Four Questions Fall 2024 You Will be Glad Summer 2024 You Answered
Seriously! Plus, pre-registration links for two summer writing courses on school statements and personal/ed phil statements
It is the rare Saturday edition of Talking Out of School!
It’s been a busy few weeks since I returned from vacation. I’m finishing up building out my One Schoolhouse summer professional development course, Effective Communication in A Time of Polarization, and my in-person workshop for their June Academic Leaders Forum, “Developing Your Leadership Voice.” Both are focused on providing some fresh framing, approaches and skills to navigate conflict and achieve connection. Then I’ll be at the NEASC Heads Retreat in July to do a version of this same workshop for both independent school heads and public school principals.
And then it’s not that I have writer’s block; it’s more that I have so many different topics I want to write on, it’s been a bit of a challenge to figure out what to tackle first!
What I can tell you is for sure, there will be a lot of good stuff. :)
Talking Out of School summer preview:
Soon, I’ll be publishing Five Guiding Principles for the First Year of Headship.
Lots and lots of posts about governance! I connected with the brilliant Moira Kelly, President of EXPLO, in January and we’ve been busy building out a new approach to governance training that emphasizes connection and what high quality partnership looks like in practice. Moira and I agree the increasingly confusing, static concept of the head/board “lanes” of school operations and long term strategy one-and-done workshop approach, or only training the head and board chair, are not up to the challenges facing schools today.
(We’re currently speaking to a small group of schools about piloting this program in the 2024-25 school year - reach out to me at jfaulstich@stonycreekstrategy.com if you’d like to chat.)
A People Talking interview with a Director of Enrollment Management about a productive head/DEM partnership and navigating tough times. This one is complicated because I think it’s hard for a DEM, as the chief cheerleader, to get down to brass tacks about the stress and responsibility and the challenges of navigating both educating, and collaborating with, the head. In my experience, DEMs are only brutally honest when they’re in the company of each other. And I never want to ask someone to truly “talk out of school.” But I’ll figure it out… I might do a few interviews and put them together in an article.
And given the number of new subscribers, I’ll also be editing and re-upping some older posts from the archives.
Stay tuned, friends.
Four Questions Fall 2024 You will be Glad Summer 2024 You Answered
ONE “What’s our school’s workplace value proposition?”
Why is your school a unique and special place to work? Every school talks about the meaning involved in working in a student-centered, mission-driven environment, but for your school, what are the specifics? What can a new employee expect in terms of professional growth? How are you using evaluation and professional development in a purposeful way?
Connect with a wide range of employees. Be curious. What patterns emerge? Then work to boil it down to a powerful message for job candidates. Be loud and proud. You will also likely identify gaps and areas for improvement between what you say you so and what you actually do, and that’s always a good thing.