April 9, 2024 • 21 mins
Unlock the secrets of effective communication within the classroom and beyond as Dr. Meghan Everette joins us to share her expertise in the educational sphere. With a focus on crafting concise messages that resonate, our enlightening conversation with Megan is a treasure trove for educators grappling with the challenge of reaching diverse audiences. She brings to the table strategies born from the chaos of the pandemic, emphasizing the power of understanding your audience and the art of simplicity in messaging. Whether you're dealing with policy changes or boosting event attendance, Megan's insights on avoiding assumptions and truly engaging with the community are invaluable.
This episode is a deep dive into the art of dialogue in education, from the state level down to the intimate parent-teacher exchanges that shape our children's learning experiences. We dissect the subtleties of communication frequency, the importance of predictable messaging schedules, and the undeniable value of two-way conversations. By inviting feedback and fostering channels that encourage parental engagement, Meghan illustrates how schools can strengthen their community bonds. This session isn't just about refining your communication tactics; it's about transforming them into tools for building lasting connections with families and students alike. Join us for a session that will leave you inspired to elevate your educational communication game.
Meghan Everette serves as the State Director of Utah Leading through Effective, Actionable, and Dynamic Education (ULEAD) at the Utah State Board of Education. She is a veteran educator and taught elementary school in the National Turnaround Model School, was a mathematics coach, and recently served two years as a Full-Time School Ambassador Fellow in the U.S. Department of Education. She co-founded and served as Executive Director of the ASCD Emerging Leader Alumni Affiliate and co-authored the ASCD book Forces of Influence: How Educators can Leverage Relationships to Improve Practice. Meghan was the 2013 Alabama Elementary Teacher of the Year and a 2015-2017 Hope Street Group National Teacher Fellow. She co-designed PoweredBy Teach to Lead Utah and spent six years as a blogger for Scholastic sharing classroom practices on everything from curriculum design to classroom libraries. She was a Digital Promise Micro-Credential Leader and served on the CCSSO Teacher Recruitment and Retention Educator Steering Committee. Meghan earned her doctorate from the University of Florida with an emphasis on how mass communication theory can be applied to improve trust through school communication.
Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services, Forward Thinking Educator Support. Find out more at www.PlanZPLServices.com. Follow us @PlanZPLS on Twitter and Instagram.
Buy The Minimalist Teacher book from ASCD+ISTE.
Follow on Instagram @PlanZEducation and @minimalist_ed_podcast.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast is a Plan Z Education Services adventure.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a
podcast about pairing down torefocus on the purpose and
priorities in our roles withco-hosts and co-authors of the
Minimalist Teacher Book, TammyMusiowsky-Borniman and Christine
Arnold.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
In this episode, megan talks about simplifying
communication to keep messagingdirect and being mindful of your
audience.
Her pair down pointer is fivethings to keep in mind when
planning your communication.
Dr Megan Everett serves as theState Director of ULEAD, utah,
leading through Effective,actionable and Dynamic Education
(00:57):
.
She is a veteran educator coachand recently served two years
as the Full Time SchoolAmbassador Fellow in the US
Department of Education.
She is an ASCD author andaffiliate leader and former
Alabama Elementary Teacher ofthe Year.
Hello everyone and welcome totoday's episode of the
Minimalist Educator.
(01:18):
Today, tammy and I are herewith Megan Everett.
How are you, megan?
I'm great, thanks.
How are you?
Yeah, good.
And how about Tammy?
I'm pretty well, thank you,awesome.
So I'm really excited to haveyou here with us today, megan,
to talk about communication.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your background with
communication and how you arenow the expert that we can call
(01:41):
on?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Expert might be a stretch.
Yeah, so I actually started mycareer in the field of
communication I have abackground in advertising and
public relations and got amaster's degree and that worked
in that for a little whilebefore returning to get a
master's in education and then adoctorate in education, and
(02:03):
when I was approaching mydissertation topic, one of the
things I was really interestedin is drawing different areas of
expertise together.
I think in education sometimeswe get too much influence from
the business world, certainly,but sometimes we're not great
about pulling those pieces ofinformation and knowledge from
(02:26):
the world around us, and so Iwanted to bring communication
theory to the field ofcommunication.
