"The schools that celebrated authentically on a regular basis created a great atmosphere for collegiality. Collegiality is not collaboration, but having colleagues who genuinely like and respect one another creates an atmosphere ripe for collaboration."
-Anthony Muhammad, Transforming School Culture
Anthony Muhammad links healthy adult relationships to student academic achievement. Anyone who has worked in a school knows that sometimes April can be a month that strains those relationships. Our school recently had a Friday afternoon faculty meeting that ended with laughter, which is sometimes in short supply in April.
Three, easy to replicate ideas were part of the meeting....along with candy and music. All of these ideas were stolen. I've done my best to give credit to the source.
1.) Chart the year (stolen from Ginny Vanderlicht of the Hook Center): A sheet of butcher paper was hung on the wall horizontally. The left side represented August and the right side represented April. A line was drawn through the middle horizontally. Teachers had six post its, and they posted notes about three highs and three lows through the year. The higher or lower the moment was, the higher or lower it went on the sheet. What's great about this is often folks struggle to come up with three lows and a lot of the highs will be recent. A visual picture of a school getting happier is created. Music was played and candy was eaten while moments were charted.
2.) Argys (stolen from Wendy Lentz): Kind of like the grammys, but with an "arg" sound, like a pirate, our mascot, makes...get it. Teachers nominated and voted for each other for fun awards such as who do you hope brings snacks to the work room, who do you hope checks on you on a bad day etc. A copy of the form can be found here.
3.) Everyone wins bingo (stolen from Scott Friedman, a really funny presenter at MASA): The faculty meeting closed with a game of bingo, which was rigged so that everyone won at the same time. Winners received a soda and a fee pass to leave early for the day. A copy of everyone wins bingo with the call order can be found here.
Hearing everyone yell "Bingo" at the same time is pretty awesome.
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