School Meeting at Arts

During my visit at Arts High, I got to sit in on a school meeting at Arts that Friday afternoon of my visit, and it was quite an interesting experience. I could tell from Mr. Carney's attitude alone toward the meeting that it was a drag for the teachers, something that was recquired and not decided upon or very productive. I walked into a meeting room where about three other teachers and Dr. Brown was there to meet us as well. It was kind of funny because they all had the same "I don't want to be here" look on their face, almost as if they were admirable teachers outside of the room and as soon as they walked in they became students again forced to sit through a boring lecture class. Dr. Brown holds these meetings, nine to twelve times out of the school year, with small groups of teachers throughout the day. The meetings are held to discuss productive ways to continue maintaining a productive classroom and teaching methods. However the topic of this particular meeting was the educational taxonomy, and open ended questions.
I thought that the discussion on open ended questions was quite non productive because it stated the obvious about these types of questions, it was a disussion that we might have in an education class for prospective teachers rather than current teachers. I couldn't help but wonder what other topics and discussions these teachers could be using their time talking about. Not to mention it was kind of funny to realize that the teachers mannerisms within the meeting were not unlike those of students in a classroom. Mr. Carney was fiddling with candy, a another was kind of shy and hesitant to contribute to the discussion. The meeting lasted for one block period and when it was over as I walked out of the room, I felt as if I had just seen teachers from another aspect I would have never seen. I just hope the teachers can find more productivity from the meetings than they had found that day.