Effective Staff Meetings at School
Should we look at corporate best practices when hosting meetings at our schools?
"We regularly talk of schools becoming businesses or working as corporations, but we forget that poor raw material in business is rejected at once, but not so in schools. Poor Schoolmasters! No doubt, schools and schoolmasters must be as organised with systems and a sense of order—and predictability—as a corporate house. These balances have to be kept.” says AN Dar, former Principal of The Scindia School.
Thank you, Mr Dar, for mentoring students, teachers, and management. My focus in this post is on how Staff Meetings at the School can become effective, and this is where we have lessons to learn from corporate culture and sectors that deliver professional services.
Some essential points to start with:
Use an Agenda
Keep Minutes and Logs
Punctuality is the key
Appropriate facilities
Have a chairperson or a leader
"School leadership matters. During the past decade, there has been a growing recognition among educators and policymakers that school principals must be instructional leaders who ensure that high-quality teaching occurs in every classroom. This view is backed up by a solid body of evidence showing that leadership places second only to teaching among school-related influences on learning". ~ The Principal Story, Learning Guide
It all starts with the Leader; thus, explaining the role is best. The chairperson's role is not just important; it's crucial for running meetings with practical outcomes. Avoid common mistakes and learn how to run more effective meetings. The chairperson's role is not just time-consuming; it's a privilege that comes with work between sessions, external representation of the organisation, and work with staff. Chairing any organisation requires diplomatic and leadership skills of a high level, and your role can make a significant difference.
"Business work, especially in an office setting, demands a certain degree of collaboration. For instance, important decisions often call for more than one person's perspective, and important work often needs the expertise of multiple people. Meetings are one way to make collaboration structured and organised, but without a sense of purpose or control, meetings can easily become overlong and inefficient. Knowing how to plan, prepare, and lead a meeting you're chairing can make the difference between an effective meeting and a wasted one".
~ How To Chair A Meeting, courtesy Wikihow.com.
Leaders Role
1. Inform all members to prepare: The teachers, like their students, must come prepared for the meeting. They need to research and determine what they are going for; this is the essential starting point.
2. Start with the end in mind: the goal of any game is the key to winning. We may meet to find a solution for a discipline challenge at a school, such as why the students are not performing or even why the school administration is challenged to manage the finances. The end of the meeting or the goal is significant.
3. Follow an Agenda: Time management is the key, and it can only happen when we follow an agenda. Items on the Agenda must be listed, and the group's focus on one item at a time will lead to effective outcomes.
4. Round-robin process: A round-robin is an arrangement of choosing all elements in a group equally in some rational order. This is often described as round-robin process scheduling. The Leader must identify and involve the members' strengths in the deliberations; teachers inherently like being involved and are willing to take leadership when given true responsibility.
5. Keep Discussion on target: Meetings can become a 'talkathon' or a prolonged discussion or debate, "a day-long talkathon on artistic freedom".
6. Build consensus: We must agree about something, an idea or opinion that everyone shares in a group. A staff meeting is advantageous for building action teams to deliver better.
7. Resolve conflict: Reasoning, opinions, and personal egos often need to be considered, and when the time nears, we must work to resolve any dispute. The burden of conflict will frequently undermine the whole purpose of the meeting.
8. Revisit Action Plans: The action plan is usually based on the school's needs. To advance the plan with the team, we need to work on a principle of shared leadership and ensure that the student's needs are kept in mind. Action plans will always work best with a good team and exemplary leadership.
9. Share Comments: All the teachers' input must be considered, and their comments reflected in the proceedings. This will get them more involved and is a small step in ensuring their effective participation.
10. Ensure everyone is very clear about the decision: the outcome of the meeting must be communicated, and an action plan or things to do must be made. Please consider all the teachers' input at the concluding time of the meeting. In a well-planned meeting, the concluding minutes are the most important and should always be carried out.
Dilbert.Com, on the Funny side of hosting a meeting:
Staff meetings can be the most critical and productive professional development opportunities of the school year; on the other hand, they can also be the most dreaded and squandered time a teacher spends. So, what makes the difference between outstanding and wasteful meetings? That's the question we posed to Education World's Principal Files team. We asked team members to tell us about their best-ever staff meetings.
According to Ed World's P-Files team, successful staff meetings are a function of the purpose, the planning, and the pace of those meetings.
"For me, the best staff meetings are those in which there is active participation, a lot of give and take, and a consensus," said Debbie Levitz, Principal at West Elementary School in Stoughton, Massachusetts.
"I love staff meetings because I try to go into each one as a student—a student of administration and leadership," added Uwe C. Gordon, Principal at Hennessey (Oklahoma) High School. I don't have many staff meetings, but I try to make the most of each. I try to keep an open mind and ears to my faculty's messages."
Here are some more ideas:
1. Keep them as long as you have to.
2. Do not tell them everything they need to do, but then give them more time to do it.
3. Do focus on stories, design, and decision-making.
4. Do encourage the staff to do anything creative.
5. Do not single out “great teachers.” Good teaching should be celebrated. The best teachers either know they’re good or are happy to have their skills celebrated in 1-1 meetings.
6. Remember to warn them of the impending trials that will challenge them next year like never before. Nothing is more putting off at the end of a long year than telling teachers how much worse next year will be!
7. Do not force staff to watch inspirational videos. Instead, ask them to find and share their own in their networks.
8. Focus on the people, not the positions.
9. Let staff tell their personal stories.
10. Focus on teaching and learning.
11. Stick to a small handful of ideas.
12. Let them brag about one another.
13 . Promote their capacity. Do something that initiates a process that will continue after the meeting. Connect people to networks. Show them what’s possible. Light a fire.
14. Give them time to collaborate
Finally, please don’t ruin it with many rules and regulations.
References:
1. www.diycommitteeguide.org
2. www.skillsyouneed.com
3. www.wikihow.com
4. www.learningforward.org
5. www.whatis.techtarget.com/definition/round-robi
6. www.pinterest.com/aaccservelearn/meeting-ideas
7. Schools Can Change - Dale W. Lick, Karl H. Clauset, Carlene U. Murphy
8. www.educationworld.com
9. www.teachthought.com/
10. www.thefreedictionary.com/talkathon
Attention all FREE subscribers! This is your final post. But don't worry; you can keep receiving my valuable content by subscribing to my posts and podcasts as soon as possible. With exclusive access to my latest updates, you will want to take advantage of this opportunity. Act now and subscribe to stay in the loop!