How do you explain American School Gun Violence abroad?

Karly and I were a paired together for our host community stay in Bangalore, India and we were excellent compliments to each other. Karly had never left North America making India her first country off the continent. I have traveled many places in Europe, Africa, and Asia so I am familiar with some of the intimacies of traveling. Karly also had more teaching experience and is continuing on to get her PhD next year while I am still more or less at the beginning of my career. I live in a big city while she lives in a small town. When one of us answered a question about the American education system often the other could elaborate more regarding the rural/city American setting regarding how they were similar or different. It was a joy to paired with Karly! We even shared the same hotel room in Bangalore. As we got to know each other, our experience of school gun violence we found wassomething we unfortunately had in common.

Karly teaches in rural Ohio in a small town community that is plagued with a generational opioid crisis which is unfortunately becoming more and more common in the USA. She is an amazing educator full of energy, life, and motivation - she is one of the most positive people I have been around. She was selected by the State of Ohio to meet President Obama for a teacher appreciation luncheon, which she originally thought was a joke her faculty was playing on her. Her life as a teacher is full of challenges that come with generational addiction and poverty. She would sometimes talk about how once a student brought a gun to school and it wasn’t confiscated till lunch because the other kids were too afraid to report before then (they all knew he had it because he was showing it off on the bus). She taught that student 2nd period and she had a one on one conversation with him about how he seemed more agitated that day, having no idea he had the gun on him. Could she have lost her life that day? She didn’t - which we are all thankful for, but the memory is forever imprinted on her. 

As for myself, I grew up in a small town that also has a drug problem although probably not as extreme as her situation. I also am unfortunately very familiar with gun violence in America as in my same hometown my elementary school bus was the first transportation responder to a school shooting that killed 3 students and a teacher. My elementary school was closest so I suppose that’s why it happened that way. I was in 2nd grade in the first seat of the bus. We were told by our principal that “something horrible happened at Frontier and the buses would be delayed and go a different route.” That route was to the middle school - I didn’t know any other information but what seemed like millions of 12 and 13 year olds boarded the bus all of them sobbing. One Hispanic girl in particular stood out to me as she was sobbing more extreme than the rest. I had never seen a Hispanic girl cry - they in my 2nd grader mind were always the toughest and that’s how I knew things were serious. I don’t remember anything else of that day - I think my aunt from Oregon maybe called and talked to me. The next memory I had was going to church and learning one of the girls who was murdered belonged to our congregation and they had her picture everywhere. I felt incredibly guilty for not knowing her. To this day I am not even sure I remember it all correctly as it was very confusing for me at the time.

Conversations of gun violence in America come up a lot when I have traveled abroad, and India is not excluded from this. It’s a tricky thing to communicate because for both Karly and I it is deeply personal. A large part of America loves their guns over the greater good of the public safety. America is an individualistic society.... it’s more important for some Americans to have rights to own guns than to protect students and teachers or the public in general. I don’t mean to make this political (I can hear the guns rights people countering with all the arguments American people who follow this topic are all too familiar with). But what I am talking about is how in the world does one communicate the uniqueness of American school gun violence to foreigners who do not have this problem. 

Imagine you live in a country where most of the people have never been to the USA but the breaking headlines of American news that reaches you are stories of school shootings. You would be curious! And if an American has come all this way to see you, you can ask them all the questions on said topic pretty much as much as you want. Often the solutions they ask about are very reasonable, but I have to give answers like “well it’s not that easy because some people just really really love their guns.” This always floors them... and they ask about x, y, or z and if the American people think about the humanity of others... and I have say things like “well yes we think about humanity up to an extent... but not everyone agrees.” They say “but your children are dying.” I say “I know.” They say, “so why doesn’t society fix it?” And I say “I think American society doesn’t care enough. America does not value community the same way India does.” This answer seems to satisfy their questions, and I am left wondering to myself is that true? 

Does American society just not care enough about our communities? I’m afraid I might think the answer is yes.

Teachers for Global Classroom’s “In Field Experience” is over: What’s next?

