SchoolCEO Summer 2022

P OW E R E D BY A P P T EGY

SUMMER 2022

The Next Adventure The exciting path forward and the tools you'll need to make the journey

“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.”

-Jerry Rice

How can we move from fear to excitement?

Just a few weeks ago, a member of our team boarded a plane for the first time in five years. An emergency landing had left him with a paralyzing fear of flying, and even though he loves to travel, he just hadn’t been able to shake it. But as he got ready for this trip, he got some good advice from his therapist: Fear and excitement are two sides of the same coin.

Think of the last time a car suddenly cut you off in traffic. For at least a split second, you probably felt your heart racing, your adrenaline pumping, your stomach leaping into your chest—all the physiological signs of fear. But now, imagine you’re inching up the lift hill of a rollercoaster. All those same feelings, right? But if you’re a thrill-seeker, that anticipation of the first big drop isn’t scary—it’s exhilarating.

That planning is exactly what we’re here to help with. In this issue, you’ll find creative ideas for building community relationships, whether it’s investing in your local businesses or starting a Spanish-language radio show. You’ll learn to push your thinking with new mental models, and discover new strategies for overcoming hesitation and doubt in your plans for progress. You’ll also find some practical tools you can put to use right away, like a guide to family communication throughout the year.

If you’re feeling that sense of trepidation as the first day of school approaches, don’t try to get rid of it—just try to reframe it. Get excited. Whatever it holds, this year will be your next adventure—and you’ll be ready for anything that comes your way.

Starting a new school year in our current moment might feel a little like boarding that plane or buckling into that rollercoaster. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the future is never certain—and it’s natural for that lack of control to come with a little anxiety. But with thoughtful preparation and a change of mindset, you can move from fear to excitement.

OUR TEAM

Managing Editor: Melissa Hite Writers/Researchers: Abigale Franco, Barrett Goodwin, Brittany Keil, Marie Kressin, Corey Whaley Graphic Designers/Illustrators: Alex Barton, Marisol Quintanilla, Pamela Villarreal

Art Director: Sebastian Andrei Digital Marketer: Heather Palacios Social Media Specialist: Thiphavanh “Bri” Vongvilay Video Producers: Ryan McDonald, Tanner Cox, Obatola Layiwola Apptegy CEO: Jeston George

IN THIS ISSUE Committing to Community The more you invest in the area around you, the stronger that community—and their support for your schools— will become.

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Smarter Not Harder

On the Air with LOBO Live How one Texas district is breaking down language barriers and engaging their entire community

Teacher and Digital Content Coordinator Randy Dorsey is using homegrown marketing to share his Ohio school’s success story.

Marketing Confronting Matters Hesitation At its best, Accessible Language How eduspeak hinders authentic family engagement—and how you can weed it out of your lexicon

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marketing is just good storytelling— and it can help you build community support.

As a school leader, it’s often your job to say no when necessary—but are hesitation and doubt holding you back?

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Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, Apptegy is an education technology company dedicated to helping school leaders build a powerful identity for their schools.

Learn more at apptegy.com

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SUMMER 2022

Mental Models to Move You Building From Crisis to Forward Hype Confidence Armed with these A Breath of Fresh Air Using federal funds, North Dakota is reintroducing students to its state parks.

Touch Points This family communication calendar will help you start—and finish— the school year strong.

Executive Director of Communications and Marketing Anita Foster is bringing years of crisis communications experience to her district.

new ways of thinking, you can reenergize and rebuild your longterm plans.

Your facilities are funded by taxpayer dollars.

Here’s how to show your community where their money’s going.

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Vol. 4 No. 4 © 2022 by Apptegy, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint or quote excerpts granted by written request only. SchoolCEO� is published four times a year (November, February, May, and August) by Apptegy, Inc. 2201 Brookwood Dr., Suite 115, Little Rock, AR 72202. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine or Apptegy, Inc. Accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.

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in Public Education

New Lexington, OH

Coral Springs, FL

Smiles are shining bright at New Lexington Elementary thanks to a unique collaboration with Hocking College Dental Hygiene Clinic. The ambitious new program aims to provide every elementary student at the school with teeth cleanings and fluoride treatments, at no cost to parents or the school district. Former New Lexington student Hanna Burton, the school’s dental and nursing assistant, says students who need additional care will be provided with exams from a dentist. The program also plans to expand dental hygiene care to local Junction City Elementary in the future.

(Perry County Tribune)

At a time when many parents are struggling to find childcare, J.P. Taravella High School is taking a unique approach with a full-time child development center on campus. The Little Trojans Academy not only provides childcare services for the high school’s teachers and staff, but also provides hands-on learning to students who are interested in going into preschool education. The center is part of the school’s “learning lab” initiative. Over a three-year period, high school students learn to educate young children and plan lessons. Once they’ve acquired 480 hours of training, they can test to be certified. “We’re giving real-world training for students heading into careers with childcare or other similar fields,” says Marilou Raham, who designed the countywide program seven years ago.

(TAPINTO.net)

Medfield, MA After a yearlong break, Blake Middle School students are once again participating in a unique environmental restoration project. Three seventh grade science classes recently released over 200 young trout in nearby rivers and streams. It’s all part of a Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife program called Teaching with Trout, which teaches students about everything from water quality and habitat health to the life cycle and anatomy of trout. Since 2013, students have been raising brook trout from eggs during the winter months and releasing them into approved rivers and streams in the spring. “Students are able to take what they have learned in class and make direct connections with their environment,” says Blake Middle School principal Nathaniel Vaughn. “These are the experiences we want for all of our learners, and I am thrilled that it has become a core aspect of our curricula.”

(6ParkNews)

Lawrence, KS

Oakland County, MI A new mural can be found hanging at Bloomfield P.R.E.P., and it’s all thanks to a unique collaboration between students and local artists. After taking art-seeking field trips to Detroit and learning to capture photos with their phones, students from the school, a post-secondary education program that serves young adults ages 18 to 26 with developmental and physical disabilities, were able to work with Detroit artist Hubert Massey and photographer S. Kay Young. The result is a colorful tile mural that will hang permanently at Bloomfield P.R.E.P., as well as a series of self-portraits that the students showcased to their teachers and parents in May. The project was part of a 25-week series created by the Michigan Arts Access Artist-in-Residency program.

(The Oakland Press)

Thanks to a generous donor and a group of Free State High School (FSHS) shop students, the next chapter of Pinckney Elementary’s Little Free Library is about to start. After an overnight fire destroyed the school’s little library in April, a donor from Oregon reached out to help fund a rebuild, and the work to replace it began almost immediately. Students in FSHS’s Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) college and career readiness program completed most of the design and build. “We tried to kind of model it after Pinckney Elementary,” instructor Amanda Torbett says.

The little library box is topped with a sleek gold panther, the school’s mascot.

(The Lawrence Times)

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COMMITTING TO COMMUNITY How investing in your local community strengthens your schools

Think about the last time you took a road trip and drove through small towns in the countryside. Remember the flags, emblazoned with the local mascot, flying from every front porch? Or the weathered banner strung across the small downtown square that read “Wildcat Pride”?

Maybe you live in one of these rural communities yourself, experiencing that local pride and school spirit every day.

It’s no surprise that rural and small schools are so central to their communities. They always have been. In his book The One Best System, education historian David B. Tyack shares the perspective of a Kansas settler in the 1870s, who described the local one-room schoolhouse as “the center— educational, social, dramatic, political, and religious—of a pioneer community.” Schools were the sites of church services, spelling bees, dances, and debates. Nearly every aspect of life converged on this single building.

Times have certainly changed, and so has public education—but it seems that in many rural communities and small towns, these intertwining connections between school and daily life have remained. But why? From the outside, you might assume that these relationships just happen in close-knit areas. But if you live and work in one of these districts, you know—being the heart of your community is difficult, intentional work.

Building the kind of community that waves your banner in the street takes more than providing quality education. It takes more than a particular size or locale. What it takes is a serious investment of time, resources, effort, and care.

When you invest in your local community, that community will invest in your schools.

Invest your space.

While researching for her book Why Rural Schools Matter, professor and author Dr. Mara Casey Tieken spent significant time conducting interviews in rural communities.

One such community was Delight, Arkansas, a tiny town southwest of Little Rock with a population of 274. At the time of Tieken’s visits, Delight’s high school—much like the oneroom schoolhouse of days gone by—was the hub around which the rest of the town revolved. Locals crowded the campus for basketball and baseball games, school plays, and holiday carnivals.

used for other things,” one community member told Tieken.

“If you have a family reunion or something like that, you’re in the cafeteria.” During her time in town, Tieken heard of the school being used for everything from a fundraiser for the Delight Fire Department to a “cemetery dinner”— the proceeds of which would, naturally, go toward the maintenance of the town’s lone cemetery. “The campus seems to be open to anyone who wants or needs to use it,” she writes. “This kind of open, shared use seems to mark the school as a communal space.”

Let’s be honest—the current state of school security may limit who you can allow into your schools. Safety, of course, comes first. But as much as possible, it’s important to develop the mindset that your community has shared ownership of your learning spaces.

You could start by actively inviting the community into your schools—and not just for open houses and parent-teacher conferences. Take, for example, the student-led Leadership Day at Nash Elementary, one of the more rural schools in Texas’ Texarkana ISD. Part of the district’s Leader in Me program, this event welcomes families onto campus to walk through a day in the life of a Nash student. Kids get to guide visitors through their school projects, goals, and plans for achieving them—while community members get an inside look at what really happens in their local school. It’s a win-win.

But it wasn’t just school-related activities that took place there. “The school is very good about letting the facilities be SUMMER 2022 /

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asks, “not just in the world at large, but also here in our own schools and communities?” It’s a complicated question without one clear answer, but for Catania, combating that inequity means carefully choosing who to do business with.

In his 2019 paper “Incentivizing Equality through Educational Expenditures,” originally published in the AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice, Catania makes his case. He argues that by doing business with vendors who have inequitable practices, schools are actually contributing to the disparities that hold their own students and communities back.

The solution? Pledge to do business only with companies that meet a standard of equitable, family-friendly work practices. Catania suggests several benchmarks: reduced wage gaps, increased minimum wages, paid sick days, and family health insurance, just to name a few.

Invest your money.

At Lake Placid Central—a district with less than 600 students—Catania didn’t expect this shift in spending to send reverberations of change through huge national corporations. But at the local level, it could really make a difference. “We like to do business with local organizations,” he tells us. “We like to purchase from our independent bookstore, for example, rather than Amazon.” Jeff Bezos is unlikely to miss that money, but for the mom-and-pop store in town, it’s practically a windfall.

If you’re leading a rural or small district (and maybe even if you’re not), you’re probably one of the most significant financial forces in your area. Your district may employ more people than any other business in town, and it may be the area’s biggest consumer, too. We can most clearly see the economic importance of a school when it’s taken away.

Research indicates that when districts consolidate and an area loses its school, local property values decline, retail sales go down, and per capita income lowers.

And insisting upon equity standards like these even for local businesses is also a way to care for the district’s own students and families. Especially in a small town, it’s likely that many of your students’ parents and caregivers work in those establishments. Incentivizing these businesses to provide livable wages, health insurance, and other essential benefits can help improve quality of life for your district’s families—and, in doing so, improve academic outcomes.

These tours consistently draw quite a crowd—including families who are otherwise disengaged. And more often than not, people leave with something positive to say about Nash. As Texarkana ISD Superintendent Dr. Doug Brubaker puts it, “Success stories breed community.” And community, in turn, breeds success stories.

As we all know, money is power—and with power comes responsibility. Even if your district isn’t the sole economic anchor in your area, how and where you spend your funds impacts not just your students, but your entire local community.

Recently retired from the superintendency at New York’s Lake Placid Central School District, Dr. Roger Catania has a unique view of the ethics of school spending. His perspective begins with a single question: “What can schools do about educational inequality and social inequity,” he 8

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If you’re not ready to make Catania’s pledge, start small.

Examine your spending and see what you could buy locally.

Rather than heading to Walmart to buy cookies for your back-to-school night, consider ordering from a bakery in town. Hire a local sports outfitter to make your jerseys instead of a national company. Putting that money back into your local economy is a great way to show your community you’re invested in their success, even outside of school.

Invest in the future.

Money is not the only resource in which your schools and local businesses have a shared interest. There’s another resource that matters even more: your students. As future professionals and business leaders, they can ultimately keep your community healthy and thriving—but only if you keep them in the area. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

At Le Grand Union Elementary School District in rural California, superintendent Scott Borba has seen the effects of “brain drain” on his local community. “For so many years we’ve told students: Get a college degree and you can make money anywhere! You can go work in San Francisco. You can work in Chicago,” he tells us. “And, unfortunately, they have.”

That dwindling of talent can slowly wear away at a community, especially a small rural one. But as a school leader, you have a lot of power to reverse this situation. It starts with making students aware of the opportunities that exist in their own backyards—and helping them seize those opportunities.

That’s exactly what Columbus Public Schools in rural Nebraska is doing with their STEM education pathways.

“Nebraska, and Columbus in particular, is heavy in manufacturing, automotive, and construction,” says Nicole Anderson, the district’s Marketing and Foundation Director.

“Those are the jobs we need here. We also have a lot of students who aren’t really interested in a four-year college program. They like to work with their hands, and skills pay the bills.”

So the district started having conversations with companies in the area, trying to determine what jobs local industry needed to fill. Then, they built out career pathways designed to train students for those jobs in particular. “Everything was designed in partnership with the businesses in our community,” Anderson explains. And those companies helped fund the project as well, donating about $900,000 to get the program off the ground.

