Positivity is Positively Contagious

Every Saturday there’s a Twitter chat (#satchat) for current and future school administrators. The topic of today’s chat was Confronting Negativity. This is a topic that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Well, I’ve actually been thinking more about promoting positive school culture, but the flip side of that is thinking about how to minimize negativity.

As I continue learning about the culture of our school, one thing that I’ve found is that we have a preponderance of positivity on campus. Faculty and staff love what they do and they seem to be happy to be at ASD. This doesn’t mean that each and every interaction can be characterized as bringing sunshine and smelling like roses, but rather that we promote positive outcomes with an approach that’s open and honest.

Just a few of the ways I’ve seen faculty and staff promote positivity are:

• Beginning meetings with celebrations or “pearls”
• Covering a class for a colleague when an unexpected emergency arises
• Celebrating birthdays with cakes and lunches
• Hosting social events outside of school
• Making sure that the administration knows just how hard a colleague worked on a project or production
• Sharing smiles. Lots of smiles. Every day.

Just a few of the ways that we (as administrators) promote positivity are:

• Greeting teachers, students, and parents in the mornings during drop-off
• Highlighting in our weekly newsletter, Thursday Thoughts, the amazing work faculty and staff do with our students
• Providing yummy snacks for long meetings
• Announcing a dress down day every once in a while
• Doing whatever we can to support our teachers as they make learning happen every day for every child
• Sharing smiles. Lots of smiles. Every day.

I believe that positivity is contagious; the more that we are positive, the more that others around us will be, too. And with winter break just a couple of weeks away, we have the opportunity to spread more positivity along with a bit of holiday cheer. I’ve got a couple of ideas…