I have been hearing a lot about flipping classrooms over the past year or so and more recently I have come across schools that are flipping their staff/faculty meetings.
The more I thought about it the more it seemed to make more and more sense to me. Here is why:
- We are always looking for more time to get together to talk about the real issues in our school. These issues include assessment and evaluation, rich learning tasks and looking at student work as a team. It has been quite difficult to get teachers released to have the time to talk about these things. Flipping a staff meeting allows for teachers to read through all of the information items at their leisure so we can spend the time talking about the issues we want to.
- Staff members do not want to sit and listen to be for an hour talking about things that could have just as easily been sent in a email.
- The flipped meeting will archive everything that is important that our staff members need to know about. If they forget something, need something or just want to reference something that was discussed, it is all in one place
So what I have decided to do it use a blog to 'flip' my meeting. In a perfect world I would have started this at the August Staff Meeting but for now the October one will have to do.
The first meeting is this afternoon and I am going to try it out. In the future I will be sending it out at least a few days in advance so everyone can take a look before the meeting takes place.
Any feedback would be most welcome. Especially from anyone who has already tried this in their schools!
Definitely a worthwhile investment in your time. I flipped an early faculty meeting (emergency procedures) by creating a video. The teachers appreciated that we valued their time and they were able to reference the videos in the future. The only problem: dealing with the 5 or so teachers that didn't watch the video (of course, if it were a "traditional" faculty meeting the chances are that more than 5 teachers wouldn't be paying attention). Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Reed! I think teachers certainly do appreciate the value placed on their time. Plus, there is more time to really focus on what drives school improvment. There will always be those who are not paying attention or reading the posts. I guess the question is .... Does communicating with staff this way create more engagement?
DeleteThanks for sharing. I'm glad to see others are thinking of new ways to flip environments besides classes. I flip workshops, seminars, meetings, and even a conference session. People who flip any of these environments face the challenge of "buy in" from the participants. Often, your role as the leader of the flip involves supporting the participants in how to function and succeed in this new environment because the rules have changed.
ReplyDeleteBarbi Honeycutt, Ph.D.
Flip It Consulting
flipitconsulting.com
Hi Tim:
ReplyDeleteJust wondering how your flipped staff meetings are going? I'm currently preparing for my "Back to school" staff meeting in August and would like to try some of the flipped approach. Any advice or samples you could give me?
Thanks,
Cindy
Hi Cindy! Thanks for reading and the comment. Things have been going quite well. We are able to place more of the information items on the meeting post and then deal with the items that need to be discussed in person. Next year I would like to even further use the time saved to work as a PLC and to look at student data and work to help our school improvement plan. As well, staff seem to appreciate it as it saves time at the meeting dealing with things that do not apply to everyone or things that really should just be sent out electronically. Here is an example of what I am doing:
ReplyDeletehttp://stritastaffblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/october-staff-meeting/
It is also a great place to have everything posted in one place.
Thanks and enjoy the rest of your summer!
Tim