Communications Rules to Live By
September 12th, 2016
Everyone agrees that education is important – but getting attention for that new innovative program can be hard. Whatever solutions your organization wants to promote, you need to make sure your messaging stands out from the crowd, grabs your audience, and inspires them to work with you.
Our consulting partner Anat Shenker-Osorio is an expert at finding the messages that resonate with audiences. With expertise in cognition and linguistics, Anat has spent over ten years researching how people think about education. She’s worked with the Ford Foundation and National Education Association, and written extensively about language and social policy.
Anat shared a few basic Do’s and Don’ts for education-focused communications. This simple guide will make your message accessible, broaden your audience, and help advance your mission and goals.
DO employ your metaphors wisely. Education issues are complex, and using the right metaphors helps listeners make sense of them. One great example is Head Start, whose name instantly evokes a common metaphor: life is a journey. Instead of exhaustively detailing the skills and developmental steps kids go through as they participate in early learning programs, Head Start’s very name conveys a simple message: kids who go to preschool get farther, faster.
DON’T talk about gaps. It’s a common turn of phrase for inequality – the wealth gap, the gender gap, the achievement gap – but describing a chasm between students has audiences fill in their own origin story for this divide. All too often, the top of mind explanation that audiences supply is about individual effort instead of about systemic change. Further, in the “gap” world, our education system’s flaws are only relevant to families whose children are struggling, not to all families. Instead, use language that emphasizes that when anybody’s school is weak, all of us lose.
DO use language that will foreground and support your proposed solution. Theories on education differ and so should our descriptions.
Are you a proponent of social and emotional learning? Then describing education in terms of productivity – “measure the learning,” “ratchet up our expectations,” “she’s a product of a good school” – might not be the best approach. This language implies that important academic successes are always quantifiable. Advances in social and emotional capacities can’t always be quantified, so why use that vocabulary?
Instead, as mentioned above, position education as a crucial part of the life journey. Phrases like “path to success” focus on learning as a process that involves time and is part of creating a whole adult ready for all of life’s challenges. Linking students to growing plants – “planting the seed of interest,” “cultivating growth,” – can be especially effective as it allows for that little bit “magic” – that unquantifiable influence – that helps students grow and develop but might not be measured in test scores.
DON’T get stuck on the problems. It’s easy to get bogged down in all of the challenges facing our students, schools, and teachers but don’t let the negatives take over your narrative. Instead of overwhelming your audience with seemingly unending and insurmountable obstacles, focus on presenting a hopeful vision of the future that will make them feel empowered and will inspire them to take action. Acknowledge that there are serious barriers but then describe a future that is better, brighter, and possible to achieve.
