I’ve recently joined my 4th PYP school, and each and every one so far has had some sort of “weekly PYP meeting”; a regularly scheduled opportunity for teams to come together, collaborate with one another and the PYP Coordinator.
These types of meetings have looked and felt a little different depending on the school. So I wanted to make sure that coming in as the new PYP Coordinator I wasn’t transplanting my own understanding or expectations of these meetings, but instead taking a stance of “appreciative inquiry” to learn and embrace the form and function of these meetings at my new school.
I decided that every first PYP meeting I had with each team I would frame it as a collaborative inquiry and together we would explore three over arching questions:
Why do we have these weekly PYP meetings?
How do we want these weekly PYP meetings to work?
What specifically do we want to focus on during our time together?
For each team that I met with I was transparent about why we were doing this and hopefully what it would help us achieve – meetings that felt productive, effective and enjoyable to everyone in the room. I prepared individual posters with each guiding question and invited each team member to share and document their thinking and perspective on a sticky note. I also prepared some probing questions for each over arching question to help support and scaffold their thinking.
It was fantastic! Not only did I learn more about each individual as they shared their thinking, but I could also begin to understand the team as a whole as trends and patterns emerged in their collective thinking.
As an incoming PYPC… this was treasure! Not only would it help me differentiate and personalize the support I offered each team, but it helped me model the approach of co-construction. Now these weekly PYP meetings would hopefully be something I do “with” the teams, not “to” them.
After I had facilitated this protocol with each team I synthesized the individual thinking into a collective document we could use and refer to.
From here, I will present each draft back to each team ask for feedback before it is finalized. Once it is finalized I will post it in our meeting space so we can make it visible and refer to it.
Then I will make sure to use the ideas to personalize the structure of the agenda, what goes on the agenda as well as what my support looks like during the meeting.
I envision this to be an iterative process, where we continually refer back to these documents, reflect on how they are working in practice and make ongoing tweaks and adjustments to the Why, How and What of our weekly PYP meetings.
With the ultimate goal being that everyone in the rooms feels that our weekly time together is productive, effective, and enjoyable. And, most importantly, making a positive impact on our students and their learning.
What do weekly PYP meetings look like at your school? Who decides?
How do you co-construct the learning environment and community for your weekly PYP meetings?
Making Good Humans 