Meetings Suck and Teachers Hate Them

Every teacher has been in a meeting and left with the thought, “well, that’s an hour of my life I will never get back.” It’s frustrating for time-strapped teachers to attend meetings that are circular conversations, dominated by a few strong voices, and result in no decisive action steps.

Running or attending meetings is often how educational leaders spend a disproportionate part of their day. While most would rather spend time in the classroom, the reality is that meetings are where much of the work of the job is done, especially district-level administrators.

There are multiple stakeholders (teachers, parents, administration, unions, school boards, community members, etc.), each with an agenda and ideas of the best way to educate students. It can be challenging to bring them together to hear all voices equally and make definitive decisions. Yet, this is critical when tackling significant problems or setting strategic goals.

Ideas borrowed from Design Sprints and Workshopping models used in the tech and design industries can help. Consultancy AJ&Smart provides a valuable framework that results in productive meetings that are fun to facilitate and attend:

• Spend time gathering data, ideas, and inspiration to dig into and identify root challenges before even considering solutions.
• Provide time and space for participants to think individually before opening up for discussion.
• Use multi-layered voting, such as voting dots, to empower all voices equally and minimize ‘groupthink’ when making decisions.
• Commit to a limited number of solutions to execute. Discard or de-prioritize all others.

Educational leaders who can adopt and adapt workshopping and design sprints to identify problems facing schools and test new solutions will have much greater success at leading change and getting stakeholder buy-in.

I’m exploring this work in my evolution as a leader in education. Reach out if you’re interested in building a dialog. Let me know what you’ve tried, what’s worked, and what has failed miserably.