September 15, 2016
Glencliff Elementary Leadership Team

Ms. Julie Hopkins, principal at Glencliff Elem, and her leadership team used the collaborative inquiry process to begin discussing and developing a communication plan for 2016-2017 school year.

Collaborative inquiry is a data-based team process that consciously uses the collaborative learning cycle (activating and engaging, exploring and discovering, and organizing and integrating) and the qualities of effective teams (fostering a culture of trust, maintaining a clear focus, taking collective responsibility and data-informed decision making.

Activating and Engaging

The activating and engaging component of the meeting was Looking Back...Looking Ahead (Lipton & Wellman, 2011) activity about communication.  It was a great springboard for our conversation.

Exploring and Discovering
Using a variety of articles about communication, a jigsaw structure was used to explore and discover information about best practices in school communication.

Organizing and Integrating
The information from the articles were used to develop draft communication plans recommendations.

Next Steps
Before the meeting adjourned, next steps were identified.

I'm excited to see the results of this meeting and its impact on their school.

The PowerPoint used during this session is located below on this page.

Meeting feedback is also located below on this page.

Meeting Feedback

Plus

• articles
• very interactive
• good blue print for communication
• good next steps
• meeting was well planned
• good inform that got me thinking
• looking back looking ahead
• knowledgeable of content
• I like the group work and articles
• very knowledgeable about the topic
• stayed on task and on time
• upbeat tone
• shared personal story
• stuck to schedule
• let us out on time
• clear and concise
• not too much info for 1 hour
• unique approaches
• positive topic
• different articles to read
• fast pace
• meaningful content
• I really enjoyed the process.
• I appreciated how you organized the information and set time limits.
• suggestions for how to streamline communication
• looking at data for what works and doesn’t work
  

Suggestions for Improvement

• some material was too abstract (difficult to relate to focus)
• need more time for end of the part of the discussion
• more time to read and digest articles
• handout of information
• more info about different aspects of collaborative inquiry
• I wasn’t aware that we were personally creating a communication plan for school and were learning about how