It's all about recruitment

In each of today's presentations, staff management and motivation, diversity and working with your boss, I saw ways I could recruit. As you may remember, I have had a staff of five for three years, and next year I will have seven. In addition to being few in number, the staffers have been new each year. So recruitment for me is really important.

Staff management is tough with so few staffers, but it is important for me to organize them in a way that is not chaotic or overwhelming for them. It's not their fault the staff is small.

I've always thought of motivation as an in-class kind of thing. I bring snacks on distribution day, things like that. But the idea of branding that Alan Weintraut talked about is something I had never thought of. Get The Pinion name out as much as possible. I will  aim to have people refer to the paper by its name, rather than by newspaper.

Low enrollment, while not a conflict with my boss, is a source of concern that I feel I need more help with than I am getting from him. I have talked to him about it, but it was related to my worry that he would cancel the class. He assured me he would not and I was relieved. Now I want to talk to him about building up the program. I am anticipating he will think that is my responsibility. So I need to think carefully about exactly how and why he should help me.

Finally, with less than 10 staffers in a school of 1700, I would say the staff is not diverse. As I thought about diversity and the different groups in my school, I realized that in striving for diversity I will also be recruiting. One group that doesn't do very well in our school is Micronesians. I will try to recruit from this population.  I will also talk to the special education teachers.

Cindy Reves
McKinley High School
Honolulu