Month: December 2010

IA25 – Parent Newsletter

Leave a reply

In order to complete this activity, I gave considerable thought to what format an effective Parent Newsletter should take in order to give parents in our school guidance on helping their children learn. In my role as Educational Technology Specialist, I provide front-line support for parents and students having difficulty with our website and I create and send all of the school’s electronic communications, including the weekly email newsletter we send to all families every Friday afternoon.

It occured to me that, rather than write a piece for an imaginary Newsletter, I can simply share a short video tutorial I created recently for parents to learn how to use the login portion of our school’s website. Our teachers use online tools with their classes and both students and parents can log in to the website to access these class materials, grades, calendars and other information.

Here is a video (http://www.hillel-nmb.org/page.cfm?p=477 )I created recently showing parents how to log in and access these pages.

I chose this project to share here because I believe it reflects to sort of dynamic, electronic communcation media we need to use to keep students and parents interested and returning to our school’s site. Short videos like this need not be limited to topics as prosaic as how to use the tool and, in the hands of the right teacher, this sort of media can be an exciting way to get parents and teachers involved in what’s happening in a class. I share tutorials like this one with the faculty as often as possible in an attempt to inspire them to create their own.

.

IA24 – Parent/Student Handbook

Leave a reply

In order to complete this activity, I spoke with KS, a high school senior, and with RB, the mother of several lower school students, about our school’s Handbook. I also looked at the handbooks of two of the schools in our area and evaluated our own with fresh eyes. 

The truth of the matter is that everyone I spoke with was satisfied with the Handbook. They felt it contained a comprehensive collection of the information they expected it to with no obvious omissions.

RB, the mother with whom I spoke, felt that the Hnadbook should contain more specific dates for events but acknowledged that most of those dates were probably not finalized when the book went to print at the start of the school year. This promted an interesting discussion of whether the book neeeded to be printed at all -as opposed to being a digital publication- but she felt that having a physical book you could pull out and reference was valuable.

This seemed unnecessary to KS who, with his younger perspective, felt that a digital-only copy would be enough. He also pointed out that, if the book were an online publication, then when dates changed, rules were updated or information became available, the “book” could be updated easily.

The only real criticism I have for the book is its organization. I know from my own experience that the Handbook has gone through a number of reorganizations over the last several years and nobody has really been satisfied with any one version since people are always confused about where to find particular bits of information. My suggestion is to index the Handbook thouroughly, cross-referencing information as exhausitvely as possible to make it easy to find things.

.

IA23 – School Web Sites

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I interviewed IT, the woman in charge of our school’s site, and evaluated it using the rubric included in the activity materials. I used the same rubric to evaluate the site of two schools with which we compete.

Findings

I will say at the outset that I (and IT) receive a great deal of positive feedback for our school’s website. It is a point of pride for our administration and something the school thinks is important and invests both time and money in to.

School A – Our competition

The website I chose to evaluate is for a larger K-12 private school which boasts two beautiful campuses and an excellent program. Their website, however, is lacking in certain characteristics that are both easy to remedy and important.

The site is a Level 2 site in terms of content. The pages contain information which is of some interest but not compelling and describes some of the school’s programs, but not all.

Its design is only Level 1, since it is not inviting to users and the elements often interfere with one another and impede ease of use. It is a chore to locate information and a user does not want to stay long.

It is also difficult to navigate, making a visitor frustrated and confused, scoring poorly on User-friendliness as well. For example, since the school has two campuses, the first page one sees contains two links, one for each campus’s sub-page. However, there is no explanation to assist the visitor who might now know that there are two campuses or, as was the case for me, which he or she wants to read about.

The information is valid and reliable, scoring well on Accuracy of Information and being Up-to-Date, but the design flaws really detract from the site’s usability.

School B  – Our website

I am proud to say that our website does well by comparison. I may be biased, but I scored it as a Level 3 site on each of the rubric’s benchmarks.

The Content is is well-written (by upper school journalism students) and fresh; several new news stories are posted every school day. The site offers a comprehensive overview of the school’s activities, including an up-to-the-minute calendar on the side of every page which includes the option to subscribe via text message, email or RSS feed.

