Yesterday's Elementary Division Meeting

Ever wonder what happens when K-5 faculty get together for a division meeting? Here's a window into that world, in the form of a narrative about yesterday's meeting.

We began by reviewing our groundrules:

Everyone participates*

Different opinions are welcome

Limit side conversations

Respect time#

Maintain your sense of humor

We review, and re-affirm, these ground rules at the beginning of each meeting, in order to "ground" us in a shared space of expectations. The * denotes that active participation can look very different for different people, from talking to listening to note taking, and that we need to put aside any judgement about how others are choosing to participate, and also participate to the best and most that we are each able to do. The # means both to be on, and end on time; and, to monitor one's own "airtime", or how much one is speaking, and allow others the time and space to speak as well.

The conversation then moved on to housekeeping. Among the items we discussed were celebrating the successes of Back to School Night, updates on ongoing admissions, information sharing about progress report language and class calendars, and previews of both the 10/5 faculty meeting and 10/7 professional development day.

A presentation from MaryBeth Ventura on the Student Success Team process followed, since Jodie Barton, our K-5 learning support coordinator, was unable to attend. Jodie and MaryBeth have clarified and streamlined the process that was developed last year, in the form of 8 phases:

1. initiation/consultation

2. gathering data

3. sharing data

4. initial intervention

5. review

6. parental intake

7. collaborative SST meeting

8. creating the Student Success Plan

From here, the conversation flowed very easily into the social and recess facilitation work that Kate Klaire is spearheading, as teachers wanted to understand the intersection of Kate's work and that of Jodie and MaryBeth. We clarified that Kate's work is a curricular component; she is working with all teachers and classrooms, and from this, may do some 1:1 work with a particular student. This in turn may lead to initiating the SST process, or it may happen parallel to the process, in which case Kate's perspective would get pulled in as another data point about the child. The other major aspect of Kate's work right now is helping classrooms create a faculty council to develop consistent recess agreements for our entire campus to follow, and we worked through some of the logistics of this work.

The meeting concluded with a conversation led by Nancy Nash about extending the purpose of the council beyond creating recess agreements, and using it as a mechanism to have students take agency over creating and solving other programmatic elements. For example, Nancy would like to work with the council to develop a consistent and coherent approach to doing community service, whether inside or outside the school.

Although we had several at the beginning of the year, division-wide meetings only occur once a month for the Elementary division as the year goes on. I'll try to remember to share after each one, as they are one of the important ways in which we build our community.