Differentiated Faculty Meetings

They come like clockwork and for some reason, they have to happen on a Monday. You know the drill. Finish your dismissal duties, rush to the bathroom if you have time, and play on your phone for an hour and occasionally look up to make smirks to your #BFFTeacherFriend.

Wait, I meant to listen to the exciting faculty meeting presentation. No, I didn’t….definitely not.

It’s time to change up the monotony of faculty meetings. If you’re an admin or a teacher, you have the ability to impact the school climate with simple switches of implementation. Here are some ideas for your next faculty meeting.

 

As much as fidget spinners took the calm out of the classroom, quiet fidgets work great for the classroom. I attended a faculty meeting once where a box of fidgets were placed in front of me. I was going to town in that box and it kept me off my phone and listening to the meeting. Give it a try!

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I’m not trying to tell you how to run your school, but as a teacher, one of the best practices that can change the climate is to empower the teachers. Help them feel valued. Teachers are a wealth of knowledge and sometimes we hide in our classroom trying to survive. All you need is  a way to get us out of the room. Thoughts:

1. Did a teacher attend a training? Ask them to present! Tidbit: let them know before the training so they can take good notes.

2. Before faculty meetings, ask teachers if they wold present on a topic (even the non-principal favorites, yall!) Make everyone feel valued!

Here’s the kicker. Hopefully, you have 3-5 teachers that want to present. Now create a schedule and let your teachers pick which session they want to attend. Just a 20-minute session and they pick two presenters each. Teachers are adults and will gravitate towards the one that will be worth their time based on their strengths and weaknesses.

This one is my favorite, I’m so sad it wasn’t my original idea, ha! The principal at my school had a ton of information to give us (housekeeping, of course). She decided to place her presentation in a Nearpod to make it interactive! What is Nearpod? Watch this quick video here.

Nearpod is a presentation platform with the ability to add features such as an interactive whiteboard, polls, quizzes, and open-ended responses just to name a few.

She created her presentation and “Nearpodized it” How do you do that: Watch this video here. 

Need a quick way to let your faculty decide on a plan of action? Place a poll in your Nearpod Presentation.

Want to start the meeting off positively? Let them share their wins of the month using the collaborate feature.

You can do it! Live stream your meeting and allow teachers to work in their own room while listening. Still want them to participate? Create an account on Todays Meet. Todays Meet is a backchannel that enables discussion during real-time presentations.

This is a great way to ask questions during your live faculty meeting and share the response back to the entire school.

Record yourself using your iPhone or Quicktime (if you have a Mac). Upload the video to Google Drive and share the link out. You can delete the video when the next month rolls around so you don’t reach storage capacity. Ask a question somewhere in the middle of the video so you can keep teachers accountable.

With all of these ideas, it only works if you share the excitement and give teachers a buy-in. Why is this change for the better? If it doesn’t work the first time will we all be willing to try again?

Communicate the process of whatever new tactic you decide to implement.

If you’re a teacher reading this. Comment below. What has your admin done during a faculty meeting that deserves to be on this list?

Admins, what have you done?

Teachers and admins, what is your ideal faculty meeting?

I hope this was a Peppy Zesty idea for you!

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