Many of these pathways directly connect students with local organizations, too. For example, after finding out that nearly 40% of their students were interested in healthcare, the district developed a pathway with the local hospital.

“By the end of their junior year, students are certified nurse assistants,” Anderson tells us. “After that, they’re doing workforce rotations at our hospital.” CNA license in hand,

students can easily get a job at any hospital—but they already have connections with the one in town.

In Le Grand, Borba is hoping to help even younger students connect with local industry and culture. “The crux of our economy in the Central Valley is agriculture,” he says, “and I can’t believe how many kids don’t have any clue about farming.”

So Borba is working on plans for an outdoor classroom, “where students can start learning what the community is surrounded by.” He’s in talks with the local Le Grand Garden Club, hoping they’ll help teach students about pollination, crop science, and orchard science. “We just want to get our students interacting with what happens locally,” he tells us. If kids grow up appreciating the benefits and opportunities of their hometowns, they’re more likely to stay—and their communities will be better for it.

Schools—rural or urban, big or small—need their communities. Districts can’t survive without teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, or custodians—not to mention enough students to fill classrooms. They can’t grow without the support, both emotional and financial, that only their communities have the power to provide.

But it’s also true that communities need their schools. Just like that one-room schoolhouse on the plains of Kansas, you can and do provide so much more than education. So as much as you can, go above and beyond. Let your local area see the benefits of a district that invests in them. The more you do, the stronger your community—and their support for your schools—will become.

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On the Air with

LOBO Live How one district’s unique approach is breaking down language barriers and engaging their entire community

It’s 12 o’clock sharp on a Tuesday afternoon, and once again, Francisco Rojas finds himself behind a microphone. He spends a lot of his time this way, it seems—whether he’s hosting his district’s Spanishlanguage radio show or commentating live on a high school soccer game. When Rojas takes the mic, it becomes more than a communication tool; it’s a bridge connecting the Spanish-speaking community in Longview, Texas, to their English-dominant schools.

The son of Ecuadorian immigrants, Rojas was born in Miami, Florida—a city often affectionately known as “the capital of Latin America.” There, he “had the opportunity to get to know all these different Latin American cultures,” he tells us. While Rojas didn’t always speak Spanish at home, his parents did.

“Every time I had to communicate with my parents, I spoke in English and they would respond in Spanish,” he says. When he was 10 years old, Rojas’ family returned to his parents’ home country. “A lot of what I experienced when I was a kid and when I lived in Ecuador helped me with the position that I currently have as someone who can connect with the Spanish-speaking community,” he says.

Rojas eventually graduated with a degree in marketing from the Universidad de las Américas in the capital city of Quito, Ecuador. His professional path then led from an International Baccalaureate school in Quito to a Texas nonprofit, and finally to Longview ISD. “I already had an idea of where I wanted my life to go,” he tells us. “I wanted to always be connected to serving my community, especially in education.” He took a position as a family engagement coordinator at the district in February 2020. But just a month later, the COVID-19 pandemic would make his face-to-face work with parents nearly impossible.

Even though his formal responsibilities were on hold, Rojas still searched for ways to help families stay connected with the district. He reached out to Longview ISD’s community relations department, volunteering to help translate district communications into Spanish. They readily agreed; at the time, no one on the team spoke Spanish. A few months later, a position in the department opened up, and Rojas became Longview’s new public information officer.

In his new role, Rojas continued to ponder the issue that had drawn him to the department in the first place. Longview’s mascot is the Lobo—the Spanish word for “wolf”—but that’s about where the district’s Spanish literacy ended.

Even though about 40% of Longview’s 8,200 students are Hispanic, and many of them do not speak English at home, the district wasn’t providing much of their communication in Spanish. That meant a huge portion of Longview’s families were essentially being blocked from engaging with their children’s schools.

For Rojas, this issue was about more than just keeping families in the loop; it was about winning their trust. “Trust is everything—but there’s an issue of distrust within the

Spanish-speaking population,” Rojas explains. “They’re coming from difficult backgrounds. Oftentimes their own governments in their home countries have gotten involved in corruption instead of pouring resources into their communities. Plus, when they arrive in the U.S., they know that a lot of people don’t want them here. All that creates a higher level of distrust.”

So how could Longview build this crucial community’s confidence in the district? They had to begin by decentering English. The U.S. doesn’t have one official language, and neither does Longview ISD. It was time to stop defaulting to English, assuming that everyone understood it. “The first step is to start communicating in Spanish,” Rojas says. “We can’t expect them to come to us—we have to approach them first.”

Meeting People Where They Are The Longview team knew that engaging this community effectively would take not only intentionality, but creativity as well. “We didn’t want to do it the boring or traditional way— sending emails and newsletters in Spanish,” Rojas says. “All that’s great, but how many people would like to read a bunch of emails and newsletters? A lot of people don’t have time SUMMER 2022 /

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for that.” The key, he knew, was to meet Spanish-speaking families where they already were—starting with the radio.

“A lot of Spanish speakers didn’t have Internet access or TVs growing up in their home countries, but they did have radio,” Rojas explains. “They built that relationship of trust with their radios. That was their way of getting updated news and entertainment.” According to Nielsen, 97% of Hispanic people in the U.S. listen to their radios at least weekly, and listeners who speak predominantly Spanish tune in more than any other group. So why not reach Longview’s Spanish speakers through the airwaves?

As it happened, Rojas already knew the owners of Radio Vida, a nonprofit Spanish-language radio station in Longview. He pitched the idea for a district radio show, all in Spanish. “I said, Hey, we have close to 4,000 Hispanic families. We’re the largest school district in the area. If you give us the opportunity to have a show on your station, we could probably pull some of our families into your audience,” he tells us. “We saw it as a win-win situation.”

To maximize impact, the Longview team also wanted to broadcast the show live on the district’s Facebook page. “If you want to reach the Spanish-speaking population using social media, Facebook is the go-to place,” he explains.

“Facebook allows them to see what their family members are doing in their home countries. It’s the way they keep in touch with their culture and people.” National data backs up that idea. According to Pew Research, 72% of Hispanic people in the U.S. say they use Facebook, compared to 50% who use Instagram and 23% who use Twitter.

Fortunately, Radio Vida agreed to the partnership. Since the start of the pandemic, they had been having trouble finding and keeping presenters. So they offered the district a slot from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays— completely free. The fledgling radio show, “LOBO Live,” was officially a go.

Providing Value Launching a radio show wasn’t enough; Rojas and his team had to actually attract listeners. “We didn’t want to just share content about Longview ISD,” he tells us. “How many people want to listen to a radio show that’s only district announcements? We had to come up with interesting content to share.”

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Once again, Rojas’ firsthand experience with different Hispanic cultures informed his approach to the project.

“Hispanics are very family-oriented,” he says. “They’re always looking to build better relationships with their families.” So Rojas spends the first 30 minutes of his radio hour presenting information about parenting and family issues, from helping kids with their schoolwork to improving nutrition.

Rojas isn’t an expert in these fields, but that’s okay.

“Before the show, I do research and find articles written by professionals,” he tells us. “Then I share those articles on the show in Spanish. The information isn’t coming from me; I’m just communicating it.” But that communication is critical.

Because these resources are in English, they’re often inaccessible to Spanish speakers.

“LOBO Live” also spotlights community organizations and other resources for anyone who might need them. Every two weeks, the show features representatives from local nonprofits, who talk about their services and programs.

In Longview, about a quarter of Hispanic people are living below the poverty line—but language barriers often keep them from accessing community resources that could help. “A lot of them are struggling but aren’t aware of what’s available to them,” says Rojas.

But it’s not just resources. “LOBO Live” works to raise awareness for community events, too—a concert by the East Texas Symphonic Band, for example. And according to Rojas, when these events get promoted on the show, organizers do typically see an uptick in Spanish speakers attending. “It’s great—we’re bringing the community together,” he says. “It’s showing them they’re also a part of our community; they just needed a way to get connected.”

And if all that wasn’t enough to attract listeners, the show also gives away prizes every week, whether they’re donated gift cards from local restaurants or Lobo swag. But in order to enter, “the listeners have to share the livestream on their own Facebook pages,” Rojas says. “That way, we get more people to tune in and listen to what we’re doing.”

Of course, the show does offer updates on what’s happening at Longview ISD as well. “Parents who speak Spanish want to know when the school board approves something, like a mask mandate, for example,” Rojas says.

That’s the genius of “LOBO Live”: it provides value outside of basic district updates. Even if listeners tune in mostly for parenting tips, community information, or giveaways, they get that district information, too.

Providing that value even brings in audiences outside of the Longview community, expanding the district’s reach.

“We have folks from Houston listening to us, folks from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, people who don’t even have kids in Longview ISD—but they like the show,” says Rojas.

Bridging the Gap Like many new projects, “LOBO Live” wasn’t an immediate success. “You have to be persistent,” Rojas tells us. “If we had only offered the radio show for a month, it would have been a huge failure.” But just two years later, Longview ISD is seeing this unique communication strategy pay off. “Now, Spanish-speaking families are reaching out to us,” he says.

“They’re asking us questions and sharing their thoughts.”

Rojas attributes that interest in connection to the trust “LOBO Live” has built with its audience. Families know that if they reach out to the district in Spanish, someone can respond. “That’s not the case in a lot of districts,” he says.

“Oftentimes, even if they get a newsletter translated into Spanish, when they call the contact phone number, the person who answers doesn’t speak Spanish.” Longview’s Spanish communications always include Rojas’ contact information for families who might want to get in touch.

“Right away, they see that there’s a real person there to help them—and oftentimes they know who I am because they recognize me from the radio show,” he says. “There’s already that trust built, and they know that they can reach out freely without a problem.”

Over the last two years, the show’s popularity has also brought in two sponsorships: one from healthcare organization Wellness Pointe and another from the local Raising Cane’s franchise. Since broadcasting the show remains basically free, Rojas and his team are giving that money back to the community—through scholarships.

“In May, we gave out three scholarships of $1,200 each to seniors who are bilingual in English and Spanish,” Rojas tells us. All three will be the first members of their families to go to college. “That makes me feel extremely proud,” he says.

“It gives me even stronger convictions about what we’ve achieved so far, and it encourages us to push forward and continue this project.”

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Scoring New Goals As “LOBO Live” took off, Rojas and his team began to turn toward another avenue for connection with the district’s Spanish speakers: soccer. Hispanic culture is not a monolith; a Colombian family will have different perspectives and customs than one from Mexico or El Salvador. But since it arrived in Latin America in the 1800s, fútbol has been a unifying interest across nearly all the disparate cultures in the region.

Hispanic immigrants have brought that passion with them to the States. According to a study from Nielsen, 61% of Hispanic people in the U.S. tuned in to at least one soccer game on TV in 2017, and of those, a whopping 94% did so on a Spanish-language network. That knowledge led the Longview communications team to a simple idea. “Since the majority of our fans who follow our soccer games are Spanish speakers,” Rojas explains, “why not livestream the games with Spanish commentary?”

The plan seemed like an obvious win for the soccer program. Livestreaming would allow Spanish-speaking family members who worked late or otherwise couldn’t attend in person to follow the games in their own language.

Longview decided to stream the games on Facebook, and once again, Rojas found himself behind the mic—not as a radio host, but as a commentator.

“We want to deliver the same experience that families get when they turn on the TV and watch a professional soccer game,” he tells us. “I try to be as enthusiastic as possible, like the professional commentators.” It’s been a huge hit. “We even have people getting together at their houses to watch the games we’re streaming,” he says.

But this soccer strategy is more than a great touch point with Spanish-speaking families; it’s a moneymaker for the district. Since the broadcasts began, the soccer team’s number of sponsors has jumped from seven to a whopping 24. The district has even seen a boost in enrollment. “Thanks to these broadcasts, a lot of students are being scouted by colleges,” Rojas explains. “Because of that exposure, soccer players from other schools are now wanting to transfer to our district just to play on our team.”

All this makes a powerful point: Including everybody in your communications isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s a good business decision, too. “This simple but out-of-thebox marketing strategy is bringing in revenue to the school district,” Rojas says. “It’s bringing opportunities to our kids who want to go to college.” What started as a way to engage more families is now transforming students’ futures.

Offering Experiences As of summer 2022, “LOBO Live” is the only Spanishlanguage school district radio show in Texas—even though almost 30% of Texans are native Spanish speakers. Longview is also the only district in the state to broadcast their soccer games in Spanish. But Rojas is anything but proprietary about these ideas. “I’d love to see other school districts take the initiative and do what we’re doing, or come up with other strategies to close that gap,” he says. “It starts with small things.”

Photos courtesy of Longview ISD

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For districts struggling to reach their Spanish-speaking community members, Rojas has a few tips. First and foremost, “every single communications, PR, or community relations department should hire someone who’s bilingual,” he says.

Beyond that, he suggests optimizing the channels and

materials you already use to make them more accessible to Spanish speakers. “For example, start posting in Spanish on your Facebook,” he says. Rojas even points out his own business card: English on one side, Spanish on the other. “You can’t ask them to reach out and trust you when everything you’re putting out is only in English,” he says.

These principles, of course, are true for any non-English language that’s prevalent in your district—not just Spanish.

But most of all, Rojas says, “you have to deliver experiences.”

To really get people engaged and win their trust, you need to give them something they will value—no strings attached.

