Team Building Agenda: Teacher / School group team building program

Teacher Team Building Program - School Staff Team Development

Situation Summary
A sample Team Building Program for Teachers - a one day (six hour) team building program for the team members within the School organization with the goals of
(A) empowering and creating a stronger sense of "community" amongst the 60 (+,-) team members
(B) Increasing collaboration and camaraderie amongst team members. For the teachers and staff to enjoy the company of other team members and give the team an opportunity to openly discuss and provide solutions to problems within the School Environment.
The team is made up of Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Administration and Support Staff. All the team members have a broad diversity of talents, education, physical ability and specialized fields of interest. Additionally the office staff of the school will be taking part in the Team Building Program.

Special Notes
Team Building for School Program Sample will take place over a 6 hour time period with 1 hour for lunch. Breaks will be added to the program as needed. The program will take place at a Corporate Conference Center or Team Building Resort. Program School Team Training (9:00 am - 3:00 pm: all time are approximate and subject to change) (?) Participants will arrive at the meeting site ~8:00 - 9:00 am, the Program will begin at 9:00 am.

Program Goals
1. Strengthen Existing Community: For participants to gain a greater understanding of the members that make up the group. Develop respect and appreciation for the skills, diverse backgrounds, values, and talents that each member brings to the group and understand that their individual attributes are a resource to be tapped for group effectiveness and learning.
2. Collaborative Team Work: Participants will examine what their role is in the team and how a shared collaborative community is more successful than a competitive community.
3. Dialog: Amongst all School Staff: Provide an opportunity for the participants to meet and speak with each other about concerns and solutions within the School Environment.
4. Having Fun through a Shared Experience: The teambuilding program will be enjoyable and set an expectation that the work setting will be rewarding while requiring hard work to increase and sustain effectiveness.

9:00-9:10 Opening: Establish Team Program Atmosphere
• Agenda of the Program
• Expectations of team for the program

9:10-9:30 Icebreakers and De-inhibitizers

Overview: Participants are led through a series of initiatives that will open them the team building experience.

Outcomes: Participants will have fun and begin to open up to others. The initiatives are all low risk, low physical and minimal touch. By creating an atmosphere of a slow introduction to the more challenging initiatives to come, the participants are part of the experience and take greater personal responsibility in the success of the program.


9:30-9:50 Snow Ball Fight!

Overview: Each participant is asked to write the answers to a series of questions on a piece of paper. The participant then balls up the paper and the team takes part in a snow ball fight. Participants are then asked to retrieve a paper that is not their own and, find the owner of the paper by asking questions of others.

Outcomes: Participants get to know others, renew a sense of fun. This activity is a powerful and personal introduction of team members. It allows for movement as well thought being involved in an introductory activity.

9:50-10:15 Card Groupings (A.K.A. Change Management)

Overview: While the team is in a large circle (from Snow Ball Fight!) each participant is given a playing card. The participants are then led through a series of challenges using the playing cards.

Outcomes: This activity places focus on personal style vs. group styles. In observing groups, you are likely to encounter a broad range of ideas and solutions for tracking numbers and organizing people in lines. Both in the planning process and the implementation card groupings offers insights into the needs different people have for information and detail, how people like to work from either a structured or unstructured approach to problem-solving. Additionally how quickly or slowly people are willing to move ahead with a plan based on how much they know and understand about the solution.

10:15-10:30 Cooperative Circles

Overview: While the participants are in smaller groups, according to their card groupings in the prior activity, each participant is asked to place one foot inside a hoop placed on the ground. The hoops are laid in a large circle (think of a clock). A qualifying question is asked as well as a number of movements along the clock. Whomever the qualifying question refers to must move the number of hoops along the clock, introducing themselves to the new hoop group. Between each qualifying question and movement team members will be asked to share things about themselves.

Outcomes: Laughter! The participants will meet and get to know almost all the team members. This activity is also a lesson in cooperation - team members must work to solve problems as space becomes limited. Cooperative Circles serves as a window into the "in" group and "out" group mentality. As team members are looking for a new hoop to join how do the groups in the existing hoops welcome the outsiders? The processing for Cooperative Circles will facilitate a discussion on a "whole team" as well as abundance theory mentality.

10:30-12:00 Bright Blurry Blind

Overview: The participants will be asked to join with existing work team. Each team is given a stack of metaphor cards, markers, and flip chart paper. The teams are asked to choose three of the metaphor cards from the stack. One card represents what they feel is Bright - out in the open, clearly evident and positive about the School. A second card that represents what they feel is Blurry - is known and not spoken about enough, a subject that should become Brighter. A third card that represents what they feel is Blind - is not known, lacking from the system or that the team feels is kept from them. The teams are asked to write these on a flip chart and then present the Bright Blurry Blind to the remaining teachers and School group.

Outcomes: By giving the teams an opportunity to think and speak about concerns and give accolades to each other a powerful bond is created. Additionally by illuminating topics the school staff can then brain storm and strengthen the team. Facilitating a "one team" atmosphere then empowering the participants to share information and techniques that are successful that may have never had the opportunity to be shared in an open forum.

Switch - Change - Rotate
If we have extra time before lunch


Overview: The participants are split into groups of 3 or 4 per small team. The small teams move around a given area working together to follow instructions.

Outcomes: FUN!!! As well as small group interactions, listening, group coordination, and group thinking.

12:00-12:30 LUNCH

12:30-12:45 Rope 'Cuffs

Overview: All the participants will be connected using ropes that are tied to each participant's wrists. The entire team must break free!

Outcome: The concept of working through a problem that seems to have no obvious solution is a valuable work skill. Creative, outside the box thinking is required. Retracing the steps between the initial formation of the puzzle, and finally solving the puzzle, provides a roadmap for future investigations and solutions to other problems. Finding the answer as part of a group investigation and then sharing the solution is also a living lesson of an abundance mentality towards sharing information.

12:45-1:45 "35"

Overview: We will revisit Bright Blurry Blind - Each participant will be asked to write a solution, on an index card, to a blind issue from one of the teams. They will be asked to randomly switch their index card with others. After each round the participants will form partnerships and discuss the idea on the index card they have. (? This can be 10 ideas then we can discuss the 10 and narrow to 3 ideas, or we can take all 10 ideas, or just take the top 5 this will be discussed further closer to the program date?)

Outcomes: Once we have the top scoring ideas the team will have a foundation of solutions to build upon. The Teachers and School team can create "task forces" to implement and champion the ideas or the ideas can just serve as a mission statement of what we are going to shed light on in the future.

1:45-2:30 It Takes a Kingdom to Build a Team

Overview & Outcomes: The group will be split into smaller groups of 3 - 5 participants. Each group will be given a large stack of multi-color index cards. Each participant will be asked to write down the foundations of learning they experienced during the program. Following writing the foundations of learning each small group will build a castle out of their multi-colored index cards. After the building of the castles participants are invited to connect their learning castles to at least two other castles, creating a School Group and Teacher Team Kingdom of connected learning and development.

2:30-3:00 Questions Group Hugs and Goodbyes

- The above serves as an example of a 6 hour school group team building program. Create-Learning leads programs from 45 minutes - to multiple days. All programs are customized and created specifically for your team. NO initiative is ever repeated for groups that choose to allow us to serve them year after year (unless they request).

- Michael Cardus serves as an Adventure Consultant for Create-Learning Team Building. Mike facilitates, trains, and speaks to groups in a variety of settings including Fortune 500 Companies, small business, universities and classrooms. Currently he lives in Buffalo NY, he travels to serve your groups needs - where and when your group desires.