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Explore the invaluable role school principals serve as conduits between what happens in the classroom and strategic messaging at the district level.
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Transcript
Tyler Vawser: All right. To make the best use of our time, we'll go ahead and do some introductions here. And so if you've been on an Apogee webinar before, you will know that I'm Tyler. I head up our marketing team and that includes our SchoolCEO magazine team as well. And so really excited to talk about this topic of principles.
We presented on some of this in the past, but we've never had Jamie or Will join us. So Jamie Rocnk is a former principal, as is Will Parker. And the two of them are actually I would consider close friends. Jamie introduced me to Will probably two years ago now.
And Will is one of those people that when you talk to him, you get his full attention and he asks really good questions. He's one of the few people that when he asks you, how are you? He really genuinely means it. So with that in mind, we're going to be talking to him and to Jamie about what it was like for them as principals.
We're going to look at SchoolCEO research and what we've learned about the role that they play, that principals play in communications and in marketing. So with that in mind, let's go ahead and we'll skip to the first slide. And Jamie, do you want to introduce yourself to start things off?
Jamie Ronck: Sure yeah so Jamie Ronck and yeah I spent eight years as a middle school principal in a really small rural district here in Oklahoma and Will was definitely a mentor and a good resource to me when I was trying to figure out that role as a principal. But yeah some fun pictures here of my family. If you're in Oklahoma you might have heard about that Boys From Oklahoma concert a couple of weeks ago in Stillwater so that's my family at that event.
We're huge Oklahoma State fans and we love to tailgate at football games so Tyler you'll love this. We even branded our tailgate and we have a logo and yeah call ourselves the Duck Street originals. Fun fact in twenty twenty four I tried two new hobbies, Legris, which is kind of like pilates. Love it.
I'm sticking with that. I also tried snow skiing. That was not so successful for me. So don't know that I'll be able to stick with that one.
Tyler Vawser: That's hard for me to hear. I grew up skiing from a very young age in Colorado. So I forget that not everybody has had that experience.
Good. Well, welcome, Jamie. Jamie's been at Apptegy for quite a few years and we started talking when you were a principal and I was actually on the hiring team back then.
Good. All right, Will.
Will Parker: Yeah. Good morning, everyone. My name is Will Parker, and I'm just so honored to be in the room with you and with Tyler and Jamie. They're both good friends of mine.
My career was also in Oklahoma since nineteen ninety three as a teacher and then assistant principal and then high school principal. And then I became the state executive director for Oklahoma's Association of Secondary School Principals and Middle Level Education Associations for six years before I started doing the work I'm doing now. And so I'm full time consult now. I'm an author of four books, I'm also the host of Principal Matters, the School Leaders podcast with more than four hundred episodes.
My family and I live in Owasso, Oklahoma. My wife and I have been married for thirty two years, and we have four adult children. And the photo at the bottom corner is when our daughter Katie graduated last year from the university in Wales. She chose to go to school overseas, which blew our minds.
And that's me hiking on the coastal trail. That's one of my favorite things to do is to be outdoors. So just excited to join you all today and to learn together with you.
Tyler Vawser: Very good. And I'm going to put some of Will's resources in the chat.
His podcast is really exceptional, not only for its content, but also for the depth and the length that you've been doing it. So if you've ever done a podcast, you know, it's quite a commitment, especially to do it year after year. And you've had so many incredible episodes and exceptional guests too.
Well, here's our agenda for today. We're going to talk about why principles. And then Will's going to talk about this concept of the dark side of the moon, which I think will really help everything else make sense and give some context around why principals are so important in our communications and in our marketing. And then Jamie and I are going to talk a little bit more about what are those barriers?
Like what gets in the way of a principal's ability to use their advantage, to use their unique position to tell the story of their schools and of the district. And then finally, we'll talk about what actions you can take and how do you build stronger communication partnerships. So whether you're a superintendent or a principal, a communications director, or somewhere in the mix of all of that. We really want to talk about how communications is not one person's role, but everyone can be involved in that.
And in this case, specifically principals and how they're involved.
So why principals? This is a slide we've shared a number of times before, and this is so important. So this comes from the Pew Research Center. But Americans have more confidence in public school principals than they do in police officers, religious leaders and members of Congress.
And this is a really great stat, but we also know kind of just intuitively how true this is. The example I always give is that when I drop my kids off in the morning, it's the principal that's there at the drop off line. Or when I walk into the building to pick them early for a dentist appointment, I usually see the principal. And in fact, about a month ago, I went to my kid's school and I volunteered for a day.
And it was almost at every turn that I saw the principal walking the halls, talking to people. And principals are just very visible in that way. And in a way that a communications director or superintendent can't be. And that's really important.
And from our own research at SchoolCEO, when we've asked parents who do you trust most to communicate valuable information, it starts with the teacher and then the principal. So those are the two most trusted. And the reason for that isn't because superintendents are not trustworthy, but because you have more direct interactions with your teachers and your kids' principals than anyone else in the school system.
And the other part of that research, which we won't go into here, but who you trust is very closely linked to the relevancy of the information that they give you, right? When the superintendent sends out a text message, it's about a board meeting about something that may not be relevant to me. But when a teacher sends me a text or sends a message to me about something, it's usually about my kid's classroom or about my kids specifically. And that relevancy and that accuracy of information is so important to building that sense of trust.
And so, and maybe Will, you can jump in here. When we think about the unique role of a principal, right, it's this idea that they're both connected to leadership, but they're also closely connected to teachers and the students as well.
Will Parker: Yeah. What I love about this idea, Tyler, it reminds me of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine who's a colonel in the US Air Force. And he was talking to me about in the military, you have strategic leadership, you have operational leadership, and you have tactical leadership.