The site’s Design and User-friendliness are impressive as well, featuring a consistent, pleasing design which makes it clear where to find information and encouraging the user to explore. 
As stated above, information is always up-tp-date and accurate with dated articles and an ever-changing homepage slideshow of news.
Justifications
It is obvious to me why these differences exist: our competition has put fewer resources toward the website than we have. Their site appears to be home-grown, with inconsistent page design and some obviously out-of-date elements. Someone is coding that site by hand in their free periods.
Our website, on the other hand, is powered by a professional firm (finalsite) who charges an annual fee for their software. Additionally, the school pays a full-time employee to write and edit articles, shoot photos and video and keep the site up to date. While I can’t determine if the cost is justified, it certainly makes an impression.
Recommendation
The most obvious recommendation I can make is the incorporation of online learning tools into a school website. Our school already posts gradebook information online but why not include discussion boards, assignment dropboxes, online chat and other web 2.0 tools into the site to allow teachers to use them every day? In fact, I am inspired to make this recommendation by the experiences I’ve had as a student at Walden where all of my coursework was completed online. These tools allow teachers to extend learning beyond the classroom in terms of both time and space and free students to express themselves in new and exciting ways.

.

IA19 – Supporting Students with Disabilities

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I interviewed MW, our lead special education teacher and GC, the head of our English department, to understand the perspective each has on the process of supporting students with disabilities. I was struck by the differences I saw in key areas as well as the overall similarities between them.

Similarities and Differences

Both MW and GC were proud of the services we offer our disabled students and both feel that room for improvement exists. Interestingly, their perspectives on where that improvement should occur are different and that difference is telling.

MW, the lead special education teacher, feels that our general teachers are sensitive to the needs of students with disabilities, but only to a point and, in her words, often look to the special education teachers to “fix their students” so they can be successful in class. She feels that teachers should be more sensitive to the fact that managing learning disabilities is a process, not a quick-fix situation, and that long-term understanding and flexibility are required.

GC, on the other hand, told me that he is often frustrated by the “continuous stream of accommodations teachers are asked to make for students with disabilities. “For example,” he told me, “suppose I am asked to help little Johnny break his research paper up into smaller steps so that he can manage it better because he has difficulty with managing large projects. I get that. But, sooner or later, Johnny is going to have to know how to manage a large research paper, right?”

This contrast is telling since it points to a fundamental lack of understanding on both sides of the perceptive of the other.

Role of the Principal

When I pointed this contrast out to both of them and asked them how they thought it should be resolved, they both suggested –correctly, I believe– that teamwork and compromise is the best solution and this, I think, is the role of a principal insofar as he or she is responsible for promoting collaboration among general and special education teachers.

Most communication between these two camps is done in writing, given the busy schedules they both keep. IEP Meetings and Staffings are few and far between and, most of the time, a teacher simply receives a list of recommendations for a particular student which, after time, begins to look very similar to all of the other “individual” recommendations made by special education teachers. This communication is what must change in order for the situation to improve.

A students progress in a mainstream classroom must be monitored by both staff members and communication should flow in both directions. An irony often missed by both sides is that the strategies that will make GC (for example) a better teacher to his students with disabilities will often help all of his other students as well. This sort of collaboration is what a principal must foster in order to remedy the situation and help both specialists to help their students achieve success.

.

IA18 – Supporting English Language Learners

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I interviewed DA, our lower school principal, who deals with the incorporation of most of our ELL students. She and I discussed the number of ELL students we have, what programs we use to address their needs, how their families are involved, and other related issues. I also reviewed the National Research Council’s “attributes of effective schools and classrooms that benefit all students, especially English learners,” paying careful attention of how these attributes are aligned to the programs and practices we employ.

Findings

The NRC research pointed to four main issues which are present in effective ELL programs. They are local autonomy, some native-language instruction, especially initially, the early phasing-in of English instruction and specially trained teachers as students grow older. I was gratified to see that the programs in place at our school align with these characteristics quite well:

  1. As a private school, we enjoy the kind of local autonomy the research describes. Though we strive to meet the same requirements our public counterparts do, we can travel our own path where appropriate and have far more flexibility to experiment with new methods of meeting our students’ needs.
  2. Our Early Childhood program features teachers who are all fluent in Spanish, the non-English language most of our ELL students speak. Moreover, they are native speakers, meaning that in addition to their knowledge of the language, they are familiar with idiom, traditions and Latin-American culture. Since these teachers are usually the first faculty that new families meet, this familiarity goes a long way to making the students and their parents comfortable.
  3. Despite the early instruction in Spanish, our Early Childhood curriculum transitions to English, following the third of the NRC findings.
  4. As students grow older and move into our lower school, if English is still a challenge, we offer an ESL program staffed by specialists at every grade level.

