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Quality in an educational facility is a process. During this process, administrators constantly struggle with the need for better and more effective ways of communicating with their personnel, the children they care for and parents. Through communication, we set the tone, create the environment, and convey what it is we want for young children. Part of continued growth and discovery is open, honest communication between the administration, staff, parents and children. In this article, I will focus on staff communication.
There are many ways to approach staff communication, but first of all recognize that it is a daily challenge and should be nurtured each day. Make sure you are spending as much time listening as you are talking. Listening can give you valuable information and helps build relationships. One way we create barriers to listening is through listening autobiographically (we hear things that relate only to our own experiences or perspective), in which we tend to respond in one of four ways: we evaluate, we probe, we advise or we interpret. Another way might be to not actually be paying attention but waiting until we can get our turn to speak. If you truly want to develop lasting relationships with your staff you might want to try developing attentive listening. That means hearing beyond the spoken words to their essence and to the feelings behind them. Being completely present to another human being, speaks volumes. You are genuinely trying to understand and learn something new. You could even practice attentive listening at staff meetings. Talk about the different ways we listen or don’t listen and have people role play the techniques and how it makes them feel. To build community within any group, good listening habits need to be encouraged and nurtured.
With busy schedules, directors may feel that they don’t have the time to communicate. Communication does not always have to be in person and face to face. Be creative! Some of the ways that I tackled this challenge was to prepare a weekly newsletter for staff. In this newsletter, I would list each day and where I would be including the times. Staff members would be aware of my schedule and when I could be reached. I would include who was absent (staff and children), who was visiting the center, any upcoming events etc.
To help facilitate dialogue and to be aware of staff issues, I sent out questionnaires that the staff could answer anonymously to assess the attitudes about the effectiveness of different communication processes in the center. The questions might include some of the following: Is written communication at this center clear? Do staff seem well-informed most of the time? Do parents seem well-informed about issues and events?
Additional Reading:
Listening From the Inside by Out by Bud Bilanich
Effective Communication - The Mortar That Holds the Team Together by Paula Jorde Bloom. [Child care information exchange (jan/feb1993)]
Stop Refereeing and Start Building Communication Skills by Patty Whitelaw Drogue. [Child care information exchange]
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