ASB Class Norms Re-Evaluation

Hello ASB 3rd Period!

First off, thank you for your time and attention during Leadership Development on Thursday. I know you all have many things to work on for Leadership, but the better we create our classroom environment the more efficient and supportive we can be.

Below is a list containing comments on norms that we feel are UNLIVED with reasons why, or new norms that could be established. There were no comments on us meeting all the norms, which is okay! Remember, the important thing for norms are that they are STATED. While we want them all to be LIVED, some will be UNLIVED. The purpose of evaluating our norms is to see why we are not living these norms, and our awareness to make them LIVED. Such is the life as leaders striving for growth.

Norm 1: Keep agenda efficient (6 comments)

• I wish that the rules of agenda would be upheld more so that people understand that rules will be enforced in ASB.
• We should have a visible timer running during agenda items so that everyone can see how much time is left for each agenda item. That way, people will be more likely to stay within the bounds of their agenda time.
• Often times, agendas are sent out later than expected and agenda items are tacked on during the week. Although this is not too big of an issue, I feel like this gets in the way of forward planning
• The rule should be that if it’s applicable to the class, it can be on agenda. Mainly with the recent amendment discussions that after explaining an amendment was followed by a few people discussing for an elongated period of time while everyone else had to sit through it.
• I’ve noticed that sometimes there are small side conversations in between or during agenda items, which may be disrespectful to speakers or others trying to listen. We should establish times when we can have small talk and times where we should exclusively be listening.
• Agenda and when projects intros and [outros] occur are often more haphazard than the rules of agenda prescribe them to be. For example we have project intros and [outros] on Monday and Tuesday and sometimes even Thursday with not that much regard to what the day has been blocked out to do (ex: full breakout or half breakout). This makes agenda more inefficient and commission time harder to plan. I think that we can adress this by having the asbo in charge of agenda monitoring the effiecency of their week. This means that if there is an agenda item that doesn’t belong on a certain day, the asbo would contact the person who wrote it and move it to another day. This would hopefully only be for some time until the class learns to do it themselves.

Norm 2: No electronics out during agenda (3 comments)

• People need to be more conscious about this norm and understand that it could be disrespectful when electronics are out during agenda. Electronics could have to be stored away during agenda time to make it easier.
• Person leading agenda should try and ensure that people don’t have their phone out during agenda. Rewrite norm to include announcements as well so that people will also pay attention to PA announcements. Mr. Lee and person leading agenda should watch out for people with phones out. People in each table should ensure that their tablemates don’t have their phones out. 
• I think this norm is definitely not lived. People continuously have conversations during agenda and announcements, are working on project plans or answering emails or putting last minute things on the agenda. This norm should be enforced more so that everyone is present and paying attention/respect to the students doing the announcements or speaking during agenda. 

Norm 3: Be respectful, including stuff (5 comments)

• Being respectable in terms of "stuff" is something I feel like we could work on. In the den, just looking after your commission's things and your own things and being respectful of other commissions things is something we could improve on.
• I think that norm #3 could be better lived in the form of people eradicating side conversations during agenda and announcements. This would help enforce the norm of being respectful because agenda items and announcements would be listened to actively and the people presenting them would feel heard and not like there wasting their time talking to people who aren’t listening. A way that this could be enforced would be for the speaker to stop presenting if there is someone having a side conversation to bring attention to them that they are being disruptive.
• Recently people have been combative regarding elections, perhaps not explicitly, but through passive aggression and argumentation. To ensure privacy and a productive workspace, we must establish a norm that prevents communication regarding elections or applications for next year.
• sometimes instead of talking directly to a person or commission i sometimes hear people talking behind that persons back rather than talk to them directly - for me personally respecting people’s food is also a problem because there are a couple people who never ask and just take other people’s food and end up eating a lot of it when it was supposed to actually be a meal for me or someone else
• I think it is important to address that being respectful isn't only about people but to everybody and everything. I know Mr. Lee put in a lot of effort into having a special classroom and den just for leadership and ASB purposes and we should respect and recognize that. It is a lot easier said than done but we should take care of it better by establishing who cleans up what and a better organization method in the den since there are a lot of miscellaneous things inside.

