During my last final year as a principal, I discovered blogging to be an effective and terrifically easy way to keep both staff and parents informed. As the opening of school approached, I created two blogs. The audience for one consisted of my staff. The intended audience consisted of parents.
Neither of the blogs has been maintained since my departure. I do think they are valuable in that they can serve as models for other principals who may want to use this means of communication. These two models can be found at:
http://grahamstaff.blogspot.com/ Blog for employees
http://grahamschool.blogspot.com/ Blog for parents and community
When I move from the principalship to the central office, I began to miss my blogs immediately, How would I communicate with teachers in the various schools? How could we publicize the good works of schools? Immediately, blogs seemed to be the answer. Following the model established at Graham, we established two blogs at the central office. One of the blogs has as its audience out employees. The other has as its audience parents and community members. Both are alive and well a year and a half later:
http://teachtalladega.blogspot.com/
http://talladegacityschools.blogspot.com/
Our intent at the outset was that these two blogs would be a place where designated people from each school could post information pertaining to their school. The result would be one single place where news from all schools would appear. From the very beginning, I had the total support of our School Improvement Specialist, Pattie Thomas. Pattie is the best co-worker a person could hope for. Our vision of people from all school contributing has not worked out near to the extent we would like, so she and I shoulder the majority of the load.
The frontier we blazed at Graham did cause two other principals to create blogs of their own. Several teachers have also created their own.
Feel free to peruse the blogs mentioned here as you gain your own ideas. Happy blogging!
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