MEETING LEADER: Executive Director

OUTSIDER:

You are NOT participating directly in the role play. Instead, your task is to observe the dynamics of the meeting. What do you notice working or not working well as the conversation progresses? You will be asked to give feedback to the role players when it’s over. UNLESS – the MATCH professional in the role play is stuck and really doesn’t know what to say next. They can then stop the role play and ask you for some suggestions. OR they can hand you their Role Card – you will then step in and continue in their place.

You think the most important thing a director can do is improve instructional quality in the program. You have been the director for two years, and are sometimes frustrated by the slow pace of change. You have given the teachers a lot of suggestions and ideas, but it seems like they just nod their heads and then go back to doing things they way they always have. You want better for the kids, and better for the teachers, even if it means mandating specific teacher behaviors.

MEETING LEADER: MATCH Professional

You have been tasked with facilitating a group process on the effort to establish program-wide behavior expectations. This is only the second time you have been on site; the first time, you got a tour of some classrooms and met with the Executive Director. You were introduced to other staff members, but didn’t get a chance to talk with any of them. Word on the street is that this program has a lot of conflict and that it will be hard to get them to change anything.

MEETING LEADER: Education Coordinator

You find the job of leading meetings like this one to be frustrating, because the people who are in the meeting always come up with ideas and get excited, but the rest of the administrative team won’t provide time or resources after the meetings, so there is no support for follow through. It feels like a waste of time, but part of you hopes that if you could get some program-wide behavior expectations figured out, then that could open the door for change in other parts of the program.

PARTICIPANT: Executive Director

You think that program-wide behavior expectations are important, but you want the teaching staff to take the lead on establishing them. You don’t really care what expectations they choose, or how they choose them. In fact, you feel like the time that you are in this meeting would be better spent on grant writing and budgeting. During the meeting, you keep getting important emails and texts from staff about fires that need to be put out right now, including an emergency phone call.

PARTICIPANT: MATCH Professional

You have been asked to sit in on this meeting, because the program has been stalled for a year on implementing a system for preventing and handling challenging behaviors. They want your help. However, a good friend of yours used to work here, and she warned you that there are some quick tempers, and you’d better be careful about what you say or you won’t be invited back. But she also said that they fired another consultant who “never said anything” and “didn’t give any guidance.”

PARTICIPANT: Education Coordinator

You have a really good sense of what will help teachers, because you were a teacher until about 6 months ago. You are still in the classrooms more than other management staff, but maybe that’s because you keep having to cover when teachers don’t show up. You want to be the voice of the teachers while being seen as someone who is no longer a teacher. This is harder than you thought it would be. In fact, you don’t understand why you weren’t asked to lead this meeting; developing program-wide behavior systems should fall under your job responsibilities.

PARTICIPANT: Teacher

You are new to the program and excited to be part of this committee. You learned all about behavior expectations in school, but real children and families are complicated and you don’t always feel prepared! Also, you are just learning the culture of the program, so you are mostly hoping to listen and get some ideas. You are representing your classroom at this meeting, which makes you a little nervous. Your co-teacher is very outspoken, and you are afraid that when you tell her about whatever is decided, she will refuse to make changes.

PARTICIPANT: Home Visitor

Sometimes you get frustrated when everyone seems to focus on classrooms and the center based program, and you feel like home visiting gets left by the wayside. You want to make sure that whatever gets decided at this meeting, it will also apply to home visitors and families.

PARTICIPANT: Teacher

You’ve been with the program through fifteen years and four directors, and you are tired. You want to go back to the way things used to be, when you could just close your door and teach, before there were performance standards and school readiness goals and so many assessments. But you volunteered for this committee because more and more children in your class have out of control behaviors like biting, kicking, and defiance. You would like for this group to talk more about how to get specific children to stop doing those things. After all, until those behaviors stop, you can’t really teach.

PARTICIPANT: Coach

You really want this meeting to be effective. You know that if the program establishes consistent behavior expectations, that can be part of a larger change for children and families. You are hoping for some quick decisions at this meeting, knowing that you will have time with teachers to refine and implement later. That’s why you don’t want the meeting to get bogged down in process. Instead, you want everyone to come to quick agreement about what the program-wide behavior expectations should be.