A Matter of Principals
Episode 4
Communications Advisory Committee
October 30, 2017

DAVID MORRILL: Hi everybody, this is David Morrill, the communications director of the Association of Washington School Principals. The podcast you’re about to listen to was recorded with 3 members of my Communications Committee. We recorded it on our committee day which was October 2017. For the past 2 years in a row, we have brought our committees together, all 7 of them. We actually have 8 committees now with the specific assistant principal advisory committee to kind of learn from each other. 

So we have 7 areas of work at AWSP. Traditionally, they were part of our old strategic plan and that’s advocacy, professional learning, member support, diversity and equality, student leadership, outdoor learning centres, and the seventh being communication. Communication really works to support the other goal areas or the other work teams. So that was a great day. We learned a lot and what we end up doing is we meet with our own committees and then we meet together to kind of learn what all the different work areas are talking about, to see how much crossover there is and where we can all help each other and work to accomplish the goals of AWSP. So we're about to hear again as in my Communications Committee, 3 members from different schools around the state and I hope you enjoy. I hope you learn something from it and that's in. 

Welcome to A Matter of Principals at AWSP podcast. This is our 4th episode and we have our contacts in this episode. We are here in SeaTac with our Communications Committee, 3 members of the committee; and each of the committees come together to figure out how they can help serve AWSP as we move forward on our strategic planning. Our 2 goals as an association include equity; so making sure that people know what equity is, why it's important, how AWSP can equip principals to be better leaders of equity throughout the state and also for communications perspective, how AWSP serves all of her members. So whether you have a small PD budget or you have the superintendent that's supportive of you getting out of the building professional learning, how can we ensure that all of our members have access to our materials, our resources; and that every kid can have a connected, engaged, and informed principal? 
So we're here today at the committee meeting again and part of what is important for us to get across to policy makers and to the public at large is that principals are multipliers of effect of instruction. So the most important thing for students is to have a qualified teacher in every classroom. But how do you do that? Well, you do that with really effective principals. And so in terms of where communication is at AWSP, we support equity and we also are trying to support the sustainability of the principalship and communications is the multiplier of the effective advocacy we do and the professional learning. And so how can we multiply and amplify what the other arm of the association are doing? And also listening to the needs of the field and make sure that we're serving our members as best as we can. 

So today we've got with us 3 principals. I’ll let them introduce themselves starting from James Everett from Bellingham. I’ve kind of introduced it for you, but give us a little bit about who you are, how long you’ve been a principal and a little bit about your background.

JAMES EVERETT: So yes, James Everett, Squalicum High School in Bellingham school district; and this is my second administrative role. I was a principal at Meridian high school for 5 years and this is the beginning of my 3rd year at Squalicum. Communication has been one of those critical pieces in establishing trust and ensuring that staff are well informed and that parents know what's going on and that students are not surprised by what's happening. And so a lot of different facets in how communication helps us manage and be strategic and be proactive in the things that we're doing. 

DAVID MORRILL: Thank you James. Cindy?

CINDY CROMWELL: Hi, I’m Cindy Cromwell, currently the principal of Butler Acres Elementary school at Kelso. This is my 10th year as the principal there. Formerly, I was the principal at Coweeman Middle school also in Kelso. Communication is just extremely critical for me. It's every part of our job. It's what we do. We can’t do it alone. So being able to communicate our needs, our goals, ideas and thoughts that we have to not only students, staff, and parents, but to all of those critical stakeholders. It’s such an extremely important part of our job every single moment.

BRENT OSBORN: My name is Brent Osborn. I’m the principal at Lakeside high school at Nine Mile Falls School District. I’ve been there for 7 years. Prior to that, I was an assistant principal at Rogers High School in Spokane for 3 years. I would echo my colleague's feelings about communication, but add the fact that the communication has evolved. Just in my 10 years in the administration or the 10 years in teaching, and what it looks like from then till now has changed, and we as principals need to change with it and grow in how we reach the people that need to know in our communities and in our schools. 

DAVID MORRILL: So, thank you guys for being here. One of the things that we talked about earlier today in our meeting prior to recording this podcast is that as much as communication is changing, principals don’t have necessarily formal training in communication, that principal prep programs and you’re responsible for a million and one things and lot of districts [05:26 Unclear]. We mentioned how to change. Cindy, you mentioned earlier about your philosophy and what is the hot social media network of the day? What is it about communication? How do you approach it so that regardless of what people are in terms of what platform you’re at or how you communicate? Tell me a little bit about why you do what you do, how much thought you give it, and what your philosophy is about communication. 

