Episode 2: Podcast Recap

For this episode, we felt it was important to discuss what helps your team be a team. That is not to say our team is perfect and we have it all figured out. But, we have figured out some things that seem to help make our team stronger or help when we are struggling.

In one of our first PLC meetings of the year, we establish norms. Depending on what your team or your PLC looks like, they may need to look different. Some examples of some norms are: being on time, coming prepared, listening to everyone, no judgement, everyone has a valued voice, and recognizing strengths. Most important is making your norms work for you and your team.

We also like to establish jobs so that we, as leaders, don’t feel like we are carrying too much responsibility. Some examples of jobs are note taker, time keeper, photographer (maybe you’re sharing artwork which is nice to have photos of to help people refer back to).

Team isn’t volunteering to take on jobs? Determine your team’s strengths! What we like to do is have a document with everyone’s name and then we would type in something we know that person is good at. For example, Hayley is good at Excel, so other teachers typed that in under her name and Laura is good at creating worksheets, so that was typed under her name. Sometimes you may not know your own strengths, but other people can point it out very easily. Filling out strengths is a great way to get to know your team too and makes delegating tasks much easier.

Another way we have gotten to know our team is doing an enneagram test. Super fascinating! It helps you discover how you relate to your co-workers and can be very surprising. You may think you are very different than someone else, but you have a lot of overlap between some characteristics.

We upped the game this year by having everyone fill out their preferred communication style. Whether they get to school early, stay late; do they prefer to text? Call? E-mail?. That way, when you reach out to a specific co-worker, you can be accommodating of them. Obviously, it doesn’t always work out and it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s nice to be aware of what your co-workers prefer based on their personal schedule. If your kiln is setting off a fire alarm…that’s a different story. Laura was scarred for a while on that (hear the whole story in episode 2 of the podcast).

A more personal way to get to know your team is to have them fill out a favorites survey. You can find so many options just by doing a Google search, but then we keep it on our shared drive so you can access it whenever you want to celebrate a teammate or they’re going through a tough time. We like to use this at conference time when we have to put in hours like classroom teachers but in a different way.

Meetings ALWAYS start with celebrations in our district. These can be professional or personal. Our team always jokes we like hearing each other’s art room celebrations and we feel like no one will appreciate them like we do. It’s a nice bonding moment that we all laugh at.

The always dreaded, never fun, makes you feel better after…conflict resolution! We often seek out an administrator’s advice because they deal with it all day, every day! They’re experts in conflict resolution! If you’re concerned about what might go down in a meeting, ask an administrator to be in the meeting to help moderate or be a neutral party. They’re on the outside of the situation and can usually give great insight into the issue.

In the end, if you get to know your team and work together as a team, there’s a good chance you won’t have to deal with as much conflict. Hello, we are all human and it’s going to happen, BUT some of these ideas would be super helpful in cutting down on the tension with an issue.

Keep blending,

Laura and Hayley