Rethinking assemblies

Yesterday after school I met with Chris P., Mike S., Julianne, and Kate to discuss our K-8 assemblies. We began to hold regular assemblies last year, but the purpose seemed not to go beyond learning a few songs to sing together. So, I asked the teachers who played instruments and lead the singing at the assemblies to meet to consider how we could make the assemblies more intentional and meaningful. While I knew I could come up with something reasonable on my own, it's more fun and interesting to work with my colleagues, and I believe this is a shift that will benefit from being consensus-driven rather than imposed from above.

Our discussion began by considering the question, what is the goal of having assemblies? We decided upon four worthy goals; to build community, to strengthen school culture, to inform each other about what's happening in the different classrooms, and to celebrate successes and give appreciations. From there, we discussed what structure should assemblies have to achieve these goals? After some disagreement, and the recognition that we needed to have something that would engage 190+ students, was low-impact on faculty, was authentic and not contrived, and would only last 15-20 minutes, we came upon a template that can be replicated at each assembly; an introduction and framing from Mitch, a brief "showcase of learning" of recent work by one of the classrooms, and then a song. If no class has signed up for a particular assembly's showcase, we can draw from a list of other elements we generated, including skits to illustrate that month's Social Rules for Kids, or having a student council select a few children to read their writing as a school-wide publishing party.

We then determined how often do we need to have assemblies to achieve these goals - once a month. After looking through the calendar and scheduling dates for assemblies for the remainder of the year, we considered what songs should we introduce to the school that support these goals? We decided to give each remaining month a theme (November = gratitude, February = social justice, April = environmentalism, etc), and to ask Eve Decker, our K-6 music and 6-8 drama teacher (who very much wanted to be involved in this process, but was unable to attend the meeting), to develop a list of songs that we will teach in both the music class and the regular classrooms. The meeting ended with a discussion about what action steps to take to meet these goals - presentations to faculty at next week's division meetings, creating a brief form to help teachers brainstorm how they want to structure a "showcase of learning", and creating a songbook for the entire year.