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Could your staff meetings use a zap of energy? Do you want more participation and less reluctance when you gather your team together? Good teachers know that fun, emotion, meaningful connections, and high expectations drive learning and committed attention to a task. This sourcebook overflows with strategies, activities, and resources designed to bring these all-important qualities into the faculty meeting.
Teacher leaders will discover the keys to improved collaboration, teamwork, and productivity - and new tools to improve group processes. By modeling best practice at staff meetings, leaders also give their teachers new engagement tools that they can put directly to use in their classrooms. The authors demonstrate how to reduce the "chore" factor of meetings by:
. Lightening the atmosphere with creative approaches
. Starting with purpose-focused theme music and other energizers
. Building relationships within the team that transform the school culture
. Overcoming barriers to productivity
. Rewarding and appreciating staff in innovative ways
. Closing the meeting with a bang--and a plan
As the energy from your staff meetings ripples through the school, every teacher and classroom will experience the motivation and focus that you create!
About the author
Sheila Eller has worked in a multitude of educational settings during her career. In addition to her current position as a principal in the Stillwater, Minnesota, School District, she also has served as a principal in other schools in Minnesota and Illinois, as a university professor, as a special education teacher, as a Title 1 math teacher, and as a self-contained classroom teacher in Grades 1-4. She is a member of the executive board of the Minnesota Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and has been a regional president of the Minnesota Association of Elementary School Principals.
Eller is a regular presenter at the ASCD national conventions, sharing her expertise on the topic of effective staff meetings and multiage instruction. While serving as a professor at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois, she worked on the development team for a classroom mathematics series that was adopted by several districts in the region. Her classroom and instructional techniques were featured in a video that was produced as a complement to this series. She works with educators to develop energized staff meetings, school improvement initiatives, multiage teaching strategies, employee supervision, and other teaching and learning content areas. She has completed advanced coursework in educational administration and supervision at St. Cloud State University and holds a master's degree from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and a bachelor's degree from Iowa State University.