For Longview, that’s an informative radio program or an exciting night of soccer. “The trick is to offer entertainment and tag school information along with it,” Rojas says. “That way, folks are going to be more interested.”

This past February, Longview was awarded a Gold Star from the Texas School Public Relations Association for “LOBO Live” and their soccer broadcasts. The radio show

also received an Honorable Mention from NSPRA’s National School Communication Awards; it was the only Spanishlanguage audio project to be recognized.

But better than all the accolades is the trust and twoway communication the district has built with its Spanish-speaking families. Finally, though it’s been long overdue, everyone is on the same wavelength. “The awards are fantastic,” Rojas tells us, “but the fact that now we have a relationship with our largest student population, and that they trust us and reach out to us—that means the world.

That’s our greatest achievement.”

You can find a Spanish version of this article online at: schoolceo.com/lobo

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SMARTER

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HARDER Teacher and Digital Content Coordinator Randy Dorsey is using homegrown marketing to share the success story of Ohio’s Grant Career Center.

is your ultimate goal in telling Q: What Grant Career Center’s story?

A:

Randy Dorsey

When Randy Dorsey started teaching at Grant Career Center, the rural career and technical high school in Bethel, Ohio, had a messaging problem. Not only were communications outdated, but misinformation had unfairly soured the school’s image. Fortunately, Grant decided to invest in Dorsey’s tech savviness, giving him a stipended role as the career center’s new digital content coordinator.

From the outset, Dorsey was determined to show Grant Career Center in a new light, with every student it serves in mind. So he started experimenting with tools like Canva to create marketing materials, and even got on the phone with Google to learn how their ads worked. With a genuine desire to connect to Grant’s diverse population of students and families, Dorsey began posting on social media, leading advertising campaigns, and creating authentic and compelling content.

Now in his seventh year at Grant (and still a full-time Special Education teacher), Dorsey and Janelle Baudendistel, the school’s recruitment and retention coordinator, make up a two-person marketing team. Together, they’re utilizing tools like school mobile apps to spread the word about one of Ohio’s most successful career tech high schools. Their work has not only shifted the school’s public image, but also garnered record-breaking application numbers—two years in a row and counting.

Our biggest goal has been trying to change the stigma of what career tech is—and who it’s for. When I came on board, we were initially just trying to get moms not to say, “Oh, that’s great for somebody else’s kid,” but instead, “If it’s good enough for your kid, it’s good enough for my own.” We also strive to make sure somebody’s kid is included in all of our communications and ads. People recognize those kids, and they start saying things like, “Look how successful so-and-so’s daughter is!” Then suddenly word spreads and people start thinking about sending their children to Grant.

We’re also trying to make sure that the message is: You can go to college from here. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of telling kids’ stories, both how they found us and what their experiences here have been like. A great example of that is a feature on our website called “Faces of Grant,” where we have profiles of some of our students. That lives right on our homepage.

Grant also hosts unique events on campus like “Guys and Gears” and “Girls and Goggles,” all organized by my colleague Janelle Baudendistel. She also helps gather social media stories about our students from our community partners and helps me monitor and respond to all messages and posts through social media. She is an amazing ambassador of career tech.

We don’t just highlight the same kids who always get attention, either. We put all of our students front and center, and we show the community how all our kids are doing great things here. Grant only has four feeder schools, which isn’t very many for a career tech, so we’re always trying to make sure we’re being heard and seen, especially for our many successes.

We asked Dorsey about Grant’s wildly effective approach to school marketing and communications—and their commitment to telling every student’s success story, no matter their path.

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is social media helping you tell Q: How that story?

A:

Aside from posting content on our social media accounts, we do ads on all the platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Snapchat and TikTok. All of this has helped us focus our campaigns on our actual consumers and get our message into their hands. We try to be where the kids are.

Snapchat has really helped us with that, I would say. It also helped us fight misinformation about the school.

We started using Snapchat ads, which are cheap and can target specific zip codes. In this small rural area, we aren’t competing with some major player like CocaCola or anything, so our ads get run often and are seen a lot by our community. It’s helped us get our message into students’ hands, and it’s pretty inexpensive.

We’ve been able to beat the stigma that was out there about our career tech programs by sharing ads and posts that show our students thriving, talking about what it’s like to learn at Grant, and getting into college.

Now people who think our students don’t succeed have their phones telling them the exact opposite. The thing I love most about my job is telling stories about kids being successful. Some of our kids have never been told they’re doing a great job, so to see parents bragging about them because of our social media is really rewarding.

TikTok is a whole new thing I’ve been learning. You’d be surprised how many parents are on there now, too.

The kids will tease me about things I post, but they also love it. We get a ton of views when we post something. The great thing I’ve learned about TikTok is that you can make videos there and then easily share them on other platforms with just a few clicks. So I can post a video on TikTok, and then go share it on Instagram and Facebook without having to spend too much time.

TikTok videos also save to your phone, so you can post them easily that way, too. It’s an incredibly user-friendly app when it comes to sharing stories.

do you balance teachQ: How ing with your role as digital

content coordinator? What tools have helped make it possible?

A:

It is a tough job to try to balance both. I do a lot of work at home for my stipend role, but there are some things I have to do here, because this is where the kids are.

I’ve always enjoyed technology, and I’ve always been a curious person, but I’ve had to teach myself how to do a lot of the tasks I’ve done over the last two years. Finding the right tools and getting the school to invest in them has really helped me, and it’s helped us focus on our consumers: students and their families.

First, we updated our website—which has earned us an unbelievable amount of hits. We’ve also been using the Thrillshare app for a couple of years now. That’s been really great for connecting with our students’ families. We use its alerts function a lot, which lets us send out customizable messages about everything from grades to absences to school fees. For example, I can type out one message on the app and then plug in specific student names and grades to send to their parents. They can always go look at their grades online, but students and their families need to be reminded sometimes, so we can easily send them messages about their progress. It doesn’t take a whole team of people making phone calls or sending emails.

Our Special Education department has been using Thrillshare in coordination with Calendly to schedule IEP meetings, and we’ve seen parent meeting attendance increase dramatically. We can send them direct messages, like texts, but we can also send guardians reminders that show up on their calendars. This customizable messaging piece has been a real game

changer—it’s saved us so much time and work. And we’re continuing to discover new ways to use the app for communicating.

The free online graphic design tool Canva has also changed our world. I love Photoshop, but sometimes you just need something quick. One thing I love about Canva is that I can create a poster series featuring our own kids, duplicate those pages, add new photographs, and I’m done.

It lets me knock out multiple digital ads quickly and easily.

Balancing being a teacher and content coordinator, I also use programs like QuillBot to help me be a better writer. It’s a paraphrasing tool—you paste in your text and it helps you clean it up. For ads and communications, that’s been really helpful.

A lot of small rural schools put people like me in charge. And, like me, a lot of people are self-conscious about writing. Using this tool helps boost my confidence before sending out marketing posts or messages.

do you use photography to tell Q: How authentic stories?

A:

My biggest goal is to always make sure our photographs tell a story and evoke emotion. When I first started, my superintendent told me he didn’t mind if we needed to use stock photography. That just wasn’t the feel or impact Janelle and I wanted as we moved forward. When you find the right student and capture them doing what they are passionate about at the right moment, it’s priceless. I want kids to know that their friends are doing good things. They can come here, find success, and take pride in their work. Even kids who aren’t our star students are doing something they enjoy and have smiles on their faces. We want to show that.

I take a lot of our photos myself. I got tired of photographers coming in and then handing us images that I thought we could do a better job of capturing. But we still occasionally use a professional photographer from a small town up the road who understands that our photos need depth and emotion. He comes in once a year or so and takes promotional photographs and videos of our campus, like the drone footage you see on the homepage of our website. That has really paid off for us. His shots have elements like a blue flash of color behind a student to evoke trust, and he’s able to use lighting to emphasize feelings of learning and happiness. Every time we do something, we try to learn what the pros do and then copy it, or at least try.

Then there are the students. We have a student here who has an excellent eye for photography. I’m very particular about the pictures we take and how they need to evoke emotion, and this kid has the exact same eye. He and I take a lot of the photos you’ll see on our website and on our social media. At our graduation ceremony recently, he used a zoom lens to get some fantastic close-ups and other shots.

Photos courtesy of Grant Career Center

When I first started doing this, I also had the school buy me an Apple computer so I could process videos better and we wouldn’t have to outsource so many things.

We were sort of stuck in a time capsule, and we just had to rip the Band-Aid off. Now I feel like our photography is genuinely telling the story of Grant Career Center, sometimes even more than our words can.

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Q: A:

What advice would you give to a school without a full-time communications director or PR team?

In terms of what you’re sharing, I’d advise you to always take pictures that evoke emotion and depth. Use that zoom lens even when you don’t think there’s room for it. To tell an authentic story, you need things like selfies and close-ups. Your photos should be intimate; they should each be telling their own stories.

My other advice is to go where the kids are. Don’t be afraid of social media like TikTok and Snapchat, and don’t be scared to put yourself out there. Sometimes things may not go as planned, but there’s a lot to learn in the process—and there will be lots of laughs, too.

And when you don’t know something, don’t hesitate to ask. When I couldn’t figure out Google ads, I called Google. I was completely surprised by how helpful they were, and learned that I could pay a certain fee and have them do a lot of the work for me. It’s about working smarter, not harder.

If you’re not sure how all this can work for you, reach out to us at Grant Career Center. We want people to ask us questions. We want other schools to ask what we’re doing and how it’s working. If you want to visit our campus and see our programs, we would love to host you. Just reach out. That’s the biggest thing—we want to learn from you, too. It’s all about sharing that knowledge and making it happen.

To find out more about Grant Career Center and how you can use homegrown communications for your own success, visit:

grantcareer.com

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Picture this: You’re at a doctor’s appointment, anxiously receiving the results of some tests you’ve been worried about. As the doctor begins to explain what’s wrong, you get a little lost. You’re stressed, and while you can usually follow basic medical terminology without effort, your emotions are making it harder in the moment. You think about asking the doctor to pause so you can catch up, but you resolve to just figure things out later.

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A few hours pass, and once you calm down, you realize that there is a lot you don’t remember—and a lot you didn’t understand. Even though the doctor was attempting to be helpful, their reliance on medical jargon only confused and alienated you.

As uncomfortable—and likely familiar—as this story sounds, this is the exact experience that many families have as they interact with their children’s schools. Just as the field

of medicine is riddled with jargon, so is education. While family engagement is often regarded as one of the most important cornerstones of a strong school, the language that educators fall into—also known as “eduspeak”—often gets in the way.

Jargon’s Dual Purposes Jargon itself is not inherently bad. After all, there’s a reason almost every profession or group develops some kind of unique, shared language. According to the Harvard Business Review, jargon is not just used because of its ability to be more specific, but also to signal a person’s authority on a topic. For example, it’s hard to imagine discussing the nuances of long-term district planning with another school administrator and viewing them as an expert if you have to explain what a school improvement plan is. Utilizing highly specific, specialized terms can make it much easier for a group to discuss a topic that they have in common.

When you’re not talking to other educators, though, the meaning behind your jargon can get lost in translation. While eduspeak can provide clarity among educators, the opposite is true when you’re speaking to non-educators—namely families. Most parents don’t have degrees in education, and don’t have the same depth of experience with pedagogical terms as you do. Jargon can make families feel not only left out and confused, but also unwelcome or explicitly unwanted in your school community. Recall the previously mentioned doctor’s visit—would you be eager to revisit this specific doctor’s office with your questions? Would you feel confident enough in your understanding to challenge the doctor’s opinion or assumptions? Probably not.

There are already enough barriers to family engagement— language shouldn’t be one of them. So let’s talk about how to audit your communications to make sure you’re speaking plainly and clearly, and moving toward a future where accessible, welcoming language is the norm in your district.

Building your family engagement practice on this shared

language is imperative to developing community—both within and outside your school walls.

Auditing Your Lexicon What does jargon look like in the educational world?

Because we are so accustomed to using it, it can be tricky to resist if you spend all of your time immersed in the education sphere. If you’re just getting started with this process, you should know that weeding out jargon is easier to do continually over time rather than all at once.

Still, we have some ideas on how you can get this cumbersome process started. There are domains where jargon can almost always be anticipated. New testing or assessment systems usually come with their own package of jargon-related terms that need to be explained. And almost any new education buzzword is bound to include some element of jargon.

There is also jargon that is specific to highly specialized areas of the school experience. Generally speaking, the more official a school process is—from discipline procedures to Special Education—the more likely it is to be rife with eduspeak. In fact, many best practice manuals for IEP meetings recommend sharing a glossary for families.

Acronyms are also considered jargon, although spelling them out usually helps.

As you seek out jargon in more surprising places, you may find it helpful to use the Notes app on your phone to jot down any term you find yourself explaining to a non-educator, even if it’s a student. Most families, for example, know what parent-teacher conferences are, but may be unfamiliar with the term “scaffolding,” even if the practice itself happens in almost any classroom in the country. Families may have a vague understanding of what some terms mean, but may

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not understand the specifics. For example, a parent may know that PBIS involves quarterly pizza parties for students without disciplinary infractions, but may not know what the acronym actually stands for.

Addressing jargon doesn’t mean eliminating it entirely. It just means using equally descriptive but more accessible words when you can—and providing explanations when you can’t.

Edutopia, an online education website, has compiled a list of alternative terms that may help you as you work.

