Hiring Workers in the Micro or Hybrid School: Training and Building Culture for Success
You’ve chosen your top candidate for your program and now you need to make sure they are able to deliver your vision. This is not always easy to do! If you are hiring an aide, they will not be responsible for a full delivery of your curriculum like a teacher would be, but you still will want to let them know what it is you do and how you want them to handle certain situations. They should also know about safety such as fire drills or pickup and drop off practices.
A teacher will need to really need to deliver your vision and you will want them to really understand your curriculum, schedule, top priorities, child and family management and communication, and safety policies.
The ideal is to have them shadow if possible. But if you are just getting started or don’t have time, that’s okay! You will want to meet with them several times. A couple of hours two or three times at minimum is usually necessary.
You will want to spend a meeting really making sure they understand the curriculum and schedule. Another meeting may be focused on safety and communication. Management of children such as discipline policies, etc, as well as a thorough review of any educational philosophy practices can easily take up a whole meeting as well. You work through actual practice lessons or scenarios, walk through your space to discuss safety procedures such as locking of doors and gates, playground rules, building rules, parent pickup policies, etc.
The 3 H’s: Honor, Humility, Humor
As you train in these areas, remember that building a culture from Day 1 of honor, humility, and and humor is so important! Even if you only have one employee, understanding how they (and you!) work: who they are, their strengths and struggles, etc… and creating a culture where you can use language you all understand, talk proactively, ask questions, and remember you all have your weak and strong areas, will build a quality team.
One person might be highly energetic but not very organized. Another may be very organized but not as bubbly. Someone else might be a very good ideas person but have some trouble with follow-through while another might be excellent at what is in front of them and want to help everyone out, but be a bit myopic when it comes to seeing connections and the big picture. None of these is better than the other and this is where humility comes in! But some strengths may fit better in some places than in others.
Honor will allow you to celebrate what someone does well and not on what they do poorly Humility will remind everyone that we all have our things…and humor will allow us to laugh about differences. Wrapped up in good communication and an educated vocabulary (Working Genius and Myers Briggs are excellent tools that I highly recommend spending a couple training hours or a staff meeting on fairly early on), these three attitudes will help you build a culture of individuality and teamwork both.
