Coaching is a way to support teachers in assessing and improving their practice. By engaging in rich, rigorous, and reflective professional conversations with colleagues, teachers can continue to develop and grow as they construct meaning, reinvest their cognitive resources, and apply new learning. Calibrating conversations are a way to foster…

Leaders often have common complaints about managing meetings and feel thwarted by attempts to collaborate. Teachers feel that time spent on collaboration is often wasted because of poor meeting management. Leaders can accelerate collaboration by creating collaborative compacts. A collaborative compact is a set of accords about how a group will…

The greatest challenge of a facilitator is correcting individual or collective behaviors that detract from the group's work. Preparing to intervene and knowing when to do so are critical to effective facilitation. To facilitate means "to make easier." In conducting meetings, the facilitator serves the group by making easier or more effective the…

This article discusses some strategies and principles of intervention that will lead to a more effective group behavior and enable the group to be proactive about improving its work. The author also discusses some of the common challenges and reliable interventions faced by a facilitator: (1) Redirect conversational altitudes; (2) Correct problems…

In this article, the author presents the dangers in group work. He states that one common dilemma is when groups tend to come to agreement too quickly. Another dilemma is when the team is getting bogged down and becoming defensive or adversarial when members express new ideas or introduce new data. Finally, a very common danger is group members'…

Presents five principles for conducting effective, successful meetings, which include: address only one topic at a time, use only one process at a time, achieve interactive and balanced participation, use cognitive conflict productively, and have all understand and agree to meeting roles. (SM)

A good question is one of the most important tools in a staff developer's repertoire. Questions that cause thinking can produce more learning than telling. This paper describes how to develop questioning skills using word banks and scaffolds. It explains why mediative questions are important and which mediative questions are the most valuable. (SM)

In adaptive schools, working groups grow, develop, and learn from experience, becoming more effective as they go. Three premises about group development include the following: each group is unique, some groups mature, and attrition need not block development. Four guidelines for successful group meetings include decide who decides, define the…

Explores various tools that presenters utilize to set the stage for their presentations and enhance audience retention, focusing on similarities to successful theatrical presentations. The four tools include setting the stage prior to the program, using the set effectively, selecting and placing props carefully, and considering oneself the…

Three learning concepts important for adult learners are that learning is accelerated by making connections to prior information, people learn best when actively constructing knowledge, and instruments are important in supporting knowledge retrieval and construction. The paper explains how index cards can be useful instruments in learning. (SM)

Discusses how presenters must act as guides to their audiences. As an example, the paper describes a trip through the Serengeti in which the guide was powerful and effective in teaching his audience. Notes goals that all presenters must strive for (activities, engagement, content, dispositions, capacities, and ideals). (SM)

Four actions are necessary when contracting to do staff development: recognize that a presenter is a consultant first, arrange for a group contracting conversation in order to completely understand the school's needs, work from a standard set of design questions, and work from a standard set of logistics questions. (SM)

Most classroom messages come from nonverbal communication. By consciously controlling their own nonverbal expressions, presenters can maintain positive relationships with the audience while managing participants' attention, transitions, and directions. This allows educators to teach content more effectively. The paper examines the importance of…

This paper details three practical ways in which presenters can exceed expectations by addressing content as well as increasing participants' capacity for collaboration. The methods include providing the rationale for collaboration before group learning activities, encouraging participants in active learning, and focusing attention on…

Describes the use of containers (formal structures, organizers, or frameworks into which a presenter can drop content) to save time when planning a presentation. To use containers, presenters must know the type of presentation outcome and allocated time, have information about the audience, and have information about various presentation…