Strategies

Rather than invent strategies of my own, I will describe things I observed while visiting our classrooms.

As a religious school, we teach far more than just academic content. And, as a school with students from over 25 different countries, we are an international community which takes every available opportunity to celebrate our diversity. So, for example, during a lower school unit on Passover traditions, students were asked to demonstrate their favorite family traditional rituals. With students from such diverse backgrounds, classes were filled with a rich variety of differing traditions, all centered around the Passover Seder. This allowed our teachers to build home-school connections which celebrated and demonstrated the diverse backgrounds of our ELL families alongside their classmates.

Similarly, around the High Holidays, students were asked to bring a family guest to class to help teach a song or prayer appropriate to the holiday. Many of these songs were in Spanish (and many family guests spoke little or no English) which allowed teachers to value home language and culture as a resource as opposed to an obstacle to overcome.

.

IA17 – Supporting Underperforming Students

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I interviewed LP, one of our school counselors, BE, an upper school science teacher, JD, the parent of a student with Asperger’s Syndrome and DA, the principal of our Lower School. Additionally, I spoke with teachers in the school’s Learning Center and the Special Needs School which is in residence on our campus.

Findings

The school at which I work could serve as a model for effectively supporting the needs of underperforming students. A number of formal programs exist to offer students opportunities for assistance, whether their difficulty is caused by a deficiency is study skills, a learning disability, a home issue or some other cause. our program breaks down into three basic categories:

Classroom Support

An expectation exists at my school that teachers will make themselves available for students who require extra attention. In addition to the basics of student-centered classrooms, teachers each have a duty period during which they are available in their classrooms for meetings with students and, during a special period at the end of the school day, all faculty remain on campus for 40 minutes for the same reason. In this way, students and parents know they will never have to wait more than 24 hours to meet with a particular teacher.

Additionally, the school offers a free Homework Lab in the Media Center every afternoon, staffed with tutors, for no charge. Students K-12 can simply drop by with no appointment for everything from a quiet place to do their homework to a one-on-one session with a specialist prepared by the teacher to assist.

Learning Center

If a student has significant challenges that prevent success in a number of classes, teachers can recommend to the the principal that the Learning Center be involved. Analogous to a public school’s resource staff, the Learning Center is an internal group of specialists who can offer assistance to a student along a wide spectrum of services ranging from additional instruction in coursework or study skills all the way to classroom shadowing, note-taking and tutoring. Students with no identified learning issue are welcome to visit the learning center for assistance with these issues.

Special Needs School

Further needs are addressed by a separate school, in residence on our campus, which services students with learning disabilities. Students can earn a certificate of attendance, a diploma from this separate school or, with support, earn a diploma from our school upon graduation. Each student’s needs are considered individually and recommendations are made. 

JD, the parent of an Asperger’s child I interviewed explained that she and her family relocated to Miami from the Midwest because of this program. The idea that her son could go to the same religious school as his siblings, sit in the same classes as “everyone else” and still receive specialized support from experts made the decision easy, she told me. Her son, currently in grade 8, is expected to graduate from our school in four years with a standard diploma, earned with the support of this special school.

DA, the principal I interviewed, explained that she saw her role in this regard to be one of identification. She said that her job is to identify which students require assistance and then work with the family to select among the options. She is gratified to be working in a school with so many options for families and is proud of the successes the school has achieved.

.

IA16 – Literacy

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I spent some time interviewing administrators and teachers K-12 to determine what formal programs exist to specifically promote literacy in out school. I also sat in on a number of  class sessions. Additionally, I reviewed the Ohio State University’s P-12 Project materials on Leadership for Literacy and their findings on the characteristics of effective literacy programs.

Literacy leadership functions present in our school

FIrst and foremost, it is important to point out that our school is located in the Miami metropolitan area and, as such, has a high percentage (over 50%) of students who come from homes in which the first language is one other than English. The vast majority of our students are fluent in Spanish, with some Hebrew as well. We have a few students (less than 5%) who speak no English and our school boasts a formal ESL program. This situation does not address literacy directly, but it does complicate things a little.

To our credit, I identified a number of functions of literacy leadership functions that are evident in the school, though there is obviously some room for improvement.

