Many young teachers gain positions of responsibility early in their careers and begin to send as many e-mails as they receive in school. Here are twelve tips for using e-mail effectively:
1. Stop sending so many
Make e-mail your Plan B. Plan A is to communicate with your staff verbally, face-to-face, instead of sending them a steady stream of e-mails. This is more difficult than it sounds. You may find that you do a lot of work after hours or at home, and if something comes up – for example if you find you need to change the time of your team meeting – you will be tempted to whizz off a quick e-mail to your team. It is much better, though, to jot it down on your Ticklist and pop round and explain to people face-to-face. As with any routine task, you should batch up any stuff you have to tell your team, and give them five minutes chat-time each. This may not always the most efficient method of communicating, but it will help you to build relationships in the team.
This is particularly true of bad news. If, for example, you need to tell a member of your team that their timetable is being changed, or their main teaching room is moving, e-mail is certainly not the best option. It is unfortunately too common in schools for bad news to be sent out via e-mail, with verbose justifications, explanations and statements of the party line. Try to avoid being seem as an e-mail manager.
2. Be discreet
Remember that all e-mails are public property. They can be forwarded, printed, left in taxis and put on noticeboards. They can be used to justify disciplinary action or formal complaints. Make sure that you never, never send an e-mail when you are angry, upset, drunk, or too tired to think straight. If you really must have a rant, type up the e-mail and send it to yourself, or save it as a draft. Read it the next day, when you are more relaxed, and decide then whether it is really worth sending. Most matters are much better dealt with face-to-face, calmly. You should also remember that most people cannot judge the emotional tone of an e-mail, but believe that they can do so.
3. Be polite
You should not waffle in e-mails, but you should take care to include the standard conversational courtesies: 'Hi', 'Hope you're well', 'Nice to see you yesterday' and similar touches all help to establish the emotional tone of your message.
You should not, though, use formal salutations on internal e-mails. Phrases like 'Dear John' and 'Yours faithfully' should be reserved for letters.
4. Be prompt
Get into the habit of replying to e-mails immediately, even when (or in fact particularly when) they involve a lot of time-consuming work. If someone sends you a twenty page report, it is much better to reply immediately with a message like “Thanks, I'll read the report over the weekend, and get back to you some time next week” than to send no response at all until after you've read the report. By replying, you are letting the sender know that you are engaged and co-operative.
This is particularly true if an e-mail asks you to do something that you aren't sure if you can do. If, for example, you are asked to develop differentiated resources for gifted and talented students, but you are concerned about the amount of work involved, it is very tempting to leave the message in your inbox while you think about it, or leave it on your Ticklist for weeks on end. The answer is to reply immediately along the lines of 'This sounds really interesting, but I'm not sure how I can fit it in with my other commitments. Can we meet to discuss, please?” This is obviously not the answer that the sender wanted, but it is far preferable to no answer at all.
5. Communicate clearly
Develop your writing style. In particular, pay attention to when-things-go-wrong – when you don't get the results you want. The most common errors are (i) accidentally communicating a negative tone or emotion (ii) failing to make it clear what you want to happen (iii) making key information hard-to-find (iv) writing paragraphs which are too long and difficult to read quickly.
6. Choose your time
Try never to just dash off an e-mail. Write your e-mails at a pre-planned time, with preparation, in batches. Before you start each e-mail, make sure that you have a purpose, and that know what you are trying to achieve. Depending on whether you want to persuade, inform or prompt some action, you may need to modify the style of your message. You must also be mindful of the personalities and relationships of those you are sending to. Some senior teacher staff are depressingly precious about over-familiarity, while others can be judgemental regarding spelling, grammar and written style.
7. Target your message
Take extra care when you send an e-mail to more than one person. Be polite, but make it absolutely clear what you want done, and who you want to do it.
Here is a bad example:
To: abby.amble@grove.ac.uk; brenda.beadle@grove.ac.uk; charles.cullen@grove.ac.uk; admin@grove.ac.uk
Subject: Moderators Visit on Tuesday - Action Needed
Hi Everyone
The EdExcel Moderator is visiting on Tuesday and I'm out all day. She'll need a car-parking space and an office to work in. We need to get the students coursework over to the office, and she'll need to be greeted on arrival. Best of Luck!!
The problem with this e-mail is that nobody knows who is doing what. Hopefully, some of it will be obvious - the admin team will know what their role is and what they don't do - but too much is being left to chance. Here is a better version:
To: abby.amble@grove.ac.uk; brenda.beadle@grove.ac.uk; charles.cullen@grove.ac.uk; admin@grove.ac.uk
Subject: Moderators Visit on Tuesday - Action Needed
Hi Everyone
The EdExcel Moderator is visiting on Tuesday and I'm out all day.
Abby, can you check with admin that they can fix her a car-parking space? And could you be there to greet her, please?
Charles, we would like to use your old office again all day. Could you confirm that's OK?
