Over the course of 2 months, I had what were referred to as "Learning Conversations" with each staff member at our school. This included our resource team, classroom teachers and our educational assistants.

We called it "Biscuits with the Boss" after the TV show "Ted Lasso". It was meant to be casual and staff were offered some food and beverage options to enjoy while I listened to and recorded their answers to a set of questions. Staff were given time to prepare ahead of time to prepare their answers if they wanted to (but doing so was optional). 

The four questions that were asked were: 

1.  What were the most significant challenges over the past two years?  

2.  What are you looking forward to for the new year?  What excites you the about 2022/23 school year?  What opportunities do we have?

3.  As we finish this year, what concerns do you continue to have? How can I support you and your work in order for us to move forward?

4.  What do you think we should focus on in the new year to meet the needs of our learners?  

After taking notes about what was said, I collated many of the notes into common themes for each question to see if there were common threads. Additionally, many of the ideas brought forth were either put into place right away or have been table to return to later on to look at the value of these ideas. Several of the ideas brought forth were putting back in place things that had been stopped/cancelled/taken away due to COVID protocols. Things like "Treat Wednesday" and Playground helpers were reinstated at a school level fairly easily. 

Attached is a "Wordle" that shows the answers from all staff to question #2 above. The words that are represented as being larger were stated more frequently than the words that are in the smallest font. The smallest font words were each stated only once.