CINDY CROMWELL: I absolutely believe that there are people that think that they are communicators, there are people who are communicators, and then there are those that think that they, but they aren’t. And one of our jobs is to figure out our audience and figure out the different ways that we can communicate for that mission of educating all kids, all day, every day whether they're in Kindergarten through 12th grade. Really thinking about that mission and utilizing communication to get us to that graduation, that end product—I think is absolutely the critical aspect, kind of our goal. 

JAMES EVERETT: I fully agree and I would add to the fact that as we are leaders within a system that's complex, we have a responsibility that everybody in our building and our stakeholders outside people we serve are fully aware of where we're heading and what's coming up. I f we don't do that well, then human nature—I believe—has people filling in the blanks with the worst possible scenario. And so then you move very quickly from a proactive stance to reactive and you don't build trust that way. There's a lot of scrambling and it's just not a good way to move forward and support your system and your students and your families.   

CINDY CROMWELL: And going through principal school, if you can call it that, you don’t take the class on necessarily communication, and again as was stated earlier, it's changed so much especially in the last couple years with technology and social media that we find ourselves so many times trying to keep up. I agree, you got to be on top of it and over communicating; otherwise it will come back and bite you.

BRENT OSBORN:  Just to add, they always say we've got to meet them where they are. So where are your community? So that I think does take some proper planning and some time and some investment as a school leader to put some time into the factor, where are they and how can they best be reached? And so a couple years ago in my school, I used project tomorrow speak up survey which allowed me to survey my students, my staff, and my community to find out where they were accessing information. 

So were they getting information around Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snap Chat? What form of media do they access best? And so however you do that, you need to find the best way for you to access where they are. You can’t just assume that everybody is going to read the paper or the newsletter you send out. So I think they've got to be communicated to in many ways. It's a blast format too. You may think that the best way to communicate is via the web page or you better put something on your Facebook that draws them back to that or your Twitter or Instagram. So different ways to get people to the information that they need to get. 
DAVID MORRILL: They’re all really good points. You talked about over communicating. It's easy to think, “Well, I've already sent this out”. But sometimes you have so many different stakeholder groups. Well, I know I told students or maybe I told staff. So it really is true. You might as a principal—in my role, I feel like you've already put that out there, but sometimes it's true, you can't really say enough; and it's better to say it too much than not enough and that will save you a lot of time in the long run. 

So when you think about what you are saying, who you are trying to communicate with, and who you are trying to communicate to, a lot of times you might have parents that you need to communicate with one way, students and staff in another and keeping track of that can definitely be tough to stay on top of. But whatever you have, you make sure that you have a system and that you don't leave anything uncovered. And again if you always error on the side of over communicating, no matter what that is and your parents your staff will thank you. The other part of that is when you talk about your stakeholders, who are they, how can you use them, and how can you partner with them? What are those strategies to make sure that everybody isn't engaged and that you're not missing anybody? 
CINDY CROMWELL: I think when we think about the school community, you've got your students and you've got your staff, you've got your parents, and then you got your greater community at large that may or may not be connected directly to the school, but are still connected to the school because it’s their community. And so each of them require different modes of communication and then that's the juggling the balls in the air as a principal. How do you best reach those groups? How the students are best contacted is not how their parents are best contacted; and then how you contact a parent is not the best way to reach the adult in the community that has no children in the school or the parent that has elementary kids and you're at the high school, but they need that information too. 

So you have to understand who they are. And then I think you have to look at each of them individually and assess how best to communicate whether that's using your email service to blast all the parents or you're using Instagram to reach kids, Facebook to reach parents. And so I think today's principal has to learn how to juggle probably 3 social Medias for their school and another 3 for themselves and that's a lot to take on as a leader. That’s that new principalship when you think about what it means to be a principal in 2017. It looks different than it did in 2015, 2013, and 2010. And so today’s principal needs to be versed on how best to reach their community. 

JAMES EVERETT: I also think that with the new tools, there are also some tried and true practices that help reinforce the communication. It's important not to lose sight of communication being a 2 way street. Are we listening to what's going on? Do you have the staff members that are willing to come to you and say there was a ramble about this or this was mentioned at lunch and they just want you to be aware? One of the things I've stumbled upon is my presence at extracurricular activities, whether it be athletics or music programs or something like that is an outreach and an opportunity for anybody at any time to come up and access me to say, “Hey, this was on my mind. I have this question. Can we meet tomorrow about that?” And then if I'm open to that, then that gives me leverage to be able to examine an area that I otherwise might not be aware of. And so just thinking about how to be listening to your community that you're serving is an important part of the total communication package. 

DAVID MORRILL: It sounds like that part of listening is just being available, being present, being available, making sure people know to contact you, giving people the opportunity for dialogue. 