Sitting at a cafe in Connaught Place after spending a small fortune to send 8kg of goodies back to America, I place an order for minestrone vegetable soup. Why might I be ordering hot soup in the middle of 100 degree+ weather in Delhi? Well, it is the only way I am finding I can eat fresh vegetables where I don’t get sick. Nothing like boiling your fresh vegetables in broth to kill all the bacteria that would otherwise wreak havoc on your stomach. I feel victorious with this realization as I have been missing raw fresh vegetables something furious. I think about all the excellent farmers markets I’m missing back in Union Square, NYC. Who knew I would miss fresh vegetables before pizza while away in India? I definitely did NOT see that one coming.

I have worked a few hours writing a blog post about physics education in American and India, but I fear am getting a little “too intellectual” and abstract with my thinking so I stop to take a break. I’ll keep working at it, but I am realizing the ideas are not 100% ironed out in my head and I’ll spin myself into circles. It’s not a dissertation and it is not supposed to be, but I can’t help but think of it like one. Still feeling the pressure to post SOMETHING I decide to write this.

Before I left for India, I was incredibly anxious as if part of me knew this trip would be the beginning of something new and life changing. In a lot of ways this trip has been that, but now that its over and several of the TGC fellows are already back home, I’m still processing what exactly to do with what I have learned while continuing to travel around India.

One of the things that I am finding difficult is that the connections I have made here have been emotionally intense in a positive and wonderful way. But just like the end of a school year, once the year is over and the students in the classroom are gone, things change - we go our separate ways into our summer routines. In this case, in India, I will go back to the States and fall back into my normal USA routines. What will be different; what will be the same? The purpose of this program is to build a relationship and collaborate across cultures. To what extent will I be able to do this, and what exactly does this to look like? These are questions I do not necessarily have answers to yet - but I am working on them for whatever that is worth.

Our TGC Host Communities

“What will our host experience be like?” Someone asked to a pervious TGC India fellow during a pre-trip departure webinar in early June of 2019. “That is so difficult to answer because everyone one of you is going to have your own unique experience that won’t really compare to anyone else’s.” Now that I am here I understand that statement better, the variety of culture and experiences is so vast within India - literally if you go about 200km in any given direction you will be a new area that has a totally different native tongue. In fact, there are 234 identifiable native tongues and 22 major languages in India. Most Indians I spoke to knew around 3-4 languages and the most common language that connected and united everyone is English.

This post is dedicated to my 2019 TGC fellows, whom I love and appreciate as professionals and human beings and who I will miss dearly. Here are some of their experiences in the field that they shared with us. My hope is that this will help give the reader an idea of what the Indian education system is like from 6 different kinds of placements in India.


Pune “The Oxford of the East.” Perhaps the most progressive lessons were observed in Pune of our group - progressive in the sense that I imagine they would make some schools in America blush. One of the first lessons they observed was on human sexuality where the teacher was walking through what LGBTQ+ stand for.  This was also the same school that gave one of our TGC fellows the following choices for teaching a lesson, “porn addiction, Eve teasing, premarital sex,” among others that I am now blanking on. This quickly became a running joke among us TGC fellows, “I think you got the leftovers on the list” (aka what the Indian teachers didn’t sign up to teach that week) we would say. But it also poses the question, what would their school like the American teacher to say about porn addiction or premarital sex? Because that can go a LOT of different directions. The fellow decided to go with “Eve teasing” which was the mildest of the choices. For those like me who maybe hadn’t heard of this term, Eve teasing is a euphemism used throughout South Asia, for public sexual harassment or sexual assault of women by men. Upon getting to her school she saw the following on the board and quickly shot a message to us saying “I’m no longer worried about teaching a lesson on Eve teasing.”

Calcutta - Here the young women at a prominent private all girls school impressed the TGC fellows with their drive. Infused in their curriculum was a focus on women’s empowerment in addition to academic excellence. For those familiar with the top NYC public schools, this school sounded very much a like an all girls version of Stuyvesant High School with perhaps a bit more progressive and forward thinking. The thinking process of many of the young women was “I go to an all girls school to focus on my education and not be distracted by relationships which will distract me from a bright future.” My favorite anecdotal stories from this school was when one of the TGC fellows who happens to be an expert in technology proved herself. At this school they have a tech guy who comes in and sets up the technology in the room for the teacher - the teachers are not expected to touch or necessarily know how to work the equipment. Before teaching her particular lesson to a class, the tech guy was struggling to turn on the projector with the remote - essentially the batteries were dead and he kept insisting the batteries were not dead and that something else was wrong. Our TGC fellow got up on a chair and push the “on” button on the projector and viola! The projector came on and she said something to the effect of “that’s right ladies we can problem solve too.”

