Nancy Frey, a classroom teacher and professor at San Diego State University, visits schools often to supervise student teachers. No stranger to the colorful conversations that unfold in front offices, Frey was unexpectedly taken aback by a recent experience.
"I was sitting in a middle school front office while two employees carried on an extended conversation about a student, who they named, and how much they disliked him. They said that the principal should expel him, but was just afraid of the family's anger. I listened to this while sitting under a bulletin board exclaiming the school's commitment to students and families."
Frey left the school "feeling demoralized for the child involved, the [child's] family, the principal, and the school community. There were two other students and a parent sitting in the same waiting area that afternoon, and the damage was immeasurable."
Although atypical, the scenario is a reminder that one poor experience can permanently alienate a visitor. Through purposeful reflection and evaluation, however, schools can prevent this kind of incident from occurring—and cultivate interactions that positively engage students, parents, community members, and stakeholders.
During a session at the 2013 ASCD Conference on Educational Leadership, Frey explained that a welcoming environment "starts with the atmosphere in the front office."
Developing Service Cycles
In fact, some parents begin evaluating a school's culture at the front door. It takes five minutes for a visitor to form an impression of a school, says Peter DeWitt, coauthor of the forthcoming ASCD book, School Climate Change: How Do I Build a Positive Environment for Learning? How quickly they are buzzed into the school, what they see hanging on the walls in the foyer and front office (is student art showcased?), how the furniture is arranged (are there barriers to the entrance?), and how they are greeted all factor into their first impression.
In How to Create a Culture of Achievement in Your School and Classroom (ASCD, 2012), Frey and coauthors Douglas Fisher and Ian Pumpian recommend that schools develop "service cycles," or scripts for how staff members—not just the front desk—receive and follow up with visitors.
"A service-oriented school provides many points of contact with clients," Frey notes. Just as you might be greeted at various points while shopping at a department store, you encounter different staff members as you make your way through a school building.
"A service cycle that includes a greeting and a simple question, 'are you being helped?' can and should be enacted by everyone," insists Frey. It should also outline expectations for how to direct visitors to their destination and how to lead them out of the building at the time of departure.
Frey recommends that students escort visitors to classrooms, but if that's not possible, front office staff can "provide a site map, review the route and highlight it on the map, and then walk the person to the door."
Evaluating Foot Traffic
To better serve clients, businesses gather customer data. This need not take a lot of extra resources to achieve in a school; indeed, many are already sitting on a wealth of information.
"Visitor log books are the most neglected data in the school," Frey believes. "No one ever seems to look at them to locate patterns, find out which teachers get lots of foot traffic, or to discover other interesting projects occurring at the school."
Reviewing the log books and placing phone calls to visitors from the previous week, asking them about their time at the school, "can give an administrator a glimpse of the front office experience," says Frey. Administrators can also touch base with staff members who received visitors to see if the school should provide additional information or assistance to those parents.
A nearly empty log book can be a telling indication that visitors are "avoiding contact" with a school and its classrooms, adds Frey. "We simply can't accomplish the work of schooling if our clients are hiding out from us."
Defining Expectations
Once the bigger picture comes into view, schools can solicit a neutral party to provide an outsider's perspective. Frey suggests having a "secret shopper"—someone unknown to the school community—visit the front office to enroll a student or pose as a vendor. "A network of administrators can do this for each other," she suggests, especially in a larger district.
Frey offers questions for reflection in How to Create a Culture of Achievement to share in advance with the secret shopper, such as, "Were you greeted in a timely fashion?", "Did you interact with anyone else besides the person at the front desk?", and "Did someone ask for your contact information so they could follow up with you?"
To prevent staff from perceiving the exercise as a "gotcha," prepare them for the visit (but don't reveal a specific date) by explaining how the criteria will be evaluated. Then, based on the feedback gathered, administrators can hold constructive conversations with staff on areas of strength and areas that need improvement.
Creating a Culture of Accountability
The front office carries the responsibility to triage requests from within and outside of the school. In such a high stress position, it helps to have a guiding philosophy for all interactions. A former principal of Poestenkill Elementary School in New York, DeWitt says that his school adopted Stephen Covey's appeal to "seek first to understand, then to be understood."
DeWitt explains, "We would discuss [as a staff] that we never really knew what was going on in the lives of families, and it was our responsibility to seek their motivation/background before we could provide input. We needed to understand our families and not judge them."
Staff members openly shared feedback on how they observed each other handle student and parent interactions. DeWitt also followed up with teachers in person, by e-mail, or with a congratulatory card when a parent notified him of a productive meeting or when he overheard a positive interaction in the hallway or front office.
"I think the accountability comes in when staff feel valued and treated like professionals," he says.
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Secret Shopper Checklist
Gather valuable feedback by enlisting a "secret shopper" to visit your school or district's front office. Visit www.ascd.org/eu0814secretshopper to download a sample Secret Shopper Checklist from the book, How to Create a Culture of Achievement in Your School and Classroom.