A Word From Our CEO: Communication

Welcome, February! Blink, and you may miss something. Luckily this month the blog has a focus on our core value of communication and the many examples of that communication in action (such as our weekly blog posts and news releases)!

This year we have focused on our core values of achievement, respect, teamwork, and integrity. Our scholars shared their accomplishments with us and discussed the importance of respect, teamwork, and integrity. This month, we focus on our fifth and final core value, communication. We’re encouraging scholars, learning coaches and staff to share why they believe that good communication is an important life skill.

Communicating with others is an, and perhaps the most, essential part of life. It’s how we express what we need and want, what we believe and how we feel. Communication is also how we listen and learn from others. In general, communication is the process by which information is exchanged between people using a common set of verbal cues, symbols, signs, and behaviors. It’s important that we all understand the basic meaning of communication because it is arguably of the most significant tools that we use to progress in life. Parents and school staff play a very important role in helping children develop healthy communication skills. From a young age, many children learn the basics of communication by learning a simple set of words and sounds, but they also learn other helpful aspects of communication like tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. It’s important to remember that we all learn and refine our understanding of the basic aspects of communication from the role models in our lives.

Communication is an essential part of our Compass community. Our teachers and staff are dedicated to modeling good communication skills to help scholars develop their own set of exceptional communication skills. The entire Compass community, including our teachers, scholars, learning coaches and school staff, are dedicated to communicating with each other in a healthy way. This means that we speak to each other kindly, honestly, respectfully and professionally. I strive to model healthy communication skills by being transparent with our staff and families and by listening and acting on the constructive feedback I receive from all of our stakeholders. I am a firm believer in open and honest communication, which is why we have a weekly blog, survey our scholars and learning coaches (thank you scholars for completing our survey in December, and learning coaches for completing our current survey), have a Virtual Suggestion Box for scholars and learning coaches on our website’s homepage, and have a Scholar Leadership Council and Parent Advisory Council. We also have a Staff Advisory Committee, and I host monthly CEO Town Halls with our staff and quarterly Parent Town Halls with the CEO with our learning coaches (thank you to our learning coaches who have joined these town halls this week). These are some of the examples of how I am communicating and receiving communication, and welcome feedback on what is working well, and areas for improvement, to ensure we are transparent in what we do, and always putting the scholar first in the decisions we make.

Our team is also dedicated to setting a good example for our scholars as they help them learn about the importance of good communication. Meaningful communication cannot be accomplished without the confidence to express ourselves and the ability to listen to others. Our staff is fully invested in CCS and our scholars, and we will all continue to model healthy communication skills in all that we do, with every stakeholder we engage and interact with.

Throughout February, scholars are invited to wear the color green every Friday and on field trips to represent our core value, communication. To further this celebration, scholars are also encouraged to share stories and pictures about modeling good communication in our brief survey, and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We want to hear from all of our scholars to learn why they believe healthy communication skills are important and celebrate this special core value. Being part of CCS is to be part of our Compass community, and our community prides itself on using meaningful communication!

As Benjamin E. Mays once said, “honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of one for the other.” We are sharing the importance of communications skills with our scholars in hopes of helping them express themselves and achieve their goals. I strongly encourage all of our scholars to share what healthy communication means to them this month!