Kerala Group 1 - There were two groups of TGC fellows who were sent to small towns in the south of India in the state of Kerala. Both pairs I believe were in government schools (what we in America would call public schools). Here the TGC fellows saw schools with less technology than Delhi, but students full of spirit. Both groups toured multiple schools in the region and did not necessarily stay at one school the whole time like some of us did. The schools in Kerala are especially proud of their 100% literacy rate. What most of us TGC fellows who were in cities were especially jealous of was the beautiful pictures they would send from Kerala - serene misty hills and pictures from the beach looking out toward the ocean. Yes, it was monsoon season so there wasn’t swimming on the beach and the downpours of rains could go from drizzle to downpour, but it was beautiful. One of the fellows from Vermont said he felt right at home there - which if anything made we me even more curious to see it for myself as Vermont is one of my top 5 favorite US states.

  

Kerala Group 2 - This pair had a music teacher and a incredibly outgoing NYC history teacher.  They made the news in their village and sent us the video clip of the highlight. Also, working as a team they performed “Don’t worry, be Happy,” which of all the things the TGC fellows sent to each other that week was the one that had me laughing till nearly tears. It was like if you took Animal from the muppets and paired him with Ralph on the saxophone and the energy between the two was about how you would imagine that to be. But the kids loved it and that’s what matters most. Here the teachers were able to run a PD with the teachers in their school which included a variety of fun free online games that are popular in classrooms back home.

Bangalore - This was my host field experience location, which I will write about in more detail in a future blog post. However, to introduce the basics - my host school was the equivalent of a private school in America and consisted of 7000 students, 5 buildings (one administration, one Kindergarten, one lower elementary, one middle school, and one high school), and beautiful resort like campus grounds with palm trees lining the entrance and multiple gardens. I was even told that there was a “campus” peacock that someone took care of, but that really peacocks are not pets because they are the bird of India so they just put out food for it every morning. I never saw this peacock so I cannot vouch for its existence - but I was intrigued by the thought. Can you imagine going to a place for learning that had beautifully maintained grounds with wild peacocks??? I feel like even if you were trying NOT to actively learn you would be learning because the environment was so beautiful. My host school was unlike any school I have seen in America. It is working toward 100% renewable energy and sustainable energy. They filter their own water for drinking and reharvest the used water for other things that didn’t need filtered water (things like toilets I imagine). They had a vegetable garden on campus that we ran out of time to see where they teach kids how to grow things too. In addition, the community of educators were so genuinely “students first” in a way that I found to be massively inspiring. If teachers had an idea they wanted to try out because it was good for kids, the answer they were given was always yes. It was a magical and impressive place to be; I have never experienced a school like it.

Hyderabad - Upon arriving back in Delhi from our host visits, Karly and I paired with the team from Hyderabad and our experiences could not have been different. In Hyderabad they were in a low resourced government school. Before arriving in India one of the TGC fellows going to
Hyderabad had organized a campaign to bring the school a piece of technology. She sent them a list of things she was willing to donate to the school - one of the things listed was an old school overhead projector, which is what the school said they wanted. After touring the schools in New Delhi that had a lot of technology she thought maybe there was a communication barrier and that the school actually meant a projector not an overhead projector. In a mad dash with our host Rajesh, she set out on the streets of Delhi to buy a projector for the school, which also included a drive by moped drop off and exchange of cash among many other adventures. Upon arriving at the school, she quickly realized that yes, it was the overhead projector they wanted as the school didn’t have WiFi or a single working computer and the very infrastructure of the building was crumbling. The atmosphere sounded similar to the inner city schools in Detroit and parts of NYC, however, I was left with the impression students here faced a deeper poverty different from what we might see back home. Despite the challenges these two fellows faced, they bonded with the teachers/students, learned and played cricket in a saree, and are already generating ideas for future international collaborations and grant writings to improve special education in the Hyderabad community.  

