259. A Collaborative Team Meeting Structure that Elevates Instruction with Kurtis Hewson

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In this episode, Kurtis Hewson joins host Lindsay to discuss his book, Collaborative Response, and the innovative concept of Collaborative Team Meetings (CTMs). Kurtis emphasizes the importance of these meetings as the missing linchpin in multi-tiered systems of support in schools. 

By implementing CTMs, schools can reduce the number of overall meetings by focusing on proactive and collaborative strategies, allowing educators to better support students. This episode is full of practical advice and strategies to implement in your school context. 


The Big Dream 

Kurtis’ big dream is captured by the idea that every child deserves a team—an educational environment where no teacher works in isolation and no student's success (or lack of success) is solely the responsibility of one person. He aims to transform schools from isolated islands of excellence into collaborative communities that leverage the collective expertise of educators to support every student's needs effectively.

Mindset Shifts Required

Kurtis sees three key mindset shifts for educators who want to work better as a team of support to their students: 

1. Tier the supports, not the kids. Instead of labeling students based on their academic tier, it’s more impactful to tier how we’re supporting them as educators. It puts the responsibility on the educators, not the student. 
2. Focus on the “yellow”: Kurtis is a proponent of color-coding data, so instead of concentrating on students who are struggling the most (the "reds"), prioritize those who are close to meeting expectations (the "yellows"), to prevent them from falling behind. Note that the “reds” get more support in the different layers of team meetings.
3. Get comfortable with discomfort: Educators must become comfortable with being pushed out of their comfort zones in collaborative settings. This involves embracing vulnerability and growth together, allowing for challenging yet supportive conversations.

Action Steps  

Implementing CTMs begins with the understanding that there are four layers of team, as Kurtis lays them out from the least to most intensive: 

1. Collaborative planning: When teachers come together to work on things that will impact all students. 
2. Collaborative team meetings: A regular meeting every 3-5 weeks with other educators that you don’t share common teaching experiences with (e.g., Math, P.E., and English teachers meeting together). Meetings have a focus area, and all participants come ready to discuss and learn from each other. 
3. School support team: The team that meets either bi-weekly or weekly and includes administrators, support coordinators, and those with more specialized roles. The conversation here is about students who need support beyond the classroom. 
4. Case consult: Any meeting about a single child at a time. 

Building these layers of support help schools decrease the number of meetings they have, but increase the quality and impact of them. By using the collaborative team meeting as a linchpin in the process, more will be resolved there without having to bring in so many support team and case consult meetings. 

With those layers in mind, teams can establish a new meeting rhythm with these action steps: 

Step 1: Start by establishing CTMs every three to five weeks, integrating them into existing PLC structures if necessary.

Step 2: Assign roles, set norms, and prepare for meetings with specific data-driven objectives, focusing on yellow students and key issues without sharing students' names.

Step 3: Utilize structured reflection and feedback processes to continuously improve the effectiveness of CTMs and ensure they are solutions-oriented and impactful.

Step 4: Get really granular about the issues you are facing, focusing on the strategies and solutions, not the specific students and their stories that can distract from how you will move forward.

We go into further detail about the CTM in this episode, and Kurtis outlines it all in his new book, Collaborative Response. 

Challenges?

The primary challenge in adopting CTMs is remaining true to the structured processes and timing of the meetings. Many educators may initially resist the level of structure required, preferring more organic discussions. However, the structure is crucial to maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of these meetings and must be adhered to for long-term success. 

Another challenge is overcoming the desire to discuss students by name and story, which can derail the focus from solution-building to storytelling.

One Step to Get Started 

Download the CTM starter kit from Jigsaw Learning, which provides necessary resources such as meeting templates, role cards, pre-meeting organizers, and facilitator guides. This kit acts as a launching pad for schools to begin their journey towards transformative collaborative practices.