Once you’re aware of jargon, you’ll probably find it wherever you look, so much so that it might even be hard to know where to stop. Consider using a triage system where you tackle the most important communication documents first—registration forms, official paperwork, and information about important school or district initiatives—and then move on to more casual communications.

After you make your way through your official communications, you can move on to your more casual interactions, such as video addresses and newsletters.

Scripting video announcements ahead of time also gives you a chance to look for unnecessary jargon. After a presentation, take time to examine which parts were least

clear to your audience, based on when you received the most questions. As any educator knows, unfamiliarity with terms is often the starting point for confusion.

Building a Culture of Inclusive Language Cutting jargon from your lexicon can’t start and end with you—it has to involve a staffwide effort, especially since your teachers and other staff members likely have far more encounters with families than you do. When it comes to your teachers, though, recognizing and explaining jargon is a skill that will likely seem very familiar to them. After all, vocabulary instruction is a vital part of almost any course.

Making teachers aware of the jargon they use will likely be enough to help them communicate with intentionality. It may even be helpful to make a list of terms that you’ve identified as eduspeak, and ask your teachers to either avoid or explain them. A teacher who spends most of their time with other teachers, for example, may not realize that parents won’t necessarily understand the phrase “think-pair-share” until it’s explained to them. Because we often use jargon for concepts and processes that are not really that difficult to explain, providing your teachers and staff with alternative language can go a long way.

Empowering your staff with a stronger awareness of the language they use is also a good step for onboarding new teachers. Since jargon can vary considerably between school districts, new teachers may struggle with a term that is either new to them or was used differently in their previous schools. Some school districts, such as Schenectady City Schools in New York, even provide glossaries on their webpages where more technical language is used. This can be beneficial for both teachers and families.

Integrating Jargon When Appropriate Is eduspeak always bad? Not necessarily. As we established earlier, jargon can serve a vital purpose, such as uniting your school community around a very specific term or mission. What matters, though, is making sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to any new or possibly obscure language. This means introducing your audience to any terms that may be new to them, even ones you’ve used before. In written communications, you can also set off jargony terms with italics, quotation marks, or bolding.

This tells your audience that you don’t expect them to know these terms already, and they shouldn’t feel bad if they don’t.

As long as you explain your buzzwords and acknowledge that you don’t expect your audience to be familiar with certain terms, jargon can be incredibly useful. It can unite your community around a shared understanding of your language, such as around a core value. The key is just to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Otherwise, all the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into how you use language in your district won’t come across—and you may even risk alienating parts of your audience altogether.

It’s about inclusivity.

Rooting out exclusive jargon is only the beginning of making your schools welcoming spaces for families, but it is a crucial first step. Once your families feel comfortable engaging in conversations with your staff— and assured that they won’t feel overwhelmed or put off by unnecessary jargon—you can work on other ways to welcome their voices within your school community.

While jargon serves a purpose within the right context, being mindful about the language you use guarantees that anyone can understand your message—from a mother with a Ph.D. in education to a grandfather who is most comfortable with conversational English. As educators, we know that language matters. Once you use language that everyone can understand, everyone is able to benefit from the clarity and thoughtfulness that you put into choosing your words.

Your students themselves can be powerful tools for communicating new terms, although this shouldn’t be a resource that you rely on too often. For example, let’s say your district has chosen to roll out a new standardized test called the Strive Test. The name won’t be familiar to anyone, but if you explain it well enough to your students, they’ll be able to pass that information along to their families. You may even equip them with talking points on how to explain the test. For example, you could coach students to tell their parents that the new test is district-mandated and assesses reading and math only, and that the purpose of the test is to make sure they are ready for high school-level courses.

Giving students these talking points, while also communicating to families through more official channels, is a great way to reinforce the usage of a new term or name.

While there still may be some confusion about the Strive Test, you have laid the groundwork for making it a part of your school’s shared language.

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Marketing Matters How marketing can help you tell your story and build community support

We don’t have to tell you that for a while now, public schools have had a bit of an image problem. If you’re like most districts, you’ve probably gotten a bad rap at some point in time. Negative headlines around test scores, mean comments on social media, and the local rumor mill can all take their toll, both on you and your district’s brand.

When this happens, it can feel like combating the negative messaging is a distraction from your real work. After all, most people don’t actually know what happens on your campuses. And while that’s probably true, you also have a substantial role to play in communicating what goes on in your schools. If you’re not intentionally adding your district’s voice to the conversation, you’ll have little to no control over the narratives floating around about your schools.

So, what’s the solution? Actively sharing your district’s story by talking up your accomplishments and successes—big or small, day in and day out. You may not think of storytelling as “marketing”—but it’s actually the best kind. After all, marketing isn’t only flashy brochures and commercials, but rather the continuous story your district shares that defines who you are and where you want to go.

If you want your community to rally around the great work your schools are doing, you must consistently and creatively tell them exactly who you are. If you’re not telling your story, someone else will tell it for you. With the rising popularity of school choice and the increasingly challenging recruitment market for both teachers and students, it’s time to embrace proactive storytelling to shift how people think and feel about your district.

Anyone can be a marketer.

Hopefully, we’ve got you convinced that marketing should be on your radar—even if you aren’t able to afford a full-time staff member to take care of it. If you’re one of the hundreds of school leaders tackling marketing on their own, we’ve got ideas to help you lay the groundwork for marketing your district successfully.

First, let’s get clear on some terminology. It’s a common misconception that marketing is just another word for advertising: branded T-shirts, billboards, and pop-up ads.

You might also confuse marketing with public relations: getting your district into (or out of) the local press. But advertising, branding, and PR are actually just pieces of an overall strategy. Marketing is the whole picture.

Marketing is the practice of influencing how people think and feel about a brand. Right now, people already have an opinion about your schools, but maybe not the opinion you wish they had. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

You could choose to be reactive: waiting until negative news surfaces in your community and counteracting it with an announcement or press release. Or, you could be proactive.

You could tell the district’s story yourself. The first is just PR, but the second? That’s marketing.

Marketing aims to build your brand—to make your audience think about your schools the way you want them to.

But what’s a brand?

In simple terms, a brand is a symbol that represents your organization. Brands can be logos, names, images, or even people. Anything that represents your district is part of the district brand. But in a broader sense, your brand is your district’s reputation. The status of your brand is the way people currently think and feel about your schools.

Branding has always been about being distinct: setting oneself apart from the crowd. Our ancestors branded their livestock because they recognized the necessity of differentiating themselves from one another, and understood that the imagery of their “brands” would eventually convey the quality or value of their products. Thousands of years later, companies distinguish themselves from their competition by branding their products with names, colors, and logos. When done well, brands have a lot of power to help companies and their products stand out from the crowd.

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Take iPhones, for example. By this point, most smartphones have similar tech specs, cameras, and other features.

However, iPhones remain astoundingly popular, even though they aren’t as affordable or as customizable as some of their competitors. Why is this? Because Apple has convinced us that they’re distinct—and that buying their products makes us distinct, too.

As a school district, you should be trying to cultivate that same differentiation or distinction: the sense that you’re unique and maybe even better than your community’s other education options. When the community hears your district’s name, you want them to feel something positive, something different from the way every other school or district makes them feel. To make that happen, you’ll need to determine which of your district’s qualities you want to emphasize most.

If your district has a strong set of core values, this can be a great place to start.

But is my district all that different?

Let’s be honest for a second. Across the U.S., there are over 14,000 school districts, and that’s not even counting charter and private schools. In so many ways, these districts are extremely similar. They have the same basic goal—to educate students—and, generally speaking, they use the same methods to accomplish that mission. While there may be minor differences in strategy, a student who transfers from one school district to another is unlikely to face much confusion about the fundamental school experience.

But in the world of marketing, none of this really matters.

It doesn’t matter if your school district isn’t different from any other; what’s important is that your district does what it brands itself on, and it does it well.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show Mad Men, this concept may seem familiar. In the pilot episode, the main character, Don Draper, is tasked with creating a marketing campaign for Lucky Strike Cigarettes. Draper asks the Lucky Strike executives to list the appealing qualities of their cigarettes, and they name several, including that their tobacco is toasted. Draper uses this for their new slogan: It’s toasted.

The executives immediately object; their competitors toast their tobacco as well, they say. But Draper counters that it doesn’t matter, as long as Lucky Strike is the first brand highlighting this feature. Oftentimes, people don’t know what they’re getting until you tell them.

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While Don Draper is fictitious, the campaign itself was real.

Lucky Strike really did adopt this slogan way back in 1917, and it was so successful that it’s still on the brand’s packaging today. Doubling down on this distinct quality set Lucky Strike up for monumental success, even though their products weren’t that different from their competitors’.

When it comes to your schools, this distinct quality could be a value that you especially pride yourself on or a program that you feel doesn’t get enough attention. Choose a strength to highlight and double down until it becomes part of what defines you—even if it isn’t totally unique to your district.

Take Centralia School District in Illinois, for example. Every spring, they spend a lot of energy marketing their May Fete.

This annual spring festival has been held at their high school for over a century, complete with a May queen, student performances, and dancing around a maypole.

While this tradition may sound unique to an outsider, many other districts in the area have equally storied May Fete celebrations. That doesn’t stop Centralia, though, from showcasing their event as a unique part of their brand. It doesn’t matter what other districts are doing—it matters that this tradition is precious to Centralia’s students and alumni.

Market to build community.

Marketing has several purposes, and recruitment is always one of them, whether you’re recruiting students or teachers. However, marketing can also help you build up community investment. Even if your next bond campaign isn’t for years, a supportive community can be a game changer for your district.

People can’t be excited about what they don’t know.

What makes you distinct?

To figure out your district’s distinction points, start by answering these two questions: 1.

2.

What do families in your district want from their schools? You know what families in your particular community value. Maybe they appreciate a smalltown feel, world-class football coaches, or innovative arts programs. But go beyond these concrete concerns to imagine more abstract wants and needs: safety, diversity, or a sense that their child belongs. List everything a family’s ideal school would offer.

What does your district do really well?

It might be a stellar STEM program, a promise of small class sizes, or exceptional teachers. Consider what really great things are going on in your district—even if there is some overlap with the districts around you.

Now, take a look at your answers. The intersection of what families need and what your district does well is the sweet spot, the core message you’ll highlight again and again.

It’s incredibly frustrating when your students’ families or other community members criticize your district—especially when it seems like they don’t have all the information. In reality, some people are going to have strong opinions formed by misinformation—or even malice—that you can’t sway or control. What you can do, though, is flood your community with positive impressions of your district—all centered around that core message we mentioned earlier.

You have good stories to tell, so share them with as many of your stakeholders as possible.

A lot of schools get this right when it comes to athletics.

Imagine your local high school won a state championship in basketball, but there were no banners, no parades, no press releases, nary a Facebook post. That would be a massive missed opportunity, right? School leaders understand how to talk about success when it comes to their sports teams. But why isn’t that same enthusiastic communication happening for all of your students’ successes?

As a school leader, it’s your job to communicate a narrative that captures your district’s multifaceted identity. This means sharing everything from academic achievements to pictures of kindergarten field trips.

Think about your district like an elementary teacher might think about their classroom. Many teachers love to showcase their decorations and activities on Instagram or TikTok. There’s a sense of pride in the learning that happens every single day, from small wins in student growth to the books being read during storytime. As simple as it is, that’s the type of content that your community can get behind.

When sharing content, think back to your core message and how you want to emphasize it. If you’re showcasing your district’s multiple paths to excellence, show your audience what that looks like in your district. The content you share is an illustration of your district’s values.

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People want bang for their buck.

Think about the last time your district completed a bondfunded construction project. There’s something special about your community getting to see their tax dollars put to use in bricks and concrete. But why should that energy be reserved for a ribbon-cutting ceremony?

On the whole, people want to see how their money is being spent, not just after a capital campaign, but all the time.

Public education is an investment, after all. So don’t be shy about showcasing what your students are up to! Contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as too many updates.

What’s more, parents want to know that their children are receiving an excellent education. They’ll enjoy the glimpses into your classrooms that only come when your teachers and administrators are comfortable with storytelling.

Again, think about athletics. Parents, alumni, even community members with no formal ties to your schools—everyone gets caught up in the excitement when the football team is on a winning streak. One reason for this is that there’s usually a lot of communication around the team’s success. You’re

not hesitant to talk about it. Your students’ families love to hear about the programs that their kids are involved in— but outside community members want to be in the loop, too.

After all, who doesn’t like to see the positive impacts of their tax dollars at work?

Your school is the heart of your local community. Even if you don’t live in a rural area where your community’s activities revolve around your district, your school matters deeply to the families and businesses who support you. You don’t have to wait for a championship game to get your stakeholders fired up about your students and teachers.

Don’t apologize for looking good.

Many school leaders hesitate to grandstand about their schools because they don’t want to come across as bragging. But it’s important to remember that talking about your successes isn’t about being “better than”—it’s about being the best you can be and highlighting your strengths, even if your district isn’t perfect. After all, what district is?

Private schools and (especially) colleges have a pretty solid understanding of this. These institutions never pass up an opportunity to talk about what makes them special. Nothing is too mundane to highlight, because every facet of their identities is part of the larger story they tell their prospective students and families. They know the value of creating and maintaining a narrative about their school, even when nothing extraordinary is going on.

You don’t have to be a university to market like one. Once you’re in the mindset of always selling your value to your community and showcasing the small, beautiful moments happening in your schools, you’ll be on the right track.

Marketing can be internal, too.

