The SCN Encourager – Monday, Nov. 19, 2012

Yikes! It’s time to set my donut down and act!

The other morning I was driving into work after first visiting one of our schools. I called our superintendent’s assistant to check-in about how the day was starting. “Just awful,” she said in a low voice.  Immediately my school communications mind-map launched into some of the possibilities. High alert time! I set my donut down, pulled over, turned down the radio, and got out my little notepad and pen. I was ready but my mind was still racing! (What could it be now? An irate parent? A bus accident? A boiler break-down? You all probably well know the varied crisis scenarios that were flipping about in my head . . .) Anyway, the assistant filled me in about the horrible beginning to her day. “The superintendent had a meeting at 8 am with a department chair. And that person showed up here at our admin building while the superintendent went way over there,” she confided. “I goofed up. I didn’t write in the location on his calendar.”  Whew! I thought, with my heart slowing back down to normal. No crisis here. In our school communicator’s world, this story had a very satisfactory ending. But it doesn’t always work out this way, does it?

Tom Page, SCN managing editor