I had reason recently to reflect on ways in which information is communicated within schools. I will argue that it’s the same calculus whether planning for class instruction, departmental meetings, or whole-school communication, and that comes down to a single question: why are we all in the same place at the same time?
By and large, monodirectional communication does not require that everyone in the target audience be in the same place at the same time. This is the basic premise behind “flip-teaching”: direct messaging can be asynchronous so that the shared time and space can be used for dialogue or dialogic practice.
Imagine teaching a lesson to help students answer the Essential Question: “How do we know whether hypnosis is a real psychological phenomenon?” One could simply lecture on the topic in class, including examples of how hypnosis has been proven to help, and examples of where it is essentially a ruse. Class could be quite engaging because the topic is inherently interesting and the examples could be amazing and/or humorous. Another way to do it would be to assign a reading, perhaps assign a TED Talk, perhaps even assign an amazing YouTube and a humorous example on YouTube, and then class time could be devoted to a demonstration and a class discussion or debate around the controversy. This is the basic idea behind “flipped teaching”.
It makes one wonder whether the same question – why is everyone in the same place at the same time? – could be applied to departmental meetings or faculty meetings. If the goal is to simply communicate information, it seems possible. If the goal is to foster dialogue, then perhaps the flipped-teaching model might be of benefit here as well.
This is not a new idea; flip-meetings. Are. A. Thing.
As an administrator, I feel a personal responsibility to model good meeting design. If there are eight people on my committee, I constantly remind myself that it’s not a 1-hour meeting — it’s an 8-hour meeting. I further remind myself: we’re all together in the same place at the same time not for the simple communication of information – that could likely be accomplished through email[1] – we’re there for genuine conversation and dialogue. Sometimes the messaging might be more affective than informative; in that case, an email wouldn’t work, but perhaps a recorded video could.
Apropos of nothing, this is just something that was volleying around my mind.
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I realize that some information is best communicated in person; there are times where an administrator needs to control the time, tone, and conveyance of information. For example, when there is a trajedy in the community or a tectonic shift in personnel, it’s probably best to not send an email but rather to pull people together to all hear the same thing at the same time from the same person. This, thankfully, is rare in a school community. ↩