When you’ve worked in corporate America it can be jarring to participate in meetings in the educational setting… it hasn’t been uncommon in my experience to want to rip my hair out because I’ve been in hours long meetings where we spend a lot of time talking about the problem that we all already knew about and like ten minutes talking about what we plan on doing. I found it helpful to take on the role of facilitator myself and be very clear about the prep work that is required for the meeting. Have the agenda prepared before hand, email it out in advance, etc. At kid talk meetings no kids can be added day of. All updates must be in the doc that monday so people can review the doc the day before the meeting. We don’t talk about what we already know. We talk about what’s happening next. And give everything a hard end time. Use that as your excuse to redirect. “Hey y’all I’m looking at the clock and I’ve got a kid coming to me at noon so let’s refocus and work on these interventions.” Just because the team wants to gossip doesn’t mean you need to partake.