Pass the microphone please

It's been a hectic week. I've helped to organize and now implement a 5 day conference for principals. It's the 3rd day today and I'm pausing here at the office to print a few materials and finish preparing my own workshop on school improvement planning (to be presented tomorrow). It's also been a great week because my mom arrived on Saturday and we've been enjoying her visit very much. I'll write more about that next week.

Yesterday I troubleshooted other presentations: Lights on, now off, powerpoint installed on laptop, projector focused, etc. One element in particular serves as a great metaphor for what I think a development practioner like myself should be doing. After a great presentation, we wanted to get principals' reactions. We were talking about how culture can hinder a principal's job (a thorny subject) and so I was passing a wireless microphone from person to person so that they could express their views.

By distributing the microphone I was helping the principals voice their concerns and work out their issues. In the end that's my role here in the RMI, to pass around the microphone, to facilitate the conversation that leads to improved schooling. It's up to the people here to take center stage and make the hard decisions.

"I'm Lubricant" might be another apt metaphor, but I decided that we've got too many other associations with that term, so I won't go there.

As a main organizer for the event I helped produce the objectives of the Principals Institute, create the daily agenda and organize airfares for all of the principals.

Unfortunately the airline is down - so those that could get here on the boats are the ones present.

The agenda, revised even the very day before the event, made planning really difficult. It's hard to tell people they've got presentations or Q&As to prepare if you're not sure yourself if and when that will happen. I got pretty frustrated about that. How do we plan a quality event if we can't simply agree on ground rules at the beginning?

But that's part of getting used to Marshallese culture, with it's "wait and see" mentality. In the end, things got off the ground without a hitch, and people are simply used to operating that way. My stress was unecessary.