communication

Email should be a convenient and efficient communication tool. However, it is also fraught with danger as messages can be misinterpreted, especially if a ‘tone’ is read into the content. It is important to remember these key points when communicating with parents using email. Once you press SEND, your message is gone. You can’t take back and it’s “on the record”. Filling in the TO section last, avoids making the mistake of prematurely sending the message. (PS Retracting an email just highlights your mistake and is likely to make them pay even closer attention to what you wrote!) Avoid rushing your response. Time pressures and the reactive nature of email can contribute to us rushing our response to a confronting…

In many schools, the staff car park is a busy place immediately after meetings. Colleagues often congregate in small groups, in the staff car park, to reflect on the meeting and share, what they were going to say or should have said! at the meeting. In the car park, after a meeting, staff tend to congregate with trusted colleagues and are honest and open with their viewpoints. Sometimes they are too open and too honest! The length and vigour of the ‘car park meeting’ is often a symptom of the level of trust that exists within the staff. It is important to school culture that staff are honest, open and genuine with their viewpoints and share them in an appropriate…

Reports on student progress and achievement should be clear, concise and jargon-free.  They need to be written in language all parents can easily understand. The challenge is to provide all the relevant detail about students’ progress and ensure that the information on the report is both clear and concise. It is important that the report is coherent and there are logical links between the achievement of the student, areas for improvement and actions the school and parents might take. Student reports should provide the following key information: Clear information on what the student has achieved – focus on each student’s progress on the basis of assessment evidence that has been gathered. Suggestions for areas of improvement that the student should…

We all have strengths, even people who seem to have more than their fair share of personal flaws. But there is a negativity bias that most people have where we tend to be more aware of our own and others’ weaknesses. It has been suggested that this bias towards noticing what is wrong has helped our evolution by avoiding possible dangers. But some people become stuck in focusing too much on the negatives. When people do this in personal relationships, it tends to attract negative responses in return. When people focus too much on the negatives at work, it also drains motivation, affects performance and at its worst, can create a toxic workplace culture. While there is a time to…