Getting your team together for a staff meeting to share new ideas and develop good practice costs nothing and can make measurable improvements to the quality of your provision, says Kirstine Beeley…
In these austere times, budgets are stretched. Many early years settings struggle to fund expensive training in a bid to deliver the CPD that is expected as part of any EYFS provision. Now, more than ever, we need to tap into the potential of in-house staff training.
Managers who view their staff meetings as mini training sessions can maximise enthusiasm and promote a team understanding of what you expect. Let’s look at a few things you can do to ensure that you make the most of their training potential…
Although it may seem obvious, the key to a good staff meeting is planning. Knowing that you have a clear focus prior to getting together helps staff to understand what you expect them to think about.
It also offers you, as the manager, a chance to make sure that what you cover is exciting, inspiring and appropriate to your setting.
Use your long-term planning and your SEF to work out your key areas for development. Plan meetings for the whole half-term, making sure that staff have a copy of these dates.
Once you know what area you will be focusing on, make sure you have clear learning objectives for the session. What exactly do you want your staff to know or do as a result of this training?
Don’t make your objectives too complicated. Your staff will have been at work all day and their ability to take in lots of information will be limited.
Keep your expectations short and simple – for example, ‘To come up with ideas for improving counting in the setting’ or ‘To refresh knowledge of a policy’.
If you make them too complicated the chances are you will be disappointed with the outcome. Keep it simple. If need be, spread your theme over a number of different staff meetings to make it easier to digest.
Once you have your focus and your objective for your staff meeting, try to think about how best to inspire your team.
Can you find visual examples of best practice from other settings? Have you seen an activity for children that has inspired you that the staff could have a go at? Is there a video clip you can play?
Starting your session with something visual and inspiring helps to focus everyone’s attention. It also provides a little light relief from what has probably been a hard day’s work.
Pictures of best practice can be found all over the internet. When looking at more practical subjects such as fine motor development or messy play, the key is definitely to try out some activities.
After you have looked, watched or had a go, make sure you leave time for your staff to reflect and discuss what they have seen.
The mistake many managers make is in trying to direct a staff meeting too much. This is rather than giving staff a chance to bounce ideas and views around.
You are trying to build a team approach and not just impose your views on your team. Try noting down comments on a large piece of paper so that everyone feels that their views are heard, or get staff to split into groups to write down their ideas.
Try not to focus on just telling people things verbally. A good mixture of visual stimulus, group discussions and leader talk makes for a more productive outcome.
If you are using articles or documents to back up your session, hand them out for reading at the end. Lengthy spells ploughing through documents is tedious and a sure way to dampen enthusiasm.
If you have to focus on documents such as policies or procedures for the session, try chopping up the policy into chunks. Discuss bits as pairs or groups, or match the statements to pictures of ‘best’ or ‘worst’ practice.
Doing this can turn a potentially boring session into one that is reflective. Staff can then apply the policy to their own setting and experience.
If you’re sending a group off to note down their views or ideas, get them to physically move to another area. This keeps them active and avoids anyone falling asleep at the end of a long day!
The purpose of any staff meeting should be to take practice forward. This means that you need to tie every session you lead into an agreement of what you as a team are going to do to improve.
Are you going to implement changes, move furniture around, add new activities? Try to agree at least one focus to work on if not more.
Make sure your targets for moving forward are manageable and achievable – remember you cannot do everything overnight!
Giving staff a task to take forward can be a good way of focusing enthusiasm for an area of development. Try asking staff to find and share things they would like to implement, make or do.
When planning your areas of development, try to let everyone have a go at leading a staff meeting. If staff have been on training externally, make it a stipulation that they run a staff meeting on what they learned.
If fellow staff have visited another setting to explore best practice, plan a meeting to look at pictures and discuss what they saw. How can you try the ideas in your setting?
As manager, make sure you are there to support less-confident staff and ensure sessions remain fun, exciting and interesting.
At the start of each subsequent staff meeting make sure you recap on the last session. Congratulate staff on any positive actions they may have taken in the meantime.
Share pictures, comments and observations of best practice before you move on to your next topic. The more staff feel they are part of the ongoing development of your setting, the more enthusiastic they generally will be.
Treehouse Pre-school in Winslow, Bucks wanted to look at developing their outdoor play provision. I led a staff meeting where we asked staff in groups to identify initially what they felt outdoor learning was all about. We listed our ideas on a large piece of paper with everyone’s input catered for.
Next, we asked staff to think about their own outdoor provision and to identify things that they felt they did really well (this focused the staff on the positives of their own practice).
Next they pooled ideas about the things they felt they could improve on. We then gave staff lots of picture examples of good outdoor learning practice and left them to look at and discuss them. Excitement was growing for the potential of their setting.
Discussions were kept informal and we worked together to see if there was a possibility of implementing some of the ideas. Finally, we used a traffic light system to look at moving forward:
You can easily apply this staff meeting format to other areas of learning. It’s a great way of ensuring that your staff have a shared vision for your setting.
Who’s responsible?
Try chopping up the statements in your safeguarding policy and see if staff can say whose responsibility each of the statements falls to.
For example, who is responsible for making sure medicines are kept safe? Who should be keeping an eye on children’s safety during the day, etc.?
This session is great for making staff more aware of what their responsibilities are as a team and what ultimately rests with the manager.
Two-year-old trail
Go to the entrance to your setting and get all staff to get down on their hands and knees (i.e. with their heads at the level of a two-year-old). Make sure staff are dressed appropriately first!
Now, as a team move through the setting and note what it looks like from a child’s eye view. Is it interesting, exciting, inspiring? Can you see things that adults have set out for you, or are they too high? Can you see things on the walls?
Don’t forget to go into everyday areas such as toilets and changing areas, which are often uninspiring and intimidating from a child’s view.
Kirstine Beeley is an independent trainer, author and consultant, with experience of teaching in early years, primary and SEN settings.
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