Working with Others Through Groups

How productive are your school improvement meetings? As a principal, teacher, parent, businessman have you ever walked away from a school improvement team meeting wondering if anything was accomplished?

Groups have a life-cycle of their own. As school improvement is a team effort, district and school Administrators need to support their improvement teams with the tools necessary to be successful.

Improvement teams bring together a diverse group of stakeholders with divergent perspectives. While the principal might seem to be the natural leader of the team the use of trained facilitators can serve a vital role keeping the group focused on the task at hand. The approached is modeled after similar practices among larger corporations.

Facilitator Defined

As defined by the International Association of Facilitators, facilitators are called upon to fill an impartial role in helping groups become more effective acting as process guides to create a balance between participation and results.

District Facilitation Team

The following concept could be adopted by medium to large school districts, regional educational service agencies for rural/small districts or state departments of education. While this concept is presented within the context of the school improvement team other applications it could be applied to include re-districting, facility development, special education, school board planning sessions.

At a district level the central office would organize an "district facilitation team" comprised of trained facilitators to assist the local principals with their improvement teams. The people serving as facilitators could be staff from schools throughout the district and/or local business or community people. The selected people would undergo a formal training process related to group dynamics and participation. Once trained the members of the "district facilitation team" would be available to the local schools as each principal desired to utilize them. A principal sensing that facilitation assistance would be helpful could call on this team for support. The team members utilized would not be any that might be working at the involved school.

Facilitator's Role

The role of a facilitator is to ensure that a group functions effectively as to their interactions and deliberative process. A facilitator is meant to be a process expert rather than a subject matter expert. An example of a defined role can be found at Team Facilitator.

Lessons Learned

• Facilitators should be people of stature within the school district, or community or region.

• Careful consideration should be given when matching facilitator with school.

• The engagement should begin with a pre-briefing with the school's principal.

• The composition of a school improvement team will be diverse in terms of gender, cultural and economic status. The facilitator needs to be aware of the socio/cultural sensitivities associated with the team's membership.

• Different tasks such as problem solving vs. decision making will require different techniques and tools.

• Generally, groups working with third party facilitators are more productive and successful than groups working without them.

The following is from a list created by Nancy Mohr, founding principal of University Heights High School in New York City and now a consultant and facilitator to schools interested in leadership and school reform.. Click on Nancy's Facilitation Standards for the complete list.

• Listen 99% of the time

• Ask questions that will truly get the group thinking

• Explain less beforehand, debrief more afterwards

• Never skip the ground rules

• Do not lose courage

• Keep the purpose in mind

For additional information check out the following resources:

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