How to Plan Highly Effective Back-to-School Meetings

In mid-July, the clicks of a band camp metronome echoing down the hallway mark the unofficial start of the school year for Jon Minton, principal of Elizabethton High School in Tennessee.

It’s a welcome sound after a month or so of relative silence, during which Minton limits interactions with his teachers. Prior to mid-July, if Minton has something he needs to communicate immediately—a change to a teacher’s schedule or assigned classroom, for example—he’ll text or call the teacher. “Our people know that if I do that, they need to call back,” he said. “But I’m not going to send out an email.”

Ryan Durr, principal of Meade High School in Maryland, used to provide updates to his staff throughout the summer. As he admits, he was probably wasting his time, because “people don’t check their emails” when they’re off, he said. Nowadays, Durr is more judicious about his summertime communications with teachers. When he reaches out to them, it means back-to-school activities are really, truly around the corner. 

Applying the same philosophy, Michael King, principal of Geneva High School in Ohio, says June is a “no-go” for contacting staff, and July is technically his month off, so he’s not anxious to reach out to colleagues then, either. “If it’s messaging that’s absolutely important, I will definitely email, but I do try to give people the break they deserve,” he said.

It’s not until the tail-end of summer break that these leaders restart regular contact with their teachers, and even then, they are careful about the amount of back-to-school information they pack into emails, phone calls, and calendar invites.

This deliberate approach to communication is something principals learn through trial-and-error and experience. And their messages are differentiated: They have to make sure they give special attention to new staffers even as they send less information to veteran educators. Once staff reconvene in the building, though, these principals make sure that among a flurry of necessary meetings, both groups of teachers have plenty of time to set up their classrooms.

Recently, Minton, Durr, and King shared these details and more about how principals should go about managing summer communications and back-to-school meetings.

Strategically Re-Engage Staff After a True Break

Two or three weeks before teachers are due back, Durr sends them a text message asking that they take a look at their email inbox at their convenience. He also mails them a letter; using a variety of reminders makes it easier to get everyone on the same page.

His email goes over back-to-school basics: the master schedule, a “report day” agenda, and procedural notifications, like where teachers can pick up their keys. Durr will sometimes flag that the school improvement team met over the summer and provide a link with more background on what the team discussed, as well as goals for the upcoming school year. “I just want them to have those pieces as a reference, but I’m not expecting them to dive in and break them down,” Durr said—and he makes that point in the email.

Durr asks new teachers to come back a week before the veterans. The new teachers participate in a dedicated professional development week called Meet University. “We do team-building and introductions of the admin team, tours of the building, how to set up your grade book, and we go over the basic needs for the classroom,” Durr said. “We normally try to have department chairs come in and introduce themselves as well.”

A week or so before teachers return to Elizabethton High, Minton sends a friendly email blast to encourage staff to start checking their emails again. New teachers are on a separate email list. In Minton’s school district, every teacher is required to earn a certain number of professional development hours; new teachers can get hours covered via their orientation and a two-day training at the district office, where they learn how to do everything from requesting time off to setting up their email addresses. The last half-day of the training is on-site at Elizabethton High, where an assistant principal welcomes the new hires and assigns them a mentor. Soon after, veteran teachers come to school, and “we’re off to the races,” Minton said.

The extra time for new staffers helps the rest of back-to-school logistics go more smoothly. That said, King suggests avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to integrating newbies. “Sometimes you’ll hire a veteran teacher where you just get out of their way because they’re ready to run,” King said. “For other hires, this is going to be their first teaching assignment, and they don’t know the technology or the internal systems, and they don’t know how the building operates.” King makes sure these new hires have “go-to people in different areas” who can help with a little bit of everything, including where to go for lunch.

Food, it turns out, is a major component of back-to-school meetings. “I feed my staff well,” King said with a laugh. “I’m known to buy the best burgers I can find with all the fixings, and we do barbecues, too. And we have an amazing donut shop right down the road—good donuts made with real butter.”

Durr has energetic music playing and an ample breakfast when his full staff arrives at Meade High. The first big meeting involves team-building and get-to-know-you activities like Four Corners, in which they move to different sides of the room if they traveled out of the country, or welcomed a new family member. “We don’t want to jump straight into work,” he said. It’s preferable to “welcome them back and let them know they’re appreciated. I’m excited every time a new school year starts, and I want them to have that same excitement.”

Budget Ample Time for Teachers to Set Up Their Classrooms

The most important part of back-to-school planning is to not overwhelm teachers with too much at once. No matter how useful any particular back-to-school meeting might be, nothing will matter to teachers quite as much as time spent in their own classrooms, and Durr likes to split up back-to-school prep days so they aren’t totally consumed by professional development. “We try to balance it,” he said. “Half of the day we’re meeting, and you’ve got the other half to work in your room.”

During the back-to-school period, Minton says one of his chief responsibilities is “dodging the things that eat up a teacher’s time.” He’s been in back-to-school meetings and trainings that stretched on forever, or were squeezed together in quick succession. Those aren’t effective ways to pass along crucial details, reminders, and learnings, he says, recommending instead “thinking like a teacher,” which Minton was before he transitioned to leadership.

“You want to make sure they have as much time as possible in their rooms,” Minton said. “They need to get ready for students and get their minds right.”

It’s Never Too Early to Plan for Next Year

A relatively low-pressure back-to-school schedule—in which teachers set up their rooms, attend a manageable number of information-rich meetings, and are not inundated with hundreds of unread emails—is the result of many months of planning by school leadership.

Minton and his team review their master schedule and personnel decisions for the following school year as early as February. A few months later, his administrators participate in a one-day retreat, where they adopt an “emphasis” for next year. That emphasis “could be all kinds of different things—data-driven, culture-related, whatever,” he said. The aim is to establish a “North Star.” By knocking out “big-ticket items before teachers go home,” Minton said, “we don't have to communicate about them later. I think if we didn’t do that, that would be a reflection on our preparation.”

Durr operates on a similar timeline. Toward the end of the school year, he centers professional development meetings on a series of questions that he wants staff to answer honestly. He places paper around the room, and asks teachers to anonymously write their responses to reflections like, What went well this year? What would you like to see more of from the administration?

Drawing on these reflections and on schoolwide data, Durr and his leadership team launch a series of committees that teachers can join for the following year. Assistant principals, who oversee the committees, try to hold at least two meetings before summer break so the committee members can lay some groundwork, freeing up time for other meetings during the back-to-school period.

Though the three principals I spoke with are generally averse to summertime correspondence with most of their teachers, they do stay in touch with administrators and teacher leaders. This summer, Durr has been meeting with his leadership team and department chairs every other Wednesday. They go over academic data, discuss committee initiatives, and think ahead about impending back-to-school communications. There’s a general understanding that administrators will miss a meeting or two while they take a vacation, which isn’t a big deal. The key is for the cadence of the meetings to be semi-consistent—not constant—so that everyone arrives back to school feeling recharged and equipped.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Durr said, “because if we wait until August and try to get everything done the week before kids come back, that’s definitely not enough time.”