Develop Your Staff
printer friendly >
Develop Your Staff Archive >
Professional development activities that have proven effective will be included in Develop Your Staff. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Staff Retreat
A summer retreat with your staff gives a lot of mileage in teambuilding,
planning and setting a tone of high expectations for the new year. Here
is a sample agenda for a day and a half meeting.
Day 1
Setting: A state park lodge 30-60 minutes driving distance
12:00-1:30: Staff arrival Wednesday noon check-in and luncheon
1:30-2:00: finish checking-in and assemble in meeting room
2:00-3:00: Teambuilding Activity. “Celebrating Our Successes”—Everyone write a story about a student or family situation in which you know for a fact you were successful. Use a marker and put it on a 4" X 24" strip of colored construction paper. During the retreat, take time to have different members share their story. Post the strips in a “starburst” design on the wall of the meeting room to acknowledge and celebrate your collective successes.
3:00-5:00: Developing the “Big Ideas” to Work on. Brainstorm for 20 minutes, “What we’ve done well this past year.” Post on newsprint and post on walls. Brainstorm for 20 minutes “What we’d like to improve upon this new year. ”Post on newsprint and post on wall. Pass out 5 sticky “dots”to each member. Let each member choose the top 5 areas that they would like to see addressed in the upcoming year. (You may pass out 3 dots if your staff is small). Put the dot next to your 5 votes. These become your priority areas to work on. Using 5 clean sheets of chart paper, write one of the 5 priority areas for each, and post them around the room. Ask everyone to sign up for 1-3 areas to work on (again, depending on the size of your group). The top name on each chart will be the “Point Person” for that topic. No one person should be the “Point Person” for more than one topic. The last several minutes should be spent with each group collectively deciding where they will begin their “committee”work the next morning. In a park setting groups may take their newsprint to a comfortable location in the lodge to work on their plan. They should come back with
- What should be done about this topic (strategies)
- When it should be done (timeline)
- Who will carry out the plan (who will make up the work team to carry it out)
- How you will know the plan is successful? (evaluation of project).
5:00-5:30: Break
5:30-6:30: Candlelight Dinner together
6:30-8:30: Inspiring Educational Movie/Popcorn/Pop and discussion (such as >Stand and Deliver). You may develop a movie guide with pertinent questions for discussion or you may conduct an open-ended discussion.
8:30-10:00: Socializing
Day 2
8:00-8:30: Continental breakfast
8:30-10:00: Committee work at locations decided upon by the groups
10:00-10:30: Break
10:30-12:00: Committee reports and plans. Whole group refines and responds to the reports. When finished, you will have assignments, timelines and promising strategies to address improvements for your school.
12:00-1:00: Luncheon and check out
1:00-3:00: Staff Professional Development. This is an opportunity to have staff members who have developed good ideas throughout the school year OR who have attended professional development conferences to share new information with their colleagues. It was my experience that while staff members may have been reluctant to “present” to their peers initially, they were well prepared and actually needed more time for their topics. Presenting to each other kept them engaged and spread the positive effects of what each had learned.
3:00-3:15: Short break
3:15-5:15: Staff Professional Development Part II. This is an opportunity to bring in an outside resource to present new information from the district, promising practices that you are interested in presenting, or in having more of your staff members present. Save administrivia for a regular staff meeting!
5:15-6:15: Celebration Dinner. Make it fun and festive! Celebrate the fun things that have happened during the retreat, give fun “awards” to each person, certificates, and small gifts or professional books. Everyone will go off on a high note.