Stay Connected

You can find more from Kurtis Hewson on the Jigsaw Learning website, where you can also get a copy of Kurtis’ book, Collaborative Response. You can also tune into the Building a Culture of Collaboration podcast, or connect with Kurtis on Instagram and LinkedIn.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing an Overview of Collaborative Response article and a CTM Starter Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 259 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 7:02 “Every child deserves a team.  And what I mean by that is I think our children deserve the best of what we have to offer collectively. No one should be feeling isolated on an island in a silo and that no child’s lack of success is ever the responsibility of one person.”
• 13:12 “I believe true collaboration is when we get pushed further than we could have on our own. And that push is done in a respectful, professional, but challenging way for us.”
• 24:13 “ I have yet to walk out of one [meeting] where I didn't hear something I've never heard before. Which is crazy. Crazy. But I think it just reinforces how incredible educators are. Every time there's a new website, a resource, an idea, a strategy, a modification, I had never considered that come out.”
• 24:54 “ The collaborative team meeting looks like you're talking about kids, but you're not. The conversation about the student is really just a name, but the conversation about practice and solutions is the main focus.” ​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:​

TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Curtis Hugin, welcome to the time for teachership podcast.
Kurtis Hewson: Oh, thank you so much, Lindsay. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to join you for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it.
Lindsay Lyons: Me too. Okay. I am so excited. And what's on my mind as we go in is your book Collaborative Response, so I have it here with me, particularly the chapter on collaborative team meetings or CTM as you call them.
And so just wanting to like preview for people that this is an exciting thing we're gonna get into in this episode and that it is. From what I've seen markedly different from anyone else doing stuff in this space. And so it's really exciting. What is on your mind as you kind of enter the conversation?
Anything people should kind of keep in mind as they engage
Kurtis Hewson: with that? Yeah. I, uh, in the book we talk about four layers of team and Lindsay, I've been at this for almost 20 years now from when we first started, some early iterations of this within my own school, and then how this has evolved. Past, we've actually discovered that every school, regardless of size, configuration, location, they need to think about four layers of collaboration with the collaborative team meeting being one of them.
And so I really do want to dig into that, but if we could even take a moment here in the conversation to discuss what are those four layers? Because when we talk about a collaborative response, we talk about having our collaborative structures and processes, these four layers. Data and evidence that feeds into those conversations in time.
And then developing continuums of support that really clearly articulate how will we respond. These three pieces are important, but in the, the visual, the framework, visual, the collaborative structures and processes is twice as large of a piece visually than the others. And that's intentional because it's really important.
And within that, I would say the collaborative team meeting is the engine that. Drives it all.
Lindsay Lyons: Well said and I, now that I am bringing up that visual in my brain, in my memory, you're right, it is bigger and that makes so much sense that it's intentional because that was the part that particularly jumped out to me as people aren't doing this and it's super important.
Kurtis Hewson: Absolutely. So when we talk about the four layers, the great news is, is most schools can identify for sure to. Probably three. And we often say, we're gonna reduce the number of meetings in your school by adding one more, which is the collaborative team meeting. And again, mathematically it makes no sense that we're gonna reduce by adding, but we do.
What we find is if we can get this collaborative team meeting, um, operationalized within the school and having impact, we see less meetings or less students needing the higher levels. Or more intensive meetings. So if you can give me just a few mo moments, I'll describe these four layers really quickly, and then we'll dig into that collaborative team meeting if that works.
Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, totally.
Kurtis Hewson: Okay, so four layers, and I'm gonna start from the least intensive to the most intensive in time. These align with the tiers within our continuum of supports, but the first layer we call collaborative planning, it's when teachers are coming together to work on things that will impact all students.
So all students across a grade level, across a division, across a subject area, maybe across the entire school. Um, they're usually at this layer. Looking at data, determining what is our response, what do we need to do? And in these conversations, we're not typically looking at individual kids, we're looking at trends.
So any school that's engaged in professional learning communities or PLCs, we'll go, okay, this layer, we got it. This makes sense. Um, and the reason we didn't call it PLCs, uh, even though we were doing a variation of that, but then we had some other structures that still fit in this layer is we've seen schools that are not necessarily following the PLC model, um, with Fidelity, but they have other ways that they're collaboratively planning that are.
