Time to Think and Converse

When did you last have a conversation, a real conversation, with a colleague or a friend – while paying them the compliment of your full, undivided attention?.... That we have built organizations which preclude the one activity they’re designed for is an irony of monstrous proportions, well beyond the scope of a single individual to fix.
by Margaret Heffernan

I have been out of town at a funeral of an old friend of my husband's this weekend. Talking with old friends has led me to consider the need for thoughtful discussions with friends and colleagues (not so much the multi-tasking that this article is referring to but rather the issue of the fact that many of us spend far too little time discussing the things that are important with friends and colleagues).

I am fortunate in that some of us at my campus make a point of getting together once or twice a week at least after class (usually at our local pub but sometimes at the home of a friend, or over a game of bridge) to discuss what has happened with our students (good and bad), or in our classes, or what is positive or is bothering us in the classroom or in our program or with our management or whatever it is that is on our minds. And it is so important that we do this. It never fails that after these informal "meetings" I am refreshed, or reminded of important things that during the hectic day I had not had time to think about, or simply cheered up and encouraged.

I am reminded that until there is some sort of crisis we often put off this necessary time to get input from others, to discuss, to debate, to hear other views and so on. Certainly on a formal basis the opportunity for these occasions has not happened for many years and it is only those of us who make a private effort to continue them have this opportunity. Our college, as it now operates, make it almost impossible to do so. There is no time when those in one program (let alone across programs) can actually get together to talk to each other, to share experiences, to learn from each other. We live scattered across the GTA, our timetables are designed by a computer so that, for example, as many of us teach on more that one campus, so it is often virtually impossible to find even one hour a week when two of us are on the same campus at the same time in order to discuss issues, let alone a group of us. The May/June period used to be set aside for program and course development, but now that some of us must be there in May/June and others in July/August, this year we have exactly (count 'em) 0 days to meet with the faculty that teach in our program between the time the marking is done and the time that holidays for roughly half the faculty start.

How does an educational organization, which claims to value teamwork and collaboration and cooperation expect this to happen when they provide no time for this type of activity to occur?