What do you hope your faculty and staff feel as they end the year?
- Spotlights
As an Administration team, go through your faculty and staff members’ list and assign an Administrator each individual to Spotlight during the last week of school. Share specific and personal appreciation for the work that person did over the school year. Highlight times they brought joy to school and made positive impacts on the community.
- End of Year Self-Reflection
By designating time to reflect, school leaders can set the stage for more meaningful goal-setting in the fall, determine what did and did not work over the past year, and create opportunities for celebration. Help your team recognize the positive – insights, growth, improvements to keep for next year. Start with personal reflection using a customized End of Year Reflection form in myFolio, then make time to share with each other in pairs or small groups. Finish by celebrating the work done over the past year. Use the information gathered to create action plans and evaluate school initiatives as a leadership team. Follow up with faculty and share your own reflections.
- Make Yourself Available
Create blocks in your calendar for faculty to book a time to come for an end-of-year chat. Ask them about their year – high points and low points – and what they are looking forward to in the next school year. Allow faculty and staff space to say what is on their mind. This is how you will learn more about your team members in order to make genuine connections.
- Community Feed
Use prompts in the Community Feed to encourage connection amongst faculty and staff before summer break begins. Don’t forget to add your own responses to get momentum going. Here are some examples of prompts:
- What books are you excited to read this summer?
- What’s your favorite summer playlist? OR What’s your song of the summer? (You can then create a staff playlist and share it on Spotify, Apple Music, or however you make your playlists.)
- Do you have any summer plans you are excited about?
- Did your class have an end-of-year project that you’d like to share? This could be an art show, classroom slideshow, class book, etc.
- What’s your fondest memory from the past year?
- Find time to laugh!
Isn’t laughing the best? And it’s important! Even if you don’t see yourselves as funny or silly, work together as an administration team to have some fun and create space to laugh at your end-of-year meetings. Perform a song and dance, write a funny poem about the year in review, host a trivia contest using Kahoot, or create your own end of the year bingo. Whatever you do, have fun and laugh!