Reply To: Weekly meeting with teaching assistants

[Catherine]

Hi Sarah! i run weekly TA meetings every wednedasy during break which is half an hour. I began it because TAs took break duites on thrusday so that teachers could have their staff meetings – but then TAs felt they were missing out on updatesof what was goin on in the school.
At first I ran one meeting a month on a topic like dyslexia etc; one meeting the ehad came in to talk to TAS; one meeting was about social skills trainiing and one was about wahtever people wanted to bring up. The latter was a bit difficult because there was one person who felt the time needed to be spent with rasing complaints- and that got really bad with the general mood of the group; then there was another person who felt the time would be well spent with advice on how things had been done in other schools she had worked in. So really, my aim of all voices being heard did not happen.
I did a survey asking TAs what how they wanted to use the meeting time. What came out of that was: 1x month a cpd on a topic eg dyslexia etc; onece a month TAs with their keystage leader; onece a month with all keystage leaders and me and once a month optional and peple who come to the optional decide how we want to work. In the end, the optional group chose to watch the series ‘ Atypical’ which is about a family with an aspie teen and discuss what they learn about apsergers/autism during our optional meeting.
Ive also encouraged TAs to do presentations on topics of their choice. Not many are keen to di it themselves, finding it too daunting. I’d love to find a way for more voices to be head.