Emily 0:37

Hey, there, thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we've got three practical strategies for making your grade level team, the best one in the school. And we're sharing a teacher approved tip for using your team meeting to get things done.

Heidi 0:52

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is if you had 30 minutes of extra instructional time each day to use for anything, what would you use it for?

Emily 1:06

I think it probably depends on what grade I'm teaching at the time. But after our experience of teaching second grade and then moving to preschool. If I were back in second grade, I would use that time for fine motor skill activities to build their fine motor skills.

Heidi 1:20

Totally definitely.

Emily 1:23

What about you, Heidi?

Heidi 1:24

I think I would like to try something like a Makerspace or Genius Hour or something that's giving kids a choice and a chance to really kind of get excited about learning.

Emily 1:35

Yeah, that's more self directed.

Heidi 1:37

Yes, there just wasn't time for that in my jam packed day.

Emily 1:41

I know if you could have 30 minutes and have it like nobody else can make any claims on that time.

Heidi 1:45

Oh my gosh, yes.

Emily 1:46

That would be the most amazing. Nobody can pull your kids during that time. No one can give you any new thing you have to cover in your curriculum. Yes, definitely. Amazing.

Emily 1:56

Well, we have some fun responses from our teacher approved Facebook group. Julia said she would love to give her kids more writing time. The kids can always use more writing time and never enough time for writing. Andrea says mindfulness and kindness over students can learn how to talk to classmates, set boundaries and speak honestly.

Emily 2:15

So important. I know and I we do always try to cover that in morning meeting. But having like a dedicated time for a longer period every day would be amazing. Chris wants more time for hands on science. Denise would have her students work on bilateral coordination exercises to help speed up their processing speed.

Heidi 2:33

Maybe we could team up with Denise and she can work on that and we'll help with fine motor. Yeah, those credit program

Emily 2:39

Yes, those are two really important skills our students often need to work on. Stephanie wishes she had time for creating thinking activities, and Tammy specifically wishes she could do creative art lessons every day.

Emily 2:53

Amanda wants time for collaborative skills team building and game playing. Katherine wants more time for RTI. And Heather says they've had that at her school for the last three years. It's called WIN time and is intended to be intervention time to fill the gaps from COVID.

Heidi 3:10

So I had to look that up because I wasn't familiar with that. And WIN stands for what I need. And it's a period of time during the school day when students get what they need when they need it. So this might be academic support, social emotional support, enrichment activities, passion projects, and more.

Emily 3:27

It sounds like every student would thrive with this, and you can learn more about it in the book. It's about time by Austin Buffum and Mike Mattos. We'd love to know more about how you do WIN time and what you do with an extra 30 minutes in the day. Come during the conversation over in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi 3:46

At most schools, being a teacher means being part of a team.

Emily 3:50

Depending on where you teach that team may be a huge help or it may be the hardest part of your job.

Heidi 3:56

And I think Emily and I we have had both of those situations.

Emily 4:00

So today we are sharing three practical suggestions for how you can turn your team into the best grade level team in the school.

Heidi 4:08

A lot of schools have implemented professional learning communities or PLCs in each grade level. And sometimes there is a lot of overlap between team business and PLC business. But today we're going to separate those out.

Emily 4:21

A PLC is where you're discussing learning and data and interventions. But grade level teams have more to manage than just student learning.

Heidi 4:30

Right. Teams have to coordinate calendars, adapt pacing guide, set important dates, manage resources, share ideas, order materials, schedule activities, and so much more.

Emily 4:40

So for our discussion today, we're going to set PLCs aside for another day. You can put your common assessments away and we'll talk about data and intervention another time.

Speaker 1 4:52

Instead we are going to focus on all the other business that comes with being part of a team. If you've got a smoothly be running team, we've got some tips for how to elevate what is already working.

Emily 5:04

And if your team is a dysfunctional disaster, we've got some suggestions for how you can at least survive if thriving isn't possible.

Heidi 5:14

Our first suggestion for team success is to create structure. We're starting with structure because it can be tricky to manage.

Emily 5:22

Considering most elementary teachers are women, we sometimes resist the formality that comes with structure. Most women just want everyone to get along and be happy and it's easy to feel like structure is going to prevent that.

Heidi 5:35

But in fact, the opposite is true. If your grade level has a predictable structure, you can let your protocols do the tough stuff without ruffling feathers.

Emily 5:46

Or without ruffling too many feathers. Because let's be honest, we'll never get to zero ruffled feathers, but we can definitely ruffle fewer feathers. It's my new tongue twister ruffle fewer feathers.

