How did Lettie integrate her leadership work from each side of the triangle?
Lettie had a great balance of utilizing each side of the triangle. As a manager/overseer, she maintained a vision that guided her in her decisions. She not only maintained her role as far as paperwork, she reached out for support when she needed to accomplish what needs to be completed. Her role as the manager helped her with a coaching/mentoring role where she gave support for her staff by providing extra time for communication needs. For her vision to actually work, she needed to provide needed time and support for her teachers to accomplish different tasks to meet the vision. With this drive and support, she found creative ways of communicating with her families as she understands the importance of building a strong and positive relationship. She created books, included family photos and also sent a teacher/child photo home, created a journaling system between the teacher and parent in regards to the child, had group conferences to help families learn about other children, and many other ways to promote and encourage communication.
If you were to put relationships center stage in your management, coaching, and community-building routines, what routine or system might you want to start revamping?
As a director and teacher, understanding the value of having a positive relationship with families can be a drive to make communication center stage. Learning of Lettie's creative ways to promote a strong communication base with families wants me to revamp communication on all sides of the triangle. In my current role, I would love to revamp our current weekly newsletter. I enjoy what we send home, but I really don't think 75% of our families actually read them. Having another way to share the same information like having a blog might improve the communication barrier. I am not a techy person, but having different forms of communication may enhance the relationship. A weekly communication journal seems very interesting. As a parent, I would've loved to have a journal as a form of communication. Utilizing a journal to communicate the child's weekly events in school and at home in a from of a storybook becomes a wonderful treasure. Would this work currently at my site? Probably not as I think families view us as a babysitter, but it is definitely worth trying.
How would you describe Lettie's disposition?
Lettie's Building and Supporting Communication side of the triangle pushes her to utilize and balance skills from all sides of the triangle. Her importance of communication with families can't be done alone, it takes all members of her site to make communication center stage, so she will do what is possible to provide the needed support for her staff. Lettie must be well organized, kind, yet authoritative hen needed.
What disposition do you want to strengthen in yourself to begin your revamping work?
I would really need to dig deep to clear my lens as I work towards revamping communication and building relationships. Since I have a sense of being a 'babysitter', I think starting from a simple survey would give me a better idea of what could be easier for parents and what they expect from communication. I wish that parents could do more for their children, but instead of thinking of how to change them, I must think of ways that I can better work with them so it helps them and teaches them along the way. Revamping my own biases would have to be the first change in strengthening myself.
Hi Anjoleen,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your responses to the questions. Lettie sets an example of what it takes in order for your vision to come alive. It is not an easy task but rewarding and beneficial to all on the receiving end. Self reflection brings to surface who we are and what we want or can be, change is inevitable if we want to see our program improve and be all it can be. Having to break through being looked at as a "babysitter" will take much effort on your part because parent's don't see or are blinded by the impact made on the child. The strategies Lettie used can be resources in changing the minds of our families to see how valuable we are in the lives of their children. They are currently missing out on the partnership that you both can have in caring for their child, instead of separating each role and that's it.