As effective for them as well. So again, think of these layers as like categories. So that first layer again, any school that has PLCs goes, check, we got it. The second layer is the collaborative team meeting, and we'll skip it for a second. Third is what we call the school support team. So this is intended to be the, the team that's meeting on a regular basis, usually biweekly or weekly.
Uh, it involves administrators, um, learning, support coordinators, maybe instructional coaches, those that have more specialized roles. And essentially this conversation is about. Who are the students that need support beyond the classroom or in addition to the classroom? When a teacher puts in a referral for support, this is the team that.
Handles, handles this and determines, alright, what do we need to do for the student? Or sometimes it's, what do we need to do to help the teacher? We often say, teachers are not necessarily in involved in this conversation because the conversation might be about the teacher, and I mean that with all due respect.
It might be how do we support, how do we coach, who could we connect this person to, to help them in this particular situation? But sometimes it might be about escalating the student. Um, for some higher levels of support. And our fourth, um, layer is what we call a case consult. Um, but really it's the broadest category of all because it's, anytime we meet with one kid on the agenda, this falls into that layer.
So I worked with a large high school, uh, once here, Lindsay, where they named all their different meetings that they were having. They put it up against these layers and went, oh my goodness. Virtually the, all the things we're doing, and it was a school of about 1200 students. All the things we're doing are falling in that case, consult that one student at a time and they went, oh, this makes perfect sense why we're drowning right now.
We we're, the, the term they used was, it feels like we're playing whack-a-mole, just putting out fires everywhere, but we're trying to do it one kid at a time and what we're trying to do. Is if we can build these layers with fidelity, with the collaborative team meeting, almost being the bridge between the collaborative planning IE PLCs.
And the school support. We're going to see less and less students reach this school support in case consult layer, and the ones that do absolutely need to, but the collaborative team meeting becomes essential. This is why any school that's engaged in multi-tiered systems of support work, MTSS work, they see this and go, oh, there's our missing piece that we have all these other pieces in place, but that collaborative team meeting is the linchpin that's that's missing.
Lindsay Lyons: Hm. That makes so much sense. So much sense. I've seen that in so many schools as well. And so, okay, this, this totally is, is a great framing for the conversation. I wanna zoom out a little bit first before we get into CTM and think about like, what is your kind of, why, what's your big dream? I like to ground this in, Dr.
Patina loves, uh, talk about freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So kind of what's that driver for you in this work?
Kurtis Hewson: For me, the driver is what you see if anyone's watching the video. Uh, right on this shirt is the idea that every child deserves a team. And what I mean by that is I think our children deserve the best of what we have to offer collectively.
And what I mean by that is. No one should be feeling isolated on an island in a silo and that no child success should ever be the responsibility, or, or, sorry, lack of success maybe is ever the responsibility of one person. My dream is that we can shift this profession from one that is, I, I used to refer to it in my own school as isolated islands of excellence.
Great people doing great things in their room, but collectively. We had centuries of teaching experience available to us. How could we leverage that in a really intentional way that's gonna help each and every kid?
Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. I wrote down isolated Islands of excellence. I think that's totally what happens in most places.
And you know, it's actually inspiring me. I've been thinking about families a lot and family school partnership and, and teammates together. Also families, right? There's so much. If we could just do like this kind of wraparound, like hug in support of, of kids, it's like we're gonna build skills together everywhere we are, whether it's in or out of school.
It's pretty cool.
Kurtis Hewson: Uh, Lindsay, I can tell you too that I hear it over and over and over again of schools that I'll come in and work with or districts where the schools will say, we thought we were collaborative until we started this work. And then we've taken it to a whole nother level. And I usually have schools that when they say.
You know, we, we collaborate a fair bit. We have good team structures. I go, oh my goodness, then you're gonna love this because it's going to pour gasoline on a fire that's already lit it. It's just gonna take it to a different level that, um, I think our kids deserve.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I, I love too that you've covered, I, in all the things you've said so far, you've already kind of covered some, some mindset shifts.