At the same time, covid washappening and I was seeing a lot
of communication errors andmistrust in what was going on in
the field of education, and sothinking about how communication
is a tool for building trustwith our communities fed into
(02:47):
that as well.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, that was a really interesting time that you
were writing that, becausethere was so much mass
communication going out,especially, you know, we live in
a school world, right.
So what were you finding weresome of the biggest maybe errors
or challenges ormiscommunications that were
happening because there was justso much confusion at that time.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I think there was a lot of confusion and that was
really hard for everybody.
You know things were changingyou can even say day to day,
they were changing hour to hourin a lot of cases and so schools
, I think, were doing their bestto get that information out
quickly to families.
One of the principles that Italked with told me that the way
(03:33):
that their communication reallychanged is they moved from
trying to be storytellers andpresenting their school in ways
that we feel really comfortableand good with to very targeted,
simple, bulleted messages,because when you have to get
communication out like that, ithas to just be so caught and dry
about what people need whenthey need it, and so,
(03:56):
unfortunately, they had to letgo of a lot of those other kinds
of messages, especially asCOVID was starting and we were
figuring things out.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it makes sense, and people had so much going on
in their lives anyway.
So, yeah, I can see the purposeof that for sure.
So do you have any strategiesfor us about how we can be clear
and concise and sort of cutthrough some of that ambiguity
that we have in our world ineducation?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Sure.
So I think some of the bestresearch in this area actually
comes from Todd Rogers, who's abehavioral scientist at Harvard,
and he's done a lot of workwith attendance works, and they
talk about truancy and how weget parents to attend to these
messages of importance regardingcoming to school, and a few of
the just cut and dry things thathe talks about are you know,
(04:49):
you don't need images cuttingback the text of whatever you
have.
So they have run studies sideby side with longer messages and
shorter messages, and even inthe case of trying to persuade
somebody to attend one of theirsessions or register for an
event, they have found thoseshort messages, direct to the
(05:11):
point with an action step inthem, is what garners the most
attention.
Now I disagree a little bit interms of telling your school
story.
I think you still need thoseimages and they can be really
powerful, but when you're tryingto be very clear and concise,
saying exactly what you meanbecomes really, really important
.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, for sure.
I think also some of thatconfusion came with.
And still, you know, when youlook back at some of the old
communications that have comeout from schools, or even things
that I've sent out, like whatwas I really talking about here?
Did I get my point?
Because we're talking with somany different stakeholders
(05:52):
right?
So we're talking with potentiallike school board members and
parents and students andcolleagues or staff, like,
depending, what your role is.
So how do you use the same typeof strategy for each of those
audiences, or is there adifferent style that you need to
use?
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, that's really important.
So in my research I took masscommunication theories and kind
of pulled them together to seewhat were the like threads, and
there were five, but the onethat undercuts all of them is
this idea of audience.
So you can't communicate untilyou know who your audience is,
and what I found in some of thework I did with schools was a
(06:34):
lot of assumption, making aroundwhat the audience could or
couldn't do, what or wouldn't beinterested in, without ever
really going and talking to them, surveying them, reading out
what they wanted.
So a great example is aprincipal that told me well, you
know, our school really doesn'thave the connectivity that they
need and so we can't do.
(06:56):
We don't worry with our website, we don't do online messaging
or anything like that.
We'll come to find out.
No, they didn't have theconnectivity that they needed
for the classroom with computersand devices in that way.
What they did have was phones,and so almost every parent
actually had a cell phone andwould have preferred messaging
(07:18):
and forms that they could dofrom their cell phone.
And so that's just one way thatknowing and understanding your
audience and actually going andtalking to them sets you up to
have a really powerful message.
So to your point, Tammy, aboutdo you keep the same message.
You can have the same intent,but you have to tailor it to who
(07:40):
you're talking to you andthere's more to it than that.
You have to tailor it for themedium that you're using.
How often have you gotten anemail where you said, well, I
really needed a meeting tounderstand this.
Or you've gotten an email, oryou've sat through a meeting
that you're like this shouldhave been an email.
So making sure that your mediumis matching your message is
(08:02):
just as important as the wordsyou're saying.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
We're talking here a lot about,I guess, text-based written
communication.
Do you have any differentsuggestions for when we're
communicating face-to-face withdifferent stakeholders?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, absolutely so.
One of the easiest ones witheducation to think about is the
jargon that we use.
