Decisions OR How Long Can These Meetings Actually Last?

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It’s 9:30am, first day back at work after the summer break, and I’m about to fall asleep at my desk as the teachers around me debate the schedule for the week. The schedule for the week! Isn’t that something that you should have ready to go when you start your Monday?

Coming from the U.S. where individualism is king, I’ve found it a challenge to adapt to a culture in which communal decision-making rules all. Every decision we will make this week as we prep for the school year must be made as a whole, in consensus. We'll often spend more time debating and revising a proposed plan than executing the plan itself. 

It drove me nuts for a long time—couldn’t the director of the school just tell us what the schedule for the week is to begin with and go from there? Couldn’t it just be emailed ahead of time? Two minutes to read it and done. Instead we’re here debating whether classroom decorating will be done Thursday or Friday. 

But then something happened that changed my mind about communal decision-making. Last year, in the midst of meetings, the director brought a new issue forward: two students desperately needed a place to study but the school was at capacity: could the professors make an exception and put extra students in their classes?

Miguel Pro is usually very strict about admitting new students, being one of the few schools with a secondary level on the outskirts of Tacna.  Classes have a cap of 30 students, although most have already gone over that by about one or two. The classrooms themselves are packed, with little wiggle room to move between desks when you helping students during class. Teachers often struggle to find enough chairs and desks for a full class. To accept these students would also mean teachers would be hard-pressed to find enough textbooks for them as the government seems to only send the number of textbooks according to the number of students of the previous year. All in all, accepting these students would be adding to an already overly-full workload for many of these teachers. But the discussion continued. The teachers talked about the challenges these students had faced in finding a school that would or could accept them-- because they were living in Miguel Pro’s neighborhood on the outskirts of town, other schools would reject them saying they lived too far away. The professors talked about how the students’ mothers had studied there as well. In this moment it dawned on me how beautiful a communal decision could be. These teachers, who work so hard, who do not make what they should, were willing to take on more responsibility in order to help these students find a new home. The director watched and listened as the professors came to this conclusion together, unanimously. It was a beautiful moment of community, and a reminder that the call to teach is not just about your subject, but about the presence and love you give to your students each day.

I confess that I am still not a complete fan of the time it takes to make and execute communal decision-making in our teacher meetings (I remain a big fan of emails that sum everything up for you nice and quick) but I think I’ve learned to let go a little more and listen to what these decisions mean for Miguel Pro: a community of teachers, united by the power of listening to one another.

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