Communication Systems

The Center for Early Childhood Education serves a broad range of constituents that includes children, families, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, Smith College employees, community members, and colleagues seeking professional development. We value positive, clear, frequent, and professional communication with all members of this community. All staff members are responsible for maintaining positive communication with families and colleagues and for developing a positive school community.

The director encourages all staff members to meet with her to discuss concerns, share ideas, and make suggestions. Please feel free to “drop in,” email, or make an appointment any time.

Structures for Face-to-Face Communication

We value direct, personal communication and believe positive relationships form the basis of a collaborative, safe, and rewarding work environment to support the demanding work inherent in early education and care.  The calendar and schedules are intentionally designed to offer many opportunities for people to build relationships through formal and informal interactions.

The structure includes common planning times, professional days, and scheduled meetings. The minutes from all meetings are recorded and available to all staff to support communication about school-related events and issues. Please see the Planning Time and Scheduled Meetings section for more detail.

Common Planning Time

The classroom supervising teachers’ schedules provide two hours of common lunch and planning time every day. Studio supervising teachers have one hour of common time with classroom supervising teachers once a week. All teacher have classroom time on professional days to plan together. Rotating assistants are available on a rotating basis to provide additional planning time.

Professional Days

The schedule on professional days provides time for a variety of formal and informal meetings, including an informal potluck breakfast time, classroom time, shared professional development, and all-school meetings.

Regularly Scheduled Meetings

The structure provides for a wide variety of regular meetings.

Weekly Classroom Team Meetings

The assistant director schedules coverage for all classroom teams to meet weekly for approximately one hour during school hours. Classroom teams also meet monthly on professional days.

Supervising Teacher Meetings with the Director

All supervising teachers and the assistant director meet with the director on the first and third Wednesdays during classroom supervising teachers’ planning time. The assistant director plans coverage for the studio supervising teachers on Wednesday afternoons when meetings are scheduled.

Level Supervising Teacher Meetings

The level coordinators schedule the supervising teachers of their level to meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays during their planning time. The assistant director plans coverage for the studio supervising teachers on Wednesday afternoons when meetings are scheduled.

All-School Level Meetings

All teachers meet as levels on professional days.

All-Staff Meetings

All Staff meetings are held on professional days during regular working hours.

Teachers and the Director

The director schedules a monthly meeting with the teachers on professional days.

Monthly Supervision Meetings

All supervisors schedule meetings with those they supervise at least once a month to discuss progress towards goals and other relevant supervision business.

Parent Meetings

Parent meetings include informal and formal meetings and phone conversations. Please see additional information in the Reporting and Assessment section and the Early Intervention and Referrals section.

Systems for Electronic Communication

Teachers and administrators follow all Information Technologies Services policies and protocols. Fort Hill maintains the following electronic systems to communicate with colleagues and families.

Center for Early Childhood Education Fort Hill Website

The  director and assistant director maintain the main Fort Hill website, which is an extensive website designed for the general public. The Families and Educators page includes links to pages relevant to current families and staff, including the annual calendar, blogs, handbooks, and emergency response plan.

Squarespace Gallery Website

The visual arts studio supervising teacher maintains a Squarespace gallery website, which is designed to convey a sense of the school through images. A link to this website is available by clicking on the Gallery link on the home page of the main website.

Website Page to Guide Researchers at Fort Hill

A page of the Staff Handbook is designed to provide information to faculty and students who conduct research at Fort Hill.

Word Press Blog Sites and Friday Documentation

All supervising teachers, the assistant director, and the director maintain Word Press blog sites designed to communicate curriculum and ongoing program information to current families and colleagues. The administrators of the sites restrict access to the sites by protecting each page and post with a common password.

Supervising teachers and the director submit a one-page documentation slide on Google Drive every Friday. The assistant director combines the slides into a pdf file and emails a link to all families and staff and posts a link on the Word Press Blog and Documentation pages for future access.

Please see the Curriculum section for more information about blogs and Friday documentation.