Norm 4: Be supportive and encouraging (4 comments)

• Be more supportive and open to collaboration with other commissions, not just necessarily own comission
• This norm could be more specific as to what we should be supportive and encouraging OF (i.e. supporting other commission's projects, extending offers of help to others outside our own circle, more actively contributing feedback during project intros/outros, and ensuring that everyone else in the classroom has the resources and information they need when we expect them to support one of our own projects).
• A way to measure this is by social media spam. A lot of times social media graphics that are to be spammed on stories aren’t, which goes against norm 4.
• I think we all say we are supporting each other at the moment, but I think we don’t live on to that. When we want volunteers or blogger comments, everyone agrees to sign up and for so, but it never really does anything until the project lead pushes them to do so. If we are truly supporting each other, we shouldn’t have to ask multiple times to do something because people should already be willing to help and not be lazy about it.

Norm 5: Breakout - prioritize your commission (2 comments)

• Clarify tasks for each breakout and make sure those are being done for each commission, so socializing/other work can be kept in check by deliverable end of period goals.
• I would like commissions to stay together and be able to communicate and seek advice from each other when needed

Norm 6: Person leading is leading, i.e. standing up (0 comments, we are likely LIVING this norm :) )

Norm 7: Be conscious of time and deadlines (10 comments)

• Having a public display in the asb classroom to hold ourselves accountable and as a daily reminder to ourselves.
• Making hard deadlines for forms and projects more followed. This could be facilities requests, announcement submissions, or simply following a calendar made for a project plan to better respect other's time and effort. This would hopefully be made possible by bringing up deadlines more often and planning farther in advance with check ins from asbos, advisors, or others involved in the project. 
• I think that as the year has gone on, people have started to pay less attention to deadlines and the value of time. I would like to see the class being more proactive in events, like if they are aware that they’ll be leading a PR video, tech can get in contact with PR before the month even starts- why wait until the week of to film everything?
• I think there’s quite a few events and activities that tend to be rushed, and I think we should work on keeping to a deadline and planning in advance.
• Especially with agenda, we need to be more coincious of deadlines to put up the items for the week.This will be able to help others plan accordingly, and this way we are also respecting the time that others need. Otherwise, someone may have planned to do something that takes considerable time, but doesn't get to it because another person added an agenda item last second.
• Sometimes, things are a bit rushed in a PR video filming schedule. We should give a bit more time for commissions to plan out scripts to ensure that all important content is articulated
• I think we all need to be more aware of deadlines especially when it involves work from other parties/collaborators/the whole of ASB. For example, sending out graphics + post schedules at least 3 days in advance. Maybe we should create a promo calendar so no one's spam is at the same time. making sure to send facilities requests!! Announcement requests!!
• Norm 7 states “Be conscious of time and deadlines”. I believe we should address the problem of procrastination and miscommunication on deadlines. Often times, we procrastinate until a few days before something is due so it puts a lot of stress on ourselves. This procrastination is often a result of not prioritizing asb work. I think we can uphold this norm by making deadlines stricter/constantly do check ups to make sure people are doing their work.
• For my commission I have noticed a problem with finishing projects on time. Our commission is always working on something so we are naturally very busy and there are times where things don’t get done on time. I feel like we as a commission need to talk about prioritizing asb over other small non important things and utilizing all the time we have especially if there is downtime.
• General Deadlines: We should write deadlines on the board (tech request, facilities, etc.) Possibly set a requirement for project plans to include a timeline and include that timeline during project intro - timeline should include dates of necessary deadlines and meetings regarding the event. Set a person/commission to update calendar regularly. Have personal commission calendars.

Norm 8: Be equitable (1 comment)

• I think “being equitable” is extremely vague and hard to carry out. Thus, I feel like some more fleshing out needs to be done in terms of what that officially entails for the class, instead of it being relegated to a thought in the back of our minds. Things like voluntarily holding back on commenting if others want to can be utilized. Requires more discussion.

I have an UNSTATED norm that should be STATED (3 comments)

• actively promote asb events on social media (posting when instructed etc) [Mr. Lee note: this could be integrated into Norm 4]
• Clean up after yourself. This should be stated so that it is not arbitrary. [Mr. Lee note: this could be integrated into Norm 3]
• I feel we should have a norm about bonding activities or something related where we have an activity scheduled once every two months or so.