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Supporting Overwhelmed Faculty

 

We were speaking to one of our schools last week about their use of myFolio this year.  They were concerned about the additional burden on faculty, as well as the concept of setting goals in such an unprecedented time when it feels like everyone’s goal is to endure.

We hear this – and we want to offer an alternative way to look at things. This year’s Folio is less about constructive feedback and more about validation, support, and collegial connection.

This year, your myFolio strategy will need a reframe just like everything else because everyone’s reality has shifted, and thus so must your approach to professional growth. Our current environment is forcing and requiring growth and creative problem solving whether your faculty are ready or not. Therefore, your use of myFolio isn’t as much about striving as it is about prioritization, clarity, intentionality, and incremental progress in the face of overwhelm.

According to our conversations with teachers. They want to know that: you have their back, you understand what they are struggling with, and you are there to help them through it.

The new features introduced a few weeks ago in myFolio demonstrate your support for faculty and staff. By giving them the structure to define their own individual goals, you are giving them agency and the opportunity to succeed. By encouraging them to share ideas and insights on your school’s community feed, you are bringing them together.

And that’s why myFolio is your community’s support system, helping everyone to focus on what matters most to your school – while tuning out the noise that keeps people spinning their wheels.

About the author

Meredith Monk Ford

Executive Director of Folio Collaborative since 2013, Meredith Ford and her team partner with 100+ schools globally to help them foster a working environment of professional learning where teachers want to stay and thrive. Before joining Folio Collaborative, Meredith was a classroom teacher and coach. After graduating from the University of Maryland with a BA in Classics, she returned to her alma-mater, the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, to teach middle school ancient history and coach. While teaching at Bryn Mawr, she also completed her first master’s degree in Liberal Arts at Johns Hopkins University. In 2009, Meredith pursued a second master’s degree in School Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The following fall, she joined the middle school faculty at McDonogh School where she served as a 7th grade history teacher, hockey and lacrosse coach, grade-level leader, and eventually, the Folio Administrator. As a result of her own Folio conversations with McDonogh administrators, she was able to realize one of her professional goals when she left the classroom to lead Folio Collaborative full-time. Because of her experience working in an environment where she thrived, Meredith is passionate about Folio’s potential to help other schools create that experience for all teachers. Although she is striving to spend the majority of her time working on the business, she still loves opportunities to train and facilitate workshops amongst administrators and faculty around professional growth, leadership, conversations, and feedback. She has spoken multiple times at the NAIS Annual Conference, the TABS Annual Conference, as well as many regional school association events. When she is not running the Folio Collaborative business, Meredith enjoys learning from her Entrepreneurs’ Organization Forum and spending quality time with her guys Owen (7), Walker (5), Briggs (2), and Robby (35).