Shifting Your Meeting Culture: Making Your Meetings More Engaging and Active

Purpose & objective

Principal Bobby Pollicino and technology coordinator Stacey Roshan have worked closely together to reimagine the format of traditional faculty meetings by integrating edtech tools that enhance face-to-face interactions. Their collaborative effort is meant to inspire staff by modeling best-practices in teaching and learning through the format and design of faculty meetings.

Central to this change has been a shift in the delivery of the nuts-and-bolts type announcements. By having staff complete an interactive presentation or video ahead of time, meetings can be spent engaging in conversation and purposeful, fun activities. The newfound face-to-face time can be spent having faculty engage in teamwork activities, cross-department conversations, and to allow teachers to lead sessions showcasing what is working in the classroom. Key in all of this is a shift from having the “expert” at the front of the room delivering information for the majority of the meeting and moving to a more active meeting environment.

In this session, Bobby will focus on helping participants understand how to drive the culture-shift and get faculty buy-in by sharing his process for implementing change. Stacey will share how to strategically choose tech tools to use in an all-staff meeting environment and how to design follow-up work with departments and individual teachers to implement these same changes in the classroom setting. Their team approach infuses tech tools such as Pear Deck, Flipgrid, and EDpuzzle along with strategies based on Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and workshops lead by the Leadership + Design team.

If we want teachers to create engaging, active classrooms, it is our responsibility to model that change. This session is meant to inspire this transformation and give participants concrete examples that they can take back to their schools.

Outline

* Introduction: why we took this on (5 minutes)
There is always more to cover than time allows, here is a way to address that

* Collaboration process: how to tap into this; building relationships with your staff (5 minutes)
How do principals create an environment where staff is comfortable coming to you with ideas?

* The process of choosing the technology and following-up with teachers on how to use it (5 minutes)

* Implementation: (15 minutes)
Tutorial walkthrough; how this process unfolds - walkthrough creating a Pear Deck and making it interactive
Share with participants what a finalized version of the presentation looks like
Share multiple ideas for integrating Flipgrid into staff meetings
-- ie: forward reflection (Pear Deck that leads up to this; Google Doc that follows this);
-- ie: opening meeting challenge to help staff team-build and have fun
Intentionality and ongoing dialogue -- when and where to infuse the technology; it's important to be consistent but also flexible to meet the needs of the team

* Question: what happens at your meetings that you can offload prior? (5 minutes)

Feedback received in the process of making the change (5 minutes)
This does require pre-work on the part of staff (they have to do something before the meeting); however, by effectively using the face-to-face time, faculty meetings become more

* Making it a regular part of the routine: (10 minutes)
Being flexible within a consistent approach
This is going to require more time and energy on your part; pre-work and post-work

* Q&A (10 minutes)

Supporting research

Why Active Learning Makes a Difference
https://www.peardeck.com/active-learning/

What’s the Most Important Part of a District Digital Transformation? https://medium.com/inspired-ideas-prek-12/whats-the-most-important-part-of-a-district-digital-transformation-9ef150b1e1cb

Plan a Better Meeting with Design Thinking
https://hbr.org/2018/02/plan-a-better-meeting-with-design-thinking

Should You Call That Meeting?
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs184/1102752268498/archive/1120129756575.html

Simon Sinek, Start with Why
https://startwithwhy.com/