Yeah. And I, I wonder, I usually ask that question at this point. Is there anyone you wanna like, double down on or say that we haven't said yet in terms of the leaders and educators who are wanting to do really meaningful collaborative work, but maybe they even thought they were Right? And then what's the shift in terms of like, what's different with this approach?
Is there some sort of thinking that needs to change?
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, there's, there's. There's three that I think are pretty critical. The first, and it's when we put all those three pieces together of collaborative structures and processes, data and evidence and continuum of supports, when we put them all together, it's about shifting our mindset so that we stop tiering kids and we tier the supports.
To me, that's a critical mindset, and it might sound like a simple shift in language, but it's massive when we tear the kids. It's too easy to say, well, that's a tier three kid, not my responsibility. When we tier the supports, it places all the attention back on us. What are we as the adults doing to support and, and, um, it becomes a much more reflective exercise.
One that's more hopeful, I think, and one that really is about, okay, well let's keep examining what could we do? And it builds high, high levels of collective efficacy in organizations. When it's, alright, that didn't work. What else could we try? What's our next step? Uh, so that's one. The second, and this is becomes critical with the use of data and evidence, I, uh, work with schools to start color coding their data.
And then we emphasize that, especially in the collaborative team meeting, we focus on the yellow. And what I mean by that is if we used a simple. Um, color coding where red means who are the students, not yet meeting expectations based on whatever data set we were utilizing. Yellow is the students who are approaching expectations.
They're close. They're not quite there yet, but they're closer than the reds. And then the green are those that are meeting expectations. And then I also have a fourth color we use of blue of exceeding expectations because in time we want a conversation about those, um, students as well. But in the collaborative team meeting, we make sure that we are not focusing on our reds.
And what I mean by that is, and we're not saying that those children don't deserve a conversation, they absolutely do. But this is why the layers of team become important because we trust that their needs are being met in our more intensive layers of team. In the collaborative team meeting, let's focus on the kids who are close and what could we do that would lift them to that next level so that we often say we're providing support for your most at risk students by not focusing on them.
In the collaborative team meeting, which again, huge mindset shift. If I was to come into a room and say, Lindsay, who would you like to talk about today? Your mind instantly goes to the kid that's furthest away from where you'd like them to be. Probably the one that's consuming 95% of your attention and energy.
And what we're trying to do is let's shift the focus off of that student because there's already conversations happening in our other layers of team. Let's focus on the ones that are, we sometimes hear schools call these our bubble kids or the, I saw a high school where they said, these are our fifties, the kids who are just passing, but by the skin of our teeth.
And what could we do, um, to help them? And the mindset shift here is the, uh, by being proactive, the kid who is yellow based on our data right now, we save them before they potentially hit that red, um, months or years in advance. And then I think the third mindset shift is being comfortable. With being uncomfortable.
And what I mean by that is when we're in really powerful collaborative conversations like the CTM, the collaborative team meeting that we'll discuss here in a bit, we want to get to a place where people are okay being slightly uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is we set up mechanisms to build high, high levels of trust and vulnerability that.
I'm always gonna have a small sense of discomfort in the conversations because people are gonna push me on my thinking, they're gonna ask me questions about my practice. And, um, what we find is, um, it takes time to be able to get there, but it is a powerful conversation. And I believe true collaboration is when we get pushed.
Further than we could have on our own. And that push is done in a respectful, professional, but challenging way for us. So it, it takes time. But I, I love going into collaborative team meetings knowing that everyone's gonna walk away just a little bit stronger than when they went in.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. This has me thinking about so many things.
I also think about, you know, student led discourse in, in classrooms just from the teacher hat. Yeah. And it's like, it's the same, it's the same thing with adults and with students, right? Like we enter a conversation kind of knowing that our ideas are gonna get better as we engage with others and get feedback on our ideas like.
It's that trust building, but it's also the structures that you have in place that enable it to come forth. Yes. Which is why I'm really excited to talk about the CTM structures you have. Um, there's so much, so I mean, I, I just wanna like read through what I got outta the chapter and maybe you could like elaborate or say more.
Kurtis Hewson: You got it, Lindsay.
