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Session 2. Time, Resources and Facilitating the Facilitators
Objective. Build an hours budget for a network of PLCs that adds no net workload, plan low-cost resources and recognition, and design the support, selection and clinic for facilitators.
Most networks of PLCs fail quietly on two things: the hours were promised but never found, and the people leading the teams were left to guess. Both are design problems, not problems of motivation. In this session you will treat time as a budget that must balance, treat recognition and small costs as real resources, and give the people who lead your teams a community of their own so that they do not burn out or drift.
Key ideas
Time first, and by swapping
- Time is the first resource and the one most often promised and not delivered. A rule that works in a school with no extra staff: every protected hour for a team is paid for by an hour taken out of something else. Make the swap visible on one page.
- Sources of hours: orders and reports that move to a written note; committees that merge; a shared free period placed on the timetable for each team; a cluster day on which neighbouring schools swap lessons so that teachers can visit.
- Do the arithmetic before you promise. Six teams of six teachers, each meeting four times for 40 minutes in a term, cost about 96 teacher-hours, and facilitators need preparation time on top. Count facilitation in the facilitator's workload, not as a favour.
Small money, big difference
- Most PLC costs are not money. Typical items: printing and paper, a room, transport between schools, a substitute for a visit, a few hours for the facilitator. Low-budget moves: rotate the host school, visit by clusters in one trip, and keep a printed pack for every team so no one needs a device.
- Recognition is a resource. The UNICEF Innocenti report on communities of practice in the Western Balkans recommends linking participation to professional development credit and career progression, and giving dedicated time to early-career and heavily burdened teachers. Check the ministry regulations on recognised professional development in Uzbekistan before you promise credit.
- Never fund a network by taking time from pupils' lessons without a plan for the lessons. Pupils' time is the scarcest resource of all.
Facilitating the facilitators
- The quality of a PLC depends on the person who leads it, so build a community for the leaders. A monthly 60-minute facilitators' clinic: each brings one stuck moment from their team, the group asks questions for 5 minutes, offers ideas for 5, and the owner chooses one next step. Use the protocols and hard-moment scripts from 12.4; do not teach them again.
- Wenger-Trayner list a myth about communities of practice: that facilitation alone drives participation. Facilitators help, but members join when the work matters to them. Teach facilitators to ask 'is this question worth the team's 40 minutes?' before 'how do I get everyone to speak?'
- Facilitators also need subject knowledge. Mark, Gorman and Nikula note that novice lesson-study teams often concentrate on building the lesson and miss chances to deepen their own mathematics. A facilitator who keeps the subject idea at the centre is worth more than one who only keeps time.
Choosing, preparing and protecting facilitators
- Choose by credibility with colleagues and willingness, not by rank alone. A deputy head is not automatically the best facilitator. Pair a new facilitator with an experienced one for the first two meetings, then step back.
- Offer a three-step support path: a half-day induction, observation of two meetings with the team's consent followed by a short conversation (one thing that worked, one question), and a place in the monthly clinic. Observation is for support, never for rating.
- Protect them: one team per facilitator in the first year, a two-year term with a handover, and a written note of the hours counted. The best teachers are often asked to do everything; a network that wears out its best people will lose them.
The 15-minute facilitators' clinic
A budget that balances, not a promise
A good hours budget has two columns. In the first you list what the network costs in teacher-hours, facilitator preparation, clinics and visits. In the second you list what is freed by swaps. The rule is simple: the second column must be at least as large as the first, and no hour may appear in both columns.
The last part matters most. An hour of an association meeting that becomes team time is not 'new'; it is the same hour used differently. Counting it as freed and also as team time inflates the plan and hides a deficit. Check the budget with a deputy or a methodist who has no stake in the network, and ask them to find the hour they do not believe.
What a facilitator needs that a participant does not
A facilitator carries three tasks that participants do not: preparing the focus question and materials, holding the time, and noticing who has not spoken. These are skills, and skills grow with practice and feedback, not with a certificate. The clinic works because it gives facilitators the very conditions that you want them to give their teams: a real problem, careful questions, and the dignity of choosing their own next step.
Selection also matters. Wenger-Trayner caution that facilitation alone does not create participation, so a facilitator whom colleagues do not trust cannot rescue a team by technique. Choose people whose lessons colleagues already want to hear about, and make the role easy to leave after two years without loss of face.
Examples from the classroom
The hour counted twice
Scene. A Fergana school plans six PLC teams. The deputy head lists 150 freed hours, including 80 from association meetings now used as team time. A methodist notices that the same 80 hours also appear as the team meetings in the cost column. Removing the double count leaves a deficit of about 30 hours. The school shortens one cluster visit and moves two notices to a written note, and the budget balances before any team is announced.
Insight. An honest budget asks someone outside the plan to find the hour they do not believe.
Choosing Malika
Scene. A school in Bukhara first asks its most senior deputy to lead three teams. Colleagues respect Malika, a maths teacher of six years whose lessons they visit, but nobody asked her. The steering group asks her to co-lead one team with an experienced facilitator for two meetings. She says yes on one condition: the preparation hour is counted in her workload. The head agrees in writing.
Insight. Choose facilitators by trust and willingness, and count their preparation time, otherwise the role becomes an unpaid favour.
A clinic that gave advice too early
Scene. In the first facilitators' clinic in a Samarkand cluster, Jasur describes teachers arriving late. Within a minute, four colleagues give him advice about fines and signing sheets. The leader stops the group and restates the rule: five minutes of questions first. Questions reveal that the team has no agreed start time and that one member teaches an extra lesson at that hour. The fix is a change of slot, not a rule.
Insight. Questions before advice let the group find the real cause instead of repeating familiar remedies.
Common pitfalls
- Promising time without a budget that shows where each hour comes from.
- Counting the same hour as both freed and spent.
- Making the strongest teacher lead many teams and wearing them out.
- Using observation of facilitators to rate them instead of to support them.
Budget the Hours and Run a Facilitators' Clinic
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE hours budget for a school of 40 teachers, a facilitator selection table and four SAMPLE stuck-moment cards. Use your own timetable and staff list in your school. (5 min)
- Alone (12 min): total the hours the sample plan asks of teams and facilitators for one term, then list the hours that will be freed by moving items to writing, merging groups and a shared period. Is the net change positive or negative?
- Pairs (15 min): fix the budget until the net change is zero or better. Add a line for printing and transport, and decide who pays, and who does not have to.
- Groups of four (13 min): fill the selection table for the six candidate facilitators, naming for each the support step they need first. Agree what you would say to a head who proposes the deputy for all six teams.
- Part B, the clinic (30 min): in groups of four run one 15-minute facilitators' clinic on a stuck-moment card, then swap and run a second. Roles: owner, two askers, timekeeper. Owner ends with one next step written down.
- Alone (10 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which hours in your own school are really free to swap, and which are only free on paper?
- What did the askers do in the clinic that helped the owner most, and what was unhelpful?
- Who in your school is overloaded with roles today, and which role could they hand on?
Reflect
- What do you stop doing tomorrow so that someone else can start a team?
- Who do you currently ask to lead everything, and what would help them?
- What is the cheapest resource you could add to every team next month?
Try it tomorrow
- Write the hours budget of one team for one term in two columns, and ask a colleague to doubt one line.
- Ask a possible facilitator what would help them and what would overload them, and listen for five minutes.
- Run a 15-minute clinic with two colleagues on one real stuck moment, using the four steps.
Further reading and links
Every protected hour is paid for by a visible swap, and facilitators get a community of their own, because a PLC rises or falls with the person who leads it.