The meetings begin

Before the tech committee meeting, I had a short meeting with C to talk about my goals for the meeting.  I expressed my reservations about making such a public apology with staff - how do I do it with the staff as a whole without sounding self-serving?  Do I write it and send it as an email?  Again, might come off as wanting praise or a pat on the back or something.  C agreed with my thought that it should happen in this small group, and then get spread out as people talk about the committee's agenda and goals - assuming, of course, that people actually talk about the committee's agenda and goals.

So I started the meeting with the mea culpa I had planned in my head.  I acknowledged that I felt the pressure to delivery something useful that would make teachers feel at ease with 500 computers arriving on campus for freshmen during 2011-12, and that I had forgotten the simplest thing that I should have done originally: I never asked teachers what they needed.  I never asked what they wanted.  I gave a few details here and there, but overall made it perfectly clear that I had a growth mindset and wanted to reset my support of staff to focus on their expressed needs, rather than my perceptions of what it was that they needed.  I also told them that I was not looking for any kind of response, as the goal of the meeting was not to talk about me, but to acknowledge staff concerns and move on.

It seemed to be received well.

We then developed a consensus on conversation protocols and developing goals for the group.  I restrained myself greatly from dictating what I thought should be the goals of the group, other than an overall need to find out what teachers' concerns were and develop solutions to them in response.  We spent a good chunk of time with teachers going through and eliminating the questions that ghsusers had contributed to the East Noble visit question document.  I think it went well.