Giving the Gift of Time at Opening In-Service

Like many school districts, we start the school year with a large kickoff meeting for all employees. At their best, these meetings are informative and inspiring. At their worst, they are a multi-hour energy drain, full of incessant talking, isolated data points and bored educators.

Through the lens of our school district’s three themes — balance, a focus on the end user and authentic and purposeful innovation — we have been examining the traditional opening-day program in terms of its costs versus benefits. While we learned our district staff overall viewed the kickoff positively, they pointed out that, with the inclusion of travel time in our suburban district near Philadelphia, the ceremonies were taking up to 2½ hours.

After factoring the time available during our three opening in-service days, we found if we subtracted lunch and the opening day ceremony, teachers were left with only 19½ hours to prepare for the new school year. Within this limited time frame, we concluded it was misguided to expect our teachers to perform the many responsibilities necessary to prepare for students, to actively participate in building and district meetings and to engage in professional learning.

Remote Participation

Applying authentic and purposeful innovation, we explored the possibility of all 900 employees accessing remotely — from their homes, a local café or a classroom — the district’s opening-day course on Schoology, a learning management system with tools for creating course content, lesson planning and student assessment.

Our objectives with the online platform were consistent with our traditional model: building camaraderie, promoting a sense of belonging and reinforcing our district identity and belief systems. We also wanted to celebrate district accomplishments, welcome new hires, acknowledge our longstanding employees, set priorities for the new school year and offer feedback on the previous year’s priorities.

Through Schoology, we also could give our faculty and staff an opportunity to interface with each other and the school system and further the district’s movement toward providing professional learning through a blended approach.

Most importantly, we wanted to give our employees some flexibility of time and space during in-service days.

Backup Systems

Two weeks before the first in-service day, we sent all staff a link to Schoology and the course code for the opening-day material. Our technology department ensured every employee was connected to the learning management system. We also created a Google shared folder as a fail-safe in the event individuals had trouble logging in.

Even though the staff had two weeks to complete the course before the first in-service day, we maintained a two-hour block of time at the beginning of the first morning. This was time traditionally reserved for opening-day meetings and activities.

The time block represented authentic flexibility of time and space. Teachers who had completed the course could go to their buildings to address their own professional needs. Those completing the course on the first in-service day were asked to do so by 10 a.m.

Within this time frame, we created five mandatory activities, including motivational kickoff videos. New teachers had access to advice from veterans via an online discussion board and a Twitter project using the handle #GVFeeling.

New Respect

Feedback from faculty and staff to last fall’s digital in-service was overwhelmingly positive. They loved the additional time for individual planning and the flexibility of engaging with the material. Most importantly, they felt respected because the new opening-day activities recognized their needs as professionals.