The Taj Mahal

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The Taj Mahal at sunrise! #fulbrightteach

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 16, 2019 at 12:25am PDT

The Last Bus Ride to School

A little girl with red glasses rode the bus with us every morning in Bangalore, she was eager and excited to great us with her smile and shy wave of a hand. Earlier in the week we had the pleasure of observing an elementary science hands on class that this girl was part of where she would cause all kinds of mischief. Not bad mischief, but the kind where she turn around and say hi to the new American teachers who entered your room while the teacher up front was giving instructions. The kind of mischief where she would explore the materials given to her before doing the experiment and maybe not follow the directions exactly as they were intended. The kind of mischief where she would turn and giggle with her seat partner and then look back to see if we were watching and then snap back to the front to show she was a model student. She was amazing. 

On the school bus either sitting behind or in front of her with her two other friends we would have conversations about what they were learning. They were shy so it was hard to hear them sometimes, but they would show us maps of the world and the workbooks they were working in (all were in English). Karly, my teacher pair, would often have gifts for the kids on the bus and distributing them became part of our usual bus morning routine that I think the girls looked forward to as much as we did riding the bus.

My last day seeing them on the bus I wrote on the back of three NYC postcards, (the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, and the Statue of Liberty) encouraging them to study hard as they have so much to contribute to the world. They asked where the pictures were from and I explained it was New York City and maybe someday they could visit when they are older. Showing them on the back the descriptions of each of their postcards, the girls opened up their English workbooks to try and decode the wording of the descriptions trying to understand what it was I had given them. I imagine an adult whether their parents or a teacher might have to read it to them and explain the historical significance of each place. Leaving the bus waving to students and saying it was our final bus ride that Friday morning quickly brought tears to my eyes, but we still had a solid half day to spend at the school.

There are 3 places in the world where I have cried upon leaving - Hanoi Vietnam, SiemReap Cambodia, and Bangalore, India. Although all three of these places are quite different and I love for different reasons, there is one thing that unites them: the kindness of the people. To me that is the most important thing and something our world could learn how to do better. I have traveled to places where that was not true of the people I spent time with, perhaps they were skeptical of Americans (and rightly so) or perhaps I fell short of a cultural expectation that I was unaware existed or was aware existed but could not deliver that expectation (example: speaking the native language of an area). This happens sometimes with traveling, but starting with a place of openness and kindness is what has allowed for the best cultural exchange experiences I have had. I am happy to have found that to be true of teachers and students I worked with in Banaglore.

Mysore Palace!

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The Mysore Palace might be the most beautiful thing I have ever walked through! So much artisanship went into making it. The Kings dynasty has been “cursed” because he took the jewels of a wife of another king. Ever since the curse the dynasty has not been able to have a child for alternate generations so they adopt a child who then becomes king.

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 14, 2019 at 7:20pm PDT

Into the Jungle near Coorg

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Rama, Shrivatsala, Imran, Karly and I adventured into the jungle! We did a safari, pet some elephants, and saw a Tibetan Buddhist temple. There’s a complicated history with elephants here- they were used in war and their ivory of course was highly desired. The Tibetan people were refugees here during a previous war with China and they created their own community.

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 13, 2019 at 8:04pm PDT

Mysore at Night (Historical City near Bangalore)

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People watching in Mysore at night.

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 13, 2019 at 6:22am PDT

Mysore King’s Summer Home

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Took a car to Mysore! This is the kings summer house. Sometimes its confusing to know if you can take pictures. They told me no pictures unless it is a selfie - but then you get inside and people are talking pictures.... so it’s hard to know. Then sometimes they take away your phone before entering certain places to ensure no pictures. Sometimes they say no pictures but don’t take the phone and then they yell at people if they see you take a picture. So I never really know what the picture rules are. And sometimes you will be in a no picture zone and someone will approach you to take a selfie - this happened in the temple yesterday. The monks did NOT like that. #fulbrightteach

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 12, 2019 at 6:38pm PDT

Punjab Dancing!

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We learned a traditional dance from Punjab with the dance teachers at the school that’s hosting me in Bangalore! Like any cardio my face turns red when I move and everyone thought that was pretty funny! #fulbrightindia #fulbrightteach #exchangeourworld

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 11, 2019 at 9:31am PDT

Things I have noticed in India

Observations of India

• The people are extremely proud of their food and want you to try it. AND they feed you all the time! I have not been hungry since I arrived in India!! The food is also very good. Usually by this time in my travels I am craving pizza hardcore, but that has not happened yet.