And when I was applying that idea to, like, the work of administrators, especially the work of a principal, I'm like, wow, the principal really has a unique role of kind of living in all of those spheres. They're, although the superintendent is primarily responsible for the strategic and that upper administration, someone has to implement it. So, the operations come back to that principle but then, they have to sell that strategy and vision to their teachers And then they have to equip them to do that tactical work. So it is a really unique position. And it's one that if you can leverage it for communication, you're going up and down that communication line from strategy to operations to tactical and then to the community.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, that's really good. And we're definitely gonna talk about this daily access point quite a bit, right? Principals have that front row seat to what's happening in the classrooms in a way that superintendents, communication directors don't always get. And in particular superintendents, right? When they're in the hallway, everyone's acting a little bit differently because of who they are. But the principal is there all the time. And so they get that really authentic, maybe sometimes too authentic experience of experiencing things firsthand and seeing how teachers and students and parents interact.
Jamie, I know when you were a principal, you used Apptegy's products and you were using that to communicate out. Do you want to talk a little bit about what it was like for you and like what this daily access looked like in your role?
Jamie Ronck: Yeah, I think that's such a great point, Tyler, and I think the daily access is built into our role when we're a principal.
Part of evaluating our teachers and being in the classrooms and having witness to all of those moments. I know for me that was probably one of my favorite parts of the job was being able to be there and see all those moments of learning take place.
And then also being able to share those moments out, you know, really quickly and in the moment, I think that's also such an important part of what we did.
Tyler Vawser: On this third point, before we go into the next slide, which will be a little bit of a discussion, so get ready to use your keyboard or raise your hand.
This idea of trust, we covered it earlier. But one of the key things that stands out to me about principals is not just that they have relationships with students, but with the family, right? I have four kids. And so for me, the principal doesn't just know each one of my kids, but they know how they're connected and they know that they're connected to me and my wife. And I think that's a really unique perspective to have, right? Is not just to look at each student as an individual, but how they're part of something bigger. And that's been really impactful for us because they're asking questions about all the kids and kind of seeing the progression as they go from kindergarten on to middle school.
All right. So here's a question. Feel free to use the chat. There's also a Q and A feature.
They both have their own advantages. So use whatever is most comfortable to you. But the question is this, in what ways have you seen principals successfully build trust in your community?
And what made these efforts effective? So we'll take a minute because it takes some time for people to write in their comments and questions.
And then Will, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you built trust and maybe some specific tactics that you did to start things off, and then we'll see what questions come in.
Will Parker: Yeah. You know, when I work with leaders, especially new principals, but it supplies to veteran principals too. And Jamie, I know this was your practice. There's just nothing more important than building relationships.
And so no matter how busy your day is, no matter how many things you have scheduled, no matter how many classrooms you wanna be in or how many parent meetings have been scheduled, Being out and visible and present with the people that you're serving to me is the most important way to to keep leveraging those relationships of trust. And so so I'm really excited to see, for those of you that are listening in, what your responses to these questions are. Have you seen principals successfully building trust? I see a response from Kevin.
He says, When their school has messed up, they've fessed up and dressed up. They weren't as leaders and didn't make excuses. Families actually reached out to thank them for doing that. I love that.
Yeah. Leaders that are just willing to own, that. Craig says visibility presence and being supportive of students.
These are so good. Tyler, I don't know if you want me to keep reading these, but I just love these responses. Lisa says being present during outside school events. Yep. Man, when you show up at ball games and local events, you know their names. When the FFA is having their showing their animals, you're there. Being true to their word, actually delivering on what they say, being visible and transparent, that goes such a long way.
William says, Show up every day, return every phone call. Oh my gosh, yes, you, the power of just following up with somebody. And Ryan says, being proactive. I love that because, sometimes if we can think ahead of what people need, we're building trust by them by answering questions before they ask them. Those are wonderful.
Tyler Vawser: Dr. Mark Bedell, who's a superintendent at Anne Arundel Public Schools in Maryland, I think they're in the top forty largest districts in the country. One of the things he talks about is that when you become a superintendent, you don't just magically know how to communicate and all those skills of leadership don't transfer to you immediately, right? And so he talks a lot about that as teachers and then principals, we really need to encourage principals to practice the leadership qualities that they want to have if they move up into a superintendent role. So learning how to speak authoritatively, but also authentically. And using the principalship as really the proving grounds to find your own voice and lead in your own way as a way of modeling that going forward.
Will Parker: Love that. Lucy, you wrote, oh my gosh, yes, staff not responding to emails is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. That's just a big issue everywhere. How do you keep up? But if someone asks you a question or they reach out, they want to know that you heard them.
Tyler Vawser: Absolutely. We talked about this on a social media webinar, but how different people are on social media versus in person or on the phone. And that's where those proactive phone calls and calling everybody back can be really helpful. It disarms people a little bit, right? When it's live and not keyboard warrior moments.
Will Parker: Yeah, we had one person in the Q and A section, right?
School night activities and dropping into the principal's office. So just being there when the school's hosting events and being available if people just want to come by and share and touch base, those build trust too.
Tyler Vawser: Absolutely. We're going to have other discussion breaks throughout, but we're going to go ahead and move on to this concept of the dark side of the moon. And so, Will, I'd love for you to talk about this idea and I'll actually stop sharing the screen in a moment just so we can see you a little.
Will Parker: Yeah. Thanks, Tyler.
Tyler Vawser: This is and why it's so important to this topic.
