Book Review: Meeting Wise: Making the Most of Collaborative Time for Educators (2014)

Just read Liz City's Meeting Wise: Making the Most of Collaborative Time for Educators (2014) after hearing her present her work on meeting theory and practice in schools at the Harvard Principals' Center "Art of Leadership" institute. My very brief take away: This is and will be perhaps the most useful and easily implementable text I've had in a long time.

Basically, City's argument about effective, growth-driven collaborative meetings is that they need to happen in schools that are learning communities. In the schools of yore, teachers and even leadership didn't mind not reaching all learners and their challenges, as they didn't mind refusing professional learning--they taught how they always taught, and without much change, as students needed to learn on their terms (or not learn at all).

Her argument, underlying her work, is that schools that embrace emerging and evolving challenges and changes in education and in students require a robust and intentional meeting culture. If adults are collaborating well towards learning objectives and outcomes, then all students are being served.

What is most useful about City's work are her actionable items (templates, protocols, checklists): her checklists for effective meetings (does it have an objective linked to student learning? does it have meaningful activities?); her protocols for various types of meetings; her recommendations for max. time for each meeting moment; her recommendations for engaging activities; her acknowledgement of challenges to and the learning curve of a facilitator; and her agenda template, which, if done right, fulfills the entire checklist.

In reflecting on her work, I understand now more than ever that meetings are opportunities--valuable, rare opportunities--for meaningful adult learning and collaboration, and they need to be structured as such. In that sense, they're a sort of classroom that engages and empowers its learners. If done right, meetings can be meaningful and even fun--and ideally, they model the sort of learning that we would expect in our classrooms, too.

Looking forward, I would like to spend as much time planning a meeting as I do holding it. I would like to include a clear objective and agenda communicated in advance (I've been doing the latter but not the former) by adapting City's form (template as google doc is available here!). And I would like to elicit "plus/delta" feedback at the end of each meeting to build in reflection and growth in to the meeting culture itself.