  • Establishing Literacy as a Priority: In our primary grades (ECE-3) there is an obvious emphasis placed on reading. My observations of these classrooms revealed a specific focus on reading comprehension and a push to prepare students for the Columbia University Teachers College Readers and Writers Workshop which occurs in grades 3-5. Each classroom has specific reading areas set aside and a significant portion of class time is given over to reading aloud or silently (depending on age). 
  • Ensuring Quality Instruction: The school has adopted specific curricula in each section in order to address reading specifically at each level. From the Reggio Emilia-inspired program in the Early Childhood classrooms through the Readers and Writers Workshop to the formal MAP Tests in Middle and High School and FCAT guideposts the students must hit, there are formal programs in place and teachers are specifically and comprehensively prepared for literacy instruction.
  • Assessing Performance and Ensuring Accountability: Our students take the MAP Test three times each year from Grades 3-10 and those scores depict growth in literacy throughout the year. Each student receives a   score as part of the results and reading assignments are given to challenge each student individually at their reading level. Our school goals are worded in terms or raising these specific scores and teachers are both held to and supported in achieving those goals.

Recommendations

While many of the functions of literacy leadership are present, there is room for improvement. Each of the functions identified by the P-12 Project can serve as a prompt for consideration of ways to improve our program. For example:

  • Establishing Literacy as a Priority: The finding calls for an “uncommon focus” on reading. While literacy is important to our school, we are probably not working hard enough, considering literacy is the “most crucial skill for success inside school.”  We have identified raising literacy scores as one goal among many but would be better served by seeing it as a lynchpin for success in all other academic disciplines.
  • Developing an Appropriate Platform of Beliefs:A challenge for many schools with as diverse a population as ours is that, when students are placed in ELL/ESL programs, they can lose the motivation to ever move out and back to a mainstream classroom. We much change our posture regarding many of these students in order to help them and their families understand that, while special programs are made available to help them succeed, the goal is that all students should meet rigorous standards, regardless of their background.
  • Ensuring Quality Instruction: Our school has successful programs in place at every grade level for reading instruction, however, a collection of disparate approaches, no matter how effective, can not be as successful as one integrated, unified approach to literacy instruction. We can not be complacent with a good set of programs; we must identify one that is great and, if we can’t, we should develop it ourselves, basing it on recognized research and the wealth of our own experiences.
  • Maximizing Time: Since ours is a dual-curriculum religious school, finding time for effective instruction is always a challenge. In order to increase the time we have to use to focus on literacy without negatively impacting other courses, we must find a way to inject literacy instruction into other areas. The study of Judaic texts, for example, comprises several skills including many skills key to literacy such as decoding unfamiliar words, developing vocabulary, etc. By generalizing these skills and incorporating them into other classes, we can further maximize the time we spend on a school-wide literacy initiative.
  • Constructing a Quality Program: We have these basic areas covered through the programs that are in place but, again, a more unified approach would be better. Using what we know to improve what we do will move us forward.
  • Assessing Performance and Ensuring Accountability: Here too, unification is the area most ripe for improvement. The expansion of the MAP test into both higher and lower grades will allow us apples-to-apples charting of student progress. If the MAP Test is the correct tool, we should use it; if it is not, we should find one that is.
  • Creating a Coherent and Aligned Reading System:My recommendation here should be familiar: unification. Coherence demands that a single philosophy be adopted so that vertical planning can be done in a careful manner.
  • Fostering Staff Decelopment and Promoting Communities of Learners: Since our literacy programs are so successful, many teachers of courses other than Language Arts are not concerned about literacy. This is dangerous since, as explained above, literacy is a general skill which can be covered in every subject area. Increasing Professional Development around this specific idea can only help our students.
  • Forging Links between Home and School: Since so many of our students come from homes with a primary language other than English, this issue is especially important. We have already established a program of parent education around health, social and parenting issues, and expanding the program to include English literacy is necessary to forge these links and draw our families closer.
  • Building Capacity: Mastery of the written word is necessary to higher levels of capacity; all learning occurs through language and literacy is freedom to learn more independently. Research shows that students who achieve high levels of literacy improve in all academic areas so a focus on literacy can be a rising tide that lifts all boats.

.

