Introduction
In order to complete this activity, I interviewed two principals, JM and NH following our most recent high school faculty meeting. I also observed the meeting and, afterwards, interviewed two teachers, JE and JC. though our discussions were varied and far-ranging, I tried to keep them focused on how they all felt the time of the meeting was spent, specifically considering if it was focused on the accomplishment of the school’s stated mission and student achievement.
Findings
I’m afraid that nobody feels we’re doing very well.
When I asked one of the teachers if he thought the time he spent at faculty meetings was well-invested, he actually laughed. He explained that “everybody” knows that meetings are a waste of time and that hadn’t been to a productive faculty meeting in years. The second teacher I spoke with said similar things though she didn’t seem to be quite as cynical about it.
Surprisingly, both of the principals gave me similar answers. JM told me that faculty meetings aren’t really about acacomplishing the mission, rather, he said, they are for “nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty,” meaning details of policy and procedure. When I told him that I was going to have to produce an agenda for a faculty meeting that “engages all staff in the fulfillment of the school’s mission,” he became interested and volunteered to help me with the project.
The Agenda
Our school’s mission says that we seek to, “create a nurturing, respectful and academically inspiring environment in which faculty guide students to attain their maximum potential, become lifelong learners and thinkers, develop high moral standards, respect diversity, and make meaningful contributions as citizens.” When you consider that the agenda for our most recent meeting included a discussion of Discipline Referral Forms and a preview of interruptions to the regular schedule over the coming weeks, it’s easy to see how we lose sight of the mision. However, what JM and I realized was that, with the right approach and perspective, these need not be true.
We chose to keep the same two items on the agenda for our imaginary meeting but to attempt to frame them in mission-specific language. So that, for example, instead of a discussion of Discipline Forms, JM should have chaired a workshop on “Using the Discipline Point System to maintain high moral standards.” Because, once we recognize that teaching morality is a mission-specific goal, then the obligation to maintain discipline becomes a moral imperitave that our mission demainds of us; it’s just as critical as teaching arithmatic!
The same is true of alerting faculty to changes in the schedule. If our mission demands that we help students make “meaningful contributions as citizens,” then the interruption of our regular class schedule for assemblies on charitable programs or field trips to do service learning activities become less burdonsome and more integral to the work we’re doing in class.
WIth the right approach, faculty members can begin to see themselves less as specialists working around a series of obstacles and more as partners with each other in accomplishing a grand goal. When a faculty works hard, it can become so distracted by what JM called the “nuts and bolts” of teaching that it becomes blind to the whole picture. That’s what a school mission is for: it can be used to paint all activities with the same brush, reminding us all that we are in fact using our time to do something important together.