CHRIS
TOY
Diary #18
Teachers
Like Sharing the
Big Picture at Faculty Meeting
At this month's
staff meeting I tried something I hadn't done before. We will be
doing it again!
I realized that I was the only one in the entire school who had the "big picture" of what is going on in every classroom. I decided to use the entire January staff meeting to have the teachers share, in small groups, what they were doing with students.
I set it up by having each of the teaching teams, 6th, 7th, 8th, and the unified arts teams meet with one of the other teams in 20-minute blocks of time to discuss that day's activities.
The feedback was extraordinary! Several veteran teachers told me that it was one of the best staff meetings they had attended in their recollection. Others related that it was very interesting and helpful to hear what students at other grade levels and subject areas were learning. A new teacher said that until this meeting she had not been able to remember the names and classes of all the staff members since she was quickly introduced around the first day of school.
Another piece of feedback from teachers was how good it was to have a staff meeting that was not filled with announcements, administrative details, and lists. I'll have to remember that these aspects of our monthly meetings may need to be kept at minimum.
One last comment shared by a teacher was how pleasant it was to have a meeting where we didn't try to solve some complex unsolvable problem, or debate some deep philosophical point that no one could agree on. It was generally agreed that sharing what we do is something we should do again, and soon.
Compliments about our special education approach
Last week our school system underwent its five-year special education review by the state department of education. It went very well. I received a great piece of feedback from the auditor during my interview with her. She said it was clear that all the the middle school teachers seemed to have very similar philosophies in their approaches to working with students. This reminded me of some earlier discussions we had in faculty meetings around the mission of our school and meeting students' needs.
She also was very impressed by how we incorporated our special educators into our teaching teams. Each grade level has its own special educator as part of the team. This configuration creates a situation where all the students belong to all the teachers. There isn't the sense that there are "your students" and "our students" when it comes to special education. The auditor described our approach as an exemplary practice. It was good to hear that the staff seems to have a shared vision and that our organizational structure fits well with our mission.
