Gathering With Intention to Maximize Staff Meetings

For district and building leadership, this is the perfect time to reflect on your all-staff gatherings. Specifically, really think about the when, where, who, how, and why of your gatherings. 

Before you read on, take a look back through your district calendar and answer these questions: 

• When did you gather? (How often? How long?)
• Where did you gather?
• Who was invited/required to be there? Who was there?
• How was the gathering conducted?
• Why did you meet? What did your group accomplish when you gathered? (Dig deep and be honest.)

With the responses to those questions in mind, consider the following points.

Why Are You Gathering?

The first thing you need to establish is why. This is so logical that we sometimes forget to articulate it. We fall into habits and expectations and just go through the motions without digging into why we gather.

So, why did you bring your staff together? In The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, event organizer and author Priya Parker notes that every gathering needs a clear purpose. Just as educators articulate the purpose for each lesson, so too should each staff gathering have a clear reason for meeting.  

And please, save the precious in-person time for tasks that necessitate meeting in person. If it can be sent in an email or a video message, do that. 

I’ll ask again: Why are you bringing all these people together? What is the purpose of your back-to-school gathering(s)? Your staff meetings? Why are you bringing all the staff together? 

Below are some not-great reasons to gather: 

• We have in-service days to use.
• We have stuff to discuss.
• We need to learn this material.
• We should probably see each other. 

Here are better reasons to gather: 

• To provide staff an opportunity to get to know each other as people, not just educators.
• To spark inspiration and innovation with new ideas so that staff are energized for the year.
• To ensure that staff—teachers, secretaries, cooks, janitors, admin, librarians—understand how our building team is interconnected with one mission: to support every student to be their best self. 

Take a moment and write down a few goals. If you could accomplish anything with your staff, what would it be? You have a team of people dedicated to serving students. What would you love to accomplish with them? Why do you need them to gather?

Guided by your why—your purpose—you can now specify who needs to gather, where you should gather, and how the gathering should function to achieve your why.

Who needs to Gather?

Who needs to be there: New staff? Certain departments? Those who teach, serve, or support a specific grade level? While gathering everyone is necessary at times, depending on your why, gathering in small groups has several advantages. 

First, you’ll be able to dig into your purpose with clarity and specificity with those who actually need to be there. This will help you and your team accomplish more in less time. Second, staff will see that you honor their time and respect them as professionals. When they’re asked to attend, their expertise and input are needed, further increasing meeting focus and productivity. 

Might a couple of people complain? Feel left out? Of course. Because a couple of people are going to complain no matter how brilliant your plan is. Don’t deplete your energy and the energy of your team catering to those folks. Instead, extend invitations to specific people, and, when appropriate, let your team know that anyone is welcome to sit in and audit a gathering. While they may observe, they may not disrupt the gathering.

Alternatively, anticipate those complaints and extend special invitations with a unique function. For example, empower a staffer to be the Connector of Dots (bridging information between meetings), the Anthropologist (tasked with observing and noting how people are reacting and feeling to help improve the meeting), the Historian (sharing past practices and historical connections). Use those staffers productively, and help head off potential negativity. 

Where and How are you gathering?

Now that you know your why and who, you can play with your where and how. A group of 12 requires a different space than a group of 200. If your goal is to knock out all those required informative sessions, how might you do so in a way that simultaneously honors your why and your who?

Certainly the high school auditorium is a great resource, but what about meeting in the band/choir room? Or at a local coffee shop? Why not connect with an area sports team and meet at a local stadium? A community pool for dive–into–professional development (PD) (modeled after drive-in movies)? While these might feel out there, unprofessional, or impossible, consider how each of those spaces shifts the feeling, dynamic, and purpose of your gathering. Again, when you start with your why, you find the where to fit. 

How you gather and what you do with gathered attendees similarly depends on your why. Want staff to connect and build relationships? Don’t sit them in an auditorium that limits movement and has an inherent presenter-presentee dynamic. Instead, meet on the stage or in the gym so that people can move and connect. Want them to build relationships with students? Take the time to go on community walks and physically visit the areas of town in which students live. 

By keeping your eyes on the why, you can shift your where and how expectations to execute your purpose. 

Ideas for Back-To-School Gatherings

Each of the following back-to-school suggestions assumes that there are some practical to-dos that must occur during that time but also provides flexibility to curate unique and powerful experiences for your team.

Team scavenger hunt: Group staff (educators or everyone) into teams. Teams might be based on grade level or content or might mix teachers of all experience levels. Or perhaps those new to the district are all one team and have slightly different objectives than the five- to 10-year staffers, who have different objectives than the 10-plus-year staffers. If custodians, bus drivers, administrative staff, and cafeteria staff also participate, their tasks might also be different, but all the groups compete against each other.

Give each team their to-do list, and set them loose for a little competition. The where may be your whole building or even the whole community. 

Flip your PD: Create videos of key content and then assign those videos to staff. Many content management systems allow you to do this easily, and you can even build in comprehension questions to check for understanding and completion. 

Recruit team members, guardians, students, and community members to create the videos. This will allow you to make some powerful partnerships: Have a group of students create the suicide prevention video; ask a few parents or guardians to talk about your grade-book portal and what is expected to be posted each week. Tap into teachers to create some videos to spark inspiration and share new resources. 

Then, since some content may not pertain to everyone, assign videos to specific groups or individuals (think new to your district versus district veterans). Your where becomes flexible and allows you to use any all-staff time creatively.

Community potluck: Host a potluck featuring food that’s important to different community members or groups. Talk to the area chamber of commerce and partner with local businesses and restaurants to provide portions of the potluck. Have students nominate their favorite school lunch, and have that on the menu. Tap into your school board and/or parents association to gather community members to bring dishes that represent their cultures and traditions.  

The who here is much bigger than those who work in any one building; the who becomes about bringing the whole community together to emphasize that we’re all key players in the education of our kids. The where may be in the school with stations set up to accomplish different tasks. What might happen if parents and teachers were in a room together for an overview of the grade book and what is expected to be posted each week?

There is so little time to do all of the things we must do to get ready for a new year. By focusing on your why, you will have richer, more productive gatherings that help to energize and connect your team.