When you talk about marketing your schools, there are going to be those who raise their eyebrows and express immediate doubt. Some of those negative voices may even be coming from your own staff. But time and time again, it’s been proven that finding creative and consistent ways to share your story with your community benefits everyone, from students and their families to teachers, administrators, and even community members without children. So how do you get your staff on board with your district’s marketing efforts? You encourage them to be part of the story you’re telling.

Get your staff involved.

When it comes to speaking for your district brand, no one has more power than teachers. After all, they’re the ones who handle most daily communications and serve as a child’s primary connection to school. So how do you turn your teachers into brand ambassadors—informed, passionate advocates for your district?

First, your staff can’t be on message if they don’t know the message in the first place. Just like your audience, your teachers can’t buy into what they don’t know. When big decisions are made, make sure to communicate them internally before externally. You never want your teachers finding out about a change in policy from a Facebook post rather than from you.

This also means letting your teachers know when you want to get the word out about something. Say you want more students signing up for after-school programs. Getting teachers and staff on the same page will help them reinforce that rallying cry.

Then, make sure your staff members can represent your brand with consistency. Conduct brand trainings to teach your staff how to talk (or tweet) about your district. As your “boots on the ground,” they need to be using the correct school colors, logos, and language in their materials just as consistently as the district office. Remember: Every time your parents and students interact with your district’s brand—including their teachers—they should be taking away the same messages.

Highlighting teachers in your marketing materials, whether in video or print, reinforces their expertise and builds their credibility—not to mention the district’s. Teachers become a part of the brand, giving them ownership over a facet of your marketing. What’s more, telling teachers’ stories on their best days provides your community a window into the amazing job your staff is doing.

Think of your story as part of the whole.

If you were to walk through each of your district’s classrooms on any given day, chances are you’d see something inspiring, likely even several things. That’s because across the country, great things are happening in schools every day.

You probably already know what makes your district special—from the small actions happening in its classrooms to the broader role your district plays in your community.

However, this good work might not make it into the minds and hearts of your community unless you spread the word.

If you’re reluctant to think of yourself as a marketer, it might help to think of yourself as a megaphone instead, amplifying all of the amazing moments happening in your district.

When you tell your story and show your school community who you are, you’re not just doing important work for your district’s reputation. You are also contributing to a broader positive perception of K-12 education. In every classroom, in every school, the magic is happening—why not shine a light on it?

Not every teacher will become an impassioned brand ambassador, and our research has shown that only staff members who feel strongly valued are likely to take that step. But with the right combination of information and engagement, they’re much more likely to promote your brand—even when they’re off the clock.

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SchoolCEO Conference

Halloran Centre in Memphis, TN October 2 & 3, 2022

Brand, Culture & Influence Like this magazine, we designed SchoolCEO Conference to be a resource that levels the playing field for public schools. We want this event to empower school leaders to share ideas with one another and to think differently about their brand, culture, and marketing.

Registration and tickets at: apptegy.com/conference

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Confronting Hesitation Understanding Conflict and New Ways of Thinking

Marketing Matters

As a school leader, you’ve no doubt said it many times: “Sounds great, but we don’t have the time. Sounds great, but we don’t have the funding. Sounds great, but that won’t work for my students.” There’s no counting the meetings and debates you’ve participated in—and the times you’ve had to be the one to reject a new idea or initiative. After all, a big part of your job is saying no when necessary and pivoting your staff toward work that is both achievable and practical. But when does saying no get in the way of progress? When does hesitation start to do a disservice to you and your schools?

Questioning and reevaluating your knowledge is a way not only to stay curious, but to think more critically about why you hold certain beliefs—and how being wrong may just be an opportunity to discover something new. In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, author Adam M. Grant urges readers to “rethink and unlearn.” When we think about this concept in terms of schools, there are myriad applications. But daring to be wrong is just the tip of the iceberg. To become a leader who listens more closely, thinks more critically, and unlearns what’s holding you back, it’s vital that you understand how to overcome your natural hesitation to change your way of thinking.

Teacher and Digital Content Coordinator Randy Dorsey is using curiosity and tech savviness to help share the success story of Ohio’s Grant Career

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Part of this hesitation comes from a fear of the unknown— and a fear of potential future conflict. This is especially true in our current climate of political scrutiny and debate in education. But by exploring new mindsets, school leaders can start to approach conflict with more boldness and confidence. This will benefit not just you, but also the staff members, students, and families you serve.

your views based on new data.” Grant advises that you treat a new viewpoint or perspective as a hunch or hypothesis to be tested. “When you start forming an opinion, resist the temptation to preach, prosecute, or politick,” he writes. “We move into scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover new knowledge.”

In our search for big ideas that could help school leaders shift their mindsets, we found a few inspiring—and surprising— philosophies. No matter your perspective, we ask that you lean into the unknown, open your mind, and dare to start your new thinking journey with us here and now. The results could be life-changing, for you and your schools.

Scientific thinking, then, isn’t just reserved for those working with Bunsen burners and microscopes. “Hypotheses have as much a place in our lives as they do in the lab,” Grant writes. “Experiments can inform our daily decisions.” Are you convinced that a new substitute training program will fail to get buy-in? Why not workshop it first? Experiment. Before you say no, dare to test your hypothesis.

Think like a scientist.

“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom,’’ Grant writes in Think Again. His book has been praised by countless writers, economists, and entrepreneurs as an essential guide to the art of rethinking. But what exactly does that look like in practice—especially for superintendents and other school leaders?

One essential takeaway Grant provides is to “think like a scientist.” “Rethinking is a skillset, but it’s also a mindset,” he writes. “We already have many of the mental tools we need.

We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.”

Grant argues that because of the accelerated rate of change in our world—mostly due to advances in access to information and technology—we need to “question our beliefs more readily than ever before.” But he’s quick to point out that this isn’t an easy ask for any of us. “As we sit with our beliefs, they tend to become more extreme and more entrenched,” he writes. We’re quick to recognize when other people need to rethink their assumptions, he says, but “when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right. We need to form the habit of developing our own second opinions.”

So how do you think like a scientist to combat your own deeply entrenched beliefs? It starts with daring to risk being wrong in order to learn what’s right. “If you’re a scientist by trade, rethinking is fundamental to your profession,” Grant writes. “You’re paid to be constantly aware of the limits of your understanding. You’re expected to doubt what you know, be curious about what you don’t know, and update

Another suggestion Grant offers is to “define your identity in terms of values, not opinions.” This also plays into thinking like a scientist because it asks you to value curiosity and learning. It encourages you to be willing to pivot if new information presents itself. “It’s easier to avoid getting stuck to your past beliefs if you don’t become attached to them as part of your present self-concept,” writes Grant. One actionable piece of advice he provides here is to keep a list of factors that would change your mind as you form a new opinion on a topic or issue.

Lastly, Grant advises: “Seek out information that goes against your views.” It can be hard to challenge ourselves, and even harder to let our guards down enough to be authentically challenged by others. But Grant says there are many reasons we should. “You can fight confirmation bias, burst filter bubbles, and escape echo chambers by actively engaging with ideas that challenge your assumptions,” he writes.

Even though we all like to consider ourselves informed and logical, we sometimes hold on to ways of thinking simply because we’ve been attached to them for so long. Grant argues that we should seek out the joy that comes from being wrong, from letting go of our attachments. When we can’t let go of the past, we sometimes can’t move forward.

“That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them,” he writes. “To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.”

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Grant’s book has many more practical takeaways and thought-provoking anecdotes that present a strong argument for rethinking and leaning into doubt. But especially as a school leader, being able to question your own opinions and viewpoints can help you create the kind of equitable, inclusive, and high-achieving school system all educators are aiming for.

Think like an activist.

You’re accustomed to keeping students and their families top of mind every day. It’s why you got into education in the first place: to make an impact. But what if fear of conflict is holding you back?

Another method for reframing your mindset can be found in a seemingly unlikely place—Kazu Haga’s Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. In this guide to understanding and resolving conflicts, Haga shares practices and philosophies based on the nonviolent teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So what does this have to do with changing the way you think as a school leader?

Well, before you can change the way you think, it’s important to understand how you respond to conflict. Looking to those who have experience mitigating and learning from those conflicts—such as activists—is a great place to center your work. Keep in mind, though, that when we say conflict here, we mean that both externally and internally. Oftentimes, we are our own greatest hurdles. Learning how to approach different types of conflict and how to be comfortable with being wrong are essential first steps toward thinking that promotes progress, problem-solving, and harm reduction.

“Understanding what type of conflict you are engaged in gives you information about how to move through it,” writes Haga. In his book, he outlines the four major types of conflict that are vital for any leader to understand. “In the heat of the conflict, it is hard not to get emotional,” Haga writes. “This is why it is helpful to study the nature of conflict and understand how it operates objectively.”

The first type of conflict Haga defines is pathway conflict.

This is when you have the same overall goals as someone else, but a different approach to reaching those goals. If you and your communications director share a goal of increasing parental involvement, but you have wildly different paths in mind to reach that goal, emotions may start getting in the way. “Emotions might get so heated that [you] may begin 36

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to feel that [your] path to get to the goal becomes even more important than the goal itself,” writes Haga. Reframing this kind of conflict, however, can keep you and your team focused on results and not emotions. “In pathway conflict, the most important thing you can do is to remember you’re trying to get to the same place,” he writes.

pandemic shutdown, one of your principals believed it was most important to ensure students were logging on to virtual classes, while you were primarily concerned with feeding hungry kids. That would be a values conflict. And even though it’s the most common form of conflict, it can be the trickiest to navigate.

Next, Haga describes something a little more complicated: mutually exclusive conflict. This type of conflict occurs when you assume you share the same goals as someone you’re working with, but, in actuality, you don’t. For example, let’s say that as you’re working with a school board member on your district’s annual budget, you suddenly realize that you have different priorities. You’re most concerned with funding a new STEM program for your students, but the board member’s priority is to tighten up spending—leaving little room for new initiatives. You have to work together, but your goals aren’t aligned.

“There is an element of a values conflict present in all conflicts,” writes Haga. “All conflict has some basis in what we value. But the opposite is also true: In all values conflicts there exists at least one of the other types of conflict.”

Because values conflicts can elicit such strong emotions, reframing them through our understanding of other conflicts can keep us focused on our ultimate goals without raising tensions so high that nothing gets resolved.

Haga argues that the first and most important step to addressing this type of conflict is to name it out loud.

“We sometimes mistakenly think that different goals are mutually exclusive—meaning one goal has to be ignored to meet the other,” he writes. “In reality, there are often ways of working together so that even with different goals, we can both actually get closer to our goals than if we worked independently. We just have to articulate the mutual benefit we are gaining by working together.”

The third type of conflict, distributive conflict, rears its head when there are not enough resources to pull off a specific goal or initiative. But Haga warns his readers to look deeply and interrogate the actual situation they’re navigating. “Most distributive conflicts, especially at a social level, actually stem from the perception that there are not enough resources to go around,” he writes. “In a distributive conflict, what you want to look at are the ways that the resources are currently being distributed to see if there is a more equitable distribution that would solve the problem.” Haga even suggests a guiding question for leaders and decision-makers to ask themselves during these types of conflicts: “What is enough?”

Finally, the last conflict outlined in Healing Resistance is values conflict. This is actually the most common type— and the most emotionally charged. Values conflicts show up when your values and vision don’t align with those of the people you’re working with, or even with an idea you’re trying to get behind. For instance, imagine that during the

If you reframe the theoretical values conflict above as a pathway conflict, it starts to look more manageable. You and the principal both want what’s best for your students; you just have different ideas of what that is. So finding whatever common ground you do share is the first—and potentially only—way to move forward. “Naming the type of conflicts we are in is like being able to diagnose the conflict,” Haga writes. “It pinpoints and articulates exactly what the problem is.” Diagnosing a conflict, then, can help you reframe it, “giving you some choices about how to engage in the conflict in a way that makes reconciliation more likely.”

Think like an artist.

So far we’ve asked you to put on your scientist hat and your activist hat to reevaluate your ways of thinking. But now it’s time to get a little more personal. As a school leader, you are no doubt passionate and dedicated to your work, but leaders like you often become derailed by a need to always get it right, to be perfect at what you do every single time, with every decision you make. This, of course, creates fear and stress.

In Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, author Elizabeth Gilbert shares her insights into the creative process, asking us to think like artists by being more curious and facing our fears with creativity. While it may seem like an unlikely technique, thinking more creatively as a leader can not only relieve stress, but also open you up to the mental work needed to accomplish anything we’ve mentioned here. In the very first chapter of Big Magic, Gilbert offers her unique definition of creative living. “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all,” she writes, “and then stands SUMMER 2022 /

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back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels—that’s creative living.” Gilbert poses a question to her readers upon which she believes all creative living hinges: “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

It may all sound a bit esoteric at first, but Gilbert’s ideas can be translated easily into other realms of our lives—even work that is prone to conflict and big decision-making. And while much of her writing revolves around living a “more enchanted existence,” she’s careful to define what that entails. “When I talk about ‘creative living’ here,” she writes, “please understand that I am not necessarily talking about pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”

Are you noticing a theme? Whether you’re reframing conflicts or thinking like a scientist, curiosity over fear seems to be an essential part of solving big problems— and, as a school leader, those are your bread and butter.

When Gilbert mentions fear, she isn’t just talking about fear of the unknown. She asks us to confront our fears—which can often hide behind stubbornness and a refusal to be wrong. “I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified,” Gilbert writes. “Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.’”

