Democracy in action

Today was our first day back at school after the hurricane. The neighborhood around PSOhYes is completely normal, except shops extra-full of people who can't get to Manhattan, but of course we all know that not far away, things are terrible. 

I was very impressed with the all-hands meeting the principal held today. It went for about an hour, and she led a quite democratic process of soliciting ideas and discussion about what we should do on a number of fronts, including what the staff would like to do about helping affected colleagues (everyone was in favor of immediate cash collection), what the greater school community, including families and the PTA can do for the broader relief effort, how teachers can talk to students about what has happened and perhaps teach into some aspects of it, and what kinds of aid activities the students can get involved in right away to help out. 

Long story short, there was a read-a-thon planned that will now be devoted to the relief effort, and will be promoted as such as soon as it can be arranged. That, along with helping affected colleagues right away, were the "now" action items. Other initiatives to follow. 

The principal really gave people a chance to be heard while still being very much in charge and keeping the meeting on track (it could have gone on all day). Many teachers were also aware of the fact that immediacy, while not the primary concern, is important: when it takes a long time to decide what to do, the message they get is "something terrible happens and we do something, sometime, maybe." I thought this was an important point to note. 

My daughter took away from this that "the train is closed" and now we take the bus to school, but she's only four. I'm interested to know what my students think about what is going on in New York right now...