Abby and Brenda, you'll need to get the students coursework over to the office on Monday evening. Talk to admin if you need help with this.
Best of Luck!!
This is particularly true if you are using cc (ie copying someone into an e-mail rather than sending it to them directly). By convention, a .cc'd message is for information only, but this is not universally understood. 'cc' messages are often one of the most unpopular aspects of e-mail, as inexperienced managers try to “keep everyone informed” by cc'ing them on all e-mails.
Most e-mail programs also include a bcc feature, also known as a blind copy. This should not be used in schools, as - again - it is widely misunderstood, and only very rarely of value.
8. Be brief
When you are part of an established team, and you know that no-one will interpret your messages as terse, you should develop brevity as a key strength.
Use standard phrases where possible so your team don't need to read long explanations:
'For action', and 'For info only' and 'As discussed'
EOM for end-of-message. This is used when you send an e-mail so brief that recipients might believe it had been sent in error. It is also used when an e-mail has no text in the body of the message, only in the subject line. Here's an example:
Subject: Just a reminder about Year 9 reports due tomorrow EOM
As a rule, however, you should avoid web abbreviations like ROFL or TTFN, unless you are confident that they will be both understood and appreciated. Similarly, emoticons (eg smiley faces) should be avoided.
As another guideline regaring brevity: you should never write an e-mail so long that it cannot be comfortably read on one screen-page.
9. Consider layout
Lay your e-mail out so each and all of the key points are distinct. Otherwise, a busy reader may miss one or more of them. Here is an example of a badly laid out e-mail body:
To: tom.smith@grove.ac.uk
Subject: Parents Evening
Hi Tom. Parents evening tomorrow. Note that you'll need to park your car in the Governors' car park. I'll need your car registration number to pass to admin and your mobile number. I'm doing the presentation in the Hall at eight. Do you have the cable to connect the laptop to the projector in the hall, and a power cable extension lead?
The problem with this layout is that it mixes information with questions, making it difficult to read quickly and much too easy to miss a question and trigger a partial reply. Here is a better layout.
To: tom.smith@grove.ac.uk
Subject: Parents Evening
Hi Tom
Couple of points for information:
- Parents evening tomorrow and you'll need to park in the Governors' car park
- I'll be doing the presentation in the Hall at eight.
A few questions:
- can you tell me your car registration number, please, so I can pass it on to admin?
- and your mobile number?
- do you have the cable to connect the laptop to the projector in the hall?
- do you have a power cable extension lead?
Abby
10. Consider subject lines
Make sure your subject line is informative and clear. If you are sending an e-mail to your teaching team, they are busy people, and they need to be able to prioritise their work, based on your subject line.
Here are some bad examples:
Subject: Help !!
Message: I'm moving house in a few weeks. Does anyone have some crates I could borrow?
Subject: IMPORTANT!!
Message: It's Carly's birthday today, so if you want some cake, come to the staff-room at break today !!!
Subject: Phone Call from Governor
Message: I've just had a call from the Chair of Governors and we are going to have a visit from Ofsted TOMORROW. Please meet in my office at 4 pm to discuss what we need to do.
The problem with these subject lines is that they convey no information about the content or its urgency. A busy reader would be much more likely to read the first two of these e-mails, while leaving the third till later. Here are some better examples:
Subject: Important - query from Parent of Tom Smith in 8B
Subject: Agenda attached for NUT meeting on 3 June
Subject: I need help moving house !!
Subject: Carly's birthday today - cake in staff-room
Subject: Read This NOW - OFSTED visit tomorrow; meeting at 4pm today
Each of these contains sufficient information for the reader to make a three-way decision: delete? Read it now? Read it later?
11. Consider your reader
One of the benefits of laying out your e-mails well (see above) is that you make it easier for in-text or inline replies to your questions. This means that the answers are embedded in the original text, along with the questions. For example, Tom might respond to the e-mail above as follows.
Hi Abby, I've embedded answers in your e-mail below.
Tom
Hi Tom.
Couple of points for information:
- It's Parents Evening tomorrow so you'll need to park in the Governors' car park
- I'll be doing the presentation in the Hall at eight.
A few questions:
- can you tell me your car registration number, please, so I can pass it on to admin? It's AK 09 PTJ
- and your mobile number? 07988 234 234
- do you have the cable to connect the laptop to the projector in the hall? Nope, sorry.
12. As a last resort
A former colleague of mine had a serious accident and was off school for nearly a whole term. When he came back to work, there was obviously a lot of catching up to do, but the thing that worried him the most was his bulging in-box: almost a thousand e-mails. I introduced him to a new concept: e-mail bankruptcy. This means putting the past behind you and starting with a clean slate. With a little help from the Network Support team, he sent out a single e-mail to everyone in his address book, saying that he would not be replying to messages more than five days old, and asking people to re-send any older e-mails which still required some action. He got exactly four replies.