We need to acknowledge that being wrong is sometimes the only way to learn the truth of a situation. Perfect, in Gilbert’s eyes, doesn’t exist. “It starts by forgetting about perfect,” she writes. “We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death.” If you want to get off that hamster wheel and live more creatively within your role as a school leader, you first have to acknowledge and appreciate that you can’t always be right, and you can’t do it alone. You have a team for a reason, and every perspective matters when you’re in the process of testing hypotheses and navigating conflict.

So, thinking like an artist isn’t about what you create—it’s about how you work with others and your own inner thoughts to resolve conflicts and make decisions. It takes courage, sure, but it also takes a big, magic slice of humility. Then you 38

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can find the hidden jewels within yourself, your team, and the situations that you face. “You can resist the seductions of grandiosity, blame, and shame,” Gilbert writes. “You can support other people in their creative efforts, acknowledging the truth that there’s plenty of room for everyone. You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Rethink like a leader.

Rethinking and unlearning aren’t easy tasks. We are creatures of habit, and in our culture, we’re accustomed to avoiding conflict at all costs. But part of being a leader is understanding how to navigate tension and approach new ideas with an open and curious mind—not just because it will make your job easier, but because it will lead to results that better serve your students and community.

Being expected to always have an answer must be exhausting sometimes, and we won’t pretend we’ve walked in your shoes. But by unlearning negative ways of thinking, reframing your mindset to approach conflict like an activist, and letting go of fear, you can grow into a leader who experiments and asks for help when needed. It won’t always be easy, but it could earn you the experience, buy-in, and support needed to make the biggest impact possible.

The next time something sounds great, but just may not work, why not dare to pause and rethink it? Interrogate your beliefs and hypotheses. Start unlearning what’s holding you back so you can find out how to move your schools—and students—forward.

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A Breath of Fresh Air How North Dakota is using federal funds to reconnect students to their state parks

You may have seen recent news stories about doctors prescribing their patients time outdoors in addition to traditional medicine. We all know that going for walks is good exercise, but health researchers are finding more and more evidence that time in nature can be especially beneficial for mental health.

able to experience all that North Dakota’s parks system has to offer. “Most people think about state parks as recreation, but we do a lot of education here, too,” says Dr. Josh Steffan, the NDPRD’s Education & Programs Chief. From the Badlands to Icelandic State Park, which focuses on the state’s homesteading past, there’s something for everyone.

During the past few years, students have been under a lot more stress than usual due to the seismic changes brought on by the pandemic. This is compounded by the fact that they’ve spent a lot of time cooped up inside. Whether it’s learning from home or just a dearth of traditional outdoor activities, it’s all been a bit much. The perfect solution for all of this, of course, is to get outside. And don’t take our word for it—a 2021 study from the National Institute of Health found that green space can actually decrease stress and boost resilience among young adults.

Of the 13 parks, four offer year-round educational programming via park interpreters—rangers who are trained to serve as educational guides for park visitors. But with notice ahead of time, the NDPRD can supply any park with enough interpreters to accommodate school groups.

These outdoor learning experiences hold great value for more students than you might think. “North Dakota is rural, but more and more kids live in cities,” Steffan explains. “They don’t have that connection to nature.”

North Dakota is putting these best practices into action. The state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has launched an innovative partnership with the Parks and Recreation Department (NDPRD) to help students explore North Dakota’s state parks.

The best part of this collaboration? North Dakota is using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to make parks accessible to more students through field trips and new outdoor experiences. This creative use of resources is already paying dividends for North Dakota students, and it’s drawing attention to the real value America’s state park systems can offer schools.

Making Up for Lost Time It all started with some available funds and a need. North Dakota’s DPI was looking for creative ways to put COVID-19 recovery dollars to good use, and a renewal of outdoor education opportunities was the perfect solution. The most obvious motivation was helping schools get students excited about learning in person again, while improving physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

At the same time, this collaboration had the potential to offer students a prime learning opportunity. Fourth graders in North Dakota typically go on field trips to historical sites— including several state parks—to learn about state history.

Two consecutive cohorts of fourth graders missed out on this unique part of their school experience due to COVID-19 restrictions. But now, learners of all ages are once again

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Making Good Use of Funds ARPA funding is being used to cover several summers’ worth of this partnership, lasting until 2024. Most immediately, these funds are helping schools cover the costs of field trips. The typical school field trip takes place at the class level, although groups can range anywhere from 10 to over 100 students. On these excursions, students can get guided tours of historic sites from park interpreters or explore the beauty of their state through self-guided hikes or nature walks. Schools can request fee waivers that cover the cost of associated educational programming. This is a big help for schools that normally find field trips cost-prohibitive.

trip. Part of the ARPA funding will be used to cover the cost of producing 25 more videos from around the state.

In addition to increasing access to existing park resources, this state-level partnership has resulted in something entirely new: 24 field days across the next three park seasons. While field trips are small-group experiences, field days are designed for several school groups to come together to experience themed outings. This is a supercharged version of something park rangers have already been doing for years. Typically, each summer, rangers invite kids into their local parks for educational programming on wildlife and other fun topics.

Field days are aimed at sixth graders, although students ranging from fourth graders to eighth graders have also participated. Because North Dakota students study state history again in the eighth grade, field days can complement classroom learning with hands-on experiences.

Learning geological history at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park Aside from covering program fees, the funding also covers transportation reimbursements. According to Steffan, transportation is the biggest hurdle most schools face in taking advantage of the state’s park offerings. Covering fuel costs is obviously expensive, but pay for bus drivers has to be factored in as well. Taking this expense out of the equation makes it much easier for schools to take advantage of these outdoor education opportunities.

Also leveling the playing field for schools is the Campfire Series, a set of videos made on-site by park rangers and uploaded to the NDPRD’s YouTube channel. When pandemic lockdowns were keeping visitors away, park staff decided to bring the parks to the people. Even now that restrictions have been lifted, these short videos can be used in the classroom as a teaching resource, or to show schools what to expect from a given park when planning a 42

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These daylong events involve every interpreter in the state coming in to offer students a variety of activities. Each field day typically includes four or more different topics for students to explore in-depth—from pond life to Native American games to orienteering. As Austin Glant, Lead Interpreter at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, explains, “Field days get students outdoors to learn a bunch of different skills. They might have been learning these things in the classroom, but here they can apply them in real life.”

These events are a great way to highlight each state park, as the plan is to rotate field days around the state throughout the course of the next three park seasons. And it seems the students are enjoying them just as much as the interpreters.

According to Glant, the recent field day at Turtle River State Park had over 200 students on both days—hitting the perstudent funding cap for these events.

Immediate Impact Even though the program is less than a year old, it has already contributed to a substantial increase in student park attendance. In the four field day events held in April and May alone, just shy of 500 students participated. In terms of field trips, some 2,700 North Dakota students visited a state park over the first half of 2022. What’s even more exciting is that this is clearly just the beginning.

Even after 2024, when funds for this particular partnership run out, the NDPRD would like to see continued engagement with the state’s school system. The Education & Programs team is focusing on getting educational supplies that’ll last for years, so they can continue to welcome students well into the future.

to encourage residents to visit interesting sites across the state. Each student is given a passport booklet to fill with stamps from both parks and historic landmarks around North Dakota, gamifying hands-on learning experiences and providing even more incentive to visit all that the state has to offer.

Feedback from schools has been very positive, especially among those who had never taken a field trip to a state park before. The hope is that these first-timers will find enough value in these outdoor learning experiences to budget for an annual class field trip or something similar post-2024.

Glant also hopes to see field days become a regular part of NDPRD programming going forward. As he explains, “this is a way to get students back outdoors and learning things in a non-classroom environment.”

Any school system in the country can emulate this spirit of collaboration. North Dakota is a unique case, as their DPI led the way—but there is nothing stopping a school district from reaching out to their local parks system. In Indiana, for example, Hamilton Southeastern Schools teamed up with Fishers Parks & Recreation to create Nature First.

This program allows every first grader in the district to visit Ritchey Woods Nature Preserve twice a year. Students are able to combine hands-on exploration with their classroom instruction on math and science, all the while learning about nature.

Partners in Education The NDPRD prides itself on a culture of collaboration. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Steffan says. “You can do a lot more collectively than in individual silos.” This culture is evident even in the gift bags students receive when they register for a field day. Along with a T-shirt and other goodies, there’s a North Dakota Passport. The Passport program started last summer as a partnership between the NDPRD and the State Historical Society of North Dakota

So, whether you’re in North Dakota or not, lace up your boots and put on your hat—there’s a world of outdoor learning to explore right in your own backyard.

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TOUCH POINTS A Yearlong Family Communication Calendar

School leaders may be messengers in chief, but we learned in our recent study “Who Speaks For Your Brand?” that teachers and other staff members carry the bulk of the weight when it comes to family engagement. Over and over, research has shown that students are much more successful when their families and schools forge strong relationships. But what does this mean for administrators leading the charge of connecting with students and families?

The answer to this question varies from district to district, but we’ve put together a basic calendar that will help your school communications start—and finish—strong. While this isn’t a comprehensive checklist for all communication with your families, it should take some heavy lifting off of you. That way, you can help your teachers and other staff strategize their communications to optimally benefit your schools and your students.

What is a school leader’s role in family communication?

The truth is that many school administrators, especially in larger districts, simply don’t engage in direct communication with families each day. But what does this mean for your role in leading your district to success? When it comes to family communication, the school administrator’s job is threefold: to provide a strategy for family communication; to create a framework that makes this outreach feel manageable; and to be a cheerleader for the teachers and staff members working to build those vital relationships.

Here, we’ll work toward building your capabilities in all three of those roles so that you can develop a district communications strategy that is feasible, logical, and— most importantly—uniquely yours. After all, having a consistent strategy doesn’t diminish the magic that your teachers work individually. It just makes it more scalable and easier to support from an administrator’s perspective.

Building this strategy out on the front end allows for more ingenuity when things get busy—and more room to individualize when it matters most.

Of course, even though teachers and other building-level staff handle the bulk of your family communications, quite a bit of information, such as districtwide mandates, still needs to come from you. This strategy is for you, too, whether you’re a superintendent, communications director, or other district administrator.

The Start of the School Year (July-September) Everyone knows that the beginning of the year is the most crucial phase for family communication and engagement.

Still, this knowledge doesn’t make building dozens of new connections any less intimidating, especially on top of everything else that teachers do in the first weeks of school.

While there are plenty of scripts and ideas out there on how to kick off proactive family communication, a few stand out from the crowd.

The Kentucky Collaborative for Families and Schools, a family engagement initiative, recommends that all teachers start off the year by having families create Hopes and Dreams letters. In each letter, a family outlines everything that they hope their child will accomplish—both during the current school year and beyond. Similarly, the Flamboyan Foundation, a national education and policy nonprofit, has an entire resource center built around educator welcome calls.

As an administrator, the best thing you can do for your staff during this season is to make space and prioritize the right actions for them to take. If family communication is a priority, make sure your staff members have the time and availability to reach this goal. For your teachers, the beginning of the school year can be rife with administrative tasks—taking inventory, sanitizing lockers, and pre-registering students for online tools. Since teachers have a limited amount of time to make a good first impression, do whatever you can to take things off their plates. You may even want to encourage principals to set specific blocks of time for family engagement so that teachers aren’t always tasked with fitting it into otherwise busy days.

Making time for communication should be the beginning of your support for teachers. Family communication is a skill that can be honed with practice and feedback, just like any other. Encourage your principals to push teachers who are already strong communicators to mentor those who are still developing this skill. When you start strong with family communication, you create momentum that will carry you throughout the school year.

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A Time for New Beginnings (January-March)

The Mid-Year Slump (October-December) If there’s a time when educators need their administrators most, it’s during the late fall months. Once the shiny veneer of the new school year wears off, the most grueling season sets in for teachers and students. Near the end of the first quarter, your teachers are probably engaging with families quite a bit, working with parents and students to adjust strategies and maximize success for the rest of the school year.

Unsurprisingly, this can be a peak time for burnout among teachers. Accordingly, this should be a time where your administrators step up their support to ensure positive— not just prescriptive—family communication. When the first rounds of grades are due, assist your educators as they split their time between teaching and grading. After all, grades aren’t the only form of important feedback; family communication is just as crucial, if not more so.

Finally, encourage teachers to revisit Hopes and Dreams letters or other beginning-of-year communications to see how they’re doing. The beauty of this time of year is that it never feels too late to change things up—harness that energy to build realistic, proactive plans to make good changes.

As an administrator, you play a unique role in this season, too. Outside of the classroom, fall and winter are heavy on the holidays, especially if you’re in a community that treats football and basketball games as weekly celebrations. This provides you with plenty of informal, fun ways to touch base with your community, including your teachers. Although Teacher Appreciation Week isn’t until spring semester, feel free to show your hardworking educators and staff some love. They deserve it, and it might just be the boost that helps push them through the tricky fall semester.

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The school year is full of new beginnings. As you likely know, this is by design! Harness this natural restart and empower your teachers to set family engagement goals for the second semester, especially now that they know most, if not all, of their families and their needs. If your staff has engaged in strong communication all year long, the beginning of the spring semester will be more about building upon previous work than starting fresh. On the other hand, if your communication hasn’t been effective—whether in supporting student success or building a student’s sense of belonging—then it may be time to revisit and reconsider those practices.

The early months of the spring semester can feel uniquely focused, especially after the hectic nature of the holidays.