Will Parker: One of the concepts that's really helped me when I think about the role of a principal is what Tyler referred to as the dark side of the moon or the other side of the moon. When I was a kid, my dad would set a telescope up outside of our farmhouse. I grew up in northwest Tennessee, even though I live in Oklahoma. And the stars there are just so brilliant.
And but one of my favorite things to do is look at the moon. And when you put a telescope there, you can see more more closely the craters and the beauty of the moon. I didn't realize until I was much older that no matter where I am at with that telescope, no matter where the moon is in the sky, you can only see one side of the moon from wherever you are on the planet. So whether it's West Tennessee or Oklahoma or if I'm on the other side of the world in Beijing, China, that face of the moon is what orbits around the earth.
So the only way you can see the back of the moon, scientists have taught us, is by taking a rocket back there, sending a satellite to the back of that moon. And it was in my early years of leadership that an older leader said to me one day, well, sometimes people struggle with communication from leaders because leaders can see more of the moon of why they've made a decision.
And the fact that you can't always show everyone the complete moon makes it hard for them to understand why this decision is made.
So on the one hand, there's a responsibility when you can see more of the moon of a school experience to protect confidentiality or things that can't be shared. But then on the other hand, there's a responsibility that if you can see more of what's going on when the decision is being made or when an experience is happening within your school, there's a responsibility to share what you do know and can share. And this is where the idea of communication to me is so important because there's probably no one in a school that has more access to what's happening than administrators or those who can go from classroom to classroom or walk across the school throughout a day and see all the different activities happening between students and teachers than a school principal or an administrator and that gives you both again a responsibility and a privilege but imagine what happens if when you see the other side of the moon of your school, you can share that experience with others.
So, if you're walking through your school and you're seeing great student learning happening or a teacher who's doing a really engaging project or you're witnessing a moment where maybe kids are helping each other out, you, why hold on to that? That could be something that is encouraging to you but the question that I have for leaders is, how do you take those moments and make sure you're telling those stories in ways that others can see the dark side of that moon. They can see the other side of the moon in your own experience. So, we'll talk in just a few minutes about some other practical ways that you can show the dark side of the moon but but Tyler, that's the the quick explanation of why I think it's just so important for principals, especially to recognize the power, the privilege and the responsibility they have for the stories that are happening around them every day.
Tyler Vawser: Will, one question that comes to mind is because principals have stronger relationships and a lot of the communication is more face to face than say a communications director that's using digital communication.
How do you think about that? Are you able to share more of the dark side of the moon because you can have those in person conversations? Like, and what's the the right balance of too much information, like you mentioned, confidentiality versus the reasoning behind something?
Will Parker: Yeah. Well, I think for me, the key is asking myself the question.
Well, let me let me back up. The key for me is recognizing that in the absence of a narrative, people make up their own stories, and I know you guys talk about that a lot at Apptegy. And so if I'm on the other side of the school, if I'm the parent or I'm the teacher who's only in one classroom all day, or if I'm the student who's only seeing a certain number of teachers, how do they know what's happening around the rest of the school unless someone's telling them? And so one of the responsibilities I have as a leader, in addition to every other hat I wear, is the head of chief communicator.
Somebody has to tell the story. And if I'm the one seeing the story, then I have a responsibility to figure out how to capture that. So maybe it's going to be jotting a few notes down on my phone of just really cool things I've seen and sending out an email later. Or maybe it's capturing a quick video of just something really amazing happening and being able to share it and push it out through social media.
Or maybe it's duplicating that same content later in the newsletter that goes out at the end of the week. Or maybe it's just making sure I circle somebody in by bragging on someone who I've seen do a good thing, or bragging about someone so that they can go and tell them later about it too. So you're spreading the news and spreading the word of those goods, the good things that you're seeing both in person and digitally.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, fantastic.
Okay, well, me share the screen again. We'll go to the next question here for the attendees. Feel free to, again, put a note in the Q and A or in the chat. Chat seems to be a little bit easier on our side to access.
So feel free to use that. The question is this. So what valuable perspectives do principals have that aren't being fully utilized in your communications? And then what stories are not being told?
And maybe that's a tricky one, right? Because if we don't know what the story is, we don't know that it hasn't been told. But I do think so often we tell the stories that we have to, and that's when there's something negative or something neutral, like, I don't know, closing because of weather. But those stories that aren't told are usually the ones that are very positive or seems like maybe not everyone's going to care about this or no one's going to proactively reach out about it because it is positive and there's not that concern.
So I would love to hear from people on what perspectives have your principles shared and maybe where have you utilized it or maybe where have you not fully used them to make that story bigger and broadcast that in a better way?
Will Parker: I'll share a thought while we're waiting for those comments, Tyler, and that's the fact that so often, especially principals spend their time managing conflicts. So on an average day, and Jamie, you remember this, there's gonna be five percent of your maybe two to five percent of your population that's gonna be taking a lot of your time, because they require that kind of feedback or maybe there's some school correction or discipline. But there's something else happening with the other ninety five percent while you're managing those. So how do you make sure that the that you're getting back out into the school and experiencing that other ninety five percent so that you can get that down too? So I see William, put a comment, and if you don't write the narrative, someone else will. You're right. So so how are we telling the story of the other things, the good things that are happening in our experiences, not just taking care of the challenges?
There's a comment from Lucy. Ensuring balanced storytelling and bragging on achievements across programs gets tricky on a large campus. Wow. What a great comment, Lucy, because what you don't want to do is be perceived like you're playing favorites, but you also want to make sure that you're not holding back either because if you're not telling the story because you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings, then you run the other side of that. So you're right. That is a balance.
And then Kevin says, day to day classroom activities, parents are trusting us to teach their kids. They deserve to see what's going on. Amen. We're not going to put webcams in every classroom.
