Thy Eternal Summer Shall Not Fade—May Staff Meeting Report
Wuxi Final Staff Meeting, May 2018
Nanjing May Staff Meeting 2018
Kathleen Oleksiuk
The final staff meeting of the school year was on June 1, on a steamy spring day that forewarned the start of the June rainy season in Nanjing. We met at 1:30, to accommodate the final housekeeping that needed to be done. It was a wise decision, seeing as the meeting lasted two and a half hours.
Even though the staff meeting started briskly, quickly moving through the first three topics on the agenda, the Teacher Talk session was swapped with house-keeping issues to the last spot on the agenda, more time was spent on the end-of-year feedback, 2018 Summer Orientation suggestions, and the lesson plan assignment. Due to this being the last staff meeting of the school year, a lot needed to be covered for end of the term and the end of the contract period, particularly because some of the information received was unclear. Dio and Grace did a great job clearing everything up, and then we moved on to the highlight of the staff meeting.
Teachers had another Open Day development task assigned, due June 8, the Lesson Plan Assignment for Storytelling/Lecture Lessons. This required a lot of explanation, and was confusing to some teachers because they assumed they needed to follow a specific template and provide a certain format. The key thing to remember is that these Open Day lessons are meant to not be scaffolded like regular ESL lessons, but provide a fun lecture-style lesson that depends entirely on what the teacher finds interesting (but appropriate) for Grades 5 and 6.
To assist teachers, Val and Matt demonstrated, quickly, their lessons on Da Vinci, the Battle of Marathon, and the Solar System/Voyager probes. These were extremely interesting, but took some time to go through.
The Teacher Talk Session for this staff meeting went more quickly in comparison, and covered two topics: "How to Make Everyone in the Classroom Talk and Pay Attention" and "Effective Time Management in the Classroom Environment". The four speakers were Jocelyn, John, Amber and Christopher.
The main points of Jocelyn and John's talk were that you must use a wide variety of ways to involve students, but be sensitive to cultural and personal quirks of the students. Amber shared some very practical ways to incorporate time management strategies into lesson planning and classroom preparation.
Christopher provided a very amusing look at lessons he learned about effective classroom management. He had something of a split personality as he both suggested that you needed to plan out for the long-term and think carefully about what your lesson goals are, versus the idea that time management in the classroom is a flexible thing and there are times you should go with the moment.
The meeting ended with some teachers going off to start the visa renewal process and others following Val to the office to pass along their teaching materials for the archive. Good luck to everyone in the new teaching year!