We roll off acronyms all thetime and we just take for
granted that people know whatthey mean, even when we're
talking amongst other educators.
So what I call a PLC might besomething totally different to
(08:46):
you, but we're really talkingabout the same thing, or even
concepts.
We think we understand.
I know what coaching looks likehere, but coaching might have a
totally different connotationsomewhere else.
So, thinking about those kindsof things, and then, yeah,
there's just lots of things toconsider when you're talking
face-to-face, because now it'snot only the words that you're
(09:07):
using, it's your gestures, it'syour eye movement, it's your.
One of my favorite is proximity.
How close you're standing tosomebody else can impart a lot,
and a lot of those things arecultural too.
So we know how we would feel ifit were our family, our friends
, our workplace.
(09:28):
But how does that feel to,maybe, a family member that
comes from a differentbackground, and what does that
mean to them?
Is it rude to stand too close?
Does it feel like you'repushing into their space, or is
that how you make somebody feelcomfortable?
And so, again, it goes back tothat knowing your audience piece
of what they're comfortablewith.
(09:49):
There's also one other piece inverbal communication,
non-written communication, thatI find really interesting.
That's called this idea ofmatching, and what that is is a
little counterintuitive.
But let's say that you're in adiscussion with somebody and
they're very angry and they'revery loud.
Now we know that we match withour friends, right?
(10:09):
If I'm talking to my friendTammy and Tammy's being kind of
quiet, that I will also be quietto match her.
But when somebody is reallyangry and I rate sometimes
matching that energy mirrors tothem what they're doing and can
actually diffuse the situation,which sounds completely
counterintuitive, right.
(10:30):
Right, you're telling you shouldhave get loud back, but there's
a lot of nuances that come in.
You mentioned how communicationis so complex, and it really is
and anytime you're adding allthose facial cues and physical
cues and tone into what you'resaying, it just becomes that
(10:52):
much more complex.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yeah, it does.
And I think about working in asmall school and kind of our
levels of communication, wherewe're facing parents a lot of
the time and that's like a daily, multiple times daily
occurrence.
Of course.
We're students facing all thetime or working with teachers
(11:15):
all the time and there's so muchinformation being shared in
different ways, even on a smallscale, so we have that face to
face.
You know, first thing in themorning we see everyone and then
sometimes there's a textmessage.
You know we use remind as one ofour ways to communicate with
parents for essential things.
Then teachers are alsocommunicating through like a
(11:37):
weekly email so they share somestuff that's happening in
classrooms with pictures, andthen we have things like
progress reports and parentteacher communications and
things like that.
So they're all.
They seem like all essentialcommunications.
But how do we balance?
Like because sometimes we workon the side of over communicate
(11:58):
so that we know everybody'sgetting the message.
But is there like a magic,something magical where you're
like OK, I know everybody's gotthe information, that's
essential?
You know what I mean.
Like, how do we strike thatbalance?
It's really hard.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Sadly, there's not one perfect thing, even in the,
even in the world of advertising, where they spend a lot of time
thinking about the frequency ofmessages, how often somebody
needs to hear it and theintensity of that message.
There's no perfect formula forthat.
If it was, if there was, youwould go out and buy whatever
(12:36):
product every time.
Right, it would be the silverbullet theory of advertising,
where it's like I've advertisedit to you perfectly and so
clearly you're going to followthrough.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And if we could do that?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
everybody also know their multiplication facts,
right?
Like we would, we would usethis force for good.
So there's no one perfect way,but one of the things that
you're talking about is asuggestion around planning where
it's really important to writedown all and I suggest
physically writing it down orputting it in a spreadsheet what
are all the different channelsthat you're using and it's
(13:09):
important in a school system tothink about?
Ok, there are messages comingfrom, probably, the state or
district or LEA level.
There are messages coming fromthe school.
There's messages coming fromyour classroom, right?
So what are all these differentchannels of communication that
a parent might be hearing from?
And then one thing you can dois just monitor the things that
(13:31):
go out in a week or two weekstime, see the volume that people
are getting and look foroverlaps, because we know that
there are people that are goingto attend to a message on
Facebook.
Better than that, they're goingto attend to a message on a
piece of paper in their child'sbackpack, right?
We don't all hear things in thesame way, so there is some need
(13:52):
to see where there's differentmessages are, but there may be
places where there's redundancythat's really not needed or
where you could be morestrategic about the things that
you're doing.
