Why School Communication Matters is an easy-to-use reference for the communication dilemmas that superintendents, principals, and other school leaders face today as they lead faculty and staff, parents and students, neighbors and community leaders. This newly revised edition incorporates the monumental technological changes, including social media that are reframing the way we think and work. The book deals with real life challenges and offers practicable solutions. Demonstrates how school leaders can design effective two-way communication strategies with their own communities—because one size no longer fits all. Draws from some of the best research in school communication and business leadership. Offers a framework of ideas on which school leaders can hang their strategic plans. Examines real challenges—from battles with angry parents to the effective use of data to the management of a major crisis—and links these challenges to larger leadership issues. Includes up to the minute information and fresh statistics on today’s social media and community outreach. Is a boots-on-the-ground field guide of proven strategies to meet the needs of practitioners who work on the front lines Is a reference book for both new and seasoned school leaders Is a textbook for those aspiring to school leadership positions

Communication Matters helps students move beyond an intuitive appreciation of communication to explore core principles of the discipline. By helping students take personal responsibility for their communication behaviors, by encouraging critical reflection, and by actively applying the key concepts to diverse contemporary challenges, the program fosters an understanding of the many important ways communication matters in daily life.

Open this book to find insights, resources, and strategies from seventeen ground-breaking educators and community leaders around the world who share passionate first-person accounts of how to engage students and families of diverse backgrounds. Diverse schools offer enriched academic and social environments, as students and families of different backgrounds and experiences provide a vibrant mosaic of insights, perspectives, and skills. Innovative Voices in Education features stories from around the world, as innovative teachers, educational leaders, and community activists passionately share personal accounts of their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Book jacket.

Allens proven ability and flare for presenting complex and oftentimes sensitive topics in nonthreatening ways carry over in the latest edition of Difference Matters. Her down-to-earth analysis of six social identity categories reveals how communication establishes and enacts identity and power dynamics. She provides historical overviews to show how perceptions of gender, race, social class, sexuality, ability, and age have varied throughout time and place. Allen clearly explains pertinent theoretical perspectives and illustrates those and other discussions with real-life experiences (many of which are her own). She also offers practical guidance for how to communicate difference more humanely. While many examples are from organizational contexts, readers from a wide range of backgrounds can relate to them and appreciate their relevance. This eye-opening, vibrant text, suitable for use in a variety of disciplines, motivates readers to think about valuing difference as a positive, enriching feature of society. Interactive elements such as Spotlights on Media, I.D. Checks, Tool Kits, and Reflection Matters questions awaken interest, awareness, and creative insights for change.

This book provides a step-by-step guide for best practice communication within schools for parents, governors and the community. Aligned to the National Standards of Excellence for Headteachers, it sets out an ‘inside out’ approach to creating and communicating a compelling vision for schools, building leadership communication skills and supporting the management of day-to-day communications in schools. Packed full of strategies to help attract and retain the best teachers, improve the effectiveness of leadership and management, build the reputation of the school, work with parents and achieve better academic results, this is essential reading for headteachers and school leaders.

Drawing from Buddhist and yogic precepts, this practical guide offers tools for becoming a better, more compassionate communicator at home, at work, and in the world Have you ever tried to tell someone what you want only to feel misunderstood and frustrated? Or hesitated to ask for what you needed because you didn't want to burden the other person? Or been stuck in blame or anger that wouldn't go away? Judith and Ike Lasater, long-term students of yoga and Buddhism, experienced dilemmas like these, too. Even though they had studied the yoga principle of satya (truth) and the Buddhist precept of right speech, it was not until they began practicing Marshall Rosenberg's techniques of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that they understood how to live satya and right speech. In What We Say Matters, Judith and Ike describe their journey through NVC and how speech becomes a spiritual practice based on giving and receiving with compassion—everywhere, all the time—whether at home, at work, or in the world. Their writing is deeply personal, punctuated by their recounts of trial and error, success and failure, laughter and challenge—even in writing this book! They guide you through an introduction to NVC with clear explanations, poignant examples, suggested exercises, and helpful resources. With practice, you'll learn new ways to: • Extend empathy to yourself and others • Distinguish between feelings and needs • Make requests rather than demands • Choose connection over conflict • Create mutually satisfying outcomes

