Get the Good News Out

Let’s face it – great things occur in all schools on a daily basis. We see the fruits of our labor through our students as they show growth in learning over time. There is nothing more gratifying as a servant of education then when our passion translates into helping students of various ability levels accomplish tasks that they themselves never thought possible.  There are countless stories to be shared that illustrate how schools are meeting the diverse needs of learners today while preparing them for success in their future.  Telling these stories adds another layer to initiatives and strategies developed to empower students and energize a community of stakeholders.

Image credit: https://brushheadmusings.wordpress.com

The good news doesn’t stop there.  Teachers, administrators, and parents go above and beyond to serve kids and the profession. Each story told helps to establish a new reality instead of one that historically has been dominated by perception.  As I have been writing since 2009, if you don’t tell your story someone else will. When someone else controls the narrative, chances are it might not paint an accurate picture of what is truly happening in your classroom, school, or district. Embracing a storyteller-in-chief mindset should no longer be optional, but instead a decision grounded in the benefits of being transparent and building powerful relationships with stakeholders (parents, media, businesses, community members, etc.). This is the premise behind brandED leadership.

To get the good news out you don’t have to continue to wait patiently for the mainstream media to cover your stories. It also doesn’t have to result in a drain on your time.  By working smarter, not harder, you can begin the process of curating and then sharing powerful learning success stories that will help to establish a new, better identity in a digital world. One strategy I developed as a principal was to create a template for my staff to easily share all the amazing work they were engaged in both with students and their own learning. This template was used to create the monthly Principal’s Report as I called it. The categories included the following:

• Guest speakers
• Innovative practices
• Student honors
• Field trips
• Guidance news
• Professional learning
• Theater arts
• Facility updates
• Other

The categories above are what I used and provide a frame of reference to create your own template. Each month I would send the template out and ask my teachers to share any pertinent work. Everything was then curated into a final document, edited twice, and then sent out to my stakeholders using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Remind, our school app, and an email blast. The final product was nothing fancy, but loaded with valuable news and insights to show everyone in our community the great work happening inside and outside the walls of our building. Check out an example HERE. Want to share content like this across multiple social media platforms with one tool to save time? If so check out IFTTT. Want to program specific times to send out tweets and other social media messages? Well there are tools for that as well. Check out Buffer and Hootsuite. 

The report became an invaluable resource for me to pull content into other digital channels and further amplify the work taking place at my school.  With my teachers permission I copied and pasted excerpts and worked the content into more elaborate blog posts.  You could even apply the same concept to Smore.  I also began to incorporate the ideas, strategies, and innovative practices into presentations I was delivering both at the local and state level. When video and pictures are incorporated you ultimately develop a digital leadership strategy that not only gets the good news out, but does so in a way that builds a positive brand presence. 

Keep in mind this simple equation to consistently get the good news out:

Communications + Public Relations = Brand presence

For more tips and ideas on how this equation can help you get the good news out click HERE. What other ways are you leveraging to get the good news out on your classroom, school, or district?