Getting Cross Department Team Meetings Started

This document outlines the areas that need to be addressed as secondary schools get cross-department teams up and running.

Author: Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MIBLSI)

Version:1.0

Date:January 2017

Team Meeting Schedule

Cross Department Teams should meet three times a year to review data (e.g. Early Warning Indicators, SWIS data) to develop a cross-department team action plan. In addition, the team should meet every 4-8 weeks to monitor progress on the plan. The data review meetings should take place around the same timeline as the collection of the Early Warning Indicators (EWI).

There are some logistics that need to be considered when setting your team meeting schedule. These include:

  • When will we find time to meet?
  • Will we need substitutes for our meetings or will it happen before school, after school, or during a common planning time?
  • Is there an existing meeting structure that we can use for Cross Department Team meetings (e.g., PLC time)?

While the first set of EWI data are for the first twenty days, there is some work that needs to be done to get the data in an accessible format. We suggest that you schedule your first data review meeting as a team after the School Leadership Team’s fall data review. The rest of the data are available at the end of the semester or trimester depending on your school’s schedule. The progress monitoring meetings would occur in between the data review meetings.

A typical meeting schedule would include the following:

  • Data Review meetings for school’s on semestersor quarters
  • After the first 20 days of school
  • At the end of the first semester or end of second quarter
  • At the end of the third quarter – Teams may not have course proficiency data if they do not report grades at the end of the quarter but all teams will have attendance and behavior EWI data along with the discipline referral data from SWIS. If a school has progress reports at the end of the quarter this information could be used by the team
  • Data Review meetings for school’s on trimesters
  • After the first 20 days of school
  • At the end of the first trimester
  • At the end of the second trimester
  • Progress-monitoring meetings would occur every 4-8 weeks in between the Data Review meetings regardless of how your school’s terms are set up.

For the remainder of the current school year, your team should have one Data Review meeting and at least one Progress-Monitoring meeting. Discuss when these meetings will occur and record your responses in the space below and on the chart paper.

Initial Data Review Meeting Date

Our first Data Review Meeting will occur sometime this spring. We will use end of first semester or first trimester data for this meeting since this is the most “current” set of EWI data available to us. We will meet on ______for our first Data Review meeting coming out of this training. At this meeting we will review our EWI data and our discipline referral data.

Initial Progress-Monitoring Meeting Date

We will meet on ______for our Progress Monitoring meeting. At this meeting we will review our progress towards our objective and our implementation of our plan developed during our data review meeting.

Meeting Dates for Next Year

Before the end of the school year we will need to set our schedule for Cross Department Team meetings for the next school year for this team.

Team Meeting Norms

“Norms can help clarify expectations, promote open dialogue, and serve as a powerful tool for holding members accountable.” (Lencioni, 2005)

Considerations when developing norms:

  • Time
  • Listening
  • Confidentiality
  • Decision Making
  • Participation
  • Expectations

Common Mistakes

  • When the team leader is absent, the meeting structure is non-existent
  • Too much or too little written documentation of the meeting
  • Too many simultaneous conversations
  • Tangents or off-topic conversations
  • Lack of data at the meeting

Considerations When Establishing Team Norms

The following considerations may be helpful when developing meeting norms for your Cross Department Team meetings. These considerations were adapted from Hrisch, Deiehant, & Sparks (1994) and (DuFour, 2010).

Time
  • When do we meet?
  • Will we set a beginning and ending time?
  • Will we start and end on time?
Listening
  • How will we encourage listening?
  • How will we discourage interrupting?
Confidentiality
  • Will the meetings be open?
  • Will what we say in the meeting be held in confidence?
  • What can be said after the meeting?
Decision Making
  • How will we make decisions?
  • Will we reach decisions by consensus?
  • How will we deal with conflict?
Participation
  • How will we encourage everyone’s participation?
  • Will we have an attendance policy?
Expectations
  • What do we expect from members?

Your Team’s Norms

Record what your team’s meeting norms will be in the space provided below and record it on your chart paper.