JAMES EVERETT: Absolutely! And the way I stumbled on it is one of the things I heard going into a new system in the past. The feedback I got from the community was they didn't know how to let the school know when things weren't going well or when they were going well. And so we put together what we call parent roundtable and teacher roundtable meetings where once a month we just invite the community to come. There's no agenda; just come and share whatever's on your mind. Sometimes we sat and looked at each other and we come up with a conversation which always led into something people were wondering about and that provided an avenue for dialogue that otherwise people got frustrated about. 

DAVID MORRILL: We’ve covered a lot of the topics here already. I think one of the questions I would like to add to that is: what good advice would you give to maybe a new principal? [13:44 Unclear] so just advice that you would give and then that can kind of lead to tips and tool and take-aways. I think that we who’s your stakeholder, why communication is important we’ve talked a little bit about maybe partnerships would be one more thing that we can talk about. Maybe you know like well everyone has that but if you have a communications person in your district you know, form a relationship, ask for help, share perspective and that kind of thing. And if you don’t, find someone in your area, district, or region that you can interact with and find out what to do.                 
                                                                
So we've talked a little bit about stakeholders and partnerships and one of the things that you can do is find people in your building to be partners and in your district and your community. Depending on the size of your district, the size of the school, you may or may not have a communications director. But if you, you have to make sure you have a good relationship with that person. Pick their brain and find out what they like from you and what they can do for you; because they're busy people just like you are so you might be surprised at how much you can get out of them with a little bit of outreach and asking them to maybe come in and help you out. 
You maybe have a really good student body or maybe you have a local paper with a writer that's interested in education. So finding these partnerships that can help you  amplify your message is really important. And maybe there is somebody else in your own building. So I’m just going to throw it around the table. Who are the people that you partner with? Who are the people that help advocate for you and help make sure that the word gets out?

JAMES EVERETT: In the building and school district, we're pretty fortunate. We have a strong communications department. So when there is a situation or there's a an item that I need to communicate or feel like I need to respond to, I have a couple of people that I'm able to share perspectives with and balance what I'm thinking against what they're looking at because they're thinking of the larger system as a whole and I'm trying to think about who we're serving immediately in my building. If they're not available, I have some colleagues that are in our league that I reach out to and that I've worked with over time with different situations that I respect. And so I'll maybe give them a call and say, “Hey, here's what I'm dealing with. Have you've been down this road before? What do you think?” Just gathering those perspectives is really helpful. 

CINDY CROMWELL: I really utilise my staff as my thought partners. In communications, I think it's critical that what I think I'm saying or what I'm sending out is truly the message that I want to. So to make sure of that, I have people's her through my documents before I speak. This is what I’m trying to get across; this is the message. Because if I'm not really clear in my message, then its totally open for interpretation. So those thought partners are giving feedback, giving sometimes very blunt feedback. I appreciate it. Sometimes those are administrators, those are district staff, or people that I can just call and pass off ideas, thoughts, or  even a letter that I'm sending to parents or an email response. Can you look at this and tell me if I am on the right track with this or how would you interpret this? 

BRENT OSBORN: As a principal in a small school in a small district that doesn't have a communications director or a local paper or those kinds of things, you really learn to rely on everyone, whether that be your office manager, your assistant principal, superintendent, or a teacher to help be that filter and guide when it comes to communication. And just like I mentioned earlier, you really partner with your teachers. And so when you talk about communication, I think my biggest partners are my teachers. They are communicating with kids and they have sites, Google classroom sites and they have websites and they have Edmodo pages. Every way that you can, you got to communicate out and often times, the conduit for us building leaders is the teachers. They're going to get that message to kids in a more personal one on one that might be the best way to get something out to kids which then may get to families. 

DAVID MORRILL: Yeah. If you're communicating well with your teachers, you don't want to model that all the way through you've got family engagements to make sure that everybody is on the same page and that information is getting to the people that need it even before they even know they need it sometimes. So you have to kind of sit back and reflect. The PTA is another organization that can help out and look at what other partnerships exist. We just want to kind of send a reminder to people who are listening that at AWSP, we're only as strong as our members are and we really love to hear stories of what worked for people. 

There are a couple things around the table that maybe we can kind of share some tips, tools, and takeaways which is something that we always try and offer. So don't be shy. My e-mail is david@awsp.org. Send us some ideas. Tell us what you're doing or if you have someone in another district or a colleague, we want to hear about that so we can start that out and stronger together. So we're going to make sure as a profession, as an association across our state that we are sharing ideas. So with that intro, I know Cindy, you have something in your district that's been a helpful tool for you last year that you’ve implemented. Can you tell me a little bit about that? 

