CHRIS
TOY
Diary #2
When's
the Best Time to
Share Uncomfortable Information?
Well, it seems I've survived the first teacher workshop day! I'm always a little nervous on that first day. I know the teachers want to get to their rooms and get ready for the students. I remember when I was a teacher I wanted to "get to it." I half listened to the introduction of new staff and the opening remarks by the school committee chair and the superintendent.
The school committee remarks were made by the co-chair this year. He did a great job of listing the great experiences his children had as they moved up through the system. It was very positive and I think the teachers appreciated his comments. The superintendent also did a great job. He also listed the accomplishments of the students and teachers in the past year. I was pleased that he mentioned that the middle school had three "teachers of the year." He also shared some of the information from the recent parent survey, also pretty impressive. By a nine to one margin parents were either "very pleased" or "pleased" with the education their children were getting from the school system. Although this is a very impressive statistic I was, and still am concerned about the relatively lower level of satisfaction given by the parents of middle school students. We received about a seven to three satisfaction rating on the survey. The parents were given the opportunity to check off five areas of concern about the middle school. Among the top concerns were facilities, administration, curriculum, teachers, instructional materials, and student-teacher relationships. We can work from a position of strength I had to figure out how to share this information with my staff in a timely manner while trying not to damage morale as the school year begins. I felt the need to raise the level of awareness of how some parents perceive us. I also wanted to let the staff know that we could address the concerns from a position of strength, as a strong faculty and an effective program. I decided to begin by focusing on our school mission and beliefs. I had reworked our handbooks, both student and faculty handbooks, so that the preamble of our school mission statement was right on the front cover. I opened the staff meeting by giving a short update on the building project. I transitioned from talking about the building project to the importance of being aware of how stressful change can be for everyone, especially since we are in the middle of a pretty disruptive renovation project. I also told our faculty that it was important to keep looking back at our mission during times of change or stress. I followed up these remarks with the results of the parent survey and asked the staff to think of ways that we could let parents know about our mission and how we could help them to have a better understanding of how we work toward it. I pointed out that 98% of the parents who responded in the survey indicated that they get their information about school from their children. Knowing what we know about our students and how they might respond to their parent's inquiries about their day at school, it is important that we be the source of information about our programs. Mixed feedback The feedback I received from the meeting was mixed. One teacher, a special educator reported to a colleague that the meeting was very positive and went very well. This teacher tends to be positive, but is also willing to be critical. It felt good to hear this kind of response from her. I spoke with another teacher who felt the timing for this kind of information was all wrong, that it was demoralizing to hear first thing that we needed to deal with criticism by parents. Although I was concerned by this teacher's comments, this teacher tends to be a bit negative at times. My worry is that other teachers may feel similarly. I spoke with a third teacher who indicated that, although it was hard to hear, it was important to know what was out there right off so the staff could think about it. Her point was that there really is never a best time for difficult news. She voiced concern that she had been remiss in communicating with parents through our newsletters and decided to make an effort to do that on a regular basis. It's interesting how differently messages are received.