IA15 – School Community Profile

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I considered community resources that both assist and impede our central goal of improved student learning. I used a force field analysis to consider these factors and, to be honest, I found the tool to be more of a hindrance than a help. I spent quite a bit of time researching and learning to use the organizer which was really nothing more than a glorified bulleted list of factors. I don’t see myself using this sort of approach again in the future myself, although it might be helpful in a large-group exercise as a way to keep every member of a team focused on how various factors can exert influece.

Influencers

The restraining forces which I identified which work against the desired state of improved student learning include:

  • A history of discipline laxness
  • A “private school mentality” among families which gives students and teachers a sense of entitlement that can lead to the bullying of faculty
  • An aging facility in a down economy
  • Confusion regarding the school’s religous mission

The driving forces which I identified which work in favor of the desired state of improved student learning include:

  • A young, hardworking, dedicated faculty with strong administrative leadership
  • Community support for the school’s legacy mission and history
  • A new, cutting-edge, research-based curriculum
  • Resrouces and the will to use them to initiate cutting-edge programs

Examination of the Influencing forces

Ours is a forty year-old religious school with a strong, supportive community and a history of family involvement and close cameraderie. The challenge which this sort of “family-close” community presents is that we often accept behavior from our own family which we would not tolerate from stranger or co-workers. When students and their families feel too at-home in a school, they tend to become informal, forming inappropriate, non-professional relationships with teachers and administrators, exerting undue influence and becoming involved in areas which should remain the purview of educational professionals. 

In our case, this has resulted in a student body far too comfortable at school and families who are willing to bully teachers to get what they want. In many cases, teachers -who have known students and their families for as many as 25 years- either bow to this pressure without being aware of it or buckle because they sense no alternative.

An additional challenge not unique to our school is the current economic climate which challenges any organization which relies on philanthropy. That downturn, combined with our already-aging facility makes it difficult to compete for students with newer, better-funded or, frankly, better-looking schools.

Working in our favor, we have a number of factors which begin with our school’s current educational leaders. Over the last five years, we’ve turned-over a number of long-term faculty and, which that is a difficult process, the result has been a more vibrant, harder-working and more recently-educated faculty willing to adopt new, research-based techniques and programs. (Don’t get me wrong: many long-term faculty are still on-board and I’m not saying that older teachers can’t learn new tricks; I’m only saying that in our case, many teachers remained only out of momentum and our administration found the will to let them leave.)

While these new directions are exciting, our community has remained supportive mostly because of the school’s legacy and that support has been invaluable. Moving into our fifth decade, we have had to work hard to communicate why the old ways, while valuable in their time, are outdated and it’s time to consider new technologies, methodologies and ideas. It has been helpful that our current community trusts the institution and its leaders enough to come along with us. 

Communication is the key

That communication has been the key. It has been hard work to tell the story of how our established school can become a leader in a new educational world but we’ve managed to do it and our current vision includes serving as a model of a 21st century school. Instead of being too concerned with our current challenges, we’ve created a plan to focus almost ten years in the future, imagining what we can accomplish, as a community, in that time. It’s an exciting time and everyone on our campus, students, parents, faculty and administration, has learned to look past the challenge to the vision for the future with anticipation.

.

