Protocols are structured processes and guidelines to promote meaningful, efficient communication, problem solving, and learning. Protocols give time for active listening and reflection, and ensure that all voices in the group are heard and honored. Using protocols appropriately in meetings with colleagues, students, parents, and others helps you build the skills and the culture necessary for productive collaborative work.

Although protocols are not needed for some meetings (such as those for disseminating information or updating participants without inviting feedback), once a group becomes accustomed to using protocols, they’re more likely to collaborate more efficiently and effectively even when protocols are not being used.

Like guardrails along a highway, NSRF protocols, under the leadership of a trained coach, provide guidance and a safe place for honest and useful feedback. They also ensure that the group involved arrives at the proposed destination rather than being pulled off-track.

NSRF has a vast array of protocols and activities to help participants:

• Address complex dilemmas with fresh perspectives
• Improve their work quickly with thought-provoking questions
• Share and learn from successes
• Introduce ideas, topics, or programs
• Expand thinking, find essential messages, discover other perspectives
• Interpret data
• Observe classrooms and environments to improve teaching, coaching, learning, or other work
• Brainstorm and improve projects, plans, or materials at any stage of progress
• Look at student work with specific objectives and needs in mind to improve outcomes

Our Protocols A-Z List is free and provides access to our original protocols, alphabetized by their given titles and downloadable as PDF files.

Our most updated and complex protocols are exclusive to Annual Members and trained Critical Friends Group® Coach Members. NSRF is a small non-profit office, and your paid memberships help to support our office which works to support YOU as an educator!

Our paid members have access to newly constructed, extended, searchable Protocols Libraries! Members’ and Coaches’ Protocol Libraries have detailed search filters that allow searches by categories such as “Planning & Brainstorming” and “Working with Data.” You can also preview brief summaries of purpose per protocol or activity. These libraries also contain activities, downloadable cards, documents, and applicable articles. You can view our protocols and activities as interactive web site pages through the Linked Title, or you can download them as PDF files. We hope to gather even more materials for you in the days to come!

To view these exclusive, extended libraries, be sure to log in with your username and password and to purchase your membership through our Store. Find the library links under “Protocols” in the top main menu. These are BIG libraries, so you might give them a few seconds to upload. We have a lot to offer, especially to our trained CFG Coaches!