professional development

CFG

Stacey Shubitz

I recently learned what a Critical Friends Group, or CFG, is from one of my colleagues. I’m curious to learn more. If you participate in a CFG, please leave a comment so we can all learn more about them (and hopefully participate in one going-forward).

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Published by Stacey Shubitz

Stacey Shubitz is a K-6 literacy consultant and former elementary teacher. She is the author of CRAFT MOVES and other professional books on writing workshop. Her forthcoming book, MAKE THE SCHOOL SYSTEM WORK FOR YOUR CHILD WITH DISABILITIES (Guilford Press, 2026), empowers parents to navigate the special education system.

4 thoughts on “CFG”

  1. We have had them at our school for a number of years. It is teachers talking about teaching. I took the facilitator training about 5 summers ago and learned about the protocals. These are used to make sure that everyone is able to particpate and to keep the focus on the aspect of teaching that is being discussed. We are currently using them to dig deeper into our lesson planning process. At our school we call them Essential Friends because critical sits too close in the minds of many to criticism.

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  2. I have two CFGs that I connect with regularly. One is my twitter network of educators, with whom I touch base with every day to share experiences and resources. I look forward to having a free moment to drop a quick tweet and I make time to catch up on what has been discussed and shared when I am not in the twitterverse. I follow a great group and those of us who live in the same area have even started getting together for drinks and snacks monthly. We call it our PD or professional development Party.

    My other CFG is a very small group of 4, including me, but we are dear friends who went back to grad school to get our administrative degrees. We, too, meet monthly for dinner at one of our houses and catch up, share our individual administrative experiences, and talk about how we are continuing to grow as educators.

    I do not know what I would do without either of these CFGs.

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  3. We used a CFG in my summer writing institute this past year. They critiqued our presentations to provide us with feedback before we presented to our districts. We also used them like a response team to share various writing pieces we might have been working on. It helped to have four people that you knew you could always depend upon to give you the honest truth about what you were writing.

    I’ve been using them with my fourth graders this year and they seem to really be enjoying it!

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  4. My district has implemented Whole Faculty Study Groups (WFSG) in the last few years, which sounds similar to a CFG. We are required to obtain 18 hours of professional developmet through our WFSG each school year. We break into small groups, by interest, and collaborate, study professional books, and look at student work. All of our WFSGs must be based on our school’s SIP (school improvement plan).

    I love doing professional development this way, instead of huge district wide meetings that try to be “one size fits all”.

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