Lindsay Lyons: Okay. So first I, I love that there's some pre-meeting work, like there's some, something you have to do first. I love that you grounded norms or agreements. I love that there's some positive like success share kind of stuff and I love that there's a reflection after on the process, which I think too often is skipped in both classes and adult meetings.
And then I like starred multiple times that page that has your key issues flow chart because there's so much in that one graphic. I mean that we, there's so much so any or all of those things. Do you wanna like expand upon those words?
Kurtis Hewson: Let's break this down. Okay, so the collaborative team meeting, we want it essentially every three to five weeks within the school.
And where we found the most power is if you have PLCs already established. Awesome. Let's say they're meeting every week. Uh, they were in my school. What we would do is every fourth week, we'd transfer that into a collaborative team meeting. Now I see the greatest power start to happen in schools where you collaboratively plan, again, think PLC.
With those, you share a common teaching experience with either at the same grade level, same subject area. Maybe it's multi graded depending on the size of your school, but we, collaborative team meet. With people we don't share. So what this does in a school is creates two layers of collaboration where I, my, for instance, my department team, if I'm at a high school, uh, I'm working consistently with my science department colleagues, but then when I get into a collaborative team meeting, there's a good chance that I'm going to have myself a mathematics.
Um, teacher, a, uh, English language learner teacher, a immersion teacher, potentially someone that's teaching phys ed. The, the possibilities become endless, uh, for us. So what we do then is the collaborative team meeting is coming up, and we know that it is, let's say, focused on literacy. Let's say the school has, we were really trying to impact literacy achievement within our school.
So the pre-work that you talked about means that every teacher comes ready. For this conversation. And we usually say, when you start, start simple, come ready with a celebration and come ready with a student. And a key issue, and I'll describe that key issue here in a little bit, and it's the game changer, uh, for us now in time, we start to say, come ready with a student to celebrate based on your data.
And a student to discuss that is yellow based on our data and a key issue that you noted. But we don't have that right away, uh, unless, uh, again, I've worked with some schools who have really strong data analysis processes where this makes total sense to them. Okay. So we come in and like you said, we start with norms.
Here's our norms that we set out. And I often now don't read every norm. We pick one that we're gonna practice. So let's say today we're gonna focus on our norm of being solutions oriented. And Lindsay, I'd love for you to just, um. Put down a, a tally of every time you hear the words what if, because at the end we're gonna talk about how many times did that happen?
When we're using the phrase, what if we're activating some solutions oriented thinking? We find a way to practice that norm. And then, like you said. At the end, just have a quick, how did we do? What did that look like? And this may seem minuscule. In fact, I was a person who did not believe norms were critical for teams.
I thought in our school, people get along great. We don't need norms. And we didn't, until we got into challenging conversations. And then we had to say out loud, we agree, everyone's opinion matters. We agree, we'll arrive on time and prepared. And then we had conversations about what does on time and prepared look like?
Do we all have a common understanding? So we, we do that norm thing and in time it just becomes. Totally natural for us. And then we start with celebrations. And here's the key, Lindsay. When I say, Lindsay, who would you like to celebrate? And you say, I've got, uh, I don't want to celebrate all the students in my class.
They've done such, uh, incredible work. Adjusting to our new flex block that we've established years ago, I would've said, that's awesome. Let's write it down. Yay. Great celebration. Anyone else have one? But now we go deeper. I would say Lindsay. Who's a student that really stands out for you? One, that's that you're surprising with the success in the flex block, what this is doing is activating a deeper level of reflection that is gonna help the next question.
So when you say, you know, I guess Sharif, Sharif is really surprised me. I thought the kid would not know how to utilize that time effectively for himself, but he's really utilizing it now to, uh. To impact what, what it is that he needs to do. Now the next question is the critical one where someone in the room is going to say, that's great.
What do you think you did that led to that success? So this is activating some, some deeper reflection for us. It's identifying that these things are, and when you say, I don't know, it must be a miracle, I'm going to jump in and say, okay, what do you think you did that led to that miracle? Um, and, and, and this is helping us to understand that what we're doing is having impact.
And when you say, uh, it's nothing big, I've got a little a checklist that he completes to help him figure out where to go during flex block. Someone in the room is going to go Genius. Can I see a copy of that checklist? Um, we're sharing strategies right in that celebrations part. So that part's really, really important.
Make sense? And then, and then we're gonna get to the key issue here in a moment.
Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, this is, I just wanna say like, this is so critical, that question of what did you do and how it leads to just natural sharing as opposed to, I'm gonna force people to share. I'm like, it's so beautiful. And I love the the focus on one student, because I think about the emotional connection too.
Yes. You're now bringing in addition to that specificity of the context, like which leads into the key issue, I'm sure. So I'll stop talking and let you talk about it.
Kurtis Hewson: I'm just, well, and really. You're going to see, and you're the people listening or viewing this podcast are going to understand that we're actualizing universal design for learning in these conversations because when you were reflecting on Sharif and your uses checklist, that actually might be something you're using with everyone.
It's really helped him, the idea of intended for one, good for all. And then this really impacts in the, in the, um, key issue process. Okay, so let's go here. I'm going to say, Lindsay. Okay, let's get started. I know you've brought a student. Please don't say their name. What is the key issue? 30 seconds or less.
And when people first start, it's hard to get. Succinct on the key issue that they're experiencing. Sometimes we're used to telling stories, and I think there's a place for stories, but not in the collaborative team meeting, potentially in that school support or that case consult, where the story of the student really, really matters.
But in the collaborative team meeting, it actually is counterintuitive for the process because we want you to get succinct on what's. Add challenge that you're seeing for this student. So the key issue, and let's say that we're having a literacy focused conversation and you say, I've got a student in mind and my key issue is inferencing.
Okay. Now we might ask a few questions of what do you mean when you say inferencing so that everybody understands around the table what it is you're talking about. And then you say, well, the student just, they can read all the words, fine, but they can't. Envision the the meaning that's happening. They can't make the mental picture of what that is creating.
So we'd say, all right, so inferencing, uh, creating mental pictures. Have we got it? And you say, yeah. Then we go, okay, great. Everyone else identify, ask student where you're also seeing that. Write down their name. Don't say 'em out loud. And then we're going to start having a conversation on what could we do to impact students who cannot, who can read, but can't make the mental pictures, uh, for it.
And we just start throwing out ideas. Now, why it's so critical that we have everybody else think of a student put in mind is because we don't want this to be a conversation where everyone turns to Lindsay and says, Hey, Lindsay, you could, you could, you could as a facilitator, I'm gonna go, whoa, these are we.
These are just possibilities that we could do. And do you notice what happens when we don't say the name? It helps us focus on the solutions oriented instead of a second. You say the name Curtis. People in the room are gonna go, oh, I know Curtis. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I taught his sister, I taught his mother ev.
It goes off on these tangents and we're just trying to leverage the student to have a conversation about practice. Okay, so now we start sharing out ideas and in time we start. Referring to our continuum of supports for ideas and suggestions that we've co-created over time. We won't get into that here today, but it becomes a solid resource and we just generate ideas.
Now, the beauty of this is, um, no idea is a bad idea at this point, but people start riffing off each other's things so that when you say, I try this in my room, I go, I do something similar, but what if. We did this and what if we tried this? And then what we want to come back is after we've generated that possibility.
And I have to tell you, I'm almost in my 30th year in education, I've been in hundreds of these collaborative team meetings, either as an observer or as a facilitator to model. I have yet to walk out of one where I didn't hear something I've never heard before, which is crazy. Crazy. But it, I think it just, um, reinforces how incredible educators are.
Um, every time there's a new website, a resource, an idea, a strategy, a modification, I had never considered that come out. And then what we do is, um, from that we say, alright, Lindsay, who's the student? Just the name. What's one thing that you're willing to try and you say, I really like Angela's idea. I think I'm gonna try that.
And we say, okay, by what date will you put that down? And then I go to the next person and say, alright, did you have a student in mind? Just the name and what's one thing you want to try? So what we're doing is building everybody's capacity over and over and over again. And I often say the collaborative team meeting looks like you're talking about kids.
But you're not, the conversation about the student is really just a name. The conversation about practice and solutions is the main focus. And so we go through that. Um, if there were five teachers in the room, we go to each of the five and say, did you have a student in mind? And what's one thing to try?
And again, when a teacher said, well, all of my kids struggle with that, we still say, just pick one that you wanna focus on for this strategy. Then we go and say, alright, let's start our next key issue conversation. Who do you have? Don't say the name. What's a key issue you're experiencing? What this does is when we see schools first start, people reach for low hanging fruit.