Harness the power of messaging to create a positive school culture and increase school and community collaboration. Written for school leaders, this title is divided into three parts. Each part helps readers to maximize their role as chief communicators with different stakeholders: students, teachers, and parents and community. Each chapter includes suggestions for using digital tools to enhance communication and ends with reflection questions and practical next steps. How this book will help you foster school community and improve your communication strategy: Comprehend the power of messaging and public relations in school. Gain tips for how to best use available technology tools, including online platforms, for messaging purposes. Inspect scenarios and real anecdotes that show communication strategies and messaging tactics in action in schools. Learn how to implement positive communication with parents and students from the start of the school year. Explore special strategies for communicating with challenging students or in difficult school climates. Contents: Introduction: Why Messaging Matters Chapter 1: Building a Positive Culture for Messaging Chapter 2: Cultivating a Positive Message With Teachers Chapter 3: Using Technology to Message With Teachers Chapter 4: Cultivating a Positive Message With Students Chapter 5: Using Technology to Message With Students Chapter 6: Cultivating a Positive Message With the Community, Parents, and Beyond Chapter 7: Using Technology to Message With the Community, Parents, and Beyond Epilogue References and Resources Index

Teaching is an essential skill in becoming a faculty member in any institution of higher education. Yet how is that skill actually acquired by graduate students? Teaching as if Learning Matters collects first-person narratives from graduate students and new PhDs that explore how the skills required to teach at a college level are developed. It examines the key issues that graduate students face as they learn to teach effectively when in fact they are still learning and being taught. Featuring contributions from over thirty graduate students from a variety of disciplines at Indiana University, Teaching as if Learning Matters allows these students to explore this topic from their own unique perspectives. They reflect on the importance of teaching to them personally and professionally, telling of both successes and struggles as they learn and embrace teaching for the first time in higher education.

Noise, as we usually think of it, is background sound that interferes with our ability to hear more interesting sounds. In general terms, though, it is anything that interferes with the reception of signals of any sort. It includes extraneous energy in the environment, degradation of signals in transit, and spontaneous random activity in receivers and signalers. Whatever the cause, the consequence of noise is error by receivers, and these errors are the key to understanding how noise shapes the evolution of communication. Noise Matters breaks new ground in the scientific understanding of how communication evolves in the presence of noise. Combining insights of signal detection theory with evidence from decades of his own original research, Haven Wiley explains the profound effects of noise on the evolution of communication. The coevolution of signalers and receivers does not result in ideal, noise-free communication, Wiley finds. Instead, signalers and receivers evolve to a joint equilibrium in which communication is effective but never error-free. Noise is inescapable in the evolution of communication. Wiley’s comprehensive approach considers communication on many different levels of biological organization, from cells to individual organisms, including humans. Social interactions, such as honesty, mate choice, and cooperation, are reassessed in the light of noisy communication. The final sections demonstrate that noise even affects how we think about human language, science, subjectivity, and freedom. Noise Matters thus contributes to understanding the behavior of animals, including ourselves.

Teacher Diversity and Student Success makes a powerful case for diversifying the teaching force as an important policy lever for closing achievement gaps and moving schools closer to equity goals. Written by three leading scholars, the book provides nuanced solutions on how to diversify the teaching force, increase student exposures to same-race teachers, and improve teacher training for a culturally diverse student body. They argue that teacher diversity should be seen as one element of teacher quality, and policies focused on improving teacher quality should take race explicitly into consideration. The authors also address the historic and contemporary factors that have kept people of color out of teaching and highlight emerging research showing the significant, long-lasting impact of same-race teacher exposures, particularly for Black and Latino students. This timely book is a call to action for building teacher diversity to ensure student success.