About this episode
Schools communicating clearly with families and community is challenging, and yet so important. Educational leaders and teachers know the opportunity of improving our communication skills, but they don’t always know how to do it. Patricia Weinzapfel (wine + zap + ful) is an expert having served as a former television reporter who spent the last decade working with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Cooperation in Indiana. Here, she talks with Jeff about pragmatic and digestible ways educators can up their game in terms of communicating with those we serve.
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Patricia Weinzapfel is a former television reporter, who’s spent the last decade working with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation in Indiana. Her role is to help the district build relationships with families and community partners. When she started her work in education, she never envisioned how much journalism skills would come in handy. But she quickly realized two things…family engagement is hard work and the foundation for that work is effective communication. It helps administrators build trust, puts parents at ease, and allows teachers to turn words into relationships that help students succeed.
She became so enamored with this idea of communication as a game-changer for family engagement that she wrote a book about it. It’s called Closing the Loop, A Powerful and Practical Guide to School-Home Communication. Closing the Loop uses the principles of broadcast journalism to help school leaders and educators improve their abilities to create clear, concise communications that make connections with families…the kind of connections that result in student success.