Staff Meeting: Collaboration 2.08.16

Focus: To open up communication across the whole school in regards to collaboration between staff members and establishing goals for moving forward. What is going well and what do we need to move away from?

Time	Agenda Item	Minutes	Actions
10 mins	Activity: What does an effective meeting look like? Question will be written up on the door as staff enter along with instructions on how to answer it. Staff will write their answers on post-it-notes and organise them in categories on a piece paper placed on the wall. We will then select the majority and make this our focus for our meeting.	There were three main trends identified: Time management and keeping to the agenda Everyone having a voice Having a system in place to work through important conversations Time management was our focus for this meeting.
5 mins	Explain the Grid to Understanding Communication and Behaviour (give examples) are our two foci in regards to staff relationships, rather than the children. We are looking at current examples of what we want to ‘move away’ from and ‘move towards’.
10 mins	Team Activity Teams fill in a grid each and then choose top two for each section. Team members will then become experts on a section each	Teams did a great job at this and had a chance to have some very important conversations.	Charlotte's thoughts: Our team felt that relationships were most effective when teams had been stable over time. We realised this is not always possible from a management point of view. We also discussed using personality tests to create more understanding between staff; and the possibility of occasional staff get togethers (e.g. once a term, as part of a staff meeting).
5 mins	Experts Activity Each team member will meet up with other staff members who are experts on the same section. They will each share their ideas and then choose two final ideas to go on our school Grid to Understanding.	A range of different opinions came up, some even complete opposites. This really showcased our range of strengths and weaknesses in a positive light.
5 mins	Explain ‘Dampening and Amplifying’ When we have our two chosen ideas for each section we will explain dampening (what we want to reduce) and amplifying (what we want to increase).
5 mins	Experts Activity Discuss ideas for moving forward, so either dampening or amplifying your chosen ideas. Decide on the best solutions as a group.	There was fantastic, robust dialogue all across the room. It was a safe environment for individuals from all teams to share their ideas and really got everything one thinking.
10 mins	Team Activity Share with your team the main solutions from your expert groups for moving forward. As a team, come up with team goals as your take home focus. One thing to move away from and one thing to move towards.	After talking with everyone there were two main goals across the teams: Dampen ‘I’ and ‘my’ statements and move towards ‘we’ like in our values. Jarred suggested that living and breathing collaboration in the hubs will help promote this language.	All staff are going to try and stop using terms such as ‘I’ and ‘my’. Sandy has also suggested that we really start moving away from using the terms ‘class’ and ‘classroom’. We have been mindful of this in our blogs and discussions with children over the past fortnight.