Heidi 5:59

For everyone's well being, we want a solid structure that is built on the foundation of a shared vision. If you get to the end of the school year, and are able to say, Yeah, our team was successful this year, what sorts of things had to happen in order to be able to say that? Likely everyone was dedicated to meeting students needs and increasing their learning.

Emily 6:20

A shared vision determines what type of work is worthy of your team's time and energy. And it helps others own the part they play in making that vision a reality. So when you're starting with structure, make sure to clarify your team shared vision.

Heidi 6:35

Then it's time to determine how your team should operate in service of that vision. The details will look different for each team. But in general, each team needs a predictable set of expectations that everyone agrees to.

Emily 6:49

You've probably heard these ground rules referred to as norms. And whether we plan them or not, norms develop anytime a group of people work together. Your team might have the unwritten norm that you do whatever the loudest team member wants to do, because it's easiest. I think I'm familiar with that.

Heidi 7:07

Or you might have the personal norm, that you say what you have to to get along with your team. But then you go back to your class and do what you think is best for your students. And we're familiar with that.

Emily 7:20

I think we've all had to adopt that norm at one point or another. But if we intentionally set norms that help us work together, instead of defaulting to norms that let us get by, we greatly increase our team's ability to function.

Heidi 7:35

You might want to start with brainstorming about things that haven't worked and things that have. Ask everyone on your team to think about the worst team they've ever been on. This could be anything a group project in school, a sports team, or even a volunteer experience that went wrong.

Emily 7:51

Then give each team member a paper folded in half, and ask everyone to spend two minutes writing about why that situation was so terrible on one half of the page.

Heidi 8:00

Just a little bit of a warning, if your team has a lot of bad blood, you may want to skip this step or specifically state that they should think of a time they were part of an ineffective group outside of work. Remember, we went fewer ruffled feathers.

Emily 8:16

Yes, let's not go digging up our past grievances. After the two minutes are up, switch gears, and have everyone think of their best experience working as a group, and write about why it went so well on the other side of the paper. When the time is up, discussed the differences between these two experiences.

Heidi 8:35

Then shift the conversation into suggesting behaviors that would contribute to your team being like the good experiences, and avoiding being like the bad experiences. You could list everyone's suggestions on a chart. But if you're worried about certain voices taking over, you might want everyone to write their suggestions on a card or a sticky note.

Emily 8:56

And you might need to limit the number of suggestions people can make. Somehow the people that need norms the most are also the ones with plenty of ideas of what everyone else should be doing.

Heidi 9:07

Isn't that how it always goes.

Emily 9:08

Yeah. A good guideline is for everyone to write down at least one group norm on their card, but no more than four.

Heidi 9:15

Some norms that might be useful are be on time, come prepared to discuss, stay on topic and leave your phone alone.

Emily 9:22

This is a time to be focusing on solutions not venting. So notice we're saying things in a positive way. Be on time is more of a solution than don't be late. Janet.

Heidi 9:34

And stay on topic is much nicer than saying stop wasting our meeting time talking about your poodles Irene.

Emily 9:41

Irene she's a real menace with those poodles. Once you got a list of suggested norms, ask the team which norms will help the group be successful. Combine and clarify ideas as needed. Try to keep the finalists under 10. If there's a point of contention, try reworking the norm until it fits everyone's needs.

Because we're aiming for our team structure to handle problems for us, you may want your team to discuss how to respond if hypothetically in the future a team member isn't following the norms.

Once you have your final list of norms, asked if everyone agrees to abide by them when the team is together. If we want these norms to provide our structure, we have to make sure they stay relevant start by giving everyone their own copy.

And consider beginning each meeting by reviewing your norms. You may even want a laminated copy that you can put in the middle of the table. That way, when Irene starts going off about her poodles again, you can just suddenly tap number four on the list and reminder to stay on topic.

We hope that every team has a chance for norm setting. But this might get tricky if you're not the grade level leader. If your team lead is not open to suggestions, you might want to chat with your administration. Maybe they're willing to mandate that each team set some norms.

Besides norms, another way to create structure for your team is to be predictable, including your norms, a set of operating standards. Maybe the day before team meeting, someone sends out the agenda. And the day after someone sends an email summarizing what was discussed.

If team leader is a paid position in your school, maybe they're the ones sending out those emails. If your team leader is not getting paid for taking on extra tasks, one way to add predictability is to assign every team member a role.

With my second grade team, I was often by default, the team leader, but I didn't get paid for that. And so we rotated who conducted meetings each month. And who took notes. At the time, it sounded like a fair way to divvy up the work. But in practice, it meant that no one knew what was going on. The month would change over and people forgot that they were now supposed to be doing something and no one could get into a regular workflow. In the end, we just ended up creating more headaches than anything else.