Another piece of that iscreating an expectation for
parents around when and wheremessages come from.
(14:13):
So imagine that my child'sschool always does home calls or
texts or their calling systemat four o'clock in the afternoon
.
If there's something important,it's going to ring right after
school and get to hear that, andthen I get a message on a
Tuesday morning.
So one is I know to expect thatafternoon call.
(14:36):
I know the level of attentionthat I need to pay it, I know
it's a reminder for the next dayor whatever.
Another thing is that whensomething comes out of the
ordinary I'm like, oh, crisiscommunication, I need to pay
attention to it.
So anytime you're building insome systems of expectation for
families, then if they've missedit, they know where to go.
Right, if I know this is in mychild's backpack every Monday,
(15:00):
then whether I checked it or noton Monday, I at least know
where to go and when I shouldexpect it, and so that can be
really important and, like Isaid, it can also help you
really attend to those messagesthat are out of the blue, that
are crisis communication thatyou need to focus on.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, I have so many questions popping up in my head,
but I'll try it.
I'll try it.
I like the idea of a Tuesdaymorning.
Why did you choose a Tuesdaymorning?
No reason, okay.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
But just something out of the ordinary right?
Yes, what I found when I wastalking with schools here is a
lot of times they had thesemessages that needed to go out,
and what would happen is theywould relay that information to
the school secretary, who wouldput it into the all-call system.
But that could happen at anygiven time.
So parents were probablygetting messages in the backpack
(15:52):
or not, on a Monday or not.
They get it in their phoneduring the day after school,
whenever, and that's fine.
That's one way to do it,certainly, but then I never know
which one of those is importantand I've run the risk of kind
of tuning all of them out.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
We have our weekly news.
Let it go out on a Fridayafternoon, which I think works
for us as staff members to do asummary of our week and think
about what's needed for nextweek.
But I do sometimes wonderwhether that's the best time for
the parents they're justlaunching into the weekend.
Do they really want to?
Is that the best time for themto process all of this
(16:36):
information?
So that's why I was like oh,Tuesday, interesting, Sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well, no, at least you're consistent, though right,
and consistency is somethingthat the parents can rely on,
and they know.
If something did pop up on aTuesday, well, that's probably
special and I should payattention to it in some way.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, sorry, tammy, if I'm speaking too much, but I
think one of the things withcommunication that schools often
fall into the trap of is a lotof the communication is one way
it's coming from school towardsthe parents, to the families.
(17:15):
What have we been doing?
Why are we doing what we'redoing?
What do you need to know that'scoming up?
What can we do to make it moreof a dialogue, a two-way
conversation, so that we alsofully informed about what's
going on with the kids?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
That's a really important question, I think one
it goes to systems and how youset up to operate.
So that could be systems.
In a lot of one is it's theheyday of two-way communication.
They're building more and moreof these systems like Remind,
where you could text back, likeClostogio, or apps where you can
(17:57):
converse in the app but youdon't feel like you're being
infringed in your personal phonespace, right.
But they build in these placeswhere people can ask a question
back or they can directlyrespond.
We're so used to that with emailand text, but you're right, we
don't often build it into ourcommunication methods from
school where we push out andpush out.
(18:18):
So that's one kind of systemthat can be put in place.
But another thing is to bereally intentional about the
spaces and times that you'reoffering for that.
If you send out a message andyou don't tell somebody
specifically I want you torespond, here is how you can
respond.
(18:39):
They're not going to do itright, they're going to take in
that information or not, butthey don't know that.
That's what you need from themand so being really purposeful
about the asks and where you putthem right.
You can't put that onabsolutely every piece of
communication, but you can whenit's really important to you or
(19:00):
as a reminder.
If you're sending somethingonce a week on a Friday,
remember we want to hear fromyou.
Please let me know Positive,negative question like and keep
telling people that they can dothat and should do that and how
they can do it.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, I think the how often gets left off right, it's
that called action, what do youactually need to do now?
Because?
And then that you know, whenpeople know exactly what to do,
it eliminates the confusion andthere's the clarity there.
We are about the time to wrapup our episode and we always ask
our guests for a pair downpointer, which is some kind of
(19:44):
tip that you suggest that would,in this case, help
communication be clear, simple,more functional, more easier way
to get out that essentialinformation.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Sure, so this is gonna be oversimplified, but I
mentioned before there are fivekey points to think about.
