Ah, the beloved faculty meeting.  Those meetings that usually happen at the most inconvenient time or when we are the most exhausted.  The meetings that lure us in with food so we can become docile and just nod “uh huh”.  I’ll be honest, most faculty meetings address what the majority of educators in the building teach – and that would NOT be music.  Which means I can approach the meeting in one of two ways:

1.  Cross my arms, try to look half-way pleasant while inwardly rolling my eyes OR
2.  Listen and see where I can pick up SOMETHING that I can learn from and/or utilize.

I will admit that my go-to is #1, but most times, if I’m open to it, I CAN learn something that addresses what I do or what I believe and it makes me think.  I think about how that one thing can change how I look at my students or address how I think about my teaching.  And THIS, my friends, is what we can learn about life from a faculty meeting.

There are a lot of thoughtful articles and blogs flying around the interwebs right now, mostly about our current isolation situation and how we go forward from here.  Invariably someone will throw in something considered “political”, whether it’s for or against the President, how inept Congress is (I think we can all come to consensus there) or something about the media and “fake news”, which is kind of an oxymoron, but that’s another blog for another day.  And again, I can approach these articles/blogs one of two ways:

1.  Cross my arms, try to look half-way pleasant (or not) while inwardly rolling my eyes OR
2.  Listen and see where I can pick up SOMETHING that I can learn from and/or utilize.

So, I read this great little blog/article this morning, and MOST of it was something that made me think in a positive way.  When this whole thing is over, regardless of whether it feels like it’s going to end or not, will we look at life, our lifestyle, our relationships, how we spend our time, differently?  At some point the writer felt the need to say something that I didn’t agree with and personally had no use for,  but I could certainly glean something else from this article and if asked what I thought, could find a point of consensus.

Here’s the point gang.  If we don’t learn how to listen to everything so we can glean those great nuggets of gold in a civil way, and come to consensus, we have learned NOTHING from our time alone the last several weeks.  Because just like our favorite faculty meeting, life does not happen in isolation.  You are working with people and some of them are in charge of running the meeting. We have the choice to listen and get angry or listen and learn something that will help us.  We don’t have to agree with everything to agree with something.  Where we get into trouble as a culture is when we feel like we have to agree with everything in order to come to consensus, consensus meaning, what can I live with.  It’s not perfect, it doesn’t check off all the boxes but what can I live with or learn from it?

I don’t have to be compliant or complacent and I don’t have to agree with everything, but I can try to learn something from everything, whether it’s positive or negative.  See, faculty meetings CAN serve a real purpose! Thank goodness for faculty meetings!