Research

=RESEARCH=

The following is from our investigation of how other schools incorporate meetings into their schedule. Some of these are direct responses from our contacts.

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St. Mary's of Lynn

We are looking at the same thing for next school year. We are thinking of having an early release day once a week and to use that time for club, activities, teacher meetings, etc… Each week it would be designated for one of those I just listed, so PD would be the first Tuesday, Clubs and activities the 2nd, etc.. Nothing set in stone at this point just discussions.

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North Reading Middle School

Whole school: once a month

Department: once a month

Grade (4 teachers all subjects with same students): 3 days out of a 6

days cycle.

We have team leaders on every team who go to one more meeting a month

and are responsible for relaying information and conducting the

meetings.

We have department leaders who do the same thing but are in charge of

the all grades in the same department. (6-8 grade science for example)

They go to an extra meeting and relay the info back to us at our dept

meetings.

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At Excel High School we only had weekly content dept meetings that lasted for a period (about an hour). We met as a whole staff once a month during afterschool PD. There were no grade level meetings.

At Fenway High School we met as a content dept for 2 hours I think. We also had a weekly half hour whole staff meetings and we had house meetings every week for about an hour.

At Boston Green Academy we met in content dept every week for about an hour. We also met as a full staff and as a house every week for an hour or more but the schedule was not clear (changed every week).

In general every school should be meeting weekly in some form or another. You need to strike a balance between content dept, full staff and grade level/house. I would identify what your school needs to work on and then come up with a meeting schedule based on that. If your school wants to establish curriculum and exchange instructional practices then dept meetings would help with that. If your school needs work on grade specific issues like college apps, SAT prep, establishing uniform policies per grade level, etc then house/grade level meetings would make sense. If your school wants to work on developing a clear long term school-wide plan, improving school culture, etc then full faculty meetings and break out sessions might be helpful.

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I'm at Fenway. We have a full staff meeting once a week for 30 min. We have "house" meetings (like grade level, but it spans three grade levels because we all teach the same segment of students for 3 years) for 1.5 hours every week. We have department meetings 2 hours every week. Meetings feel necessary but also are a little tedious at times.

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1. What is the name of your school?

Burke High school

2. Approximately how often do you as a school have a faculty/staff wide meeting? For how long?

- We have 3 meetings a week. One for our 10th grade academy, 1 to talk about students (student support meetibg)and one to talk about our practice (plc or professional learning community). These meetings are built into our schedule and are 40 mins long. We also have a once a month pd after school for an hour and a half.

3. Approximately how often does your department meet? For how long?

- Our science department is suppose to meet once a month after school but we never do. We only meet when we need to order stuff.

4. Approximately how often does your grade level meet? For how long?

-Our grade level meets once a week for 40 minutes during the school day.

5. Do you think that your meetings are helpful, necessary, superfluous?

I think our grade level meeting are helpfull b/c it is where our admin tells us about everything that is going on in the building and what things are coming up. It is also a place where we talk about things that we want to implement in our 10th grade academy. Our student support meetings are useful b/c we talk about our kids and discuss intervention. Our professional learning Community meetings are less helpful but could be if we had a better focuse of what to work on and how.

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1. Mary Lyon Pilot High School

2. Every other Tuesday morning the entire staff meets for 45 minutes. Once a month the entire staff has professional development for 1 hr and the students have early release.

3. Department meetings happen formally once a month for 1 hr on the same day students have early release. Otherwise department meetings are less formal -- science usually has a 30 minute meeting once a week and then additionally 1-1.5 hours every two weeks with middle school science teachers.

4. Grade level teams formally meet every other Tuesday morning for 45 minutes. Sometimes impromptu grade level meetings will occur if urgent things come up that need to be discussed in person.

5. The meetings are definitely necessary, and helpful as they give us time to discuss issues, plan action steps we can all implement, and then update on the outcomes/adjust our steps/etc.

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New Mission High School: Entire Staff: 1 X every 6 weeks for a professional development Department: 1 X a week during a scheduled 1 hour slot during the school day. Grade Level: 2 X a week, after school for an hour. These meetings discussed individual students and also problems seen across the board. Each meeting had a liason that would report to a liason (department chair or grade level head meeting once every other week)

Tech Boston Lower Academy 6-9 Entire Staff: 2X a month for 30 min -1 hour Department: 1X a month for a few hours. (PD) Grade Level: 1X a week. After school or before school for an 1. Every teacher was required to attend 1 grade level meeting. Meetings were scheduled on different days with minutes and a way for teachers ont in attendance to express concerns.

At both places, I found the grade level meetings incredibly helpful. It allowed teachers to collaborate, create 1 parent contact about teacher/behavior concerns, and also establish and reinforce consistent procedures for instruction so that all the teachers were on the same page. I found this team approach was most helpful in making sure students didnt "fall between the cracks."

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