So I were doing it again, I would try to come up with an assignment for everyone every week, since our team leader, me, wasn't getting paid for extra work, I didn't want to take it on all myself. So maybe someone could be in charge of sending out the agenda. Someone could take notes and send out the summary. Someone could run the meeting, someone could bring chocolate or whatever else we decided was important. And I really do think when you're we did have someone over snacks.

I like it. Good thinking. And you could extend that out beyond just team meetings, one person could be in charge of coordinating the fall field trip. And someone could be over the spring field trip, someone could be in charge of updating the shared calendar, and someone else could be in charge of choosing the grades dance for the school's Dance Festival.

It's only fair to share the workload. And I really have found that most people will follow through if they have a clear understanding of their assignment.

That's where structure is important again. Maybe as a team, you can generate a list of each jobs responsibilities, and then everyone can choose an assignment that they're willing to take on.

Besides creating structure. The second suggestion for making your team the best in the school is to build community.

Community is built through talking and sharing. So look for opportunities to talk. A fun way to get people talking is to have a shared experience. Going out to lunch one day would work in a pinch. But something like taking a class or visiting a museum together would go farther. Heidi, did you ever do a belly dancing class with your team?

You know, somehow I don't think we did that. And I also appreciate that you didn't mention trust falls or a ropes course.

Yeah, no.

It's important to know your audience when you're planning group activities. If you have got a young spry active team, then go for big adventure. But please just know that if Emily and I are on your team, we're going to be over in the corner painting mugs instead.

A shared experience that requires much less planning is for everyone to take a personality quiz, and then share their results.

You're probably looking for something more like a Myers Briggs test, and not which Kardashian or you type quiz. Although you know that could reveal some interesting answers.

Maybe you could do both. That would really get the conversation going. And it's probably better to stick with something with a little more depth. And we're big fans of Gretchen Reubens Four Tendencies quiz that you can take for free. We'll link to it in the show notes.

An added benefit of a personality test is that it can help you understand how to work better with your teammates. If you take Gretchen Rubens quiz and find out that you are on a team with a bunch of questioners, you'll want to do things differently than if you are on a team with a bunch of obligers.

And all of that will make more sense once you've taken the quiz. But regardless of the personality types you're working with communication is key.

We could easily have a whole episode filled with suggestions for how to communicate better, but in general, a lot of positive communication just comes down to being a good listener.

That's probably everybody's least favorite advice because listening is not that fun. But it is predictably effective.

If you have got a teammate or two that you absolutely cannot connect with, I suggest looking for something nice you can do for them. In college I once had to write a paper on do we love because we serve or do we serve because we love? That was a tricky paper? And it turns out that the answer to that question is yes.

When we love people, we want to do things to help them. But it turns out that when we do things for people, they're easier to love. That realization probably saved the life of maybe a couple of my college roommate. When I reached a point where I just could not stand them anymore, I tried making their bed, and suddenly they were a lot easier to deal with.

Unless your breadmaking skills have greatly improved since we were kids, I doubt making the bed changed your roommates.

Don't underestimate my skill.

But it did change your attitude toward them. Which brings us to our third suggestion, shift your mindset from what will benefit your class to what will benefit your team.

One way to shift your mindset is to consider all of the students as your students. Some of your school's third graders are in your class, and some are unfortunately in Irene's class, but ultimately, they're all your kids. You have a responsibility to every kid in your grade. So that means you got to do what you can to make your team a success.

Being flexible will go a long way towards your team's success. Sometimes you have to go with the flow even if doing science rotations isn't your favorite thing.

But also don't go along with things you really disagree with just for the sake of being a team player. It's kind of a game of knowing when to pick your battles.

This is why clarifying your shared team vision is so important. If a teammate is committed to something that isn't supporting that vision you can push back on it makes the conversation about your agreed upon vision instead of about individuals. Let your team structure be the bad guy, not you.

And do what you can to assume goodwill. Most people are just doing the best they can. They're not actually trying to make your life harder, even if they are making your life harder.

I remind myself that sometimes about my children, and probably students as well. An amazing thing happens when we assume that someone is doing the best they can. It frees us up we can drop our anger and judgment and resentment and find a productive way forward. That might look like setting boundaries about what's okay for us and what's not okay for us.

And if that means just doing the minimum required to get along, then sometimes that is all we can do.