So audience cross cuts them all, but the context of what you're
saying, like the actual words.
The medium, so the way thatyou're sending it via that email
or piece of paper.
The design, so what it actuallylooks like on the page with
(20:17):
white space and fonts and things.
And then the timing when yousend it and how often you send
it.
All of those things have aneffect, and so you're either
making an intentional choicearound them.
That has an effect, or you'renot doing them, and that also
has an effect.
And so I would say that thoseare kind of the key things to
(20:40):
keep in mind when you are doingany kind of communication.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
That was really helpful, megan.
We really appreciate your timetoday.
We've learned a lot and gotlots of things to think about
and refer back to, so thank youvery much for joining us.
Thank you, today's episode wasbrought to you by Plan Z
Professional Learning ServicesForward-thinking educator
(21:04):
support.
Find out more at Plan Z PLServices dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for
more episodes of the MinimalistEducator Podcast.
They would love to hear aboutyour journey with minimalism.
Connect with them at Plan Z PLSon Twitter or Instagram.
The music for the podcast hasbeen written and performed by
Gaya Moretti.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a
podcast about pairing down torefocus on the purpose and
priorities in our roles withco-hosts and co-authors of the
Minimalist Teacher Book, TammyMusiowsky-Borniman and Christine
Arnold.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
In this episode, megan talks about simplifying
communication to keep messagingdirect and being mindful of your
audience.
Her pair down pointer is fivethings to keep in mind when
planning your communication.
Dr Megan Everett serves as theState Director of ULEAD, utah,
leading through Effective,actionable and Dynamic Education
(00:57):
.
She is a veteran educator coachand recently served two years
as the Full Time SchoolAmbassador Fellow in the US
Department of Education.
She is an ASCD author andaffiliate leader and former
Alabama Elementary Teacher ofthe Year.
Hello everyone and welcome totoday's episode of the
Minimalist Educator.
(01:18):
Today, tammy and I are herewith Megan Everett.
How are you, megan?
I'm great, thanks.
How are you?
Yeah, good.
And how about Tammy?
I'm pretty well, thank you,awesome.
So I'm really excited to haveyou here with us today, megan,
to talk about communication.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your background with
communication and how you arenow the expert that we can call
(01:41):
on?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Expert might be a stretch.
Yeah, so I actually started mycareer in the field of
communication I have abackground in advertising and
public relations and got amaster's degree and that worked
in that for a little whilebefore returning to get a
master's in education and then adoctorate in education, and
(02:03):
when I was approaching mydissertation topic, one of the
things I was really interestedin is drawing different areas of
expertise together.
I think in education sometimeswe get too much influence from
the business world, certainly,but sometimes we're not great
about pulling those pieces ofinformation and knowledge from
(02:26):
the world around us, and so Iwanted to bring communication
theory to the field ofcommunication.
At the same time, covid washappening and I was seeing a lot
of communication errors andmistrust in what was going on in
the field of education, and sothinking about how communication
is a tool for building trustwith our communities fed into
(02:47):
that as well.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, that was a really interesting time that you
were writing that, becausethere was so much mass
communication going out,especially, you know, we live in
a school world, right.
So what were you finding weresome of the biggest maybe errors
or challenges ormiscommunications that were
happening because there was justso much confusion at that time.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I think there was a lot of confusion and that was
really hard for everybody.
You know things were changingyou can even say day to day,
they were changing hour to hourin a lot of cases and so schools
, I think, were doing their bestto get that information out
quickly to families.
One of the principles that Italked with told me that the way
(03:33):
that their communication reallychanged is they moved from
trying to be storytellers andpresenting their school in ways
that we feel really comfortableand good with to very targeted,
simple, bulleted messages,because when you have to get
communication out like that, ithas to just be so caught and dry
about what people need whenthey need it, and so,
(03:56):
unfortunately, they had to letgo of a lot of those other kinds
of messages, especially asCOVID was starting and we were
figuring things out.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it makes sense, and people had so much going on
in their lives anyway.
So, yeah, I can see the purposeof that for sure.
So do you have any strategiesfor us about how we can be clear
and concise and sort of cutthrough some of that ambiguity
that we have in our world ineducation?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Sure.
