An ode to gratitude
What would you do if you couldn’t…
- text during a Zoom meeting?
- look for a reaction from a colleague when you’re looking at 9 different faces at once?
- have another meeting in person again?
This school year has shown an increase in face-to-face meetings with both families and colleagues. What was initially a hurdle to jump over now became something that I didn’t want to let go of- Zoom meetings for their impersonal nature had advantages.
In education, meetings with parents and/or colleagues can be trying. There is an enormous amount of value of bringing people together to talk about issues that are important. There is also an enormous amount of wasted time when people get on their soapboxes or go off on monologues.
The landscape of meetings has changed so drastically, and the addition of texting or sending a joke and making a connection through a screen makes this change much more bearable.
I’m serious too- what if meetings stopped being in person in the future? Would it change how we do things going forward or would bad meeting habits creep back in?
When you sat in a pre-pandemic meeting and just wanted to someone to move on, or you wanted to tell someone exactly what you were thinking, or have a side conversation that pushed the agenda forward, you couldn’t do it like you do now.
Here’s to gratitude for a change. Not all change is embraced immediately, but with reflection, this change has had it’s positives (and of course, it’s downfalls).
Gratitude for sending messages via a phone. Gratitude for different connections. Gratitude for what once was and is returning.