Facebook Page

Fort Hill maintains a Facebook page, which is designed to promote the program to prospective families and interested individuals. No identifiable images of children are used in Facebook posts. The assistant director, the studio supervising teachers, and the level coordinators follow a rotating schedule to post on the page a minimum of three times each week. The posts include information about parenting, child development, curriculum, and events at Fort Hill.

Front Foyer Monitor

The visual arts supervising teacher maintains and regularly updates an iPhoto slide show that depicts the Fort Hill community and children’s experiences in the program. Supervising teachers contribute the images for the shows. The office coordinator starts the slide show each morning.

Smith College Portal

Smith College maintains a portal that provides access to many of the electronic resources of the college, including BannerWeb.

Moodle

All Fort Hill staff have access to a CECE Moodle site through their Smith portal. This site is dedicated to professional development and includes a variety of resources, including orientation, performance review, and professional development resources.

Google Drive

All Smith employees have access to Google Drive through their Smith email account. Training on using Google Drive is available online on the Lynda.com site available through the Smith portal. All teachers have access to the Fort Hill Teacher Folder, which contains information and forms relevant to teaching at Fort Hill. The administration maintains collaborative files in the Administration folder.

Teachers and administrators provide shared access to Fort Hill’s Google Drive data only to individuals’ Smith College email addresses and do not share access through personal email accounts. Teachers and administrators do not post personal identifying information on Google Drive.

E-mail

Much of the communication within the program and the College is accomplished through e-mail; the College provides all benefitted staff members with a Smith College e-mail address and network account. Fort Hill staff check email at least once a day and are responsible for all information communicated by e-mail. The Information Technologies Services department provides online information on how to access the Smith mail program from mobile devices.

Fort Hill staff use their Smith email accounts (rather than personal accounts) to communicate with families. Fort Hill staff “blind copy” families and staff when sending email to families.

Supervising teachers and administrators maintain address books of the families in each classroom, all members of the staff, and all families enrolled in the school. The office coordinator sends updates and provides training on how to add to the address books. The address books must be updated whenever information changes.  If a family communicates an address change to a teacher, the teacher shares the information with the office coordinator.

CECE maintains two general email address:

• an alias e-mail address, CECE@smith.edu. The office coordinator receives e-mail sent to this address.
• a general email account, forthill@smith.edu. The office coordinator monitors this account.

Communication with Families

In order to maintain open and frequent communication with families, teachers offer a wide variety of ways of communicating, e.g., face-to-face formal and informal meetings, bulletin boards, e-mail messages, telephone conversations,  communication books, photo books, displays, documentations, etc.

Personal Greetings at Arrival and Departure

All Fort Hill staff greet all children and adults warmly, individually, and by name at arrival and at departure with eye contact, a welcoming expression, and an individualized verbal greeting.

Message Boards

Supervising teachers write a message to children and families each morning. The message is open-ended, provocative, and warm. The message stimulates conversation between parents and children, engages the child in deep reflective thinking, and/or promotes excitement and thinking about the classroom curriculum. Teachers avoid using simple declarative statements and closed questions such as, “Do you want to…?” The messages clearly promote problem-solving, inquiry, emotional engagement, and critical thinking. The messages may include a provocative image, artifact, or words. The messages avoid overwhelming or complicated information and questions and are printed in correctly formed and legible handwriting.

Classroom supervising teachers post teachers’ absences on the message board every morning to communicate the staffing plan to families.

Administrators post information on an easel in the front foyer. The visual arts studio supervising teacher posts an individualized welcome message for all visitors to the school, which may include parents attending parent-teacher conferences, educators from other institutions, etc.

Bulletin Boards

The administration maintains a Family Bulletin Board in the front foyer of the school, level coordinators and the visual arts studio teacher maintain bulletin boards in the halls, and teachers maintain bulletin boards in the classrooms. These boards reflect the school’s core values of using documentation to communicate and maintaining an aesthetically pleasing and engaging environment.