• I have been experiencing the best hospitality of my life! (Look at the pictures!) When you thank them for their hospitality and say we have never been treated like that before they smile and say “We are famous for our hospitality you know!”

• Also because of their hospitality they will sometimes let you get away with ridiculous things and they sweep it under the rug rather than point out you are being rude or doing something unusual by their social standards. For instance, I was eating at a restaurant with my cohort and I asked one of our hosts to help me order. She asked if I wanted vegetarian or not. I said vegetarian, then she asked if I wanted rice or naan (bread). Since I had been eating a lot of naan I said rice. I could tell by her face this was the wrong answer, but I had no idea why and she thought about it for awhile and then told me to get some dish she assured me it was very Indian. When the waiter came to order I ordered and he goes with rice?!?!!? And then the woman said something in Hindi to him. You could tell he was like.. yeah I dont’ know about this… but the dish came out with rice as I ordered. Later I commented to her after the meal that you dont usually eat that with rice do you, she laughed and said “no, but little kids will eat it with rice and it really is a very Indian dish. Very popular with little kids.” So basically I ate the Indian version of Mac and cheese for kids. Haha BUT morale of the story, pleasing the host’s request is generally considered more important than doing it the proper Indian way.

• I’ve also been reminded several times that Indians are the largest democracy in the world. They are very proud of this and will remind you of it, if it happens to flow with the conversation.

• I have also been reminded that Indians are some of the largest consumers in the world. There’s a lot of ads for Stranger Things 3 here so I asked if that was a popular show, and they said “oh yes!” I said I was surprised because I didn’t know they watched that, and I was reminded that way more Indians watch it than Americans because their population is so large.

• Peace is also a very important value to many of the people I have talked to and shows up in lots of different conversations. I asked a woman if divorce happens frequently here. She said no, it is not good for the peace.

• I have a hard time telling the difference between the types of flat breads here. To me everything looks like “naan” which is kind of like a pita bread but not. But I have made the mistake several times where I have asked them to pass the naan and they say, no this is not naan this is roti! Or No this is not naan this is… “fill in the blank with a word I dont recognize”. To me they all look the same… but I think I’m starting to understand?

• Lots of things are “auspicious.” I have asked a lot of questions about why do people do xyz, trying to understand the reason behind it and I am often told “it is considered auspicious.” What I’m learning is there are a lot of things that are considered “auspicious” but it hasn’t been explained to me why it is this way - which I’m also totally fine with. The fact that it is auspicious is more important than the reasoning is what I am learning. Here’s some examples of auspicious things:

• When visiting the Iskon Krishna Temple in Bangalore lots of people were holding up both hands to a flame and then brushing the tops of their head/neck with their hands

• People paint masks and hang them outside their homes to ward off bad spirits

• When entering a temple complex you must enter from a certain side to leave the bad energy and then exit a different way so the bad energy does not come back to you

• Bells are important for energy and also ward off bad spirits

• There are a lot of non-verbal Indian cues that can be confusing for westerners including myself. They often will shake their head “no” in a figure 8 type of way, BUT that does not necessarily mean “no” it could mean “no” but it could also mean “maybe” or “we will see” or “yes.” So you have to kind of pick up on the context and the emotion behind the head shake.

• The women I’m working with LOVE it when you wear Indian clothes or the bindi or bangles. They have been joking with us saying we are looking more Indian every day! Karly really likes wearing the bindi (the dot that represents the third eye in Hindu married women). I hadn’t been wearing one because I’m not married, but then they kept asking me “Amanda why are you not wearing the bindi?” So I started and they really seem to love it. One of the teachers said she had never seen a western woman wear one before and that it was nice. (I was worried about cultural appropriation, but they seem to insist it is good so I’m not going to worry about it.)

• The women I’m working with love laughing and make jokes all the time. They are much freer with their laughter and are very expressive. Karly and I were wearing our new clothes (a kurta) that were tailored for us. One joked saying “Oh you are all looking so beautiful today -when you going to go to the temple you will make all the priests question their celibacy!”

• Also, wearing a scarf all the time in the style they wear them makes me realize how clumsy I am. Wearing a scarf is a mandatory requirement for the teachers at the school I’m at. However, they do not wear scarfs like we do in the west. They drape them differently and mine always falls. I don’t know how they do it! I need more practice. I also hear it takes practice to wear a saree… which I 100% believe based off my scarf experiences.

