Monday, October 4, 2010
Principals, principles and the press.
For this month, editors at the Harvard Education Letter have kindly removed the paywall on this interview with me. In it, I give advice to school and district administrators about dealing with the press. Not surprisingly, I advocate for openness, but I think I make a good case—so pass this along to the people you cover, and maybe it will give them pause about shutting you out.
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Traditionally teachers have had good job security so I could never understand "the culture of fear," but it definitely exists. For some reason, I was never afraid to speak up, and for that reason administrators were afraid of ME.
ReplyDeleteThe trick was to "talk" to people outside of the district, such as parents, reporters, politicians and agencies of the state and federal governments. Once I had a great letter to the editor (criticizing a disrespectful board member) and actually won a prize for the best letter of the year! Of course, none of that would have been possible without due process.
One of the primary reasons we are having the current problems in education is the fact that teachers do not speak up nearly as much as they should. Much of the public just doesn't know what is going on in our schools.