CINDY CROMWELL: Yes, we have started using what’s called Peach Jar. So being an elementary school, we have all sorts of organisations that bring these lovely flyers that my staff have to count out and send off to students in Friday folders, and peach jar allows us to just send it electronically. It totally takes it out of everybody's hands and we're able to communicate with families and it's been really lovely tool that we have been able to incorporate. The other item that we used to do was old fashioned phone tree where I would start off by calling four or five people and they will start calling those individuals who would implement weather or delays. I totally love the Remind app. It is a tool that I can use to communicate with teachers, all of them at the same exact time. So nobody is concerned that when you call this person beforehand or, “Why didn’t I get that phone call?” I can 100% guarantee that when I call one, it goes out to everybody in whatever format that they love. Peach Jar and Remind now are 2 really good products. 

JAMES EVERETT: We're a big user of school messenger and I think the other tip I would have is tapping into our leadership students and the connection that they have in the school both with their peers and with their parents about what's going on and just giving us that perspective that each year will be farther away from that age group. And so it's good reminder on how to access what they need from us in order to get the messages that we want to send. But the 2 big ones for us are school messenger—usually as a district resource that we utilize, and then tapping into our student leaders. 

BRENT OSBORN: I would echo that the apps and tools that have been mentioned already, we use those as well. School messenger and Remind, those are fabulous. I still always think the best way to communicate is face to face with kids and having that conversation, not the daily announcements that everybody ignores. But the opportunity for a teacher or an administrator or school personnel to get in front of a group of kids and communicate directly in a classroom, something is important. It usually gets them well. James mentioned earlier that face to face is the strategy that we slightly lead to interpretation of emotions or emojis or exclamation marks. And so that's what I always encourage. Whenever possible, pick up the phone, call somebody, schedule a meeting, and talk to them in person. Social media can replace that and it can help in your mass communication, but remember that personal contact with your families and your parents and your community. 

DAVID MORRILL: Going back to before being proactive with that can really helping and there’s time and place for everything and making sure—do I really need to have a conversation with this person because like I said, the challenge for every communicator and every human is: this person that I'm talking to, are they interpreting the message the way that I want them to receive it? That's important. 

JAMES EVERETT: Just in what Brent said and what you're talking about, I think it reminds me of the idea that you go to the heat. If there's ever something that comes up, waiting is almost always the wrong approach. You deal with it. And so that would be some advice I would say for someone who's new in the role and needing to work with communication. 

DAVID MORRILL: Yeah. And I would say sometimes you have to slow down to go fast. And to me as a communications person, and someone who is interested in technology, that means taking little time to learn your tools and learn what's available to you. It might cost a little time up front, but it might save you a lot of time on the back end. And the same thing, you might not think you have enough time to write a blog post or put something on Facebook, but if you take the time and if you're consistent and if you stay engaged with that, your audience will follow. They’ll come to you and in the long run, it's going to save you a bunch of time on the back end and your parents, your staff, your community and everybody will come to appreciate that. 

So one of the tools I believe they’ll take away is: there's a service called buffer where you can schedule posts on Facebook. I would suggest at may be the beginning of the year, sitting down with your leadership team—and that might be a teacher, might be assistant principal, and might be students, and might be the PTA—and kind of looking at an editorial calendar. What are the events that we're going to be talking about throughout the year? Play is coming up, games—a lot of the stuff can kind of be prescheduled or talked about in advance. One of the advantages of that is that you can have a secretary who might not be totally comfortable. You can check and have draft posts and you can have something scheduled to go out and then you can go ahead and you can look and you can review and you can see everything ahead of time. It's so much easier when you can block that time out; like a couple hours and maybe it's couple hours a day for the first couple weeks school, but that will save you so much time at the end when you're in the middle of everything and you have to get something out and you're wondering what is appropriate or not. So it's kind of planned. Make a plan for your year. What are you going to be sharing? Who are you going to be sharing it with? You can kind of front load some of that work and make your life a lot easier when things do really get busy. Anybody else have anything to add? Any last bit of advice to the principals in the state of Washington and beyond? 

JAMES EVERETT: No.
CINDY CROMWELL: No.
BRENT OSBORN: No.

DAVID MORRILL: Thanks to the 3 of you for being here. You guys have been a great help for me in the association. And again for the listeners, if you have any feedback, both good or bad, we really want our members to be critical friends, we're here to serve you guys. So let us know where we're succeeding and where we're falling short. And then please share what works so we can be stronger together. Thank you for listening and hopefully you'll be hearing more from us in the future and different podcasts and different topics. 

Thanks for listening to A Matter of Principals. Remember you can subscribe to our podcast and ITunes. You can find that in Google play store or you can always listen on our website. We'd love to hear feedback from what you'd like to hear and the guests you'd like to have us have on in future episodes. You can always send that feedback to me at www.david@awsp.org  or just shoot anyone here an email. Find us on social media. We’re on Twitter as awsp_principals or find us on Facebook.
Thanks again for listening. Take care. 

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Thanks to OSPI and the Department of Education for supporting our work and supporting principals across the state.