We can't afford to wait any longer...

We are losing the war. We are losing the war because we are being defeated in battles on all fronts. We are continually on the defensive, and because of our unwillingness to attack we are on the backs of our heels.

http://goo.gl/vLaf1

This war I speak of is the war of public relations....

Today I attended my first ever administrative meeting with all the central office administrators and building level administrators in the district. As one of the "new people," I spent a lot of time listening and observing. As I started to reflect on the 2 hour meeting, there were 2 different events that really stood out:

1 - Each administrator took a few moments to share something positive about his/her staff and/or students. I found this to be a very useful activity since it allowed each of us to hear some of the great things going on in the district. Additionally, it modeled an excellent activity that could be done at the building or even classroom level to share and celebrate some of the great things going on in our schools.

2 - My Superintendent made a point to highlight the importance of school public relations, and unfortunately as it currently stands we all have room for improvement here. His comment was simple and straight forward, "we need to do a better job of getting some of the great things we are doing in our schools out to parents and the community." He mentioned several ways to do this, and many of his suggestions are in one of my recent blog posts titled, "10 ways to build the community school."

I know posts like this aren't new to many Educators in the Twitterverse and blogosphere, but we have got to do a better job of working with teachers and building and central office administrators on ways to improve our public relations. We have got to take the fight to the public and scream as loud as we can about the many great things going on in our schools. We need our parents and community to be inundated by positive news. We need the great and positive stories to find our parents, rather than having them only hear the negative news. We need to go on the offensive and become our own public relations machine.

As we approach the start of the 2011-2012 school year, I challenge you and your colleagues to discuss and contemplate new and improved ways to share the awesome things taking place in your schools. Right now there is only one voice being heard by parents and the community, and unfortunately that voice is not coming from Educators. We can no longer afford for our parents and community to only hear one side of the story...