Unlocking Group Potential to Improve Schools

How great groups make great schools

This field book shows educators how to develop group culture, enhance facilitators’ skills, and optimize the group’s most precious resource—its members. The authors describe how to form working committees, task forces, grade-level, and department teams, and faculties that are more effective and better equipped to resolve complex issues around student learning. Specific topics include:

• Understanding eight principles that underlie effective groups
• Learning the five standards for effective meetings
• Setting clear goals and roles
• Practicing new ways of talking for improved collaboration
• Examining perceptions and mental models
• Enhancing energy sources
• Working with conflict
• Developing basic facilitation skills