So I think some of the bestresearch in this area actually
comes from Todd Rogers, who's abehavioral scientist at Harvard,
and he's done a lot of workwith attendance works, and they
talk about truancy and how weget parents to attend to these
messages of importance regardingcoming to school, and a few of
the just cut and dry things thathe talks about are you know,
(04:49):
you don't need images cuttingback the text of whatever you
have.
So they have run studies sideby side with longer messages and
shorter messages, and even inthe case of trying to persuade
somebody to attend one of theirsessions or register for an
event, they have found thoseshort messages, direct to the
(05:11):
point with an action step inthem, is what garners the most
attention.
Now I disagree a little bit interms of telling your school
story.
I think you still need thoseimages and they can be really
powerful, but when you're tryingto be very clear and concise,
saying exactly what you meanbecomes really, really important
.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, for sure.
I think also some of thatconfusion came with.
And still, you know, when youlook back at some of the old
communications that have comeout from schools, or even things
that I've sent out, like whatwas I really talking about here?
Did I get my point?
Because we're talking with somany different stakeholders
(05:52):
right?
So we're talking with potentiallike school board members and
parents and students andcolleagues or staff, like,
depending, what your role is.
So how do you use the same typeof strategy for each of those
audiences, or is there adifferent style that you need to
use?
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, that's really important.
So in my research I took masscommunication theories and kind
of pulled them together to seewhat were the like threads, and
there were five, but the onethat undercuts all of them is
this idea of audience.
So you can't communicate untilyou know who your audience is,
and what I found in some of thework I did with schools was a
(06:34):
lot of assumption, making aroundwhat the audience could or
couldn't do, what or wouldn't beinterested in, without ever
really going and talking to them, surveying them, reading out
what they wanted.
So a great example is aprincipal that told me well, you
know, our school really doesn'thave the connectivity that they
need and so we can't do.
(06:56):
We don't worry with our website, we don't do online messaging
or anything like that.
We'll come to find out.
No, they didn't have theconnectivity that they needed
for the classroom with computersand devices in that way.
What they did have was phones,and so almost every parent
actually had a cell phone andwould have preferred messaging
(07:18):
and forms that they could dofrom their cell phone.
And so that's just one way thatknowing and understanding your
audience and actually going andtalking to them sets you up to
have a really powerful message.
So to your point, Tammy, aboutdo you keep the same message.
You can have the same intent,but you have to tailor it to who
(07:40):
you're talking to you andthere's more to it than that.
You have to tailor it for themedium that you're using.
How often have you gotten anemail where you said, well, I
really needed a meeting tounderstand this.
Or you've gotten an email, oryou've sat through a meeting
that you're like this shouldhave been an email.
So making sure that your mediumis matching your message is
(08:02):
just as important as the wordsyou're saying.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
We're talking here a lot about,I guess, text-based written
communication.
Do you have any differentsuggestions for when we're
communicating face-to-face withdifferent stakeholders?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, absolutely so.
One of the easiest ones witheducation to think about is the
jargon that we use.
We roll off acronyms all thetime and we just take for
granted that people know whatthey mean, even when we're
talking amongst other educators.
So what I call a PLC might besomething totally different to
(08:46):
you, but we're really talkingabout the same thing, or even
concepts.
We think we understand.
I know what coaching looks likehere, but coaching might have a
totally different connotationsomewhere else.
So, thinking about those kindsof things, and then, yeah,
there's just lots of things toconsider when you're talking
face-to-face, because now it'snot only the words that you're
(09:07):
using, it's your gestures, it'syour eye movement, it's your.
One of my favorite is proximity.
How close you're standing tosomebody else can impart a lot,
and a lot of those things arecultural too.
So we know how we would feel ifit were our family, our friends
, our workplace.
(09:28):
But how does that feel to,maybe, a family member that
comes from a differentbackground, and what does that
mean to them?
Is it rude to stand too close?
Does it feel like you'repushing into their space, or is
that how you make somebody feelcomfortable?
And so, again, it goes back tothat knowing your audience piece
of what they're comfortablewith.
(09:49):
There's also one other piece inverbal communication,
non-written communication, thatI find really interesting.
That's called this idea ofmatching, and what that is is a
little counterintuitive.
