Teach Meets-Top Tips
What is a Teach Meet?
A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting (in the style of an unconference)
for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in
teaching.
Participants volunteer (via the Teach Meet website) to demonstrate good practice
they've delivered, or discuss a tool that enhances classroom practice.
Teach Meet events are open to all and do not charge an entry fee.
What happens at a Teach Meet?
Teach Meets are organised by teachers for teachers. Usually teachers sign up to
attend the event beforehand and say whether they would like to make a
presentation.
The presentations are done by willing volunteers and are usually either 7 (micropresentation) or 2 (nano-presentation) minutes long. Presentations tend to be
chosen in random order on the night.
It is traditional in Teach Meets to throw a toy camel at any speakers who go over
their allotted time!
Who organises Teach Meets?
As an NUT rep (school rep or learning rep) in a school/college or division/association
you are well placed to organise a Teach Meet for colleagues in your area. Teach
Meets are about teachers taking control of their own CPD and professionalism and
sharing their experience with colleagues.
The NUT believes that the most powerful learning by teachers is from other
teacher’s, which is why we run our CPD programme based on Peer 2Peer learning,
guided by experts.
Teach Meets are an extension of this approach and a great way to share
professional learning with others.
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How do I organise a Teach Meet?
Participants – Who is coming? Will it be teachers from a wide area or could it be a
staff meeting between a couple of schools? Could you invite student teachers from a
local college? Have you invited any School Direct trainees in your school or cluster
of schools?
Advertising the event – You will need to think about how you get people to sign up
for the event. The traditional way is to create a wiki page from the main Teach Meet
page in your area and then anyone can log in and edit this to add their name.
Twitter is also a great way of advertising your event. One way of doing this is to
create a hashtag that people will use when talking about your event. To do this just
give it a name e.g.#tmbolton and send a tweet with that hashtag in it. Others will see
it and do the same.
Venue – Do you have enough space for everyone? What is your limit? Can people
park easily enough? Is it accessible for all teachers?
Refreshments – Not essential, but teachers will appreciate it, especially after a long
day at school
Equipment – You will almost certainly need a laptop to present from but will you
need a projector too or is there one at the venue? Is the wifi available for people to
connect to?
Host – Teach Meets work well with a host to introduce the format, manage problems
and answer questions. They can also link between presentations throughout the
event
Sponsorship – Definitely not essential, but if there are costs to cover (wifi, food etc)
you can speak to your division/association about funding through an NUT training
grant. Remember-you can run a successful Teach Meet using local support, local
schools and virtual networks.
During the event/on the day – You may wish to have signs and posters directing
people to your event. You may also wish to have a signing in sheet and collect email
addresses from people as they sign in.
You may also want to show Visible Tweets (www.visibletweets.com ) as people enter
and throughout the evening. This will show all tweets based around a particular
term. To see how it works, load it up and enter #ukedchat to see the latest tweets.
Once you get started, introduce yourself and explain how the evening will run,
explain about the camel and the time limits. Don’t forget to mention fire exits and
toilets! Time the presentations and remember to thank the speakers at the end.
After the event
Could you send a survey to people who attended? How about sending a thank you
email or your follow up blog post?
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What’s going on in my area?
Like TeachMeet on FaceBook for the latest events and news. (Get your TeachMeet
listed on Facebook).
Consider
adding
your
at http://bit.ly/tmlivemap.
event
to
the Teach
Meet
Map,
available
Add your event to the Google Spreadsheet to have it appear automatically on the
map. Spreadsheet is publicly available at http://bit.ly/tmmapdata with instructions and
help available at http://bit.ly/tmmapdatahelp.
Search Teach Meets and then the name of your area eg: Teach Meets Hants
(Teach Meets Hampshire - http://www.teachmeethants.co.uk/), Teach Meets Sussex
(#TMSussex on Twitter) etc
To find out about other Teach Meets or to advertise your own go to http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/w/
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