The first few days


For many principals like myself, it is so important to start the school year off on the right foot. You definitely want positive feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. I try to keep the housekeeping to a minimum because nothing kills enthusiasm faster than a long meeting that could have been an email (I actually have a document called 'it could have been an email' that serves as a introductory handbook with timelines on when staff should aim to familiarize themselves with certain items). For me, I also want to start the process of building my Team on day one. I am very conscious of the experience of the first day as I want to try and hit the right notes for both new staff and returning. To this end, activities for me have to be Team Builders and not Icebreakers. 


Icebreakers are fine if you are bringing people together for a short time, and they have their place. They are meant to help people to be more comfortable in the setting they are in. They are also one of the activities that teachers can dread the most. I personally think they are not a productive use of time. Trading icebreakers for team-builders is much better at bringing staff together. Icebreakers are superficial by nature in that they are meant to help put people at ease. Though when faced with a question like 'what is the theme song of your life' many of us spend more time thinking up an answer than listening to everyone else. Team builders are meant to both foster connection as well as allow members to discover each other’s strengths. In order to be effective though, they need to be linked to a larger purpose that will become leveraged. For example, we have done scavenger hunt orientations for our staff, since they need to orient with policies and our building, but we organize it in small teams to make it a team-builder. This turns the activity into an authentic and not an artificial purpose that links to a larger purpose, which is acclimatizing and introducing new staff to our building.


Staff Meetings


For me, I feel that staff meetings have two important components: Co-constructed Norms, and Agendas.


Co-constructed norms are a good way to help keep things moving and give everyone a safe space to bring forward ideas. They help to establish psychological safety which is critical for any organization to growth. The current ones at my school are:



Norms are constantly on display on my agendas and I try to refer to them. These were originally co-constructed and are a good starting place each year so staff can add, delete or refine them. Ideally, the group itself helps to take responsibility for them and keep them in mind as participants. One of the norms that I have seen added to some is:



In this way it encourages participants to commit to think about their impact when they contribute to the group. 


Another thing we have put in place is to add the Gentle Nudge, I feel we are drifting from our norms. Oftentimes when someone violates the agreed on norms, it can feel uncomfortable knowing what to say to a colleague. In this way, the script is written so it takes pressure of trying to think of what to say out of the equation. For our group, we have established that if someone voices this, then the speaker needs to stop and reflect before continuing. It is not a time to question or argue, it is a time to respect how the person is feeling. We can absolutely have the conversation later about how and why it was felt the norms were violated, but we do not do that with our group. The addition of this has helped us to keep our norms fairly well and makes our time together more productive. To be clear, we still disagree and have strong opinions on some things, but it helps us to maintain psychological safety in a group.


Agendas are the other component to successful staff meetings. There are a lot of moving parts and concerns that staff often have and it can be tough to address everything. An agenda helps everyone understand the purpose of the meeting as well as guides the conversation so that items that need addressing have their time. It also gives people a reasonable expectation of the duration. No one wants to be in a meeting that goes on for what feels like forever after a full day of teaching, possibly with supervision duty and no breaks! 


Anything that can be a memo or email, should be. Bringing people together for the purpose of sending one-way communication is not a good use of anyone’s time. One of the ways that I have found effective at minimizing this is that on the agenda I put ‘memo items’ on the bottom. This ensures that they get seen, even by those you feel may not always read their emails. 


I personally do not love an ‘Other business ’ spot on the agenda. I find that it defeats the purpose of keeping an agenda in a lot of ways. I know that some staff like having an open slot on the agenda to discuss things on their mind. To accommodate this, we send the agenda in advance and if staff members feel they have a concern that requires everyone on staff to discuss, they can come by the office to discuss it. I figure if it isn’t worth someone taking a few minutes of their day to come and discuss it with me, it’s not worth everyone’s time to discuss it as a group. The conversation is better than a simple email since it helps me to get my head around the issue as well. It also helps to screen things that may not be appropriate for a full staff meeting. For example, if an issue only applied to a single grade level, then not all staff are involved. If it was an issue about a particular teacher having trouble with a class and people wanting to help (a laudable goal) it also highlights the struggle of a teacher that is not appropriate in front of their peers. If something is so pressing that the staff has to talk about it but it can’t be done unless in front of a group, then there is a whole different problem afoot. Best case scenario they do not feel comfortable voicing concerns and that is a failure of leadership on your part. Worst case scenario, they want to spring it on you to make a decision before you have had time to think it through. Either way, there is little to be gained from it.


We also start each staff meeting with a 10 minute discussion where we share best practices with our table partners. We often provide a prompt to reflect on to help get the conversation going and use visibly random groups to sort staff. Administration also takes part in the activity. It is a good, low risk way for staff to learn about each other's work which contributes to Collective Teacher Efficacy. 


I have in recent years put a space there for sharing time but it is clear that it has a time limit, which is in place to respect everyone’s time. I am clear and upfront about that. I used to put on a timer but I feel this sent the wrong message so now I just keep an eye on it. It is also clear that it is a space for sharing and not a space for decision-making. This way, there is an avenue for staff who feel they want to share with the group, but there is no pressure on me as an administrator to respond with an answer or a solution.


Other Meetings


Meetings for the sake of meetings are a time suck. They devalue a teacher’s time and also devalue all of your other meetings. I have canceled many meetings and staff meetings if I felt they were not required at the time or if they were simply sharing information which could be an email. 


For other meetings I usually try to consider two things:


A meeting should have a clear purpose. If you look at hourly salaries of staff, some meetings can be really expensive. For example, if you have a meeting of a half dozen staff, is it worth the few hundreds dollars spent in salaries for what was accomplished? To be clear, I am not advocating getting rid of all meetings, but encouraging reflections if they are worth doing. We have Teaching Team meetings that are definitely worth the time as they are student and solution focused. The conversations and follow up enhances student learning and success which ought to be a priority of any school. 


The other consideration is who should be there. If you are doing a grade level meeting, then you may not need teachers who do not teach those grade levels. If you want to get a good cross section of voices, then it may be worth inviting teachers who are both for the idea as well as those against the idea to help represent your staff. Depending on what you are doing, sometimes you may want a group of go-getters to launch a project or initiative. The point is, when you consider the purpose of what you are doing, who needs to be there should feed into that. Ideally though, it is good not to simply keep getting the same people since you do not want to overload them either. 


In Closing


Teachers are some of the busiest people I know. Protecting and maximizing the time that we do have to meet is incredibly important if we want it to be effective.