Welcome to New Staff - Communications

Communications

Virtual Staff Room

The VSR (Virtual Staff Room), which is a destination on Google Classroom, is every bit as important as the physical staff room, and so it is vital that you visit it every day to check for general posts and messages in the stream. Please be aware that there are messages posted here that do not go anywhere else, so if you don’t read them, you will find yourself rather in the dark!

If you click on the ‘classwork’ tab, this is in fact an alphabetical reference section, with all kinds of information and links to documents you might need throughout the year.

Daily Bulletin

This is an electronic document published every day, usually the evening before, with a complete round-up of everything that is going on for the day. You should definitely look at this at the beginning of every day for a reminder of what is in store!

Anyone can make an entry on the Daily Bulletin. To do this, just go to the whole School team drive (shared Google drive), select the Communications folder, and in there you will find the Daily Bulletin folder. Just type in a title, fill out some text saying what your event is, who it is for, timings and - crucially - where it is taking place. Don't worry about the order of your post, this will be formatted by the Platform Manager before publication.

email

All school staff have an @farlingtonschool.com gmail based on their official school initials. Your display name is written first name and last name, no titles. If the form of your first name (or last name) is not the form you wish to go by, then please raise an IT ticket and ask for this to be changed.

When sending email that is for information or reference, please consider whether it would be better to post on the VSR. This is to avoid overloading of inboxes because - after all - no one came into education to process email and it can become overwhelming.

Please do not use your school email for personal communications. Gmail is great and you can set up a personal account if you want. If you have gmail already, please pay attention to which account you are in, as it is easy to be in the wrong one. A good idea to distinguish between the two is to put a different profile photo on each.

When sending emails to individual parents, please pay attention to correct spelling and grammar and keep it professional. Our standard sign off is like this:

Kind regards

First and last name

Job title

You can add this to your signature block in settings.

Consider whether you need to copy others in or not. You do not necessarily have to copy in your line manager every time you send an email. However, if you are writing to a parent, your Head of school must be copied in. Please do not use the bcc function.

If you want to send a message to a group, such as ‘All Year 7 parents’, you must send this through for approval to the Deputy Head as far in advance as possible, and this will be sent out for you by the School Administrator.

Staff Briefing

This takes place at morning break in the Trina Mawer Hall every Tuesday and should be attended by all staff, both teaching and non-teaching, (unless you are on break duty which means your will, unfortunately, not be able to be there).

If you're teaching period 2, please let your pupils go 2 to 3 minutes before 10.15am to allow yourself time to get over to the venue as the briefing will start at 10.20am. Tea and coffee are provided for you in the TMH.

The briefing starts with messages from the Headmaster and other members of the Senior Management Team, after which other members of staff may make any announcements if they wish. If you do say something, please be as quick and succinct as possible and make sure that you fill out the Briefing Minutes yourself. A link for this will be sent to you by the School Administrator and you can even do this in advance, via the link on that day’s Daily Bulletin. If you want to add something to the Briefing Minutes that you do not have time or do not wish to say, that is fine, as all staff are required to review the minutes once published, as these contain important messages.

Phones

Staff may use their personal phones around school at their discretion and, if not teaching, are requested to respond to any calls or messages from management or administration if they can. You can call any internal school phone directly from your mobile by using the number published in the internal telephone directory, (see the VSR).

Please note that personal phones should not be used when a member of staff is on duty, unless in the case of emergency, or in the lunch hall or other areas visible to students.

Remember that pupils below Year 11 may not use phones in school, and for Years 11 and above phone use is restricted to the common room and Sixth Form Centre.

There is a staff phone in the corner of the staff room next to the photocopier that you can use to make internal and external calls. You do not need to dial any prefix to make an external call. If the phone rings, the nearest person should answer it.

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