The high school where I am student teaching has a shortened schedule on some Wednesdays in order to have time for teachers to come together. The time is used for presentations on ELL abilities, planning instruction, department meetings, and so forth.
Today I went to the English Department meeting. Up until this point, I have been in very small schools, the department meetings - if we even had them - would include both middle school and high school teachers. It was interesting to see how the teachers were grappling with things like scope and sequence, WKCE, implementing best practices, and evaluating new strategies; I guess no matter the size of the schools, there are some issues that are universal.
Leaving the meeting, I was just amazed at how many different perspectives there are on how to teach and how diverse opinions can be given education, age, and training. I had always assumed that teaching in a small school had given me incredible freedom to chose what I wanted to teach, but I realized that the teachers in this big school also had a lot of freedom. It made me rethink some previously held notions about school size, department meetings, best practices, and teaching styles.
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