School meetings are considered an administrative chore that schools need to go through in order to tell children important issues. Sometimes it goes by the name 'Assembly' but the purpose is the same.
Our meetings in contrast are another learning opportunity. We freely acknowledge that we take our prompt from the progressive school 'Summerhill' in east England. In a nutshell, our senior children (Pod 5 and upwards) run the meetings. This is the 'real' school meeting, not a pretend one. Children get to learn the roles of being a 'Facilitator' (chairperson), a 'Scribe' (aka secretary) and an 'Ombudsperson'. Children can only talk if they hold a talking stick. We can always tell who the Facilitator is in our meetings because of the large blue hat they wear. This emphasises the role that they take on as Facilitator which 'ends' after the meeting is finished. The majority of decisions are made through voting. Teachers may also vote but they only get half a vote to offset their swaying influence as adults.
The meetings are structured so that there are always action points to be taken, and these are always carried forward to the next meeting. The office bearers are chosen for the next meeting. In other words everyone gets a chance to be an office bearer.
In this photo Talei is the Faciltator shown by the blue hat she's wearning. Children are putting their hands up to speak but they have to be holding the talking stick before they can actually speak.
We've written a bit more about this issue in our blog entry here.