Futuristic Project: The Teacher's Lounge

The teacher's lounge can be the most toxic place on campus!  My futurist plan is to create a place where teacher's gather to talk about student work, share teaching ideas, and support one another.  Here are my ideas/notes on how to implement this practice:

1. If you were to implement this practice, strategy, idea today, what specialized skills, resources, and dispositions would you need to obtain for yourself, your colleagues and staff?

Have a group meeting to discuss norms.  This would need to be approached from a positive point of view.  Create committees: decorating (i.e., colored paper, posters, pictures), norm/rules, make it a collaboration area with teacher library.  In the room would be computers, round tables to invite conversation, textbooks. 

2. What skills will your colleagues and those you supervise need in order to be successful in this scenario? Of those skills, which ones are currently being supported through resources such as professional development in your setting? Which ones are missing or minimal? What is currently being supported in your setting that would likely be obsolete in 2020? 

  

Teachers need to and should have positive conversations about students.  Teachers would need updated data on students to share with other teachers.  Collaboration could be between subject matter teachers, vertical grades, and teachers who share the same students.

3. In what ways are we unprepared, lacking in resources and staffing, or to what degree are our strategies and underlying values unable to respond effectively to the conditions this scenario represents?

Is the current environment:  toxic or healthy (articles by Anthony Muhammad)?  Create a "positive talk zone". 

4. What could we be doing now to leverage this trend to our advantage?

Model with people we currently work with.  Initiate positive talk conversations with colleagues and students. Let others begin to see and experience the benefits of the "new and improved" teacher's lounge. 

5. What would need to happen internally and in the external environment for preparing yourself and those you lead to navigate in this strategic vision? What changes should your organization begin to make? What should it start doing? What should it stop doing? 

Get team leaders on board.  Buy a can of paint (in a mood enhancing) shade.  Feng Shui the room.  Create inviting areas.  Create a school/teacher blog to highlight good outcomes shared information, teacher-presented Prezis.  Create a chart of data analysis results for the walls showing current AYP standings and what the goal is for the year.  Have a theme for the year (i.e: student ownership) and a place for teachers/admin to post results.  Have a parking lot board.  Have a conversation board.