We Need to Talk About...

- February 11, 2021

Are you trying to identify which students to bring forward for discussion at a Collaborative Team Meeting? Are you wondering how to determine which students to talk about during your Collaborative Team Meeting? Are you trying to figure out how to talk about a number of students in a focused way to ensure the efficiency of your Collaborative Team Meeting?

The following are some considerations that may be beneficial when we know we need to talk about a particular student.

The Pre-Meeting Organizer

In his blog post, Examining Collaborative Team Meetings - Pre-Meeting Organizers, Kurtis Hewson explores the idea of having teachers come to the Collaborative Team Meeting prepared for the conversation. This preparedness is critical to the success of the solution-focused discussion, and a pre-meeting organizer is suggested as way to organize prior to a meeting.

The Student Alert in WeCollab

Within WeCollab, the pre-meeting process described by Kurtis can be timely on the part of the teacher as well as lead to incredible efficiencies during Collaborative Team Meetings.

The Student Alert is a digital way of identifying the reason a student might need to be brought forward in a meeting discussion: to celebrate, to raise a concern, or to identify an opportunity to challenge and enrich the learning.

The timeliness of this feature is that it can be accessed at any time, allowing a teacher to enact an alert prior to a Collaborative Team Meeting. Adding an Alert not only provides an indication of who needs to be talked about during the meeting, but the Alert raises awareness to anyone who accesses the Student Profile that the student is on the radar, and where a staff member is subscribed to a student, the Alert becomes part of the daily or weekly email summary (student subscription will be explored in a future blog post).

Add an Alert

Clicking on the blue Add an Alert button in the Student Profile will bring up a pop up window where text can be entered to describe the reason for bringing the student forward for discussion.

View an Alert

When an Alert exists in a Student Profile, the previously blue Add an Alert button is now a red Remove Alert button. Hovering over the question mark in the button will show the Alert text and the name of the user who added the Alert.

Alerts on the Team Board

An Alert appears on the Team Board as a red exclamation mark on the Student Card. Hovering over the exclamation mark will show the Alert text and the name of the user who added the Alert, much the same way as hovering over the question mark in the Student Profile.

Show Alerts on the Team Board

The ability to address the students we need to talk about becomes incredibly efficient with the use of the Show Alerts button on the Team Board. Students with an Alert on their profile are brought to the top in their appropriate Tier of Support and the remaining students are greyed out.

Not only does this clearly identify the students whose teachers have noted that "we need to talk about...", but the functionality of WeCollab in this context becomes focused on these students: it is only their profiles that can be accessed for the purposes of adding meeting notes or updating details.

Alerts During Meetings

During an active meeting, the Alert text can be added to the details of the meeting with the click of a button, entering into the meeting notes the reason for discussing the student while at the same time reducing the amount of redundant data entry.

No Student Falls Through the Cracks

If an Alert is not addressed during a Collaborative Team Meeting, it remains in the Student Profile until such time as someone removes it. While there may not have been time to talk about a particular child at this meeting, they remain on the radar to be brought up at the next meeting.