That's insane. But sharing stories and photos from the classroom activities is always positive. I love that, Kevin. You're right.
I'm always eager to see what's going on when my kids were still in school. If someone shared a post or I saw something on social media and they captured my kid learning, guess who else got to see that grandma and aunts and uncles, and it's going to go in my fridge.
Jamie Ronck: And Will, kind of to Kevin's comment there, I think that's also part of our role as principals is to give our teachers the eyes to see those moments in a really different way, maybe from that parent's perspective. You know as the classroom teacher maybe it's just the same unit that we do every March but to that parent who's asking their child what did you do today? That picture or that story that we share you know becomes something really special that they can talk about at the dinner table or, you know, in the car ride on the way home.
Will Parker: Yeah, you reminded me of a conversation I heard, a school friend of mine say yesterday. She was, I won't say who because I don't have her permission, but she was at a practice with a coach who said to the families that were sitting there, I want you to realize the power of your dinnertime conversations because they can either make or break this entire season depending on the stories that we retell to one another about our experiences. And But I like to say that to educators and leaders, which is they're going to go home and talk about school today at the dinner table, so let's give them something to talk about. Let's make sure that we have promoted and put a spotlight on those wonderful stories of things that are happening around our schools. Well, feel free if anyone else has stories that you believe need to be being told in our schools. I'd love to continue to see those comments come in, but I know we need to get to part three.
Tyler Vawser: All right. Yeah, great comments. Thank you all. And Jamie, want to pull you into this part of the conversation.
So it's easy for us to sit here and say principals should communicate more. You should tell more positive stories. But we all know there's a lot of work to be done and there's not always a lot of time to get that done. Principals, because of their unique position kind of being between administration and families and teachers, that means a lot of opportunities come to them.
But with that comes a lot of work. And so we want to talk through some of those challenges. And many of you have seen this. This is SchoolCEO's research from fall twenty twenty three.
And what we did in this research is we actually asked superintendents and principals in dedicated interviews where we asked them the same questions and really just listened to what their experience has been. So thirty participants, superintendents and principals about what it's like to work together around these topics of marketing and school communications. And so we had three big questions. One, how do administrators at both levels perceive their roles and responsibilities when it comes to marketing communications?
What are the gaps in communication that exists between the two roles? And then what role does internal communication play in creating that district brand?
And so these are some of the outcomes, right, and some of the results that came from that research on what the challenges are for the principals and the superintendents and in between. And so one of these was about this idea that principals struggle to incorporate communications in their day to day work.
And so there's this great quote. So it's not that I'm not interested in digging into the work, it's a time factor. I just don't have a lot of time left over to think about it. So Jamie, do you want to talk about what it was like for you as a principal and how much time or how little time did you have to do this type of work?
Jamie Ronck: Sure. And I think it depends on the day sometimes. I'm sure Will can relate to that too and all the other principals that are on the call today. But principals are being pulled in so many different directions and so many people need our time when we're serving in that role in our building. We need students. We'll mention maybe some discipline issues or students that need our attention. Those usually take priority.
Parents in those phone calls or email messages that we need to to return.
Teachers that need our time.
You know classroom activities, being visible in the hallway or at the ball games or you know evaluating teachers. I think there were just being pulled in so many different directions lots of days that I'm still communicating but sometimes it's just I'm sending out the message that needs to happen today. You know maybe the time of the ball game got changed or there's an important event that's happening tonight. So I don't think we're always able to focus on the bigger picture when it comes to marketing the district or on the communication strategy.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, that's really good.
Yeah, this is another interesting quote. I don't think this is a stock photo, but this is something we heard a lot from principals that they know that when they communicate because they have those relationships and people are close to them, that there's often a quick response back. And so you can, if you don't get the communications just right, you can actually spend even more time dealing with the kind of aftermath or the response to communications that you sent out. Jamie, did you experience that? And how did you think about when to communicate versus having time to follow-up after you've got responses about that communication?
Jamie Ronck: For sure. I almost feel like that could have been a picture of me a lot of days.
But yeah, there were definitely those messages where you think about, okay, we're not going to send this out until after school because we know the front office is going to get bombarded with phone calls if we send this out right now.
And I think that is always a thought that's in the back of your mind is how are parents going to react? How's the community going to react? How many phone calls am I going to get when I send out this message?
Tyler Vawser: So some of the ideas that came from superintendents in the research were these, right? So making sure that they're more involved in the district level cabinet. And obviously, your mileage may vary on this depending on the size of your district and how much access you can or can't give. But a lot of this advice here I think is pretty straightforward, but it's a good reminder, right?
Build intentional relationships. Make sure that the school communication staff and the principals are connecting. Last November, I spoke at a district where it was the chief information officer brought all the principals together. And we talked about some of these ideas, we talked about marketing, and we talked about communications.
And it's actually quite rare for that to happen. It was a very large district, but what they said was we know that the principals are that frontline on student enrollment, and they're also the ones that are really representing the district brand in conversations. And we want them to be thinking about not just communications, but also branding and marketing. Thought that was so smart of them to get all those people together and start those conversations.
That doesn't solve everything, but it's a really good thing to say like, hey, not only do we want you to be aware of this, but you're a participant in creating our brand and you're a participant in how we communicate and show up to parents and the broader community as well.
All right. So another outcome of the research was this idea that principals are reluctant to initiate conversations about marketing. And what they actually told us was that they know that marketing is important, but they're not quite sure what their role in it is or if they're kind of stepping out of their own lane if they're going to bring that up. So when we looked at this, what we found was that principals don't initiate those conversations.
