Improving Communication Among

Colleagues

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Improving Communication Among
Colleagues

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Improving Communication Among
Colleagues

Don’t need to answer out loud, but think about these questions.

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Improving Communication Among
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Main Roles of Department Chairs

- Don’t read out loud. Give audience time to scan
*Main Focus of the presentation

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Improving Communication Among
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Consider:
How many times as something gone wrong that could have been prevented if
teachers just communicated with you?
Is there a student you’re having trouble with that it would help to check in with
other teachers to see if they’re having the same issues?
Has a homeroom teacher not picked up their class, simply assuming you’d
bring them back, or take them where they need to be?

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Changes have been made without our consent, or even without just getting our
opinion on it.
Examples:
A new duty was requested by homeroom teachers, but specialty teachers are filling it.
During COVID, a meeting was held for lower school teachers, but homeroom
teachers spoke as if specialty teachers weren’t there.
Do other events come to mind for you?

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Many homeroom teachers think we don’t work as hard as them. We have bigger
break in between classes, but we have many grade levels to prepare for, so we need
that extra prep time.
Many homeroom teachers think of our class as “break time” for students or a class
that’s “just for fun”. In reality, we actually teaching them in these classes.

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Improving Communication Among
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Don’t need to answer out loud, but think about these questions.

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This table is a current representation of our specialty teachers schedules for the
2021-2022 school year.
Things to note:
- How many grade levels we each teach
- How many students we teach
- How often we see each class, and for how long.
- This is in addition to our duties

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Communication is critical for a school to function effectively.

Department Chair can help with:
- Teacher to teacher communication
- Communication of student behavioral issues.

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A Department Chair can help with scheduling because:

- They have experience as a specialty teacher and knows what schedules work
best for them.
- They know many of the specialty teachers’ preferences with scheduling.

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A department chair can:

- Provide better support for incoming specialty teachers.
- grading/testing/organization skills, etc
- Provide classroom management strategies
- Wait time/project presentation ideas
- Help with parent teacher communication
- Via emails/phone conversations/addressing issues with parents

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Don’t need to answer out loud, but think about this question.

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Here is a list of our current department chairs. You’ll notice that each subject area has
a department chair. Prior to some recent changes, majority of the chair were from
middle school. While that’s not a bad thing, I’d like to point out that the middle school
world is a lot different than the lower school world. Much of what they do upstairs
does not coincide with what we do down here. While many of us here straddle MS
and LS, a lot of the department chairs are from MS, and aren’t familiar with with how
things run down here. And you can definitely argue the same vice versa. But I think
that this

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A take away thought I’d like to leave with you today is to think about one way a
department chair for specialist teachers can help you here at Harbor Day. You don’t
need to answer out loud, but think about this question.

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