Perspectives

Today, I went back into Teleplace to make sure I had no loose ends on our case study project. I knew I had responded to 3 of the 4 groups' questions, saving our own group till last. Then I realized I hadn't read everyone's case study brief. I had read group 1 and my own group (4) but I hadn't read groups 3 or 2; I think this was partly due to the fact that not all the briefs were posted when the questions were. Anyway, I read through all the groups' briefs again and of course, a lot of our ideas and expressions were the same so there was a good bit of repetition from brief to brief. yada, yada, yada . . . then as I read group 2's brief, I realized that each group had similarities but generally the same perspective.
However, group 2's brief stood out to me because they took a decidedly more accusatory position; they were critical of the principal's actions a little more than the other groups. I don't say this to disagree with them at all; I find it interesting that each group took a slightly different angle of the problem and dealt with the problem with varying degrees of solutions. My own group only discussed what we felt were viable solutions, like we couldn't even entertain the absurd such as firing the staff members. We brainstormed solutions then somehow, we used all of them in one form or the other in our action plan. Overkill. We had the immediate meeting with the parties, then mediation, then follow-up with mentors. I don't know that all of it would be necessary. Anyway, all of this is hindsight. Groupwork was difficult to accomplish when we weren't meeting face to face. And it is all about compromise. The more people involved, the more compromises are made to produce a result.