Meeting Wise Resources

Meeting Wise: Making the Most of Collaborative Time for Educators

Every day, millions of educators gather in classrooms, faculty rooms, boardrooms, and (sometimes virtual) conference rooms to tackle problems that are so big that no individual can solve them alone. How to prepare students to thrive in a knowledge economy and rapidly developing world, how to support teachers in transforming their practice, how to create policy that drives opportunity and access for every learner—addressing each of these would truly make a big difference in learning and teaching. But although some of the meetings that could take on these issues are invigorating opportunities for generating ideas and creating solutions, many are not.

This book identifies improving meeting agendas as a high-leverage strategy for changing how people work together, and offers the Meeting Wise Checklist as a tool for developing a common language for discussing and improving the quality of meeting design and the Meeting Wise Agenda Template to help you get started.  It provides tips for setting up, facilitating, and participating effectively in meetings, and supports the reader in developing a strategy for making a fundamental shift in how collaborative time is used. 

Intrigued? For more information:

  • Review this book excerpt provided by the publisher
  • Read this interview featured in Ed Week
  • Read this blog post from Fast Company
  • Check out this book review featured inInside Higher Education
  • Listen to this podcast featured from Harvard Graduate School of Education's Usable Knowledge 
  • Listen to this podcast hosted by School Leadership Briefing 
  • Buy Meeting Wise from Harvard Education Press.

If you have already read the book, we would love to hear about the extent to which the ideas in the book may be helping you make more effective use of collaborative time.  Please email meetingwise@gse.harvard.edu with:

  • Insights from using the Meeting Wise Checklist
  • Experiences addressing common dilemmas for facilitators or participants
  • Your own tips and ideas for helping an organization become Meeting Wise

The Meeting Wise Agenda Template is also available as a Google document.