning meetings. We've been doing this for 8 years- with the number of staff members steadily increasing each year. Back when there were only 9 of us we all thought that there was no way we could continue the consensus thing past 10 members. But we've done it. Not always easy- not always clean- but we get there. A couple years ago a staff member conned us into using a talking piece during our meetings. So if you are in charge of facilitating, you have to bring a talking piece. These vary, sometimes an orange, sometimes a water bottle, but most often some sort of stuffed animal. If you have something to say, you have to wait until you get the talking piece. Lately it has been this little stuffed amoeba thingy. Called 'the germ'. As in "pass me the germ!! I have a point to make!" Today it was a stuffed crab. Which quickly became crabs. As in, "Shh, can't you see that Chris has got crabs??" Crass, I know, and probably should not be part of a business meeting, but again, the trick here is that we all think we are funny. Or at least those who disagree haven't gotten their hands on the talking piece yet.