Role of the Administrator

The role of a school administrator in the Cross Department Team meetings will vary based on the context of a school. Three variations are described below, an ideal, an acceptable variation and an unacceptable variation. With your school’s administrator discuss what his/her role will be with the Cross Department Team meetings based on these variations. Record your decision on the chart paper.

Ideal Variation

An ideal variation would be that a school administrator is available to participate in all of the Cross Department Team meetings. The administrator is the instructional leader of the building and provides a unique perspective in the problem-solving process. In addition, the administrator is a part of the School Leadership Team and his/her participation in both team’s meetings will further enhance the communication and collaboration between the teams.

Acceptable Variation

An acceptable variation is if the school administrator attends meetings when time permits and has a strong communication link between him/herself and the Cross Department Teams. This could include a review of the team’s meeting notes on the Cross Department Problem Solving Template along with any other notes coming out of the meetings and/or a debrief with someone who attends the meetings.

Unacceptable Variation

An unacceptable variation would be if there is no connection between the school’s administrator and the Cross Department teams.

Access to Data

In order to engage in effective problem solving your team will need to have efficient access to data for your meetings. There are a variety of data sources that will support your team’s problem-solving meetings. Please review the information below each data source and engage in the discussion and decision-making that is prompted.

MIDATA

Your team will need to be able to log into MIBLSI’s database, MIDATA, to examine your school’s dashboard data for your common grade level. As a team, discuss the following and then record your responses in the space provided and on the chart paper.

  • Who has access to MIDATA from our school? Is it someone on this team?
  • If not, who will request access from our district’s MTSS Coordinator?

Early Warning Indicators

The Early Warning Indicator (EWI) data are available from your School Information System (SIS). As a team, discuss the following and then record your responses in the space provided and on the chart paper.

  • Who has access to the specific Early Warning Indicators and the EWI student level report/spreadsheet for our common grade level?
  • Recall when the EWI data are available for school’s on semester or quarter terms:
  • After the first 20 days of school
  • At the end of the first semester or end of second quarter
  • At the end of the third quarter – Teams may not have course proficiency data if they do not report grades at the end of the quarter but all teams will have attendance and behavior EWI data along with the discipline referral data from SWIS. If a school has progress reports at the end of the quarter this information could be used by the team
  • Recall when the EWI data are available for school’s on trimester terms:
  • After the first 20 days of school
  • At the end of the first trimester
  • At the end of the second trimester
  • Who has access to our Student Information System and will ensure we have the data we need for our meetings?

Additional Academic Data

As a team you will need to identify what additional academic data you will want to have access to in order to support your data analysis. As a team discuss the following and then record your responses in the space provided and on the chart paper.

  • What additional academic data did we identify this morning on our problem-solving team table?
  • How will we access it for our meetings?

Discipline Referrals

Discipline Referral data will come from your school’s School-wide Information System (SWIS) account. As a team, discuss the following and then record your responses in the space provided and on the chart paper.

  • Who in your building has access to the SWIS? Anyone on your team?
  • Who will guide our team through the SWIS drilldown when we are examining our discipline referral data?

Communication

During Day Two of this training series we will discuss communication between your Cross Department Team and other teams in your school (e.g., School Leadership Team, Department Teams).

Assignments

Your team’s assignments coming out of today’s session include:

  • Communicate with the rest of the staff about the different types of problem-solving teams
  • Address the logistics in the “Getting Cross Department Team Meetings Started” document
  • Hold at least one data review meeting and one progress-monitoring meeting between now and the end of the school year using the Cross Department Team meeting template
  • Schedule and hold data review and progress-monitoring meetings during the next school year
  • Bring Cross Department Team meeting template document from your most recent meeting to the Secondary Data Based Problem Solving Day 2 training next school year
  • Administrator: decide if additional Cross Department Teams will participate in the Day 1 training (this training) next year

Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MIBLSI) is a Grant Funded Initiative (GFI) funded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) through
the Michigan Department of Education.

Getting Cross Department Team Meetings Started (January, 2017)

Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MIBLSI) is a Grant Funded Initiative (GFI),

funded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) through the Michigan Department of Education.

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