Yesterday, we had our first divisional faculty meeting since August. Our busy Head of School search left us all weary and a canceled Sept meeting was just the ticket. (I flipped the major content instead using youtube and showbie.) I wanted our short time together yesterday to be focused on learning and felt affirmed in my agenda choices by reading this blog from Glenn Robbins. We always start with a sharing stories time (as modeled by Matthew Gould at Norwood) and we had some hearty laughs. As we are are in report card comment season, we went through an exercise inspired by Angela Maiers wherein we identified a child who was struggling for us (on an index card) and named their strengths. This yielded graceful silence as our teachers put such thought into affirming their students value.
THE BEST PART (for me) was our small group time. Teachers broke into subject area groups to share ideas in their content areas. They had time to TALK to one another in a professional context. As I walked the hallways, I heard engaged conversation, energy, and teachers taking the initiative to lead their own learning. Colleagues were the experts. Ideas were shared. It made me simply GIDDY. It made me feel like this:
As we walk our journey as educators, we simply must have time to talk through practice with colleagues. If I can do nothing else for my faculty but make this time and keep the extra stuff for an email, I will totally do it. I hope they will hold me accountable to this and never feel this way after one of our meetings:
Onward, friends!
Teach2Connect 