Expanding Critical Friends Groups within an organization or school

There are many ways to expand the number of people who are involved in participating in Critical Friends Group.
1. Administration can require participation.
2. Administration can work with teachers to encourage training and more participation.
3. People trained in coaching can ask for teachers to join them and see if they would like to get trained and then start there own group.
4. Just ignore it and see if that helps.

What seemed to work for my school was a combination of 2 and 3 from above. We started a CFG at our school and asked many to join that we thought would be excited doing that type of work. Our principal encouraged some within our group to get trained. This in turn allowed us to get more trained coaches and expand within our school the number of CFG that were operating. 

At the beginning of our third year we had trained 6 CFG coaches and asked teachers to volunteer to sign up for one of the three groups meeting. We encouraged new teachers to join one of those three groups but did not require it. Two of the groups met during the school day using substitutes and the third group met after school. All three groups met once a month.

At the same time we still had our original CFG meeting and invited the principal to join us. We name that group the "Leadership CFG" but in truth we were a group working on the problems with running other CFG groups plus some school wide concerns.

Our feedback from the three new groups was very encouraging and began to change the culture of the building. We began missions that seemed difficult to start previously. We had a Positive Behavioral Support team that began discussion on how to best support all students at our school. Notice I say all and not just those who were the repeat offenders. This was part of our new culture, always thinking about all students in most situations. We also began a group who worked with the book called "Courageous Conversations". We wanted to have open dialog with each other about peeling the layers back on our beliefs about race and how that effects are students. These two groups might have been difficult to start before the CFG work in our building.

One of the most eye opening results was that from our new teachers They really spoke with excitement about participating in a CFG. They listed several reason:
1. They knew staff members and no longer felt isolated.
2. Staff members knew them and would engage them in conversations.
3. They have a vehicle to get help if they need it.
4. They discovered that no one is perfect.
5. They were amazed how veteran  teachers with decades of experience were working so hard to still improve.

I felt like at this point we had reached a point that all teachers would love to work in. We were in a culture of honest, trusting professionals who had the support to be highly creative and bold with their teaching. We did  have about ten staff members who chose not to participate in an on-going CFG. On Professional Development days we had all of the CFG groups meeting, these not attached teachers met in a CFG like meeting that I would facilitate. They would do the same protocol work but using the easier to use protocols. They had good discussions about some of the work they were doing and appreciated the freedom to not participate. For a few staff members, they did decide to join a CFG group.