Dr. Celia Conley is an incredible Executive Director (ED) in the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) district. In her role as an ED, she supports a cluster of middle schools and their principals. As a former MNPS principal herself, Dr. Conley used parent feedback from Possip’s Pulse Check Reports to strengthen her school, however, she didn’t accomplish this alone. She strategically built a report reading team–a team of school administrators and staff who routinely met to discuss parent praise, feedback, and action steps to close the feedback loop.
She says “having [a report reading] team allows you to ensure timely follow-up with families, and develop capacity for the leaders in your building [since they] assist [with report reading].” As the leader of a larger school, she decided to include her administrative team and Community Achieves (CA) manager on her report reading team because they “all worked with parents frequently.”
Now Dr. Conley is supporting other principals as an ED, and guiding them in their use of Possip. She sent her principals the following tips on communicating parent insights with staff and building a report reading team. She gave us permission to share her helpful tips with you too:
1. Share celebrations with the staff.
We all need a pick-me-up every now and then. I would often share school-wide celebrations in my Sunday emails, in my faculty meeting slide deck, etc. For individual teachers, I would immediately cut and paste and send it to them. It was always “right on time” for them (and me). (Team Possip Tip: Now, you can select the “email” button when viewing your report from the Possip site, and an email will automatically populate so you can easily share the praise).
2. Address comments quickly.
Follow-up with parents that expressed concerns, and thank parents that gave you praise.
3. Build capacity through a report reading team!
You can add additional users to Possip so they can have access to the reports. My APs, Deans, and Community Achieves (CA) manager all received the report directly from Possip. Just email jasmine@possip.com and she can add them. This way you are not the only one to review it, and the team can help divvy up the load.
4. Assign roles on your report reading team.
Our general system was that I would take the praise and any heavy issues, the dean would take the bullying comments, and the APs would take any student or teacher issues for their grade levels. The CA would handle food and technology needs. We would forward ones that were in Spanish to our translator for follow-up.
If you’re a district leader or executive director who wants to support your principals like Dr. Conley, she recommends that a good starting point is to “Model sharing the praise with your principals by cutting snippets [from the report].”
Let us know if you want to connect with her to learn more! Read additional Possip Partner spotlights here.
