Car lines can be difficult to plan, manage, and improve. Join our 30-minute session where we will provide tangible tips to help create a great car line experience!
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Miami-Dade County School Administrators, we’ve got a demo JUST for you! Join Possip on Wednesday, July 27th from 2:00 – 2:30 PM ET to see if Possip is a good fit for your schools or districts!
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Possip looks to explore ways in which we can assist Communication Professionals during this 30-minute session on July 26th, from 11 AM CT – 11:30 AM CT.
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Virginia Williams, Possip reporter with a background in Elementary Education & Special Education from Raleigh, NC, gives school leaders ideas for tackling COVID this upcoming school year.
COVID has now been impacting our students, staff and families for three school years! Throughout that time, countless messages have been shared with school communities about how to prevent the spread of COVID, what to do after an exposure (what is considered “exposure”?), what to do if you have COVID, what to do if you’re sick and it’s not COVID…and the list goes on and on. With the ever-changing COVID landscape, it is just as important as ever to communicate early, often and CLEARLY with families.
Below are some guidelines that will help you do just that.
Make sure families know where/when/how information related to COVID will be shared with them. Do they need to join a text messaging system? Do they need to ensure that their email address is included on a mailing list? Is there a page on your school website they should check regularly? Who should they contact if they have questions? Should they notify the school of exposures or infections? If so, how?
Don’t wait until you have a student or staff member infected with COVID to share your protocols with your community! Share as much information as you can upfront. Make sure families and staff know what to expect in a variety of scenarios so that if/when positive cases do occur, there are no surprises in terms of your school’s response. Additionally, share any changes & updates in a timely manner. Most importantly, when possible, share the rationale behind your decision-making. We know there are many varying opinions and feelings about Covid and how to respond. It may be helpful to cite the medical experts and/or district leaders who are supporting and guiding your school as you make decisions about lifting, maintaining or changing safety measures.
Create a COVID response team or designate a point person to lead the communication efforts. This will ensure consistency in how protocols/updates are communicated and will make it easy for families to reach out with questions or concerns.
We know the thought of another pandemic school year is exhausting, but we also know that you can set your school up for success throughout trying times by having a clear plan in place and sharing that plan with your community. We hope these tips help you in doing that!
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Calling all Arkansas School Admin – we would love for you to join us for a brief, 30-minute, dive into Possip’s services at 11 AM CT / 12 PM ET! Register today!
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Adam Thede, reporter and tech lead at Possip, presents great ways to support principals
Supporting teachers is important this time of year – but so is principal support. I remember a line from Superman when I was a kid. Superman has just caught Lois Lane from a falling building.
Superman: Easy, miss. I’ve got you.
Lois Lane: You, you‘ve got me? Who’s got you?
As I think about what the school year is like for principals, this is the question that comes to mind. Principals are to support teachers – but who supports principals?
The principal job is hard. My empathy extends to principals. This is probably because when I met my husband he was starting a school and a principal. I have watched all of the challenges he has to tackle.
We recently were sharing about Possip with a community – and we were shocked to hear people say, “it’s interesting that you all talk about empathizing with principals. No one empathizes with principals.”
I could probably spend an entire post musing on what psychological and sociological drivers might lead us to undervalue and underappreciate principals. That’s not for this post.
So we know that principals are caring for everyone else – students, parents, teachers, district administrators. Who gives the principal support they need? And how do principals make it through this time of year when you are struggling?
And read some of these reflections on what a good principal is here. Remind yourself that whatever else is going on, you are a good principal – and you can support principals…even if the principal is you!
One last note before we go. One way to support principals is to support your people. Keeping too much negative parallel processing from happening is important. Parallel processing in organizations is described here.
“parallel processes occur when one team projects elements of its condition onto the other, and the other absorbs what is projected.” https://gothamculture.com/2017/05/25/can-parallel-processes-solve-organizational-problems
Schools are ripe with parallel processing – and principals are ripe for being a key part of it. Principals are both receiving conditions that exist within their school system and district or that are being created elsewhere. Principals can risk pushing that culture down. So if they are feeling pressure from the central office, they may unintentionally push that down onto their teachers, who may push that down onto students.
Conversely, we know that teachers can be parallel processing the trauma their students come into school with: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/09/helping-teachers-manage-weight-trauma. As this Harvard article shares, “Teachers, counselors, and administrators may recognize the cumulative stressors that they face, but they don’t always realize that their symptoms are a common reaction to working with traumatized children — and that these symptoms have a name.”
Principals can play a critical role in helping diffuse any unhealthy habits no matter which direction they come. Principals can be a filter or gate for anything coming from the top on down from a board or central office. Or principals can be a mirror or reflection for anything that is coming upward from students or teachers or parents.
The post Principal Support This Season: 7 Ideas appeared first on Possip | Engagement Platform | School Feedback App.
As Possip Founder, CEO, and a parent of a student- Shani Dowell shares what the first day of school is really like.
On Facebook and Instagram they look like cute pictures of kids, impressive classrooms, and beautiful libraries.
The reality is crying kids at drop off and buses running late. The truth is a lot of first year teachers, class scheduling snafus, and kids worrying about their clothes. There’s more! Parents worrying about whether their kid is okay, and districts worrying about buses and transportation. We’re not done yet! Schools have to figure out who is showing up – fewer kids than expected? More kids than expected?
Beneath the beauty of cute kids and perfect classrooms is the messiness of the art and science of running great schools. All the cuteness and preparedness is real; but a little bit of chaos is too.
Our only solution for this messiness is a community of wisdom and grace.
At Possip we see the praise and feedback that highlights both how hard the first weeks of school are – -and the beauties in the first weeks of school.
We want to remind teachers, parents, and school staff that – as we tell our kids who may be tentatively entering school for the first time – you’re good!
As most parents know, these two words are spoken more as a vision and prayer than anything – we are speaking over our kids that they are going to be okay.
Similarly, just remember that in spite of hiccups in the first days or maybe even week of school, YOU’RE GOOD! Your child, your classroom, your school is going to have a great year.
Luckily, the school year echoes the Winston Churchill quote – success is not final; failure is not fatal; is the courage to continue that counts.
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