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Unbreak Your Meetings
Meetings are broken in my school. I want to fix them.
My school is great, but its meetings are broken. I’m confident this isn’t unique to us — most schools, and organizations more broadly, struggle with broken meetings. Still, it’s a gripe worth addressing.
Broken meetings aren’t a dealbreaker for me. In the grand scheme of things, they’re a fancy problem — a reflection of an otherwise charmed teacher life. I am very grateful that my school is filled with fancy problems. It’s a charmed teacher life, to be sure
But I still don’t like broken meetings.
Why Are Our Meetings Broken?
1. Overstuffed Meetings
Our meetings try to do too much. This likely stems from a broader tendency to over-scope everything. With too many priorities in the hopper, it’s no surprise that meetings become bloated.
I participate in meetings on the regular where the sheer number of slides or focus areas makes it impossible to have meaningful conversations. You’d think someone would recognize this during planning, but the bloat is, seemingly, inexorable.