But the superintendent said they actually have really good ideas about marketing. And we'll talk later about how marketing looks in a principal's role that's different from a communications director or somebody that has a specific marketing role. The key to that is experiences versus digital communication. So those in real life moments versus on screen moments.
So this is really interesting, right? And I think the reason principals have such good ideas about marketing is because families. They're very close to the community. And so it's not a concept, it's a person, it's a family, it's an idea.
And they're interacting with people in real time. And that makes the quality of their insights so much better and so much more like tactical and real.
All right. So for those of you that if you're on this call and you're a principal, you're saying I still don't quite know if like I'm involved in marketing or not. The way that we've always defined it at Apptegy and SchoolCEO is that it's just influencing the way that people think and feel about your schools. And I always point out that the feeling part is really important because in some places, maybe not your district, but in some places, parents and families are not always rational, right?
The way that they feel often outweighs how they think and that rational side of things. So we actually have to do both. We have to think about what's the rational explanation here. And then also how are they going to feel about these decisions or about this communication or about what we're putting out there.
We're going to skip ahead because I'm careful about time. But this I think is a helpful quick diagram of the difference between principals and superintendents and how they think about it. Principals think more about the pressure of school communication, whereas superintendents are thinking more about the strategy and the broader perspective. And this is where both roles can really serve each other well. Principals are maybe going to be a little bit more hesitant, but that's because they're thinking about the reception of something and superintendents are going to think more strategically, but they may not be thinking about the specific objections or questions that are going to come up through the communications because they're further removed.
And actually, I was listening to a book yesterday, David Brooks was talking about, Condoleezza Rice. So this is maybe a long way back, but twenty five years ago or so when Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State, she would invite David Brooks to interview her quite regularly off the record. And if you know David Brooks, he is not into foreign affairs or politics. He writes about more religion and philosophy and things like that.
And at one point, he actually asked her, why do you keep inviting me to have these conversations? And she said, because your questions are so broad, and they're frankly not that informed, that actually helps me zoom out and see the bigger picture because I'm so close to everything. I'm so in the weeds. And we'll actually talk about this idea of a microscope versus a telescope later.
But I think principals can actually serve in that way where they may not understand the whole strategy or everything that goes into, you know, the Board of Education's decision, but that's actually really valuable because the questions they ask are more likely to be the same questions that families in the community ask.
All right. Will or Jamie, anything you want to share there before we keep going?
Will Parker: No, I think you're spot on, Tyler. So many of those tips are just so important. But, you know, the closer you are to the work of what's happening with students, the more you're gonna see the things that matter the most to parents. It doesn't mean that those strategic pieces aren't important. But man, if you can marry those two together, where the stories accelerate, where the stories illustrate the strategy, then that's where I think that real marketing can be at its best.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, that's great.
All right. Third point. This one's, I think, a pretty straightforward one. Having a communication team generally helps.
This is different research that we put out there, which focused largely on teachers and staff. But one of the insights that came from this study about principals is that about half of them said that they're trained on district branding and messaging less than twice a year. So if you're in a communications role, you want to be telling principals more often about what the branding is, what the messaging priorities are. And if you're a principal, right, you should be asking the communications team what is it that you're focused on?
What are the two or three core concepts that we're trying to push out there over and over again?
And so this is a quote that we got from a communications director or sorry, from a principal about communications directors that they tell them over and over again that it's their job to make my job easier, right? Communications teams, you're thinking about communications all the time and the best strategies, principles. That's only a small part of their work. And so what we want to do is marry those two, just like we talked about with superintendents. How do we bring those two closer together where you're getting the expertise from each side and bringing that into a cohesive experience.
So let's do another discussion here. So what's one communication barrier between principals and district leadership that you've experienced? So what gets in the way when thinking about your role as a principal or your role in the central office or as a superintendent? What do you find gets in the way for you? And then if you want, what solutions have you tried successfully or unsuccessfully to solve for that?
Will Parker: I'm seeing a response that Lucy had written just a couple of minutes ago that's so strategic as we think about some of the things you just said previously, Tyler and Jamie. Lucy says, Is the focus on technology, AI communications expands in school operations, I see a growing need for the equivalent of an instructional coach type of role, perhaps per feeder, to guide or even implement solutions at the campus level to bridge a gap between the district and campus, particularly in large districts. It's more of a specialist function these days in existing roles typically don't have time to invest in that.
Of course, that position would work extremely closely with campus admin and district comms to achieve consistency, streamline messaging, and results. I love how strategically you're thinking, Lucy, because you're right. Unless we place the system, and we will talk a little bit about this in just a few minutes, but we can have really great intentions. But unless we build systems for how to streamline those communications across people, won't happen.
Kevin says skill set school communication isn't taught in how to be a principal school. You're right.
It's our job as communicators to teach principals communication and walk alongside them as they become better communicators. It takes time, sometimes multiple school years. It helps to have data backing up our positions as communicators. Thank you, Kevin, for saying that, because you're right.
Jamie, neither one of us had in our master's degree in administration.
We were taught how to manage social media or how to be communications experts or any of those things where we
Jamie Ronck: For sure.
We need to get that course added, Will. Yeah, we do.
Tyler Vawser: One note there, obviously, SchoolCEO has a lot of this research on marketing, communications and perspectives and a podcast as well.
We write primarily to superintendents and to communications directors. But all of that information is relevant to principals. And it's, you know, we'll put together a course at some point. But until we do that, right, you should feel free to send those articles to principals.
Have them sign up for our newsletter. I'll put a link in the chat. And get them to think more about this, right? All of those articles and all of the advice that we put out in that magazine is a really good primer to a principle.
One, it'll give them ideas, but also it'll help them ask better questions of the communications team and the central office team related to these ideas of marketing communications.