But let's say that you're in adiscussion with somebody and
they're very angry and they'revery loud.
Now we know that we match withour friends, right?
(10:09):
If I'm talking to my friendTammy and Tammy's being kind of
quiet, that I will also be quietto match her.
But when somebody is reallyangry and I rate sometimes
matching that energy mirrors tothem what they're doing and can
actually diffuse the situation,which sounds completely
counterintuitive, right.
(10:30):
Right, you're telling you shouldhave get loud back, but there's
a lot of nuances that come in.
You mentioned how communicationis so complex, and it really is
and anytime you're adding allthose facial cues and physical
cues and tone into what you'resaying, it just becomes that
(10:52):
much more complex.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yeah, it does.
And I think about working in asmall school and kind of our
levels of communication, wherewe're facing parents a lot of
the time and that's like a daily, multiple times daily
occurrence.
Of course.
We're students facing all thetime or working with teachers
(11:15):
all the time and there's so muchinformation being shared in
different ways, even on a smallscale, so we have that face to
face.
You know, first thing in themorning we see everyone and then
sometimes there's a textmessage.
You know we use remind as one ofour ways to communicate with
parents for essential things.
Then teachers are alsocommunicating through like a
(11:37):
weekly email so they share somestuff that's happening in
classrooms with pictures, andthen we have things like
progress reports and parentteacher communications and
things like that.
So they're all.
They seem like all essentialcommunications.
But how do we balance?
Like because sometimes we workon the side of over communicate
(11:58):
so that we know everybody'sgetting the message.
But is there like a magic,something magical where you're
like OK, I know everybody's gotthe information, that's
essential?
You know what I mean.
Like, how do we strike thatbalance?
It's really hard.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Sadly, there's not one perfect thing, even in the,
even in the world of advertising, where they spend a lot of time
thinking about the frequency ofmessages, how often somebody
needs to hear it and theintensity of that message.
There's no perfect formula forthat.
If it was, if there was, youwould go out and buy whatever
(12:36):
product every time.
Right, it would be the silverbullet theory of advertising,
where it's like I've advertisedit to you perfectly and so
clearly you're going to followthrough.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And if we could do that?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
everybody also know their multiplication facts,
right?
Like we would, we would usethis force for good.
So there's no one perfect way,but one of the things that
you're talking about is asuggestion around planning where
it's really important to writedown all and I suggest
physically writing it down orputting it in a spreadsheet what
are all the different channelsthat you're using and it's
(13:09):
important in a school system tothink about?
Ok, there are messages comingfrom, probably, the state or
district or LEA level.
There are messages coming fromthe school.
There's messages coming fromyour classroom, right?
So what are all these differentchannels of communication that
a parent might be hearing from?
And then one thing you can dois just monitor the things that
(13:31):
go out in a week or two weekstime, see the volume that people
are getting and look foroverlaps, because we know that
there are people that are goingto attend to a message on
Facebook.
Better than that, they're goingto attend to a message on a
piece of paper in their child'sbackpack, right?
We don't all hear things in thesame way, so there is some need
(13:52):
to see where there's differentmessages are, but there may be
places where there's redundancythat's really not needed or
where you could be morestrategic about the things that
you're doing.
Another piece of that iscreating an expectation for
parents around when and wheremessages come from.
(14:13):
So imagine that my child'sschool always does home calls or
texts or their calling systemat four o'clock in the afternoon
.
If there's something important,it's going to ring right after
school and get to hear that, andthen I get a message on a
Tuesday morning.
So one is I know to expect thatafternoon call.
(14:36):
I know the level of attentionthat I need to pay it, I know
it's a reminder for the next dayor whatever.
Another thing is that whensomething comes out of the
ordinary I'm like, oh, crisiscommunication, I need to pay
attention to it.
So anytime you're building insome systems of expectation for
families, then if they've missedit, they know where to go.
Right, if I know this is in mychild's backpack every Monday,
(15:00):
then whether I checked it or noton Monday, I at least know
where to go and when I shouldexpect it, and so that can be
really important and, like Isaid, it can also help you
really attend to those messagesthat are out of the blue, that
are crisis communication thatyou need to focus on.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, I have so many questions popping up in my head,
but I'll try it.
I'll try it.
I like the idea of a Tuesdaymorning.
Why did you choose a Tuesdaymorning?
