5 Effective Communication Techniques for School Principals

School Principals have a significant duty in shaping a successfully enriching school environment for all teachers and students.

Here’s our insider’s advice on how school principals can communicate effectively with staff, faculty and students.

• School Newsletters

A newsletter is a great tool of communication that engages parents, and even faculty and students, in the school’s latest and necessary updates. You can either choose to send the newsletter via a mass e-mail service or as a hardcopy on a weekly and/or monthly basis.

Several schools dedicate a weekly newsletter that sums up all the necessary information in one page, including the school’s activities, trips, events, and any significant achievements. It is a cost-effective method that saves the printing of many flyers and leaflets. Its regularity also creates a bond between parents and schools, and is an awaited tool for parents who want to know more about the school’s performances and activities.

Weekly newsletters gives a chance for monthly newsletters to hold more information. Monthly newsletters will serve parents with excess details, articles, news, polls and other exciting updates. Like the weekly newsletter, it may be distributed through mass e-mail to the parents’ database (and optionally students and teachers’ database). Or it can be sent by mail to parents’ homes. This will entirely depend on your budget and how internet-friendly the parents are.

 

• School Podcast

As a school thriving with twenty-first-century teaching techniques, new technology should always be introduced. Principals can benefit from the School Podcast by dedicating thirty minutes each day to talk about important updates, interesting insights, engaging and knowledgeable information, etc. The more creative and interactive the content is, the more credible and trust worthy your school reputation will be. Not to mention, students, teachers and parents will be able to not only read words by listen to opinions, facts and necessary data.

 

• Face-to-Face Communication

The best, most effective form of communication is face-to-face. The more serious or important the topic is, the better it is to communicate directly. Principals may invite parents over a ‘Coffee with the Principal’ event the start of every month, where they can address issues, concerns and updates. It also created a friendly sphere were parents can engage with a credible school official to build further trust. As well, ‘Parents Meetings’ are a great channel for parents to directly interact with their child’s teachers, and learn about his/her performance, concerns, achievements, etc. Other effective events could be small group discussions where the parents’ inputs may help improve and evolve the school’s performance.

 

• Parents Portal

What’s better than dedicating a portal of online communication for parents? This tool is essentially effective, as parents will have the luxury of signing in to their personalized profile, check streaming news and updates, have a real-time chat with teachers or principals and monitor their children’s performance at school. Any needed information, updates, stats or the like can be found on this portal.

 

• Listen and Suspend

Listening and suspending is an effective communication technique that many will need to use in challenging situations. Principals have the responsibility to listen to parents, teachers, and students’ concerns. However, many will find their emotions immersed in such challenging situations, and as a result, stimulate subjectivity within the problem-solving process. By setting the emotional factor aside, and logically listening to the issues being addressed, an act of suspension is being taken. Suspension will, hence, allow a fruitful discussion where problems may be solved accurately and efficiently.