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Communication is a big part of effective school leadership – especially when you’re trying to implement major changes to the system.
As the school community is made up of multiple parties, including the faculty, parents and students, finding the right balance of the ‘what, when and how’ to communicate your ideas can get tricky.
Singapore American School’s superintendent Chip Kimball shares with The Educator Asia how he constantly aims to strike a balance, particularly with handling the parent community.
“Sometimes leadership runs into this dilemma: if you have an idea you’re trying to implement, how soon do you introduce it, knowing that if you do it too soon, you might get a response that is reactionary because your idea isn’t completely mature yet,” Kimball said.
“But if you wait too long, parents will think that you don’t want their opinion because it’s already a done deal – so there’s that tricky balance.”
What he’s learned in his years of experience is that sometimes it’s better to engage your community earlier in the process, rather than later.
Often, a program’s success is not about delivering a perfect idea; the community’s involvement in the early stages can even help you form a better program.
“Sometimes in education we wait too long because we want things to be perfect, but I think that often what parents want is not the ability to drive the solution.
“They just want to know that they’ve had the opportunity to give input and be heard.”
The impact of good feedback
Parents’ feedback can also help the school form and deliver a more cohesive message, he added. When they bring up critical questions or concerns, it helps the school understand what needs to be clarified.
Kimball shared how parents’ feedback had a crucial impact recently on a planned system change – amendments to graduation requirements for SAS’s high school students and advanced placement program.
Parents shared strong feedback about its impact on students who were currently in the system. The school thus delayed the rollout of the changes to reduce the program’s impact.
“That was a heated, controversial scenario and the outcome ended being the best for our students,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not necessarily about changing a program but handling the timing or rollout.”