If you have attended staff meetings, you would agree that at a certain point, you had the feeling that the meetings were just a waste of time. Sometimes you wished the meeting could have been conducted through email to save the stress.
Teachers majorly experience these unexciting situations. This article will provide more information on how to design staff meetings to be engaging and inclusive for teachers, to assist them to maximize collaboration, community, learning, and learning for the best results.
So if you are a teacher or an individual who owns an institution and want your staff meetings to be interesting, you can follow these steps:
Encourage Feedback
At school, teachers always emphasize the value of speaking and asking questions when they teach. This is a style you can also integrate into staff meetings by asking teachers for feedback on their thoughts or suggestions on the agenda. This will make the agenda be cocreated regards the teachers’ input.
To make it easy, you can give teachers feedback forms after meetings to fill anonymously. The feedback should be about whether the meeting was valuable and what can be done to enhance it. After getting the feedback, ensure to implement the response in the next meeting and you will be surprised by the level of engagement and result in the single act will inspire.
Promote Engagement
Teachers should be given the opportunity to have discussions in meetings. After staff meetings, teachers should be allowed to think collaboratively. You can also encourage them to share their thoughts about some issues or form a group where they can discuss together. Encourage them to chat, stretch, get snacks, walk, take notes and talk, etc., allows them to relax and having valuable discussions with their colleagues about their practice.
Encourage Social and Emotional Learning
The pandemic has caused a lot of disruption to the educational system and teachers are trying to meet up with the challenges or meeting students’ needs both physically and remotely.
There are discussions about supporting wellbeing and mental health, which should also be extended to teachers.
Staff meetings should be done in a way that allows teachers time to gather their thoughts, refresh their minds and connect with others. Teachers’ concerns should be considered and given the required attention.
Emotional and social learning will allow you to know there are teachers who are emotionally and physically down to help you plan staff meetings in a way to uplift the teachers. This step will allow them to find balance and it is a great way to create awareness for their realities and to show strategies that can be integrated into classrooms.
Amplify their Success
This approach is the most effective one. While in staff meetings, always try to make time for showcasing and appreciating teachers’ best practices. Their best practices might be the discussion protocols they use, lessons they teach their students, or innovative formats they utilize for assessments. Having few minutes to show their colleagues how they do things to motivate them to try their new methods.’
Conclusion
These strategies discussed in this article will go a long way to enhance values shared in staff meetings. Staff meetings can bring collaboration, can be fun and uplifting with the right plans.
