Tips for faculty meetings
In its blog Schools in the Time of Coronavirus the Education Section at the Goetheanum provides tips for online teachers’ meetings.
“It was such a joy to see and hear each other again!” is how Tomáš Zdražil describes his impressions of a video conference held by the teacher training seminar Freie Hochschule Stuttgart (DE). “One has to listen more carefully what others say or try to say,” Christof Wiechert writes of his experience with media conferences. The former head of the Education Section attends the weekly virtual faculty meeting of a school in Asia.
In preparing for a video conference it is important to introduce everyone who takes part to the software used, possibly with the help of parents. Virtual meetings, too, run more smoothly when documents are prepared in advance, not least because that also helps to keep the meeting time to a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes.
According to Christof Wiechert it is essential to appoint a moderator. Another rule is to keep contributions short; they can always be explained in more detail in a later written version. The spoken word has priority over the parallel chat function. More complex topics can be delegated to small groups that can then feed their results back to the whole faculty.
Tomáš Zdražil thinks that video conferences have their limitations when it comes to “questions that are more personal and closer to home”, such as recruiting new colleagues or consulting on controversial issues. Voting tools are recommendable for questions that can be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’.