Sept 19th ILD Meeting Summary 3:00 PM 4:05 PM in C-109

In attendance: Colline Coe, Chelsea Campbell, June James, Nicole Summers, Lilia Trynova, Kathy Cepus, Megan Simmer, Heather Hart, Brent Schieve, Stephen Koehn, Stacey Myrah, Holly Egan, Tammy Stockli, Patrice White, Kristen Dorey, Leah Christensen, Nadine McSpadden, Michelle Johnston, Matt Brandt, Stefan Stipp Information Update Critical Thinking After overwhelmingly positive feedback to the summer pro-d, the pro-d committee has decided theyd like Stefan to continue at the September Pro-D by doing a workshop on critical thinking which fits nicely with our ILD plans. The intention is do more of an actual workshop that allows people time to digest and plan ways to infuse critical thinking into their teaching. The Website/ Portal After checking out many different web-portals, I decided that a regular website with a forum would serve us best. Ive created the site and invite you to check it out at www.gpild.weebly.com . Please go to the forum section and create an id for yourself and send a reply. Come see me if you have trouble. Currently all of the site including the forum is open to anyone. We can discuss whether its worth paying a fee to make the site, or at least the forum, password protected. Job Action I checked with Denise Moffat and was clearly told that its not ok for us invite administrators to our meeting. I communicated this to admin and they were disappointed but understanding. I also met with Leah Christensen, our liaison to the district and there are some issues around how she and Nadine McSpadden (the other liaison) will be involved because of the job action. What is clear is that the engagement survey that was supposed to be part of what we do cannot be distributed to us (its in draft form) meaning well need to come up with our own ways to assess our progress.

Meeting Summary 1. Discussion of Information Items People are encouraged to go to the website and log into the forum before the next meeting. 2. How will our team function and make decisions? Stefan presented a short powerpoint on some ideas form a book on participatory decision making (Sam Kaners Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making) and proposed that we embrace its model for our group. We agreed unanimously to adopt the four participatory values of full participation, mutual understanding, inclusive solutions and shared responsibility. This means that rather than trying to reach quick decisions, our group will take the time necessary to truly understand each other and commit to finding win-win solutions while all doing our part. This diagram is a summary of the process:

3. We then discussed and agreed on two decision making rules we plan to follow: a. For big decisions that affect many people in our building (ex. changing the timetable to facilitate staff collaboration time) we require unanimous agreement from the ILD team. Unanimous does not necessarily mean wholehearted support; rather, it means everyone is willing to move forward with the decision. We will use the following gradients of agreement for our voting procedure:
1 Endorse I fully support it 2 Agree with reservation I mostly support it 3 Mixed feeling Im not sure but I dont want to hold 4 Some concerns I have some issues with the proposal 5 Against I veto this proposal

up the group

but Ill support the decision

Prior to each decision we will discuss what level of agreement we require to move forward. For example, when we voted on adopting this decision making rule we agreed that we needed all 1s and 2s to proceed. For another decision we might be ok with some 3s and 4s. Regardless of the situation everyone in our group has veto power. This will force us to live by the principles of participatory decision making above, meaning we have to make sure we fully understand each other and have taken everyones concerns into account before moving forward with a proposal. After receiving unanimous consent from our group we will work to effectively communicate our proposal to all staff which will include sincerely soliciting concerns and trying to address them. If we feel these have been adequately addressed, our proposal will go to a staff vote. We agree that the bar for these votes always be higher than a simple majority and we will decide the level of support necessary on a case by case basis. For example, to change the timetable to create collaboration time for staff, we might require 85% approval (Im just making this up). The bottom line is that we recognize that a very high level of buy in is required for any significant change to how we do things.

b. For little decisions (spending $40 to host our website for a year), we agreed to let Stefan make these
decisions after consulting with two neutral members of the ILD team. Stefan will also report out such decisions. We will revisit this decision in a month or two in case Stefan has gone crazy with his new power .

4. Thats as far as we got which leaves us lots to discuss at our next meeting on Sept 26 at 10:30 AM:
a. A little bit more on decision making b. What our purpose/ vision is. c. How well measure progress. d. How students might be involved. e. How we will proceed on our exploration of other programs/ schools I have some good leads but we could use lots more. f. When we want to meet on a regular basis Realistically, if we can address a. and b. at that meeting well have achieved a lot.