Principals, Here’s How to Have Hard Conversations with Younger Teachers
September 25, 2017
Read Jennifer's guest blog column for Learning Forward on how principals can have hard conversations with younger teachers.
Excerpt:
Principals often tell me their entire workday is filled with fires to extinguish, a few challenging parent interactions, and a load of hard conversations. Some feel those communications are routine and don’t find them too difficult: “I don’t have any hard conversations in my inbox; I handle them all.” Others take them home, repeat them on a loop, and make themselves sick over what they should have said or must say tomorrow.
Whether you more often find yourself in the former group or the latter, every school leader can benefit from a few new ideas to simplify hard conversations and handle them effectively.
About Jennifer Abrams
Jennifer Abrams considers herself a "voice coach," helping others learn how to best use their voices – be it collaborating on a team, presenting in front of an audience, coaching a colleague and supervising an employee. Jennifer holds a Master's degree in Education from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree in English from Tufts University. She lives in Palo Alto, California. Jennifer's latest book is Swimming in the Deep End: Four Foundational Skills for Leading Successful School Initiatives. Her previous publications include Having Hard Conversations, The Multigenerational Workplace: Communicating, Collaborating & Creating Community and Hard Conversations Unpacked – the Whos, the Whens and the What Ifs. She has also created a Corwin Press e-course by the same name.
Work with Jennifer
Praise for Jennifer
“Our school’s work with Jennifer Abrams has sown the seeds of stronger communication skills among the adults in the building. This has only served to strengthen the integrity of communication between staff and students as well. We’ve added her language to our expectations: honest, humane, and growth-producing conversations occur regularly.”
