Not a million years ago, I started a middle leadership role in a school. By then, I’d been around the block a few times. There wasn’t much (I thought) that I hadn’t experienced. Communication, I knew, was the key to running a successful department, alongside integrity and competence. I got to work to ensure that key information was communicated for the week ahead through a nicely laid-out bulletin; I tried to keep emails to a minimum, to “own” decisions and see them through, to favour verbal communication over written where possible, to keep my door open when teaching - and when not teaching - and to always make time to say “good morning”. I brought in treats now and again “just because”. Six months in, I took a deep breath and asked for some feedback. “What needs to be improved?” I asked. “Communication,” said my team. I admit it, I could have curled in a corner and howled. It’s then that I realised two things: that effective communication means different things to different people, and that I can never, ever sit on my laurels when it comes to communicating more effectively.

I have a great little book which I keep by my desk at work: How to Build Communication Success in Your School, by Karen Dempster and Justin Robbins. It’s an infinitely practical dip-in and dip-out kind of book which you can pick up in almost any scenario which requires tricky or crucial communication, from leading change to managing a crisis.

How to improve school communication

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the previous year through performance-management meetings in which we describe “impact” and “evidence”. It’s getting colder and darker and, as we limp to another half term, the temptation can be to get defensive when asked to appraise our own performance from the previous year. I’m not sure I know any teacher who hasn’t in some way expressed the sentiment: “What more could I possibly have done?” As I discuss in my own book, How to Survive in Teaching, the joy and the frustration of teaching is that the job is never done. There are, despite so many schools’ endless pursuit of them, no silver bullets. The most outstandingly brilliant schools in the country can still not claim to have education sussed. The job is hungry and demands constant reflection and constant reappraisal.

That’s why I like this book - it’s not one which claims silver bullets, nor does it seek to criticise us when we don’t get communication right all of the time. The book doesn’t claim to “ensure” or “guarantee” communication success, but to offer tools to help “build it”. The tone is matter-of-fact and reassuring, and counsels us to steer clear of defensiveness and the mother of all dangers: “assumption”.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned, with the help of this book and my own experiences.

1. Little and often, check in for feedback
   Don’t wait six months before asking for a wholesale appraisal of your approach. Take the temperature with contrasting individuals - from the ones who will always give their opinion to the ones who appear to be quietly getting on with it.

2. Acknowledge emails
   Email remains a bit of a nightmare, even since the days when the “where is my umbrella?” emails have been nipped in the bud by most schools. It’s the sheer volume that’s the challenge, especially when you’re teaching for most of the working day. But if you don’t have time to respond in full, if someone makes a request or a suggestion, acknowledge it, even if it’s just in a couple of words in the first instance.
3. Communication is complicated and multi-layered
   Not everyone can have the information they think they might be entitled to all of the time. The pressures on leaders at all levels can be immense - I remain in awe of headteachers - and we can’t always fully grasp the complexities of the decisions they have to make, nor can we have the full information available, for all sorts of reasons. Accepting, serenity-prayer-style, that we can’t control everything all of the time is quite liberating, and there’s no shame in communicating this to our teams at pertinent points.
4. Vision is a very powerful thing.
   When I was first asked to put my vision into writing, I had not the first clue where to start. But I did it, and the mosaic and the helicopter and the aspirations - some of which I am proud to say we achieved - have stayed with me. I recommend actually writing out, sharing and asking for feedback on your role as a great way of ensuring that you keep “your North Star” - your moral compass at the heart of everything you do.
5. Never lose sight of the students.
   Communication in schools is fraught with politics and it can be so easy - and so understandable - to get caught in the web of should-haves, could-haves and “why wasn’t I asked?” There’s a lot to be said for looking into the whites of the eyes of young people and getting on with the job of educating them.
    

This leads me to my final lesson on communication, which comes from my current school. I remember the days of being reminded about Ahmed’s parents’ impending divorce or Melissa’s eviction or darker tragedies that befall our students all of the time in all-staff briefing. Where I work, children’s privacy is as sacred as that of staff. Only the people who absolutely need to know their vulnerabilities and their setbacks are aware of them - their personal lives, like the personal lives of staff, are private.

Like all lessons, this one ends in the same place: we are always learning and we can only control what we can, the very best we can.

Emma Kell is a secondary teacher in north-east London and author of How to Survive in Teaching