All right.
Well, if you have other thoughts, go ahead and drop them in the chat. But we're going to keep going and we'll take on questions as we get closer to the end here. So, part four. So, we've talked about the dark side of the moon. We've talked about what gets in the way. Now what we want to do is really think about what can we do to build stronger communication partnerships? And we'll really want to call on you here because so many of these ideas come from some work that you've done with SchoolCEO, an article in a magazine a couple issues ago about specific strategies and tactics that we can apply to make principals more effective in their work.
Will Parker: Yeah, I want to give a big shout out to Brittany Edwardes Keil, who did a piece called The Power of Principles in January.
And so a lot of these pieces are in this that I'm going to cover were uncovered by Brittany interviewing me, but other principals too, just to talk about what's the roles that we that we play. And I I first just want to begin with point one, which is that we have to create story worthy experiences. So first of all, I believe that starts with creating a culture of FOMO. And by FOMO, I mean, you want any student that misses school to be afraid they've missed out.
So how do we create the kind of experiences for students through our culture, through our atmosphere, through our encouragement, through our activities where they want to be there. Just this morning, I was on a call with the principal from Louisville, Kentucky, and she said several years ago, some girls wanted to start a powder puff football fundraiser. So they organized this event. They thought it was going be a one time thing.
When they sent it down on social media, to the surprise of the administration, it went viral. Three thousand people showed up for this event, and it became such a huge fundraiser. They've done it every year since. And so you better believe there's nobody missing that day today because they created FOMO.
But we also have to design intentional touch points where I know that throughout the day, I'm looking for good things that are happening. Maybe it's when I'm out greeting kids at the beginning of school, or maybe it's when I'm walking hallways between passing periods, or maybe it's when I'm out in the cafeteria. I'm not just doing duty or I'm not just observing. I'm looking for those things.
And I want to create touch points throughout my day where I'm collecting stories and sharing those. But I also want to involve kids because the stories of your school aren't just yours. We had a group of students one year that decided that they wanted to win, and they didn't even tell me this, but they wanted to win the championship by News Channel six of the, you know, the most spirited school. So, every football game, every basketball game, every wrestling match, every event that they could go to, they hashtagged the news station that they were there.
And by the end of that year, you better believe they got the championship trophy, but they were creating their own marketing cycle. And of course, when I did find that out, I started retweeting and re pushing out their stuff too with those same hashtags. So, we have to create story worthy experiences if we're going to be creating stories worth sharing. But I think we talked about this earlier, if we want to go to the next slide, Tyler, which is that we have to be willing to recognize that in the relationships that superintendents have, and the principals have, that all of us play a part.
And I touched on this earlier that, you know, superintendents play a really important role for strategies, but principals play a really important role for those day to day activities, experiences for students and families and employees.
But then, in addition to creating story worthy experiences, we also have to be able to shift from observer to storyteller. And that means that we have to be able to think about some really practical things. So let me give you some examples. If I'm dealing with student discipline, and I've just wrapped up this whatever situation that I'm dealing with, a practice that I used to have is what I call it shift the focus, or an after challenge walk, where I'm going to intentionally now go back out into my school and look for something good to remind me why I love to be here.
And while I'm walking that school, I'm going to make sure that I'm reminding myself, filling my tank again, with the reasons that I want to be here. But I'm also going to develop a habit of writing down those things or recording them on my phone or some way that I can kind of take notes of the great things that I'm seeing as I'm walking through. And one of my favorite tricks was something I called kudos messages, where maybe I've just walked through the school third period, and I just saw that Ms. Johnston's students are reading Shakespeare.
They've broken it into parts, and every kid is reading their roles or performing that play, or I go down the hall to Ms. Miller's Algebra one class, and she has a student up that's demonstrating the algebraic equation. Or I go on down the hall to my FFA teacher's room, and he's got kids that are breaking down small engines and then I swing around the corner and there's my choir class and the kids are just singing and making my heart so happy. Well, guess what?
I can record those four experiences and send it out in a quick Email or a quick text and just say, hey, teachers, kudos. I just saw kids performing miss Johnson's class Shakespeare. I just saw students that were solving algebraic equations. I just watched mister Sowell's students breaking down small engines and the choir's kids were singing so beautifully today.
What a wonderful place to be.
Those are the kinds of ways we take observers and turn ourselves in into storytellers. And then number three, it's just so important to invest in communities, our communications professionals to support our principles. And a lot of you on this call have this role. And so, as busy as principles are, they're always and I'm going to speak from my experience, but Jamie, I know you are too.
We're always looking for an ally. Somebody that's willing to come in and champion with us the wonderful things that are happening. And so, part of that is just making sure that you keep those friendships developed. And one of my equations always live by is time spent equals relationships built.
So, if there's somebody you want to get to know better, go spend more time with them. And don't feel like you're being an intruder by showing up to want to champion with them but then, also creating really clear content pipeline. So, if it's a small school versus a large school that's going to look differently. In our school, I led a school with my last high school with seven fifty students.
So, that's a school I could wrap my arms around but I we had a pipeline where anytime someone had something to celebrate, they would send it not just to the office but also one of our teachers who had a content class. He had a design course that he created, and they would include him as well. And we would also make sure we included our media center specialist because she actually managed our social media. So, we had a funnel of people that would be told these things so that that pipeline is going down.
And all of those things that we were gathering throughout a week would also be transferred over. Could use it as copy for our newsletter, not just something that was going out in piecemeal or on social media. And then we also need to encourage mutual learning opportunities. This was mentioned in the chat earlier, too.
Some principles need to be taught how to storytell. And Jamie, you're so good at this, at teaching people how to how to storytell. So feel free to jump in if you want to say anything about that piece.