We hear things like, well, I was planning to try this anyway, so just put me down for that. But when we start to build up that trust and vulnerability, we start to hear things like, I love Lindsay's idea, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. And that's where me, uh, myself as a leader are in there to say, oh, could I cover your class for 20 minutes tomorrow so that you can go and connect with Lindsey around this?
Or do you need to see what this looks like? We, we refer to this as distributive coaching, and what it means is that everyone in the room is an expert. Everybody's also a learner, and you do not have to hold the title of instructional coach to teach somebody else something that you know how to do. That idea of distributive coaching is we could all learn something from other people, and this is where the real power happens outside of these meetings, we start to build up that capacity building that.
Idea generation, that sharing, and then all of a sudden when I struggle with someone with a student, I don't wait for a meeting. I run down the hall to talk to Lindsay because I know you have a toolbox that's equipped for this type of thing. We, I, I'm, I'm always fascinated that sometimes we can teach across the hallway.
Decades with another person and not necessarily know their instructional strategies, processes, practices. This is a way to access it, and what we see through this is everyone's capacity just keeps growing and growing and growing. Everyone's leaves these collaborative team meetings with two or three things they hadn't considered before, or we often see people start to stretch.
Um, their own practice to start to challenge their own thinking. And this is where that power starts to happen, where all of a sudden, a year, two years, three years from now, I get that student, um, that I would've been referring to the special ed or school support team or whatever language you're using in your school.
But now I have the toolbox to help support, and this again, is how we reduce the number of meetings by adding one more long term. It's the, the collaborative team meeting is powerful, really powerful.
Lindsay Lyons: And I love that you are accomplishing all the things that I think instructional coaches, that team meeting facilitators want, but it's just the intentionality of the structure and the culture you build through those conversations and that structure.
Kurtis Hewson: Oh, Lindsay instructional coaches love this because when somebody says, I'm gonna try this, they now have an instant access to say, would you like some help? Could I help you with that? Would you like me to model that for you? We saw that where with teachers who were. Uh, hesitant and I would even say a little bit fearful to have another person come into their room to watch or to help whatnot.
Where now it's not that they're coming in because you're lacking in some area as a teacher, they're coming in because you said you're gonna try something for this kid, and can I help you? For that, that student, it, it, it just diverts the attention ever so slightly. And for me as a leader, I would be listening for that.
Where it might be the, how could, you know, knowing what I know about Marcel and you said you're gonna try this. I also think Lindsay's idea would be really impactful that for that student, can we help you do that? And it was a way where I could start pushing people's. Instructional practices, but in a really supportive and, um, non-judgmental, uh, way.
Lindsay Lyons: That is so cool. I mean, there's just, there's so much potential here. I mean, there, there's actualized things that'll come out of this in the work you've done, which is so cool. I, I'm wondering, is there a particular challenge that you've noticed when people are trying to shift to this kind of way of collaborating and, and being in these types of meetings?
What's like the biggest challenge you've seen, or one challenge you've seen, and how did, how have you helped people overcome it?
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, so the, uh, the biggest challenge is remaining true to the structures and processes of it. So a school where they go, well, we just collaborate really well naturally. We, we just let, let it flow, we let our meetings flow.
Um, I will say that's wonderful. I promise. If you put in these structures that are going to feel a little mechanical, a little awkward when you first begin. I promise they will take you to another level. So when I say structures or processes, it's things like we have norms established and we're going to review them at the start.
We have roles in this meeting where I'm the facilitator, Lindsay is the recorder, Douglas is the timekeeper. And we might even have, I've seen lots of schools that introduce the role of the interrupter, and it's that person's job too. Knock on the table. If anyone goes off into story and they're not doing it to be a jerk, it's just we've agreed that's how we stay focused.
Um, and so being able to say, alright, we're going to move to celebrations. Uh, Douglas, can you set a, uh, eight minute timer for this and let us know when we're down to one minute. Lindsay, let's start with you. What's a celebration that you've seen? 30 seconds or less, and then we're gonna dig into what we did.
Sometimes people are a little bit afraid of that type of structure of having things timed of all of the, the things I, I often have people, when they watch a video of me facilitating one, I get the, you're kind of like a drill sergeant within that, and Yes, I am, because. We only have 40 minutes. We want to maximize that 40 minutes, and I hear it repeatedly of people that were hesitant to put the structures in that.