IA14 – Staff Development Planning

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I reviewed the NSDC’s Standards for Staff Development and my school’s published Mission Statement. I also asked about a formal Staff Development Plan but we don’t have one. I then considered my own peronal experiences as a faculty member and as an administrator who conducts Development sessions then interviewed VL, a Lower School Assistant Principal, NH, our Middle and Upper School Principal and several teachers, both veterans and newcomers. My findings were revealing and included several causes for concern but, at the same time, I discovered a number of things of which the school can be proud.
Findings
Alignment between the school’s staff development plan and a) research-based standards for staff development, b) the school’s vision/mission/goals, and c) the school improvement plan
As I stated above, the school has no formal development plan. That is not to say that members of the administrative team do not share a set of goals for staff development, they simply have not codified these plans into a unified document. Of course, having such a document is important for a number of reasons, foremost among them the fact that creating such a document is an important process that will force members of the team to reconcile their needs and feelings with the rest of the adminstrative team and reach consensus on a single set of goals.
The NSDC’s Standards for Staff Development state that schools should form Professional Learning Communities with goals aligned with the school’s mission. This has been done, though it could bear improvement. Currenlty, each school’s faculty (Lower, Middle and Upper) meets weekly for development. A significant portion of this meeting time is taken up with housekeeping details (schedule change announcements, new procedures, etc), but developent does occur. This is often planned in a scattershot way where, for example, one team might recieve training on a tool like electronic whiteboard software, while another team fills their session with horizontal team sessions on curriculum design while waiting for the whiteboard specialist to be available next week.
The teachers I interviewed shared contradictory messages with me. On the one hand, they identified the gap in their development and recognized that they weren’t “getting better enough fast enough” at their jobs (interestingly, both rookie and veteran teachers felt this way). However, every teacher I interviewed also resented the meeting time they were “forced” to endure, complaining that they felt their time was wasted after school when they “deserved” to be home after teaching a full day.
While I understand their feelings (and even shared them when I was a teacher), my current perspective as an administrator and student in this program changes my view quite a bit. The problem, I believe, lies not with the fact that the training occurs, but in the way it is planned and carried out, making the need for a formal Staff Develoment Plan even more urgent.
As a teacher, I was asked for lesson and unit plans by my principal. It is not unreasonable to expect the same from a school administration; this is all a Staff Development Plan is. Over and over again during this masters program, I have been struck by the similarities between the relationship a teacher has with students and the one an administraor has with teachers. In this case, the expectations flow in the opposite direction, but the principle is the same: students have a right to expect that a teacher has a plan… and teachers should expect the same thing from an administrative team is they are asked to give time over to professional development..

IA10 – School Boards

Leave a reply

Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I observed portions of two meetings of my school’s Board of Governors and interviewed the Chief Operating Officer and Head of School. I have to begin by saying that, while I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience with boards of any kind, the cynic in me was surprised by the professional style in which the Board operates. The stories I have heard from friends who sit on other organization’s boards led me to expect disarray, argument and unprofessional behavior but I saw nothing like that. I credit our Head of School and Board President for this.

Findings

A comparison of the information you gained from your own observations to the information you gained from interviews regarding how relationships among the school board members, superintendent, and principal work together to impact decisions related to the goals and needs of the school 

As I said above, everything on this point seemed to run exactly as it should. Almost 50% of the school’s Board comprises people with no personal stake in the school (since they have no children there) and these members were chosen because of this detachment.

The division of labor between the Board of Governors and the school’s professional leadership is a clear one: the Board concerns itself with strategic issues and leaves the tactics to the administration. The COO used the analogy of a general and his officers, explaining that a general selects objectives and defines success but does not actually conduct a battle. Similarly, the Board sees its role as one of determining objectives but trusts the school’s administration to decided methodologies. 

I should point out that our current Head of School deserves credit for this professional attitude since many Board members shared with me that, prior to his arrival, this division of labor was not as clear.

A description of a specific decision that was made and an explanation of how relationships played a part in the decision-making process 

Our school is currenlty undergoing evaluation for certification as an Interational Baccalaureate School. Choosing to raise academic rigor and seek a school-wide curriculum that would make us a school of distinction was the Board’s decision. Once they shared it with our Head, he and the administrative team investigated several options, evaluated them and finally selected the IBO. He then reported that decision back to the Board, complete with a strategy and three-year timeline for implementation. They approved the plan, evaluating it solely on the basis of how well it met their initial directive.

Both the Board and the Head of School seem to enjoy the autonomy and clarity of this arrangement.

A description of an incident in which the board sought to influence personnel, policy, or events in the school, how the incident was addressed or responded to by the principal, and what you consider to be an appropriate and effective response

Our Head of School explained to me that the biggest issue challenging this arrangement is when Board members try, with no ill intent, to “do favors” for the school. A second challenge arises when Board members don’t realize the danger of influence they don’t even know they posess.

For example, the school is currently interviewing candidates for a senior administrative position. One Board member, trying only to helpful, told the Head that he had identified, contacted and interviewed a candidate, using his company’s facilities to conduct video-conferenced interviews in the evening. The Head pointed out that, should the candidate be hired, he would probably expect to continue to enjoy a special relationship with this particular Board member and that could lead to confusion regarding reporting and seniority.

Another example concerned a Board family who were paying a teacher to tutor their child at home. The teacher was not their child’s teacher, but another of their children did have a class with the teacher in question and came into some trouble in class. The teacher came to the Head of School wondering if she might be able to ask another teacher to report the student, so as to not damage the profitable relationship she had with this important family. An awkward situation that could have been avoided had the Board family been more aware of the danger.

.