Elisa MacDonald is an avid watcher of meetings in schools.
She watches where teachers and the lead facilitator sit. She observes how an administrator or lead teacher starts the meeting. She pays special attention to the agenda: Could this meeting have been an email? Or did the group leave with some ideas on how to manage classrooms better and improve student learning?
MacDonald has distilled years of observations into two best-selling books, The Skillful Team Leader and Intentional Moves: How Skillful Team Leaders Impact Learning, which guide leaders on how to be intentional about why they ask other educators to meet. Her books were part of a professional development reading list curated by Education Week, based on reader recommendations.
Meetings are less about “facilitating an agenda,” and more about “leading learning for adults,” MacDonald told Education Week in an interview.
“As soon as we reframe it as leading professional learning for continuous improvement, now I’m looking at that meeting in terms of, what’s the learning that’s coming out of this meeting—the learning for teachers, and the impact [this] group of educators is having on the students that they serve?” said MacDonald.
Still, teachers have a full plate of teaching and administrative tasks. To pile meetings on top of that means there’s less planning time or opportunities to take a break, so, naturally, teachers want fewer meetings in their schedule. But if meetings become learning spaces that help teachers improve their practice, they will be keen to attend, MacDonald said.
MacDonald has devised several best practices for school meeting facilitators. Here are a few key takeaways in a downloadable guide on what makes a productive meeting.
“A Guide to Making Meetings Intentional”