Jamie Ronck: No, I love what you just said there, Will, about our role as storytellers and investing in the communications. I think I'm sure you saw this too, when we take the time to share those stories, even after you said like after a challenging day, how that affects the culture in our schools and gives teachers and other people in our building the eyes to see things in a positive perspective as well.
Will Parker: I love that.
Tyler Vawser: One thing that comes to mind to these first three points that you made, Will, is this idea of chronic absenteeism, right? This is a real challenge for a lot of schools. And I think maybe the silver lining of that difficult situation is that principals and communications directors and all of the district leadership really have to work closer together. And that idea of creating that fear of missing out culture where students want to be there, right?
And they're actually worried that if they're not there, that they're gonna miss out. And I think the more that principals and communications directors can work together in that way to say like, actually look at all the amazing things happening and to make that aware, the whole community aware of that, but especially for students to see what's happening in their own building and what's happening in other places. And this just sense that I need to be at school because I want to be there. And I don't want to miss out on the relationships and I'll be missed and I'll be missing out if I'm not there.
Will Parker: Yeah. Quick story. Kim Kuti, who's now an assistant principal, excuse me, assistant superintendent at Glenpool Public Schools. When she was principal, they put up a stage in their commons area at lunch times, and every Friday, they would let kids sign up who wanted to demonstrate their talent and guess which was the most popular lunch every single week that kids wanted to be at because they got to see their peers.
They got to enjoy lunch, they got to listen to fun music, and it just became an atmosphere where you didn't want to miss Fridays. And so, you know, we can do that in more than just one place. We can do that throughout an entire school. But then, while that experience is happening, do other people know it?
Are you capturing those moments to remind families and other people around the community that this is a place where kids want to be?
That's great.
Finally, well, I think I have a couple of more points, but number four is make district mission vision come alive through authentic school stories. So we've talked about this already, but those daily things that are happening, if you are cognizant, you're recognizing they always connect to the bigger purpose of why we're doing school, which is to make sure that we have great instruction happening, but also great care that's happening at the same time. And I love this image, Tyler, that you've created of the we have to have the telescope and the microscope. So we have to be able to look at the big picture of what's happening and see how is this matching the strategies that we have for student learning and reaching standards and making sure that we're seeing growth and improvement in learning.
But also how do we get granular and look at the life of that child or that student or that teacher or that custodian or whoever it is that's actually making that work happen on a daily basis. And so it's both a big picture of this is why we're so glad to be a part of this community, and it's an individual story of this person as a great representative for what's happening in our community too. And then number five is we just have to make sure that we establish clear regular communication channels between principals and district leadership. And so, again, some of you have the luxury of of being able to have support for communication throughout your district.
So don't be afraid to schedule dedicated communications meetings that create those feedback loops and celebrate wins together. And Tyler, you've helped facilitate some of these in schools too.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, I want to go back to this because I just think it's such a good example. You almost want to swap places. You give the superintendent the microscope and you give the principal the telescope. And if we do that effectively, right, we gain perspective, right? We take perspective. And I think that's such a key piece.
Yesterday in our SchoolCEO newsletter, we actually talked about this idea of a lever, right? A lever can help you lift something that's impossible to lift on your own. And stories are really levers for information, right? You can tell someone all the facts of something and it's a pretty heavy lift for them to remember what you're saying and what matters. But in the context of a story, right, that lever makes that information more accessible, more memorable and even more actionable. And so I think, you know, if you're someone that's usually on the end of the telescope, you can use the microscope to take that story and to use that as the lever for people to really understand, you know, what the mission vision is and to really make that connection to the broader story.
And that's like these relationships are so important.
One note I'll just make is I always think it's amazing where if you go to lunch with someone that you work with that you don't normally interact with, it seems like for the next two or three weeks after you've had lunch or coffee with that person, you're suddenly communicating about more things. And it's like you almost forgot all the things that you needed to tell them day to day just because they weren't top of mind. And so I think the advice that we have here is that if you create purposeful time and moments together, not only are those moments gonna be helpful, but all the time in between, you know, the first meeting and the second meeting and the second and the third meeting is actually made more effective because you're thinking of each other and the last conversation you had and does this story help the communications director or if you're a superintendent, this piece of on the strategy really needs to get down to the principle that I saw last week.
And so by creating those intentional moments, you just create this top of mindness that I think can be really helpful to that telescope and microscope perspective.
Will Parker: Love that. I know that when Britney was doing well, when SchoolCEO was doing this research, one of the principals said this, that in our district, all of the principals are responsible for communicating about what's going on in their own schools. But it feels like we're all our own puzzle pieces.
So here's the challenge. What would it be like if there was someone linking us together?
Which is really, Tyler, why you invited us into this conversation today.
Tyler Vawser: Absolutely. And communication directors are a huge part of that. For the sake of time, we'll skip over this, but this is a great article. If you're a district that does not yet have a dedicated communications professional, look this article up on SchoolCEO.
It can be really helpful to convince your board that you need to hire that person or invest in taking someone from part time work to full time work, or even if you have one person, why you may need two to be able to do this. So we're wrapping up soon. So final discussion question here is based on the presentation, what's one action that you want to take in the next week to strengthen that principal to district communication? So we'd love for you all to put it in the chat.
And Will, I guess I'm curious when you're presenting to districts, and I know you work a lot with principals both at like the coaching level, but also at like a workshop, large group, or even a conference setting. What advice do you most typically get asked for, right? Like you give your keynote and then the talk is over. When people come up to the stage to ask you a question when there's no microphone, what are like the top two or three questions you get from principals that relate to what we talked about today?
