Teacher Common Planning Periods - Stefanie Hatfield

I am curious as to what everyone thinks about creating schedules that include common planning periods for grade level teachers.  I have seen it done to varying degrees of success. Some teachers can get a lot of work done together when given common planning, and in other schools I have seen the planning period turn in to 45 minutes of whining and complaining with one another and no planning being done at all!  
Does anyone have any experience with this?  If successful, did you do something to make it that way? If not successful, ideas as to what can be done to make sure teachers are utilizing their time wisely and effectively?  Or do we need to worry about it at all? 

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 1, 2017 at 4:12 AM

    This observation comes from the parent angle only. When New Albany instituted a later Wednesday morning start time some years ago, the "Eagle period" was meant for a common planning period, a time to provide extra help to kids perhaps, maybe a time to meet with a parent on short notice. After a while, it just became a day when everybody came to school later than usual.
    Doing this at the very end or very start of the day might create this problem.

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