Cultivating Healthy Adult Communication
September 26, 2025
The Catholic Principals' Council of Ontario, Canada invited Jennifer to write an article for their Fall 2025 Principal Connections magazine. The theme of the fall magazine is Pioneering Tomorrow. Jennifer's article is titled, Cultivating Healthy Adult Communication.
Excerpt:
Leaders who wish to build strong, professional learning cultures and healthy, thriving school communities need to be aware of and compassionate towards a key understanding on which few leaders focus: Educators have credentials in how to teach subjects and grade levels, but what they don’t have are credentials in how to talk to and with other adults.
Yet, for a strong and healthy school culture, leaders need to put energy and time into developing the skills and capacities for everyone to engage in healthy adult-to-adult communication.
Schools that don’t just survive, but thrive, are schools that expect, encourage and support everyone’s growth around skills for healthy adult-to-adult communication. The work of being a place of lifelong learning, continuous growth and successful innovation, must encourage both inner and outer development of those that work within them.
About Jennifer Abrams
Jennifer has been recognized as one of "21 Women All K-12 Educators Need to Know" by Education Week's 'Finding Common Ground' blog. She considers herself a "voice coach," helping others learn how to best use their voices – be it collaborating on a team, facilitating a group, coaching a colleague, supervising an employee and being an all around better human being in all types of interactions.
Work with Jennifer
Praise for Jennifer
“Jennifer’s session was not just a workshop, but an invitation to look inward at how we, as adults, show up in our professional roles. She reminded us that hard conversations are not about winning or avoiding conflict, but about cultivating clarity, empathy, and courage.
One of the most powerful takeaways was this: for dialogue to be truly effective, we must learn to communicate with precision while holding space for humanity. Hard conversations should not shut people down; they should open the door to growth-producing feedback that strengthens trust, relationships, and professional practice. My learning experience with Jennifer was a reminder that our impact as educators is amplified when we are willing to pause, reflect, and engage with one another in ways that foster both accountability and compassion.”