Will Parker: Yeah, I think the first one would be time management. Like, how do I manage with all the other responsibilities that I have? How can I work this into what I'm already responsible to do? And I think this was touched on in one of the earlier comments.
Some people need to be taught better communication skills. But one of the things I like to remind leaders of is this doesn't have to be extra work. You're already doing these things. You're already with students.
You're already observing. You're already out in the mornings greeting them. You're already walking hallways. You're already in classrooms.
You're already at lunch. Why not take the thing you're already doing, but look through the lens of messaging so that you can see that, wow, what's something going on here that I can make sure someone else knows about? And then when it comes to communication, maybe it's someone else's stronger than you at summarizing those stories or telling those stories. And so, think it's important that if that's not a skill set you have, you can communicate it to someone else who that maybe that is their strength.
And so, that's why I think it's important for you to surround yourself with other people who maybe have strengths that you don't. I'm a natural storyteller, but you may not be a natural storyteller as a principal. So, but there's going to be somebody on your team who is. So how do you make sure you're sharing that information with someone else who can help you communicate that as well?
Jamie, what would you add?
Jamie Ronck: Well, I was just reading, Christie's comment in the chat and I think it's a really great one, with what she plans to do is to make appointments at each school throughout the next year to get to know the principals and vice principals better, allow them to tell me about their school in detail, learn learn how I can make their lives easier with templates or tools, and see what stories I can learn about what they're doing.
Will Parker: Yeah, I love that.
Jamie Ronck: And then Kevin, we're hiring a few new principals for next school year. So in the coming weeks, we will work to train the new principals on our communication tools, needs, and missions. Love that. Like making it a part of that onboarding experience.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah, that's really good. And Will, you were saying something about, yeah, not necessarily creating more work, but seeing what the work you're already doing and how it fits into this. We skipped over this a little bit, but principals are often creating those in person experiences, right? So my kid's principal is overseeing the fall festival and we have something here called East and they have East night out.
And I don't think the principal runs that exactly, but someone underneath him does. They're always creating these events. And I can imagine them saying, we're too busy to do marketing communications because we have all these events. And I think my response to that is all those events are already marketing.
You just need to see the work as what it's accomplishing, right? And so you don't need to go do more, but you should actually give yourself credit for what you're already doing and see how that changes how families or grandparents or the community thinks and feels about your specific school. And really leaning into that, that we're already doing the work. We just need to see it from this different perspective.
Will Parker: So here's a communication hack, and this may not work everywhere, but, you know, because we were in a small enough community that we had one newspaper there. Anytime I sent out communication like through our weekly newsletter celebration, things that happened that week, I included the editor of our local newspaper. And guess where a lot of their content came from about the schools? Through my newsletter, because in fact, the editor would reach out to me in the summer and say, I have very few things to talk about because you guys are on summer break.
When are you going start sending me some things? And so, but that's so, you can duplicate this over and over again. It doesn't have to just be you're in the moment and you share it with your own community. Man, push it out.
Get it out so that it spreads.
You're building your brand. Your brand is more than even just your local community. It's the communities around when they see great things are happening, then you suddenly have a little bit more clout when it comes to saying this is a place where kids want to be.
Tyler Vawser: Absolutely. And the in person experiences are just so much more powerful, right? The difference between reading a text about a story and having been there, it's night and day. So the more we can get people to be present physically, and I think that's actually becoming more and more rare, right? Like so much communication happens digitally, that's where there's a lot of noise. If we really want to create signal, the more we can bring people physically into the building and into an experience where we know we have more of their attention, all the better.
Well, Well, thank you, Jamie and Will, so much for this conversation. Really appreciate it. I love that you both have had this experience of being a principal and now you also work kind of up and down the ladder throughout a district of helping them think through communications and storytelling. And Will, just before we go, I do want to talk about SchoolCEO Conference, but I'd also love for you to take one minute to talk about your new book because it just came out, was it last week or the week before?
Will Parker: Oh, you're so kind. Thank you. I have a new book called Whose Permission Are You Waiting For? An Educator's Guide to Doing What You Love. And this is a book I really used in coaching leaders because so often when we're trying to make hard decisions or we're navigating pathways or we're trying to make really important choices, it's important to have the kind of reflection practices, but also the kind of mindset that it takes, but also the inspiration to be reminded that ultimately when you know something's valuable for kids, when you know something's going to help the community, when you know something is going to, be match the values that your school has for serving students, stop waiting for somebody's permission. Do it.
You know, if you're going to on the side of over communicating like we've talked about today, I would rather do that than under communicating. And so, this book is just my latest book and just helping leaders to think through about navigating the most important parts of their career as educators, but then also just holding on to those values and not waiting for someone else's permission to do the thing that they know is going to be a value for others.
Tyler Vawser: Very good. Well, we're at time here. So thank you again, Will and Jamie, for your time and your insights here. One quick note is the SchoolCEO Conference is coming up this September.
If you've been before, you know that it's quite different. There are no vendors. There are only keynote speakers. It's a really great experience.
And this fall, we're actually specifically focusing on how do you connect with families in an era of school choice. So how do you connect with the moms that are making the decisions on where their kids are going to go to school? How do you connect those values that are present in the building to someone that hasn't yet experienced what it's like to be in the building? And so how do we really think about enrollment?
How do we think about retention? How do we think about advocacy?
And so this is something that we've been talking about for a long time in SchoolCEO Magazine, but we're actually bringing private sector and K-twelve leaders together into a conversation about how do you attract and retain families.
And with that, we will wrap up. So thank you all again.
Have a great weekend starting tomorrow, and we'll talk to you soon.
Will Parker: Thank you, everybody.
