The Administrative Webinar Series Modeling the Body-Brain Compatible Elements in Staff Meetings

Goal Sessions: Understand the nine body-brain elements Identify strategies in leading effective staff meetings Reflect on your own experience and how to use that experience to develop a plan for supporting your teachers.

“Educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they create structures to promote a collaborative culture.” Richard DuFour

Guiding Principles 1.Teachers cannot change a behavior or practice until they SEE what the new behavior or practice LOOKS like in a real world setting multiple times. 2.For professional development to truly be effective and sustained, it must be accompanied with on-going COACHING in a non-threatening environment

Absence of Threat/Nurturing Reflective Thinking Mastery/Application Immediate Feedback Choices Adequate Time Meaningful Content Collaboration Movement Enriched Environment

Using the Bodybrain Elements Absence of Threat/Nurturing Reflective Thinking: –Supports collaboration and full membership in the classroom learning community –Supports understanding of curriculum by materials at multiple levels to allow for all learning levels and multiple intelligences

Staff Meeting Implications: Create an agenda that goes out at least 24 hours prior to the meeting. Provide learning clubs for when staff members enter the meeting room. Give entry procedures for the staff to do as they come into the room.

Using the Bodybrain Elements Meaningful Content –Has real-life context –Is relevant to the learner and their emotions –Connects to previous experiences and future possibilities –Overcomes inequities –Corrects misconceptions –Assists in second language acquisition

Staff Meeting Implications: Avoid using the staff meeting for a ‘list’ of to-dos, calendar items, and updates. View staff members as an opportunity for professional development Create staff meetings based on the needs of the staff Use a “Parking Lot” to identify needs

Using the Bodybrain Elements Collaboration –Teaches to work effectively together –Increases learning –Improves the quality of products –Makes learning more pleasant and productive –Allows examining issues to expand our own understanding

Staff Meeting Implications Model cooperative strategies during a staff meeting –Quiz, Quiz Trade –Dots Activity Reflection Time on activities Provide time to discuss after every 5-7 minutes Exit Slip

Quiz, Quiz, Trade 1. Hold the question in front of you. 2. Quiz each other. 3. Trade papers. 4. Move to the next person.

Using the Bodybrain Elements Movement –Is fundamental to the existence of the brain –Entire front half of the brain is devoted to organizing action, both physical and mental –Is crucial to every brain function, including memory, emotion, language, and learning

Staff Meeting Implications Procedural Memory –Use of procedures for tasks Episodic Memory –Giving them an experience provides a memory in which they connect content Utilize collaboration activities that make them move –Like grade levels –Cross Grade Levels

Using the Bodybrain Elements Choices –Should be well crafted –Has enormous power to enhance learning –Give positive emotional effects –Allows students to select the kind of input that they most need in order to understand and apply concepts and skills –Creates lifelong learners with a passion for learning

Staff Meeting Implications Consider providing choice in staff meeting items; have other lead –High Ability Strategies –Plan, Do, Study, Act Fist to Five Time to reflect; what is that you want to do next…

Staff Meeting Implications Adequate Time –Having enough time to develop an understanding of meaningful content –Engaging student learning so that time is used efficiently and effectively as learning takes place

Staff Meeting Implications Consider the goals of each session Record the objectives of the staff meeting Don’t plan too much –Agenda items should never be more than 2-3 items Give Reflection time in between each item Provide time to communicate about items with one another

Using the Bodybrain Elements Immediate Feedback –Creates pattern seeking and program building –In all environments except school it is present in abundance –Feedback that tells us we have succeeded in learning produces a burst of neurotrasmitters, producing a “chemical high” –More immediate, intrinsic, and unambiguous the feedback, the faster and more accurate the learning

Staff Meeting Implications Give feedback on modeling of strategy Provide direction; next steps –How will you follow through with the information presented? Immediate feedback may be in written form as well Two-way street –Your needs/next steps –Their needs/next steps

Using the Bodybrain Elements Mastery –Means completion of both steps in learning- pattern seeking and program building –Ability to apply what is learning in real-world ways –Practicing how to use the skill or knowledge until it becomes wired into long-term memory –Acquiring competence at understanding and using concepts and skills at a level appropriate for the age of the student

Staff Meeting Implications Revisit items from prior staff meeting –Give staff time to ‘practice’ skills –Revisit during weekly grade level/department meetings Mastery takes time; provide guidelines of your expectations…be clear, concise, and correct

Olsen, K., Kovalik, S. (2005). Exceeding Expectations, p. xiv

Olsen, K., Kovalik, S. (2005). Exceeding Expectations, p. xiv

Take it Back! Reflect on information from the presentation. –3 things you will change in your next staff meeting –1 idea on what you need next to support your own professional development in leading staff meetings that are body-brain compatible.

“There is no such thing as bypassing the sensory system; it is the bodybrain partnership’s way of taking in information.” Excerpt from Exceeding Expectations: A User’s Guide in Implementing Brain Research In the Classroom by Susan Kovalik & Karen Olsen