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Felipe Partida is a resource specialist program (RSP) teacher at Nogales High School.
The first time I was involved with the Ball Foundation was at the World Café at the beginning of the year. I really appreciated the format of the meeting. I’m a firm believer in how the communication process works, and I was impressed by the outcome of the Café. I don’t think there’s a better way to encourage collaboration within a large organization such as a school district because there are so many different points of view, teaching styles, administrators, and so forth. Everybody feels like they need to be heard.
I’ve been at the district for nine years and there have been several high profile situations where teachers have gotten really emotional and just wanted to point fingers – some of them rightfully so. But it’s not productive. It’s just a lot of complaining and bickering. This time around, at the Cafés, the teachers felt, “These are my questions. These are my concerns. I’m being heard. I’m being acknowledged.” It brought a different feeling to the process.
Personally, I definitely want to keep this process as a tool that I can carry forward into the next phase of my career. A couple of years ago, I started thinking about going into administration. The clincher for considering this career change came during the recent meeting about the reconstruction of RSP. Because of the Ball Foundation’s processes, I felt like, “Maybe administration isn’t that bad.” During the RSP reconstruction, I really wanted to be part of the decision making. We came up with good ideas and concerns, but nothing was said about, “This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’ve got,” and I felt like I needed to be a part of that. In the past, what would have been said was, “This is what we have and this is what we’re going to do about it.” Instead, what was said was, “This is what we have. Now let us know your concerns and your questions.” That way, we could all personally feel that we had participated, we were involved, and we were heard. So this experience has given me a more hopeful perspective that if I went into administration, I might actually be able to do some good.
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