Community organizations and individuals frequently ask if we will distribute promotional material regarding their programs, events, or businesses to the families at Fort Hill. We do not distribute individual notices either by email or hard copy except when the communication relates to Fort Hill. With prior approval from the director, we post relevant and appropriate notices for community members on the Family Bulletin Board.

Documentation

Classroom teachers document the ongoing experiences of children in their classrooms using a wide variety of methods: documentation panels, bulletin boards, blogs, binders, recorders, etc. Please note that some children’s families may have restricted permission to record images and the voice of their child. Please maintain a list of these children in a prominent location near your computer and in your classroom. The office coordinator maintains a list of these children in the Google Drive/Teacher Folder/Permission Exceptions.

Please see the Curriculum section for more information about blogs and Friday documentation.

Mailings

The office coordinator sends hard copies of a variety of correspondences to families, including admission and enrollment information, permissions, and details about events.

Parent Conversations

Supervising teachers conduct formal conferences three times during the year (September, January, and May). Teachers or parents may also initiate conversations at any time of the year; teachers are always willing to meet with parents at their request. We also value informal communication by telephone, e-mail, or in person. We encourage parents to share their questions, concerns, and suggestions as they arise. Supervising teachers are available to talk or meet with parents during their daily planning time. Supervising teachers maintain documentation of all important conversations with families.

Teachers refrain from engaging in lengthy discussions with families at arrival and departure, as it is difficult to attend to and participate in important conversations when responsible for a group of children and it is best to refrain from talking about children when they are nearby.

Communication Among Staff

Mailboxes

Every regular employee has a mailbox in the office. Please check your mailbox daily.

Agendas and Minutes of Meetings

The facilitator of each meeting records, or designates another person to record, minutes of the meeting; the minutes of all meetings (please see above for a list of regular meetings), except for supervision meetings, parent meetings, and classroom team meetings, are posted in Google Drive for all staff to access. The office coordinator maintains binders in the office with the minutes of these staff meetings. The assistant director or staff member uploads the minutes to Google Drive/Teacher Folder/Meeting Minutes and sends a link to all staff members when the minutes are posted.

Supervising teachers are responsible for developing agendas and recording minutes for all classroom team meetings, supervision meetings, and meetings with parents and consultants. Supervising teachers maintain the minutes of classroom team meetings in a notebook that is accessible to all staff. Supervising teachers maintain the minutes of supervision and parent meetings in confidential files.

Level coordinators maintain a clipboard in the Teachers’ Work Room for all members of the staff to record suggestions for agenda items for upcoming meetings. The level coordinators develop the agenda and ensure that minutes are recorded and posted for supervising teacher and all-school level meetings.

The assistant director records and posts minutes of the supervising teacher meetings. The director records and posts minutes of the monthly meeting between the director and teachers. The office coordinator records and posts minutes of all-staff meetings. All supervisors record and maintain confidential minutes of supervision meetings.

Classroom Teacher Communication Notebooks

Each classroom maintains a communication notebook to share important events among staff members. The teachers in the Fort Hill classrooms work varying hours; the communication notebook allows teachers who come in after the start of the day, or who leave before the day is finished, to have information relevant to the children.

Staffing Plans

Classrooms maintain an accurate, up-to-date staffing plan in the classroom and also post a calendar in the classroom as a reference for all teachers noting the days that classroom teachers have planned time-off.  The office coordinator posts daily absences at the top of the sign-in sheet and maintains a staffing chart in a notebook in the office. The assistant director maintains a schedule of the rotating teachers in the office and an electronic database in Google Drive of Time-off requests. The office coordinator records the distribution of extra planning time covered by the rotating teachers. Please see the Time-Off and Planning Time and Scheduled Meetings sections for more information.

Curriculum Plans

All supervising teachers maintain current and detailed curriculum plans in a location easily accessible to all teachers and administrators. Please see the Curriculum section for more detail.

Blogs and Documentation

Supervising teachers and the assistant director share the blogs and documentation with all staff members as well as with families. Staff members are welcome to post comments on the blogs.

Please see the Curriculum section for more information about blogs and documentation.