But don't let that scare you. Most people want to get along and most teams can work well together if you're intentional about the decisions you make. Start by naming your shared vision and setting up your team structure, build community and relationships with your team members. And remember to shift your mindset to include what will benefit your team. Implement those three strategies, and you're sure to have the best team in the school.

We would love to hear how you have improved your grade level team. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is set aside meeting time for an important task. Tell us about this, Heidi.

So part of having an effective team structure is having a predictable agenda for your meetings. If you want people to show up prepared, they need to know exactly what's expected of them. So a reliable agenda is important. Now how you set up that agenda will vary depending on your school expectations, and what works for your team. But one thing you might consider adding is a few minutes for work that otherwise gets ignored.

I came across this great idea recently. And for some reason I can't do it did this I didn't write down where I saw this. So my apologies. If this sounds familiar to anyone, please let me know who said it. And I'm happy to give them credit.

But anyway, this teacher said that her team sets aside the first 10 minutes of team meeting to send positive parent emails. It's one of those things like right, we're all saying we're always going to do. But there are way more pressing demands on our time. So we just never get around to it. Or maybe that's just me. So by dedicating that time every week, they're actually making sure it gets done.

Obviously this is great because it's creating time for an important task. But besides that, though, I really love that this activity makes such a nice transition from teacher mode to meeting mode. I know I really struggled switching gears from busy running a class teacher Heidi to discussing the upcoming calendar with my team Heidi. I may think setting aside this task time at the beginning of the meeting, would just have made such a nice peaceful transition.

That's such a good point. And if people are coming in late, you're not all waiting around for them, because you can start, they're missing out on time to email, but they're not holding everyone else up.

And that's a double win. Because what do we do to fill time while everyone gathers? We talk and obviously talking with your team is not a bad thing. But it can really make it hard to get the team meeting going. Because you don't want to be rude and interrupt. So you have to wait until Irene stories wrapped up before you can get started. And by that point, let's be honest, you've wasted 10 minutes of your meeting time anyway.

So as you are considering your meeting agenda, maybe consider setting aside a few minutes at the start of the meeting for an important task. It doesn't have to be emailing parents, you can consider any other little task that everyone always intends to do but never actually gets around to.

So maybe that is leaving feedback on each other's lesson plans or typing your weekly newsletter, contributing to some kind of grade level document, looking for video clips for upcoming math lessons. Choose a set task that will have the biggest benefits for you.

And whatever you select, try to get your whole team to commit to the same thing. It will be more successful if you've made your plan ahead of time instead of wasting time each meeting trying to decide how to use your 10 minutes.

To wrap up the show we are sharing we are giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

I'm giving extra credit to the Skylight calendar. If you haven't seen ads for this, I'm shocked. But also I'll tell you about it.

I don't think I have I'm probably maybe not their demographic.

It is a digital display that you can use to show all the many things your family needs to keep track of. So I got it at the start of summer. And it has been amazing for the kids to be able to go look at the calendar themselves and see what's going on, then their chore chart is on there.

And they've been so good at doing their chores every day without me having to remind them. And I like a little like confetti explosion when they check them off. I do have one child that checks off things that they have not done. So we had to set a consequence for doing that. But overall, it's been positive.

And it has an app that goes with it. So you can easily update it on the go when you think of things. And it's been really handy for my mother's helper so that when she comes she can see what's on the agenda. And those are the main things we use it for. But it also displays the weather and you can use it for shopping list and your meal plan if you are a person that is on the ball and has a meal plan.

Now it's pricey. But I think you can often get it at Costco or Sam's Club and so you can get a little bit of a better price there. And they have great customer service. And it seems like they're always like listening to customers and updating it and adding new features and things. So overall, I think it's been worth the investment.

Well shoot now I would just want one for me.

Why not? You go girl. What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Oh, my extra credit goes to the TV show Welcome to Wrexham. Oh, I love that. So if you're not familiar, it's a show on FX and Hulu, about a soccer team from the little town of Wrexham Wales that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney just happened to buy one day.

So sports is just not something that I typically find interesting. That's not a slam on anyone who enjoys it. It's just not my jam. But this shows done documentary style and it is so well done. It does a great job showing the human stories behind every game that's played like I'm so invested in this town now.

The third season just wrapped up. And if you need a good show this summer, it's definitely worth checking out. Even if you're not someone who enjoys sports, we'd probably get a lot out of it. If you are a sport person. Just a little bit of a warning that there is an abundance of F words. So many words F words in this show. So maybe wait till the kids are in bed before you turn it on.

That's it for today's episode. Use our three strategies to make your grade level team the best in the school. And don't forget our teacher approved tip for setting aside meeting time for an important task.