Why Staff Meetings Matter

... a topic guaranteed to elicit groans from all over the edu-bloggersphere. One of my mentors told the story the other day of when he was a first year teacher in one of his first staff meetings, and a veteran teacher pulled him aside and said, "I hope I die in a faculty meeting so that I won't be able to tell the difference." And certainly, almost every teacher (and most administrators) can speak about the staff meeting That.Would.Not.End. They aren't fun. They aren't useful, and they often make us feel like we're losing time off of the end of our lives.

But we're in the middle of two weeks of faculty workshops (our term for staff meetings... feels more like what we do,) and as much as anything else, we're finding that we're running out of time to discuss everything we want to. Some of that is because we're still building, but it's also an atmosphere that I hope we can foster over the long-haul.

So what should a culture of "faculty workshops" do? Simply put -- it should mean that a faculty is greater than the sum of its parts.

That's why it's important to constantly look at the way you live your mission statement in your classes. That's why it's important to talk about how we assess. That's why it's important to read articles together, build wikis together, agree on school policies together. That's why it's important to take the time to set goals together. And that's why it's important that we find ways for all faculty members to have a chance to speak to these ideas.