Leading with Good News!

In 1983, Anne Murray had a hit with the release of the song, "A Little Good News."  I found myself thinking about this song as I reviewed another issue of EdSource.

It begs the question: What are schools doing weekly to tell their story, share a positive update, and inform the public about the good news happening in their work with students?  With the billions of dollars poured into public education in the Golden State annually, every public education leader has an obligation to communicate the wins, the stories of success, and how lives are being impacted for good with the students in their care.

The media will focus on the negative: the decades of failure and the scandals involving people and programs wasting public tax dollars. They consistently avoid sharing good news about public education because they lack an outpouring of positive stories to share. If every editor and news director had a large sample of positive stories, there is a greater chance of seeing and hearing those stories in our community.

There are some simple ways to communicate your successes, even when you are an organization with limited resources.  Here are three.

1 - Schools currently send newsletters or communications to their community, so simply add the emails for local reporters and news organizations to those distributions.

2 - Consistently post positive student and program successes on your school’s website.

3 – Encourage your team to share these student and program successes on their private social media channels to amplify the positive messages you are sharing as a school and organization.

The work of educating students is not easy and the rewards are seen daily in our classrooms and on our campuses.  Sharing those stories is not hard when protocols are established for teachers and team members to consistently share successes, allowing a school leader to embrace the opportunity to share a little good news that community members and taxpayers are looking for from public education.

The average citizen can tell you what they have heard about the failures of public education on any given day. Do they know what is happening in the school down the street or in all schools in the community?  That can change and it just takes a commitment from school leaders to make it happen one positive story at a time.  We sure could use a little good news today. 💚