Wednesday, December 1, 2010

meetings

I sometimes wonder if anyone has ever died from too many meetings.  Sometimes I feel like I might.  I don't know why it takes so many meetings to teach children.  Oh - never mind.... we don't really TEACH any more.  That's so last century.

Yesterday I had a meeting during school to decide who was going to monitor the interventions that needed to be done for a child, and how often.  This meeting lasted 45 minutes and had 7 people present at it.  It was about 40 minutes too long.  Today I had a meeting before school.  It wasn't too bad as meetings go.  Then I had a department meeting during my planning time at school.  It went about 30 minutes into my last block class.  A lot of it was a re-hash of yesterday's meeting.  At some point, I just had to ask, "Are we finished here?" 

Tomorrow during my planning time is an IEP meeting.  One of my co-workers is conducting the meeting, but she asked if I would like to attend, and I told her I'd show up for moral support.   Tomorrow after school, we have an hour-long faculty meeting. 

I think Friday is meeting-free.  Monday we have a meeting during our planning time so someone can help us  with the finer points of progress monitoring. 

I wonder who the patron saint of meetings is?

Oh - and there is no Mass at my parish tomorrow morning.  Our priest has a meeting...

2 comments:

  1. Maybe you could come up with some rules for meetings that would make them shorter. I have a hunch that there is a psychological need that is behind the apparent "need" for all those meetings. Perhaps if you could figure it out, the needs could be met another way. Could it be a need for adult association since the main interface for teachers is with kids? Just asking. I'm from the corporate world and hate meetings.

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  2. If its any consolation, its the same way in nursing! I don't think I've ever seen a diagnosis of "too many meetings" on a death certificate but I have seen "Failure to Thrive" on many...maybe its the same thing :-)

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