No reason, okay.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
But just something out of the ordinary right?
Yes, what I found when I wastalking with schools here is a
lot of times they had thesemessages that needed to go out,
and what would happen is theywould relay that information to
the school secretary, who wouldput it into the all-call system.
But that could happen at anygiven time.
So parents were probablygetting messages in the backpack
(15:52):
or not, on a Monday or not.
They get it in their phoneduring the day after school,
whenever, and that's fine.
That's one way to do it,certainly, but then I never know
which one of those is importantand I've run the risk of kind
of tuning all of them out.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
We have our weekly news.
Let it go out on a Fridayafternoon, which I think works
for us as staff members to do asummary of our week and think
about what's needed for nextweek.
But I do sometimes wonderwhether that's the best time for
the parents they're justlaunching into the weekend.
Do they really want to?
Is that the best time for themto process all of this
(16:36):
information?
So that's why I was like oh,Tuesday, interesting, Sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well, no, at least you're consistent, though right,
and consistency is somethingthat the parents can rely on,
and they know.
If something did pop up on aTuesday, well, that's probably
special and I should payattention to it in some way.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, sorry, tammy, if I'm speaking too much, but I
think one of the things withcommunication that schools often
fall into the trap of is a lotof the communication is one way
it's coming from school towardsthe parents, to the families.
(17:15):
What have we been doing?
Why are we doing what we'redoing?
What do you need to know that'scoming up?
What can we do to make it moreof a dialogue, a two-way
conversation, so that we alsofully informed about what's
going on with the kids?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
That's a really important question, I think one
it goes to systems and how youset up to operate.
So that could be systems.
In a lot of one is it's theheyday of two-way communication.
They're building more and moreof these systems like Remind,
where you could text back, likeClostogio, or apps where you can
(17:57):
converse in the app but youdon't feel like you're being
infringed in your personal phonespace, right.
But they build in these placeswhere people can ask a question
back or they can directlyrespond.
We're so used to that with emailand text, but you're right, we
don't often build it into ourcommunication methods from
school where we push out andpush out.
(18:18):
So that's one kind of systemthat can be put in place.
But another thing is to bereally intentional about the
spaces and times that you'reoffering for that.
If you send out a message andyou don't tell somebody
specifically I want you torespond, here is how you can
respond.
(18:39):
They're not going to do itright, they're going to take in
that information or not, butthey don't know that.
That's what you need from themand so being really purposeful
about the asks and where you putthem right.
You can't put that onabsolutely every piece of
communication, but you can whenit's really important to you or
(19:00):
as a reminder.
If you're sending somethingonce a week on a Friday,
remember we want to hear fromyou.
Please let me know Positive,negative question like and keep
telling people that they can dothat and should do that and how
they can do it.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, I think the how often gets left off right, it's
that called action, what do youactually need to do now?
Because?
And then that you know, whenpeople know exactly what to do,
it eliminates the confusion andthere's the clarity there.
We are about the time to wrapup our episode and we always ask
our guests for a pair downpointer, which is some kind of
(19:44):
tip that you suggest that would,in this case, help
communication be clear, simple,more functional, more easier way
to get out that essentialinformation.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Sure, so this is gonna be oversimplified, but I
mentioned before there are fivekey points to think about.
So audience cross cuts them all, but the context of what you're
saying, like the actual words.
The medium, so the way thatyou're sending it via that email
or piece of paper.
The design, so what it actuallylooks like on the page with
(20:17):
white space and fonts and things.
And then the timing when yousend it and how often you send
it.
All of those things have aneffect, and so you're either
making an intentional choicearound them.
That has an effect, or you'renot doing them, and that also
has an effect.
And so I would say that thoseare kind of the key things to
(20:40):
keep in mind when you are doingany kind of communication.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
That was really helpful, megan.
We really appreciate your timetoday.
We've learned a lot and gotlots of things to think about
and refer back to, so thank youvery much for joining us.
Thank you, today's episode wasbrought to you by Plan Z
Professional Learning ServicesForward-thinking educator
(21:04):
support.
Find out more at Plan Z PLServices dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for
more episodes of the MinimalistEducator Podcast.
They would love to hear aboutyour journey with minimalism.
Connect with them at Plan Z PLSon Twitter or Instagram.
The music for the podcast hasbeen written and performed by
Gaya Moretti.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com