Once they do and then people get comfortable. They love it and they often start translating it into other meeting places. All of a sudden, staff meetings have timers and clear agendas and note documents. Um, we go to meet with a parent and we start off with norms of, we all agree we're here for the best interest of your child, and that we'll do whatever it takes for their success.
Saying some of those things out loud become really powerful. That, that's what I see as the biggest challenge is people feeling a bit uncomfortable with structure, but the structure is critical for the success.
Lindsay Lyons: I That makes so much sense. I could totally imagine that that to be a challenge and that the structure just like kind of believe it and, and it'll happen.
It seems like a good approach there.
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah. Well, and the other challenge I see too is we're so accustomed, and this is the huge mindset shift that comes. We're so accustomed to coming into a meeting and if someone says, who's a student you like, and this is why we often say, don't say the name. Out loud.
We're so used to saying, here's everything I know about this student. Everything I've tried, all the things that have worked. And when people start to say, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this, then me as a teacher go, oh, I've tried that already. No, that wouldn't work. Let me tell you more about what, what's happened.
Um, this shifts that on its ear and it's really hard sometimes to focus on the key issue because I've got Daniel in my head and I. I want to talk about Daniel, but this is where we say, okay, if you need to have a conversation with Daniel, awesome. It doesn't happen here. That sounds like a case consult layer meeting.
Who do we need around the table? I love that, and that's gonna get scheduled somewhere else. This is what, again, why the layers are so, so important for us.
Lindsay Lyons: I love that. Oh my gosh. So there's so much richness in here. People should obviously grab the book and read all the details, but what is maybe one thing you would encourage listeners or audience members to do once they've just ended the episode?
They're walking into school or like walking into their office, preparing for the upcoming school year? Like what's one thing that could get them on the path?
Kurtis Hewson: We have what we call our CTM starter kit, and I'm going to give, uh, the link to it for you. So go check the show notes out, um, or go to jigsaw learning.ca/free and you'll find it, it's one of the free resources in it.
It has a adapted story of a collaborative team meeting so that you can see it, it has links to video of it, it has, here's your meeting template, um, uh, notes document. Here's your roll cards. Here's your pre-meeting organizer, all the things that you might need. There's even a facilitator's one pager that says, here's the process, here's questions you could be asking.
Um, all of that, it's all built together. And if anyone's walking away from this episode going, I'm really excited about this. My piece of advice is just start, just start the, the meetings will feel awkward. Your first one will not go. Um, as well as you would imagine it, it will. Um, I think we often hear schools say it turned out better than we thought it was going to, but it takes time, it takes practice, but it is well worth the investment because it transforms the way we, we think about the work we do and the way that we support, the way that we collaboratively respond to the needs of our students.
And we also, uh, Lindsay, we have, uh, at this point in the recording, I know that this will get released later, so hopefully the book will already be out. But we are just finishing a book all about the collaborative team meeting. Just that one structure, it's coming out mid May is what we're aiming for. So, um, check that out.
Go to jigsaw learning.ca. It'll be on the website. Love to, uh, be able to share. We've seen schools that have. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, um, in, uh, from engaging in this work that their collaborative team meeting is just so rich and so layered. Uh, when you look at it, you go, this is insanely complex how this is set up.
And it never looked like that to start, but it got there over time.
Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. You beat me to that question. That's awesome. And, and finally, I know you mentioned your website anywhere else that people can connect with, with you as a, as a human or, um, other places to go in terms of your work.
Kurtis Hewson: I would say the easiest is that website, jigsaw learning.ca.
Um, I'm Canadian. I live in, uh, Alberta, Canada, so that's the.ca part of this. Um, if you want to check out on any of the socials, uh, search for Jigsaw Learning, or, I'm in most socials as Houston K two seven. To, uh, connect with me on Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn. Um, yeah, would love to have a conversation and, um, to help any of the schools that are trying to implement this, this work that we see have such incredible impact, not just for kids, but for the adult supporting the kids.
Lindsay Lyons: Great point to end on. Chris, thank you so much. This has been such a rich conversation.
Kurtis Hewson: Uh, thank you Lindsay. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely.

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