Trusting Teachers

My little school is sometimes a force for change in the community.  We are often so busy running the school and keeping our heads above water on that front that we don't have time to do what we can in the wider world.  But we do have a mission to help re-elevate teaching to the profession it should be.  This last spring we held a brief conference highlighting a book entitled "Trusting Teachers with School Success".  The author had visited several teacher-run schools and compiled her lessons she learned that could be spread to more traditional schools.  The turnout was great- teachers are hungry for change of this type.  Anyway- the evening started with a panel of teachers who work in teacher led schools, including two of my co-workers.  While they were speaking I admit I began daydreaming a little about the 'old days' and life in Avalon before we had really gotten our 'systems' in to place.  The endless meetings, the crazy decisions, the unique duties that fall to a teacher-leader when everything that has to get done has to get done by you, or your co-workers.  It made me remember a time when my co-worker Regina was using the freight elevator in our old building in order to move some furniture out to the dumpster.  She had a crew of several male students with her.  The elevator was not trustworthy and chose to stall with Regina and the students stuck between floors.  This was back in the early days of cell phones, and I can't remember if no one had one, or if they didn't work from within that concrete prison.  In any case, they were stuck there for over an hour, before anyone realized they were missing and hunted them down.  A rescue mission ensued.  All good for laughs now.

I dare say that when Regina started down the path toward teaching, she didn't prep herself for an hour locked between floors with a group of students.  In fact, so much of what I do daily at Avalon was not foreshadowed in my teacher education.  But it is so much better than what I was trained for back in the day.  I was really educated to be part of a system- to be a cog- to jump on the treadmill.  And as we all know how I do on treadmills (I was once thrown off, twice, within 2 minutes) it's probably for the best that I have stepped off and entered this alternative universe where we are trusted as professionals, and I think, for the most part, we are deserving of that trust.