In the middle of December I led my third staff meeting. This was probably one of the most frustrating yet. Out of the 10 participants in my class I only had four show up. I did send anther staff member to a session I thought would be more pertinent to her job, so I guess I could call it five people at the meeting. Well two of the people showed up late and one that showed up late even left early. I feel like there is no excuse for this because I emailed the participants twice reminding them of the meeting and I sent out info on how to transfer lessons to their Workspace software. No one seemed to follow the directions so I helped the two members that stayed the whole time and are actually trying to use the software to do this.
Okay, after all that ranting, the time spend with the three staff members was good. I was able to really help them and they worked on some affects of their lessons using the Mobi. One of the other participants is getting very frustrated because her computer seems to be having some issues with the software. It is working very slowly and some of the same things I am helping others with does not work for her. There is one more session left for this differentiated staff session. I emailed the other leaders to remind them that this last session will be a sharing session at the end. Each participant should be creating something to use in their classroom or teaching. I have asked the leaders to send me the activities their participants create so I can compile them onto our email conference for others to refer to if looking for activity ideas.
Since I was so frustrated with the lack of participation I went to one of the administrators and explained my concerns. She understood, but like me was not surprised. I am not the other meeting leader with these problems. Our school is known for the lack of participation, late arrivals and lack of interest in staff meetings. While I can understand this due to our workload and the fact that these meetings begin 25 minutes before our normal start time, it is also part of our job and people should understand that. The administrator talked about how this shows a lack of respect for other staff members which is true. I asked her to mention something at the next team leader meeting to discuss the problem and possible solutions.
My last meeting is in a few weeks. When we get back to school in a few days I will send another email reminding my participants that they should be working on their activity/lesson. I will offer assistance to help them with the Mobi and Workspace again to see if anyone would like help this time. I am very interested to see what everyone will create and how many members will show up this time.
