Materials Archive
Featured Materials - Summer 2008
The materials that follow can be used to help organize a kick off meeting. This meeting is organized with the goal of fostering dialogue about effective strategies for engaging students at the start of the school year.
The "Kickoff Meeting Advice for Facilitators" provides an example of a meeting invitation to teachers, describes the structure of the meeting, and provides guidelines on how to conduct the meeting.
The "Stage One Prompts for Teachers" is to be used as a handout. Teachers write their responses on the handout during the second ten minutes of the meeting. Their responses are collected and later shared, often in the form of a summary. See "Kickoff Meeting Advice for Facilitators" for more detail.
The "Stage One Prompts for Student Panelists" is a set of questions for a panel of five students. This panel discussion takes place during the third ten minutes of the meeting. See "Kickoff Meeting Advice for Facilitators" for more detail.
Insight Sheet 1.1 compares and contrasts responses from past administrations of the "Stage One Prompts for Teachers." This is a helpful handout to distribute after the kickoff meeting. It can also serve as the focus for discussion. One column of the file gives rather passive and uncreative ways of interacting with students at the beginning of the school year, while the other column gives more active and engaging ways of beginning the year.
The First Day Video
This short video presents perspectives of students and adults who reflect on their expectations for the first day of school and the steps adults can take to create a safe and welcoming environment for students. Such conditions are closely tied to theTripod Project’s first engagement target which focuses on trust and security. Creating conditions that will promote this engagement target is a challenge that should be emphasized during the start of the school year.