By this time in the school year, everyone knows the expectations, generally speaking. Take advantage of this understanding to push your community engagement a bit further—trying out new ideas that you’ve been too busy or hesitant to pilot. Perhaps you’ve been considering adding more student voice to your weekly newsletters. Go for it! Or maybe you’ve been thinking about starting a district podcast—now’s the time! At this point in the school year, you are likely to have strong enough relationships with your stakeholders to experiment. Push the envelope and have fun with it—all while increasing your community’s trust in their schools.

Finally, you can begin to pivot toward recruitment, both for teachers and for students. While your HR or marketing teams employ recruitment strategies year-round, wordof-mouth is always the best way to transform a curious candidate into an excited applicant—and your families are great people to do this recruitment for you. Ask your community what they love about working and learning in your district. If you use both your direct and indirect communications to show that your district is a great place to work and learn, half the battle of recruiting will be done for you.

Finishing Strong (April-May) In some ways, family communication at the end of the school year is the easiest part. If you’ve built strong family partnerships supported by regular communication throughout the school year, carry these practices through to the end.

If teachers haven’t been in regular contact with families, this time can be painful as everyone reckons with lost opportunities. The last thing a parent wants to hear at the end of the school year is that their child has not been successful. Whatever this means—summer school, retaking courses, or other supports—the news may be met with frustration if families haven’t been part of the conversation from the beginning.

Building a thorough, sustainable family communication plan is more of a marathon than a race. It requires constant experimentation—sometimes over the course of many years. While your teachers handle the bulk of the family engagement, this yearlong communication framework can take the guesswork out of their strategy. By supporting them in this way, you are freeing up space for more creativity and personal touches.

The end of the school year is also full of celebration. Awards and accolades are rolling in this time of year, so it’s a natural time to focus on student-centered communication. This can start small. Did a student who barely scraped by in December end the year with a C average? Find a way to laud them for their hard work, like a positive phone call home, so they see their growth being noticed and celebrated.

As a school leader and communicator in chief, you have the unique capability to build the district you believe will best meet the needs of your families. If frequent, productive communication with families is one of your priorities—and it should be—supporting your teachers is the first step.

That way, you empower them to build more closely knit relationships with students and their families.

This is also a great time to celebrate teacher gains and achievements and share these milestones with your families—who are likely your educators’ top fans, anyway.

Did your history instructor get into a prestigious summer program? Shout them out to your entire district community!

Did a large group of first-time teachers make it through with flying colors? This warrants highlighting, too, as you make space to celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of summer break. By celebrating these moments to your families, you are building a culture of learning that showcases everyone’s growth—not just students’.

Summertime Shift (June-July) For most teachers and students, summer is the time to rest, relax, and gear up for next year. It’s also when the bulk of the work shifts from them to you, the administrator. While summers are busy in many respects for school leaders, families often look forward to summers as a chance to take a break from school. However, times are changing. Summers include more educational programming than ever—and you will need to find a way to preserve a sense of togetherness without overwhelming your families.

Most of your summer communication will revolve around the upcoming school year, especially if your district is using initiatives to combat the summer slide. Use this time to build anticipation and help engaged families feel like the school is as robust in the summer as it is during the school year. Your goal is to keep your community in the loop and ready for whatever is next.

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From Crisis to Confidence

How Anita Foster brought years of crisis communications experience to her everyday work at Arlington ISD

consider disasters themselves as crises in the Red Cross—that was just our everyday work— but there are so many potential problems that come with an emergency: disparity of services, mismanagement of funds, not using volunteers right. You can take public school and plug in different concerns, and it’s the same.

So when I read the job description from Arlington ISD, I got excited about it. This was before COVID, but even then, I thought, These are massive challenges—but we can tackle this.

We can build strategic communications plans, turn around social media feeds, build presence and community, build our stakeholders, support our superintendent. Those are all things I’ve done across my career in a variety of different ways. It was a great alignment to my skill set.

Anita Foster

Anita Foster is no stranger to crisis. Before entering the world of education, she served as a chief communications officer at the American Red Cross, supporting the organization’s disaster relief services. For more than 20 years, she witnessed the aftermath of hundreds of emergencies, from local floods and fires to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. It was a tough job, she tells us—sleeping on cots, going without running water, enduring sleepless nights and early mornings.

When it came time to make a change, Foster started what she hoped would be a rewarding—but less stressful—job as the Executive Director of Communications and Marketing at Texas’ Arlington ISD. But only a few months later, COVID-19 swept the globe, and Foster found herself in crisis mode once again. Fortunately, that’s where she thrives.

Even as we adjust to life with COVID, the touchstones Foster relied on during the height of the pandemic—proactivity, honesty, and transparency—are still the hallmarks of a successful communications strategy. Here, she tells us why staying ahead of the game matters, whether you’re in crisis mode or not.

Q A

What led you to make the switch to education?

Q A

Was it difficult adjusting to education after so long in the nonprofit world?

I had to learn basically a whole new vocabulary getting here. It’s tough—people in education have their own language that no one else speaks. I’m really glad I had a little bit of time before COVID to try to figure it out. I’m not even joking—I’d sit in meetings in the beginning and think, I don’t have any idea what’s going on here.

Now, our team talks about plain language.

Using words like “asynchronous” with parents is probably not a best practice, because they aren’t always going to know what that means.

We spend a lot of time trying to make things look simple, even when they’re actually not easy to explain.

Well, education is wild, and I love wild jobs.

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Q A

How did your previous experience prepare you for COVID and school closures?

We do make a lot of jokes about me showing up from the Red Cross right before a global crisis. When I was interviewing, the superintendent promised time away for spring break and winter break—I still tease him about when those perks start. But I’ve loved it every day. I have no regrets about coming here.

I do feel that we’re on the downside of COVID. I’ve been through enough crises to know that all emergencies have a cycle—this one was just longer than the average. How long did it take to rebuild Ground Zero, or to put New Orleans back together? It takes years, and this is no different. Why would we think that we wouldn’t have learning loss right now?

Why would we think that could be solved immediately?

I bring that perspective with me, and I’m glad I do. I learned through many, many years of terrible things that people are extremely resilient, and I am confident that public education and our kids will bounce back.

“I believed this before COVID, and I believe it now more than ever—we have to be transparent about the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

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Photos courtesy of Arlington ISD

Q A

You often emphasize how important it is to be proactive in school communications. Why is that so crucial?

I don’t know that I could possibly place enough value on being proactive. I really do believe that.

It has helped us build trust, especially at the very beginning of the pandemic when we didn’t know what would happen from one day to the next. I constantly told my team that we had to say what we knew at the time, and that it was okay to say what we didn’t know.

We really adopted that strategy as a team, and I had a lot of conversations with the superintendent about that, too. I learned early in the pandemic that teachers and educators

see it as very important to share everything, verify everything, make sure everything is correct before they share information—but that is not how crisis communications works. The longer we wait to share something, the more we allow someone to build a narrative for us instead of telling our own story. We cannot wait.

We have to be transparent, and we have to put the message out ourselves.

We’re in Texas, and when the Uvalde school shooting happened, the whole country was talking about it. So we sent a note to families and staff that night reinforcing our safety measures and providing tips from our counseling department that parents could use to talk to their children. We got several messages back that made me really grateful we went down that road—a number of parents saying, Thank you, I had no idea what to say to my kid.

Being proactive communicators is scary because it does require you to take a risk and not wait and see what would have happened if you hadn’t said anything. But we want these parents and families who have children in our care to know what we know. I believed this before COVID, and I believe it now more than ever—we have to be transparent about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“The longer we wait to share something, the more we allow someone to build a narrative for us instead of telling our own story. We cannot wait. We have to be transparent, and we have to put the message out ourselves.”

Q A

There are lots of controversial topics in public education right now. How do you get ahead of those challenges?

Well, there’s no perfect answer, and I’m always interested in hearing philosophies from other communicators on how we handle those difficult situations.

Like everyone else, we dealt with this a lot at the height of the pandemic. Especially when mask and vaccine mandates were being passionately debated, half of our parents on Facebook supported district decisions and the other half opposed. Conversations were often fruitless—if we tried to explain why we had made a particular decision, we would be attacked in the comments by multiple off-topic responses from parents and non-parents.

We decided then that we would answer each question once, with factual information and links to a verified source, if possible. After that, we would stop responding. We thought that was better than not answering at all.

We also do our best to share as much relevant information as possible, and counteract misinformation wherever we can. Right now, Governor Greg Abbott is trying to pass his Parental Bill of Rights here in Texas—so we put up a link on our website to the Texas Education Code’s section on parental rights and responsibilities from years ago. That way, our parents and families can see the rights that they already have. We also keep some fact sheets and FAQs, plus some “Claim vs. Fact” documents to combat misinformation. They’re really simple: This is the claim; these are the facts.

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crises. Things like Critical Race Theory, bans on library books—they’re distractions. We can’t ignore them, but we have to see them for what they are. So we try to keep it really simple: Ask and answer.

Getting ahead of known issues allows us to address them before they become crises. The more proactive we are with issues management, the less likely it is that an issue becomes a crisis.

Now, they might not like that answer, but that’s okay. As a communications team, we talk about this a lot—we would rather a parent, staff member, or stakeholder tell us they don’t like our message than tell us they didn’t get a message. That’s our philosophy.

The same philosophy applies when we mess something up. I did a presentation years ago called “Mess Up, Fess Up, Fix It.” If we’ve made a mistake, we have to fess up and then actually tell people what we’re going to do about it.

It’s hard. It takes time to do all of that. It takes more time to be proactive than it does to react.

But that’s what we have to do.

Q A

Sometimes it’s tempting to wait and hope an issue blows over rather than address it head-on. Why is that a bad idea?

I’ve had some experience with hoping that an issue would “blow over,” and I learned two things the hard way: Experience is a great teacher, and hope is not a good strategy.

Communicators today operate in one of the most challenging environments in the history of our profession. Issues management has always been critical, but even more so now.

Social media allows everyone to have an opinion and a megaphone, so in a nanosecond, an issue can blow up to crisis level. We have to be prepared for that.

Understanding the difference between an issue and a crisis can help explain why staying ahead of issues is better than sweeping up behind them. I love how crisis management consultant Tony Jaques illustrates this difference: “Issues management is steering the ship out of troubled waters. Crisis management is trying to save the ship after it has struck an iceberg.”

Q A

Part of being proactive is presenting a unified message. How do you get teachers and other staff members on message across the whole district?

That’s such a good question because that’s very hard to do, but not impossible. We are always addressing our staff’s needs and their questions, especially if we are in a crisis situation. We are so big—about 8,500 staff members—so it’s not one-size-fits-all. We take a multichannel approach, pushing out the same message by email, by video, by text message—so that everyone knows what’s going on.

We also make it a point to notify our staff about anything first, before we tell our larger community. During COVID, we saw a lot of teachers from other districts saying they found out about changes to protocols or things like that on Facebook, not from their districts. We don’t ever want that to happen here. Even outside of a crisis, we send them ahead of time

exactly what we’re planning to send to parents and families. Everyone’s getting the same unified message, but our teachers and staff are getting it first.

There are no greater advocates for us than those who work here in the district. Looking back at our employee satisfaction surveys, our scores have continued to rise, even during COVID—and I think a lot of that is because of our immediate, regular, transparent communication to the staff. They’re never wondering what’s going on.

Of course, when you’re in crisis mode, that’s difficult to do. We came back to school this year to the Delta variant, and then this semester started with Omicron. So I would say we probably only turned the corner from crisis mode in the last couple of months. Right before we went out for spring break, we sat down as a communications team with the superintendent and said, Now through graduation, what stories can we produce that are proactive and positive?

We made a list of those ideas, assigned them out, and created those stories. Then we pushed them on our blog, social media feeds, video channels, through news releases, and everywhere else we could proactively share our good news.

Now, we also have a proactive pitch plan. We hadn’t been pitching very many non-COVID stories to the media for about two and a half years. So we drew a line in the sand and said, This is where we’re going to start. And we did!

We introduced a districtwide STEM curriculum for all four-year-olds in pre-K at the end of March—and we wanted to talk about that.

So we pitched the idea to our local magazine, Arlington Today, and it became the cover story of their April issue.

Q A

So we’ve talked about crises—but how do you proactively share your district’s successes?

My advice is to just decide you’re going to do it. Put a list together of proactive stories that you know your team can cover and go for it.

Then, you can get back to the business at hand: supporting quality education for kids and preparing for the next emergency.

When families are making decisions about education, they have five other choices besides your public schools: virtual, homeschool, charter, private schools, or other brick-and-mortar districts. We have to make sure our schools look better than all those other options, and that means emphasizing the positives.

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Talking in Memphis

The May 2022 SchoolCEO Conference In May 2022, SchoolCEO held our first-ever conference. We wanted to do is this: take the big ideas about organizational culture and branding we feature in our magazine and discuss them directly with school leaders from all across the country. Here is what our first group of attendees had to say about the results:

"If there's only one conference you can attend in 2022, make sure it's Apptegy's SchoolCEO Conference."

Ron Nielson | Superintendent, San Juan School District, UT

“Hands down the best conference I've ever been to. Seriously."

Dr. Amy Britt | Superintendent, Bakersfield R-IV School District, MO

"I learned more in one day of SchoolCEO Conference than any multi-day conference I’ve attended.”

Dr. Nancy Anderson | Superintendent, Cutter Morning Star Public Schools, AR

Want to know more? See for yourself!

