I will be your knight in shining armor coming to your emotional rescue (The Rolling Stones)

You all know what I think about meetings.

I won't bore y'all with another diatribe, but I will provide you with this nifty diagram from Sarah Cooper, looking at the ways you can cope with meetings and even better than that - appear smart at them!

I've used a few already - and I can recommend them whole-heartedly!!

#4 NOD CONTINUOUSLY WHILE PRETENDING TO TAKE NOTES is a personal favourite!

Oh is there concrete all around or is it in my head (Mott The Hoople)

1 Meetings
I have a thing about meetings - mainly an aversion. Leadership Freak seems to share my feelings, although I like his always positive initiatives to improve the experience. If we must have them then the powers that be should read this.

2 Curiosity
Another of our thrusts in English classes last year and this has been to build upon students' curiosity. Another Leadership Freak article that hits the right spot.

3 Professional development
I've been involved in various forms of PD during my teaching career (now into its thirty third year). Good to read this article by well known educational thinker/writer Mike Schmoker about restructuring PD to make it (more) powerful.

4 Quill
A colleague alerted me to this - a tool to help students be better writers - a great site that I aim to use in 2016.

5 Quill part 2
This article is a companion piece that delves into Quill's use as an 'accelerator'.

Well, I woke up this mornin', didn't know right from wrong (Muddy Waters)

The Meeting-a-thon continues unabated at school. 

They are a necessary evil.

It's not just Woodford House either - it's epidemic proportions in education. When I was a Deputy Principal (and then Principal) I seemed to spend most of my time in meetings. It was a bit of a shock - I didn't realise that was what I'd signed up for. Pastoral meetings, Middle Management Meetings, strategic Senior Leadership meetings, department meetings, parent meetings, student at risk meetings...it was endless.

Now that I have more classes to teach I have less meetings but they still happen with alarming regularity.

So, bottom line - they can't be avoided. 

Here then is a good list of five things that meetings should be addressing. I whittled down to this core list from a list of 15 things that was on Dan Rockwell's blog. Less is more Dan!:

What does winning look like this week/month?

How will we know we are winning?

What kept us from achieving greater success last week/month? 

What new thing(s) will we try this week/month? (Organizations that      don’t try new things, die!) 

What dangers wait around the corner? How can we prepare today?

I like this list because it acknowledges big picture, rather than making widgets. It starts with the here and now, looks back a bit with a clear focus, and then thinks about the future.

It's pretty much the same template we used when I was a DP at Cambridge High School and that I instigated in strategic Senior Leadership Team meetings as a Principal. Same idea - slightly different language.

If you're going to have a meeting - than please - make it a focused one.

Gotta make it through the tunnel, got a meeting with a man on the other side (Bruce Springsteen)

I sometimes feel like the meeting moth (Dilbert, as always, is all over it like a cheap suit).

We have a poster in our staff room that contains this Alain de Botton quote (from a tweet): 

When someone can't be bothered to think an issue through & vaguely hopes someone else will come up with the answer: they call a meeting.

Excuse my language, but, Gee Willikers, Monsieur de Botton has this nailed!! Too often that quote is true.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a meeting code - guidelines, if you will, to see us through?

As chance would have it I happened upon this set of meetings about laws...oops, I mean laws about meetings, on Twitter, from the coolly named Dan Rockwell.

Law #1: Thou shalt always declare the purpose of the meeting before it happens.  

The most important work of the meeting happens before the meeting. Confusion about purpose is always the result of inept leadership. 

Law #2: All participants shalt understand and agree that the requirements of law #1 have been fully met.

Declaring the purpose of a meeting doesn’t mean everyone understands or aligns.

Law #3: Thou shalt meet to make decisions, never to discuss.

Law #4: Everyone around the table shalt have a stake in the pie.

Law #5: The people closest to the work shalt talk the most.

Law #6: The most powerful person in the room shalt talk the least.

Law #7: Thou shalt engage in lively debate.

When law #6 is violated, law #7 won’t happen.

Law #8: The leader of the meeting shalt keep everyone focused and engaged.

Law #9: Thou shalt silence big mouths, even if it hurts their feelings, and        engage quiet participants.

Law #10: Thou shalt assign tasks to everyone in the room.
The person who leaves the room without something to do, shouldn’t have attended in the first place.