• Indian women LOVE their jewelry! Weddings are filled with gold jewelry. It is one of the first things they notice about you. I tend to not travel with jewelry just because I might lose it. Because jewelry is so popular here, I decided to buy some big hanging earrings - and viola, it is the first thing the woman have been commenting on when they meet me. :)

Bangalore Adventures!

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Pics from Bangalore! We ride the bus into the school with the kids! We also saw a cultural program of dance by students/faculty. After school we have gone shopping at commercial street, drank their delicious filtered coffee, and bought tailor made clothes to our size. #fulbrightteach

A post shared by Amanda Hochstatter (@ms.hochstatter) on Jul 10, 2019 at 7:25pm PDT

Observations of Bangalore

Namaste!

I’m so behind in blogging and now its kind of to the point of where and how do I begin?!?! I think I will start with a list of quick observations.

I am currently in Bangalore, India in the province of Karnataka. The weather is soooooo much better than Delhi. Its a pleasant 80ish degrees most days with a breeze. In Delhi I was sweating through multiple shirts a day... SO the weather here is very welcome!!

The school I am at is a private school that teaches kids K-12. It was approximately 7000 students total and is a like a mini college campus. There are 5 buildings and they have amazing sports facilities, lab facilities, and beautiful classrooms. The school even has their own bus system of 125ish buses they operate. Teachers are also welcome to take the school bus into school which I personally think is awesome. We ride the bus to school too, which is really fun! It reminds me of my elementary school days waiting for my best friend Haley to get on the bus. 

On Monday all the kids were studying when we got on the bus. I’m not even kidding!! They have beautiful notebooks with beautiful handwriting! We told the teachers this  and they all laughed saying they had exams that day so that’s why they were studying and we would not see that again. (Well I’ve rode the bus 3 times now and there is always at least a couple kids studying!!).

Speaking of notebooks... I taught a physics class today on unit vectors. I tried to teach it in the style that I would teach back in the USA, but its very difficult to walk into a class that maybe has never seen that style. One of the things I do all the time in my class is give stars on kids papers when they get the question correct. I did this today as second nature and the kids were very surprised I was writing in their notebooks! They were like “What! You are giving me a star?” And I would say yeah, you got the problem correct! Then because the class had a various level of mastery on the topic, it became super clear really quickly there were a handful of kids who got the content right away and I needed to give them something more challenging to do ASAP. So I decided to write in their notebooks a challenge problem. Again complete shock that I would write in their notebooks! I  asked the teachers about this later and they said they don’t write in their notebooks once they get to grade 11/12, and really they only write in struggling learners notebooks in the younger grades.

I have been doing so much learning the past fewdays! The principal here has connections all overthe world and in her home community too and makes a sure we meet everyone!  She was a Fulbright scholar in the USA and when she proposed her topics to investigate the committee told her it was too big and that she should focus on one part for her project. Well she did it alland impressed everyone!! She is the kind of person who has a lot of light in her eyes and pep in her step who makes things happen! I am very grateful to be at her school!

Our schedules are packed during the working day. We have observed elementary and high school science classrooms, department meetings, the cabinet meetings for upper and lower house, presented at an assembly, watched a cultural assembly, and met with the guidance team/IEP team.I’m sure I’m forgetting something - but it is jam packed! 

Something that has been a relief for me is that teachers here are very similar to teachers in the USA. They all have been incredibly kind, but whena meeting is over and the department chair dismisses them, they hurry off to their next thing. I identify with this strongly as a teacher as I am always bouncing around from one thing to the next. Even though I’d love to chat more with all of them about their experiences, its kind of comfortingto know that there are still things to be done. 

One last thing, in the meetings I have observed it seems that the teachers and the admin communicate in a way that I often see in a market where you may bargain for a price. For instance,  the AP wanted the teachers to be a specific place ata certain time, but the teacher leaders explained how it is too difficult to get their by said time and gave a brief anecdotes (story narrative) for why this was difficult for them. The AP responded back with another idea to still accomplish the same goal, and the teachers responded back with this might work, but we will need xyz. It was a very back and forth flow that was incredibly organic were multiple teachers spoke up. I was really impressed with this as I am used to a more top-down decision policy being made. Of course the AP had the final authority on decisions and would sometimes use this, but that was rare.