Make plans to join us this October at: schoolceo.com/conference

MENTAL MODELS TO MOVE YOU FORWARD Amidst a pandemic and one of the most tense political climates K-12 education has ever known, long-term planning might feel like wishful thinking. At SchoolCEO, we spend a lot of time talking to superintendents and other school leaders about their hopes and dreams for their districts. Over and over again, we hear variations on the same statement: “We had big plans, but then COVID hit.”

Beyond Backward Planning The most common tool for long-term planning is very well known to educators—backward planning, sometimes known as “reverse engineering.” Under this mental framework, you start with an outcome that you desire and then work backward to create goals that will eventually produce your desired result.

The concept of backward planning is incredibly formative for most educators—in fact, it’s the foundation for many teachers’ lesson planning. You probably even read Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design at some point during your own learning journey. In the classroom, the desired outcome is content mastery; teachers then work backward to write lessons that support students toward that goal.

Backward planning is useful for a lot of reasons, but helping you get out of your head and think beyond your current problems is chief among them. In the hectic day-to-day work of school administration, getting out of the weeds and building long-term plans takes effort, and backward planning is one way to get there. This is a very basic type of mental model—but it’s not the only one.

What are mental models?

But what does this mean for us now, over two years into a pandemic and in a field that will only keep evolving? As hard as it can be to reenergize plans that were set aside two years ago—and even dream up new ones—there is no time to wait. School leaders must be prepared to build resilient long-term plans. Putting this into practice, though, is easier said than done.

To build viable long-term plans, you need to make sure you’re addressing the right problems—and that your solutions are robust enough to weather whatever surprises crop up. In any organization, it is the role of the executive to strike a balance between adhering to a long-term plan and navigating inevitable short-term switch-ups. As the executive of your district, finding that balance falls to you.

But how do you ensure that you’re focusing on the right problems and solutions in the first place? This is where mental models come in handy.

Put simply, mental models are the lenses through which we view the world. They’re ways of thinking. Each of us develops our own go-to mental models based on our experiences, beliefs, and ideas—whether consciously or unconsciously. With the help of fresh mental models, you can reexamine a familiar problem in order to come to a novel solution. In short, a mental model is a framework that you use to make sense of the world.

Having consistent mental models we fall back on is, in a lot of ways, a good thing. It creates precedents, making it easier for us to make decisions rather than approach every new encounter from scratch. For example, whether you know it or not, you probably use a mental model when you go grocery shopping. You don’t look at every product each time you shop; instead, you might always walk through to see the produce specials first and then use a list to quickly navigate the rest of the aisles.

Everyone uses mental models to understand their challenges. The problem is that once you’re an adult, you probably unconsciously use the same three or four familiar

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mental models over and over. No mental model is perfect 100% of the time, and falling into the same ways of thinking every time will rarely result in any inspired ideas. Fortunately, there are hundreds of models that you can incorporate into your thinking. Learning to view your plans through these new lenses won’t just give you new ways of seeing your problems; it will also help you become a better thinker and, by extension, a better planner.

Mental Models to Push Your Thinking As you learn new mental models, you will probably recognize them as familiar, even if you didn’t know the specific terminology we use here. While hundreds of models exist, a few are a lot more common—and well researched— than the rest. Here are good ones to get started with as you dip your toes into new ways of thinking.

First Principles Thinking There is a famous anecdote about a woman who cooks ham for a dinner party. One of her guests asks her why she cuts the end of the ham off, and the woman replies that she doesn’t know; that’s just how her family cooks ham. She later asks her mother, who admits that she doesn’t know why they do it, either. They then ask the grandmother, who admits that she started cutting the ham out of necessity; her first oven was too small to fit a full-sized ham. The strategy, it turns out, was solving a problem that no longer existed.

This story is a prime example of our first mental model, first principles thinking. In this mental model, you interrogate a challenge to strip it of its inherent assumptions. For example, you might think that your mother cut the ends off her hams to improve their taste—but that would be an assumption.

You work your way through these assumptions until you come to the titular “first principle”—the most basic verifiable fact that can’t be reduced any further. Once you get to this first principle, you are better equipped to understand the root of your problem, and hence find a solution.

The true masters of first principles thinking are children, who love to question “why” when faced with a seemingly arbitrary “fact.” Why do they have to sleep in their bed?

Why do they have to go to bed at all? Why is it dark? Why does the sun go down? While these questions are likely exhausting to a tired parent, constantly asking “why” can help you interrogate a problem to its foundation.

Let’s apply this thinking to something simple: your district’s careers page. Why do you have a careers page in the first place? You might assume that the role of such a page is solely to inform potential applicants of job opportunities.

But thanks to websites like Indeed and LinkedIn, potential candidates probably already know that your openings exist. The function of the page, then, shouldn’t be to inform them of jobs, but rather to convince them to take that next step and apply. This means you should be advertising your school’s culture—not just its vacancies.

The Map Is Not the Territory The Map Is Not the Territory is another mental model that can help you discern the difference between representations of reality and reality itself. Every map is a simplification of the area it represents; some maps focus on roads, others focus on topography, and so on. After all, a single map with every small hill, stream, or gulch on it would be overwhelming and impractical for most casual map readers.

As a mental model, The Map Is Not the Territory can help people understand any kind of representation of reality.

We’re often confused when we see a representation of something and mistake it for the whole truth, regardless of whatever “unmappable” qualities exist within the data or plan. For example, an architect will use a series of blueprints to plan a new building. One plan might be for the electrical work needed, another for plumbing, and still another for framing. While each of the plans represents the same building, they are all limited in what they represent. In a sense, all plans are like this. It is our job to be aware of their purposes—as well as their limitations.

This mental model might be especially useful for school leaders when interpreting student data, like test scores. In a way, any score report is just one representation of your district, not the entire truth. For example, let’s say a test is given to two class periods of students and the results show that the second period class reads, on average, at a lower grade level than the first period class. Through the Map Is Not the Territory model, you might seek to understand why this perceived reality is the case—and what information you’re missing—rather than take these results at face value.

You might find, for example, that the second period class’s test was interrupted by a fire alarm, which disrupted their focus even though they were able to make up the time.

Antifragility The antifragility model is the idea that adversity is a strengthening force, and that any plan or idea can only benefit from the chaos that besieges it. While we usually see disorder and chaos as external threats to a plan’s strength, the antifragility model views them as integral parts of proving that the system or plan is healthy and sustainable.

The human body is a perfect example of antifragility. The body actually needs adversity in order to grow stronger.

Just as exposure to viruses makes for a more robust immune system, muscles and bones get stronger through the exertion of physical exercise.

In some ways, antifragility is similar to what we in education call a “growth mindset.” Rather than focusing on the negative impacts that a challenge presents, you should see it as an opportunity to make your plan or project more resilient. For example, many districts that started school lunch pickup during the pandemic have kept these programs up during summer breaks, even though schools have long since reopened. Despite the problems it caused, the unexpected adversity of COVID-19 also spurred long-lasting innovation.

The idea of antifragility can be hard to swallow—especially if you’ve seen most of your district’s long-term plans buckle under the unpredictability of the past two years. On the other hand, schools couldn’t thrive without accounting for at least some chaos. As unexpected as the pandemic was, we’re already seeing signs that our school systems are stronger—and more inclusive—coming out of it.

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Inversion There’s a famous quote by Charlie Munger, the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett, that sums up our final mental model, inversion, pretty well: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” The concept of inversion involves turning all of your ideas around goal setting on their heads. Rather than thinking about your desired result, imagine the absolute worst-case scenario— then focus on how to avoid that outcome.

For example, let’s say that you have a goal around improving teacher work satisfaction. Ordinarily, you would approach this goal by thinking of ways to improve teacher morale or working conditions. Under the inversion model, though, you would instead focus on what a total failure of this goal would look like. What would it take for every teacher to quit? What would bring staff morale to an all-time low? And what can you do to make sure that doesn’t happen?

On the surface level, inversion seems deceptively simple, but it can help you reach a new level of clarity around your problems. As important as goal setting is, it’s equally important to identify the rock bottom that you never want to hit—and figure out what guardrails you can put in place to make sure you don’t end up there.

We know it can be hard to change the way you think.

Patterns are comforting, and switching things up can sometimes shake your confidence. But it is the role of the educator—and the leader—to find the best plans, strategies, and paths forward. If you always approach decisions with the same mindset, you will always arrive at the very same conclusions that have fallen flat before. But by understanding your problems in different ways, you can find new, innovative paths toward progress.

So as you continue to plan for an uncertain future, consider approaching potential pitfalls differently than you typically would. The mental models we’ve discussed here can help you identify the sources of your problems, understand the limitations of your own viewpoints, and test the strength of your strategies. No plan will ever be foolproof—but by thinking a little differently, you can build stronger long-term plans for your schools, staff, and students.

Marketing your school district to prospective students, parents, and employees doesn’t always have to be timeconsuming or expensive. One effective way to entice new students and teachers to your district is by showing off your schools—not just talking about them. Your community needs to see where their children will be learning, and, oftentimes, where their tax dollars are being spent. Whether on your website, on social media, or in person, giving your stakeholders a good glimpse of your schools can earn you trust, interest, and even enrollment.

There are several ways to showcase your school buildings, from hosting open houses for your community to giving virtual tours of your campuses online. Photography and videography, of course, are the easiest and most efficient tools for universal access and appeal. Here, we’ll highlight a few school districts making sure their communities know exactly where they’re learning, working, and thriving.

Show them who you are.

If you’re going to show off your schools, you’ll want to present them from their best angles, in their best light, and through a lens worthy of your stakeholders’ eyes. For an effective example of using photography to highlight your school buildings, look no further than Tennessee’s Cleveland City Schools. When you visit their website, you’re immediately greeted with high-quality photographs of every school in the district.

These aren’t just snapshots either—they’re professionalquality photos that take both lighting and composition into account. What could be more inviting to prospective students or staff than sunlight shining on the beautiful facade of a school like Cleveland High?

Cleveland City Schools also posts video tours of their campuses on social media.

On their social media, Cleveland City Schools goes one step further by using high-quality video. One post on their Instagram account, for instance, takes viewers on a video tour of the district, turning the camera on everything from classrooms to science labs to stadiums and auditoriums.

The short video includes background music and a narrator who details some of the district’s history while also highlighting its facilities.

It’s important to remember that you don’t necessarily need to hire a professional photographer to get high-quality images and videos of your schools. With a little practice and the right smartphone, you or a member of your staff can capture shots that elicit the kind of emotional reactions you desire from your audience.

For a quick guide to taking your own high-quality photos, read our Fall 2021 article “Capturing the Moment” at schoolceo.com/photo

Show them who you’ll be.

Of course, showcasing your school buildings and campuses to the public also helps you earn and keep their trust. Most school districts rely on funds from bond initiatives to build their facilities, so provide your community with construction updates. This isn’t just a courtesy—it’s also great marketing and a way to show your supporters the impact of their votes.

Cleveland City Schools features high-quality photos of each campus on their website’s homepage.

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good effect. This will not only build trust, but could very well help you pass your next bond. Your supporters can see how you’re spending their investment dollars, while prospective students and staff can see what your district has to offer.

In Illinois, Barrington School District 220 has set up a page they call “Build 220,” with custom menus that allow visitors to toggle between specific school sites for updates, designs, photos, and other information. The “Build 220” tab can be found on the district’s homepage, right where any visitor can see it. A user-friendly and easily accessible page like this one is a perfect way to prove that your district is a thoughtful and trustworthy steward of your community’s investment.

Your students and their families will see your school buildings in real life, while others in your community— especially those who don’t have kids in the district—may not.

But those community members without direct connections could be the swing votes that make or break a bond.

Mora Public Schools shares photos to keep their community updated on construction progress.

Mora Public Schools in Minnesota, for example, shares construction photos with weekly updates of ongoing projects, all under one tab on their website. The district’s “New Construction” page also features artist renderings of future school buildings, as well as a community engagement presentation detailing the design process, key milestones, and construction progress for specific sites.

Mora Public Schools shares artist renderings of future school buildings.

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In 2019, Plainview ISD in Texas passed their first facilities bond since the 1970s, totaling $76.7 million. The district not only has a bond page on their website, complete with drone footage of ongoing construction, but has also come up with some unique ways to introduce the Plainview community to their new elementary schools.

Going well beyond simple ribbon cuttings, Plainview ISD has plans to share their new buildings as often as possible.

“Something really neat that we’ll do next year is invite the Lions Club, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, and Soroptimist Club to use our new school conference rooms and spaces for a special event or occasion. They’ll host meetings or events in the facilities that they were a large part in helping fund,” says Plainview superintendent Dr. H.T. Sanchez. “We’re not going to rent out space for these special occasions—we’re going to give out space because we want people to come in and see our buildings.” The district will also partner with local YMCAs to share their new facilities and will host community open houses throughout the year. Establishing your schools as shared community spaces can pay dividends, both in gaining support for future projects and in increasing family participation and buy-in.

It may be difficult to match the enthusiasm your staff and students have for your district’s new buildings. But by sharing your progress with your community in creative, inviting ways, you can grow advocates for your district and, ultimately, for the students you serve. By simply showing the world where your students learn, you’re building hype—and support—for your schools.

Find shareable articles, key topics, and full issues at schoolceo.com

Recruiting teachers

Creating advocates

Retaining classified staff

Owning your digital spaces

Championing communications directors

Engaging all families

Building a brand

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Dr. Nancy Anderson, Superintendent Cutter Morning Star Public Schools