Engage communities, superintendent says
tools like social media to share stories is one of the ways Joe Sanfelippo keeps Fall Creek School District engaged with its community.
Sanfelippo, the superintendent of the Fall Creek, Wis., school, told administrators and faculty members from across Arkansas Thursday that staying connected to the community is done by being intentional, opening doors and “making sure we build the people around us.”
Sanfelippo was Thursday’s keynote speaker at the Arkansas Department of Education’s Data Conference at the Hot Springs Convention Center. In 2016, Fall Creek School District was named in the top 10 Innovative Districts by the International Center for Leadership in Education.
“For us, it’s really about telling stories and making sure that the people know and understand what’s happening in our space because when they know and understand, they feel differently about it,” he said of the work done within any school district.
“The work that we do and everything that we do is really done in a fishbowl no matter where we go. Our job is to try to make sure that we do everything that we can to tell the right story of what’s happening in our space through being intentional in the work that we do, through opening the doors to the people in our care, and making
sure that we’re building people up along the way. “
Sanfelippo said he realized that every interaction matters when he moved into his district to become superintendent because one of those interactions could be the one that is talked about and remembered, good or bad.
“You don’t know what people are going to say about you, but you do know that they’re going to talk about you,” he said.
Sanfelippo said that moments of awe are happening throughout school districts, but the stories are getting overlooked oftentimes thanks to individuals who are not patrons of a district.
“The thing that’s happening is a lot of people are telling you what your school is because they went to school 25 years ago, and they keep telling the story over and over and over again like it happened yesterday. It’s not fair to all the work that all your teachers are doing and everybody that works in your building are doing because they have to defend the work that they do,” he said adding that a lot of times, schools are not looked at as an investment.
“Eighty percent of the voting public doesn’t have a kid in school and they keep telling the story of what happened to them in school to the detriment of the people that are in school right now. Our job is to try to build that culture and make sure that the people that we care for are in a spot where they can tell stories.”
Culture, he said, can be formed in as little as 30 seconds.
“Culture is built with every interaction,” he said. “Culture is built every time that you get a chance to talk about what it is that you’re doing. It can’t just be a one-time thing. It’s not about the time, it’s about what you do with the time. … We have to be intentional about that.”
Ways that his organization shares its stories are via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, he said. Facebook reaches the parents and community, Instagram the students, and Twitter as an investment in the millennials who will someday soon be the parents within the district.
“The thing that social media does for your organization is that it amplifies the work that you’re doing and it accelerates the work that you’re doing. That’s why you have to start building your culture first,” Sanfelippo said.
Other ways the district has built its culture, he said, is through small gestures to engage its network of families through letters home to staff members’ families and 100 positive phone calls on the 100th day of school.
“In our board meetings we put pictures of our kids up and before every board meeting I get up and say ‘Let’s not forget why we make decisions in this school district,’” he added.
Sanfelippo said education is one of the only fields he has seen that people have to justify the work they do because each educator’s story is going to be told regardless.
“We spend so much time at the beginning of the year making sure our name tags are perfect and the cat poster that hangs on the wall that tells the kid to ‘hang in there’ is perfectly placed. The cat poster on the wall that tells the kid to ‘hang in there’ doesn’t make the kid hang in there if when they look in your eyes they don’t think you want them to hang in there,” he said. “That’s why we’re there for them and that’s what we do. … That’s why we have to stop really defending the work that happens and start being proud of it.”
Sanfelippo said he isn’t sure where the idea changed that educators have to defend their work because of what people might say about it, but by taking control of their organization’s narrative, they can start to be proud of that work.
“If we never give up the opportunity to say something great about our kids, and our community and our school, we can change the whole dang thing,” he said.