Competency 2:

Communication Skills

Related Task 2.2 Ability to devise information and communication systems. Specific Task 2.2.4 Establish a communication system for providing information to all concerned with a specific project in a given district. Narrative description of specific task: When I arrived at the building in November and met with the staff one of their biggest concerns was the lack of communication, specifically not everyone having access to information they needed or knew where to find it. Addressing this issue will include creating an on-line calendar and using Google drives to organize information and make it accessible to those that need it. In addition training of staff will need to occur in order to show them how to access the information including creating and inviting people to events on the on-line staff calendar along with uploading and downloading forms from the Google drive. Process, Purpose, and Approach Communication is a key ingredient when it comes to the success of any organization, and schools are no different. If there is not a structure for good communication in place then people do not know what is happening within the building and feel out of the loop. As a result staffs get separated into those in and out of the know, divisions occur, and staff morale can deteriorate. When I took over as Principal of Lockwood Elementary the second week of November I did not know a lot about what happened previous to my placement, but I was told that it was a terrific staff that had often been divided. A staff meeting was held during that first week during which the staff was asked to list things they felt were immediate concerns. At the top of every groups list was communication, specifically feeling like they did not know what was going on within the building (this was probably amplified by the change in administration after the first marking period). Another key part of communication is letting people know where information is kept and how to access it. Many staff members felt that they were not informed about what was happening in our building teams (i.e. BIT, MiBLSI, Intervention Assistance, etc.) or what needed to be done on a regular basis and as a result the impression was that a small group of people were making decisions that effected everyone. The purpose behind this competency is to develop a system for staff communication, including a central area where needed information can be easily accessed by all. In addition people needed to know where the Principal was at throughout the day, especially if he was out of the building, if they needed or wanted to know when he was available to meet with them. The other part of this competency is training the staff how to maximize this system once it is put in place, especially since it will rely heavily on the use of technology and there is a wide range of comfort levels and experiences among the staff in this area.

In order to create a system of communication the first thing that needed to be done was determine what was available. Since all district employees have a Gmail account utilizing the Google features seemed like the best way to go. Next was learning how to use the features and finding people to help brainstorm ideas, test what was in place to make sure it worked as intended, and eventually help train the staff. Those people were identified, the building secretary and a teacher that is comfortable with technology, and a Lockwood staff account was created through gmail. Immediately a staff calendar was created and as the two individuals began to learn and become comfortable with the features others were given access. Once the experts were comfortable they began sharing it with individual staff members and a plan was made to show the staff at the next staff meeting. The day before the staff meeting all staff members were given access to the new staff calendar including the ability to add/edit events as well as the ability to view the Principals calendar. The teacher demonstrated how to access the calendar and how to create events, which many of the staff had little or no experience doing. Afterwards staff was shown the administrator calendar and explained that they all now had access to it and were shown how to invite guests to a created event. Staff was directed to check the administrator calendar for availability, create the event on their google calendar, and send an invite instead of sending emails asking for days and times to meet since this is constantly changing (this was especially helpful with IEPs since a large number were being scheduled and multiple people were included in the emails and they tended to respond to all, generating a lot of emails). Staff was encouraged to start using the calendar by signing up their class for the morning announcements and shown people that were comfortable with using Google Calendar they could go to with any questions. In addition the weekly memo that was put out by the secretary each week was only going to continue for a couple more weeks while people got used to using the staff calendar since the calendar would contain more information than the memos did anyway. Then next item was to use Google Docs to organize and share information. The first step was to create folders for general documents, such as leave of absence and conference forms along with evaluation documents, and get the documents uploaded. The secretary and teacher leaders of all of the committees (BIT, MiBLSI, etc) were sat down with one-on-one and shown how to do this. After the folders were set up at the next staff meeting staff was shown how to access and save to the Google Drive. In order to encourage staff to use the drive they were shown how to retrieve the evaluation documents they would need for their upcoming pre-observation meetings (they could only be found on the Google Drive). Lessons Learned From the start it was clear that communication, or a lack there of, was a major concern among the staff at Lockwood Elementary. This lack of communication left staff members from the office to the classroom feeling like they were not aware of what was

happening in the building and because of that undervalued. Every building will have its leaders, the ones that are involved in multiple committees and are the go to people for decision making, but when those individuals feel they are out of the loop and unaware of what is happening in the building you know communication is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Throughout this competency it was clear the wide range in the experiences and comfort levels of individual staff members when it came to the use of technology. There are a handful that use technology to set-up web pages, create newsletters, use resources beyond simple email to communicate with parents, and introduce a wide variety technology into their lessons while others use it only to keep track of grades and to send/receive emails. A lot of patience and understanding for where people were at along with making time to sit down with individual staff members was, and still is, necessary in order to utilize the technology available to increase communication building wide. While the creation of a staff calendar and the utilization of Google Docs was appreciated, especially once the worry of learning something new was alleviated, from the teaching staff, the biggest change was from the non-teaching staff. This includes support staff and particularly the people from the Regional Education Service Agency (RESA, formally the Intermediate School District - ISD), of which we have several at Lockwood throughout the week and the handful of shared staff in our building. For the first time those groups of people felt like they were a part of the staff and aware of what was happening in the building. Participation in staff meetings and committees from Intervention Assistance Teams to March is Reading Month as well as staff get togethers has increased. ______________________________________________________________________ Attached Artifacts Staff Calendar - Screen shot Google Drive - Screen shot showing the folders set up