Why Principals Must Build Relationships with Parents

Much has been made about the need for teachers to foster healthy relationships with the parents of their students. Likewise, a principal must seek out opportunities to build cooperative relationships with parents.   Though the relationship between principal and parents are much more distant than the relationship between teacher and parents, there is still considerable value there.   Principals who embrace the opportunity to build the relationships with parents will find it to be a worthwhile investment.   Relationships Build Respect Parents may not always agree with your decisions, but when they respect you, it makes those disagreements easier.   Garnering parental respect helps to make those tough decisions a little easier. Principals are not perfect, and all their decisions will not turn to gold. Being respected gives principals a little latitude when they do fail. Furthermore, if the parents respect you, the students will respect you.   This alone makes any time invested in building relationships with parents worthwhile. Relationships BuildTrust Trust is sometimes the most difficult thing to earn. Parents are often skeptical. They want to know that you have the best interests of their children at heart.   Trust happens when parents bring issues or concerns to you and know when they leave your office that it is going to be addressed. The benefits of earning a parent’s trust are fantastic. Trust gives you the leeway to make decisions without looking over your shoulder, worrying about being questioned, or having to defend it.   Relationships Allow for Honest Feedback Perhaps the biggest benefit of having a relationship with parents is that you can solicit feedback from them on a wide variety of school-related issues.   A good principal seeks out honest feedback. They want to know what works well, but they also want to know what needs to be fixed.   Taking this feedback and examining it further can spark great changes in a school. Parents have great ideas. Many will never express those ideas because they do not have a relationship with a principal.   Principals must be okay with asking the tough questions, but also receiving the tough answers.   We may not like everything we hear, but having feedback can challenge the way we think and ultimately make our school better. Relationships Make Your Job Easier A principal’s job is difficult.   Nothing is predictable. Each day brings about new and unexpected challenges.   When you have healthy relationships with parents, it simply makes your job easier.   Calling a parent about a student discipline issue becomes much easier when there is a healthy relationship there.   Making decisions, in general, become easier when you know that parents respect you and trust you enough to do your job that they are not going to be beating down your door and questioning your every move. Strategies for Principals to Build Relationships with Parents Principals spend a large amount of time after school at extra-curricular activities. This is a great opportunity to reach out and build informal relationships with parents.   Great principals are adept at finding common ground or mutual interests with almost any parent.   They can talk about anything from the weather to politics to sports.   Having these conversations helps parents see you as a real person and not just as a figurehead for the school.   They see you in part as the person who really likes the Dallas Cowboys as opposed to the guy that’s out to get my kid. Knowing something personal about you will make it easier to trust and respect you. One simple strategy for building relationships with parents is to randomly call 5-10 parents each week and ask them a short series of questions about the school, their children’s teachers, etc.   Parents will love that you took the time to ask them their opinion. Another strategy is a parent’s luncheon.   A principal can invite a small group of parents to join them for lunch to talk about key issues the school is dealing with.   These luncheons can be scheduled on a monthly basis or as needed.   Utilizing strategies like these can really solidify relationships with parents. Finally, schools are almost always forming committees on a variety of school-related topics. These committees should not be limited to school personnel. Inviting parents and students to serve on a committee brings a different perspective that can be beneficial for everyone.   Parents get to be a part of the inner workings of the school and provide their stamp on their child’s education. Principals are able to utilize this time to continue to build relationships and solicit a perspective they may not have otherwise been given.

Speech Acts in Linguistics

In linguistics, a speech act is an utterance defined in terms of a speakers intention and the effect it has on a listener. Essentially, it is the action that the speaker hopes to provoke in his or her audience. Speech acts might be requests, warnings, promises, apologies, greetings, or any number of declarations. As you might imagine, speech acts are an important part of communication. Speech-Act Theory Speech-act theory is a subfield of pragmatics. This area of study is concerned with the ways in which words  can be used not only to present information but also to carry out actions. It is used in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, legal and literary theories, and even the development of artificial intelligence. Speech-act theory was introduced in 1975 by Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin in How to Do Things With Words  and further developed by American philosopher J.R. Searle. It considers three levels or components of utterances: locutionary acts (the making of a meaningful statement, saying something that a hearer understands), illocutionary acts (saying something with a purpose, such as to inform), and perlocutionary acts (saying something that causes someone to act). Illocutionary speech acts can also be broken down into different families, grouped together by their intent of usage. Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts To determine which way a speech act is to be interpreted, one must first determine the type of act being performed.  Locutionary acts  are, according to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seays Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics, the mere act of producing some linguistic sounds or marks with a certain meaning and reference. So this is merely an umbrella term, as illocutionary and perlocutionary acts can occur simultaneously when locution of a statement happens. Illocutionary acts, then, carry a directive for the audience. It might be a promise, an order, an apology, or an expression of thanks—or merely an answer to a question, to inform the other person in the conversation. These express a certain attitude and carry with their statements a certain illocutionary force, which can be broken into families.   Perlocutionary acts, on the other hand, bring about a consequence to the audience. They have an effect on the hearer, in feelings, thoughts, or actions, for example, changing someones mind. Unlike illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts can project a sense of fear into the audience. Take for instance the perlocutionary act of saying, I will not be your friend. Here, the impending loss of friendship is an illocutionary act, while the effect of frightening the friend into compliance is a perlocutionary act. Families of Speech Acts As mentioned, illocutionary acts can be categorized into common families of speech acts. These define the supposed intent of the speaker. Austin again uses How to Do Things With Words to argue his case for the five most common classes:   Verdictives, which present a findingExercitives, which exemplify power or influenceCommissives, which consist of promising or committing to doing somethingBehabitives, which have to do with social behaviors and attitudes like apologizing and congratulatingExpositives, which explain how our language interacts with itself David Crystal, too, argues for these categories in Dictionary of Linguistics. He lists several proposed  categories, including directives (speakers try to get their listeners to do something, e.g. begging, commanding, requesting), commissives (speakers commit themselves to a future course of action, e.g. promising, guaranteeing), expressives (speakers express their feelings, e.g. apologizing, welcoming, sympathizing), declarations (the speakers utterance brings about a new external situation, e.g. christening, marrying, resigning). It is important to note that these are not the only categories of speech acts, and they are not perfect nor exclusive. Kirsten Malmkjaer points out in Speech-Act Theory, There are many marginal cases, and many instances of overlap, and a very large body of research exists as a result of peoples efforts to arrive at more precise classifications. Still, these five commonly accepted categories do a good job of describing the breadth of human expression, at least when it comes to illocutionary acts in speech theory. Sources Austin, J.L. How to Do Things With Words. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Crystal, D. Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Malmkjaer, K. Speech -Act Theory. In The Linguistics Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. Nuccetelli, Susana (Editor). Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics. Gary Seay (Series Editor), Rowman Littlefield Publishers, December 24, 2007.

Nuclear Energy Essay - 1946 Words

Nuclear Energy The world is running out of fossil fuels and this decrease in supply is causing an increase in price for the consumer. There is a growing need to find alternative sources for energy. The World Energy Council predicts that the world will be using 50 percent more energy by the year 2020 (Morgan). Among the options for more energy are wind, solar, water, and nuclear powers. Nuclear power gives far more bang for the buck than the others. Although it can produce vast amounts of energy there is a lot of skepticism about the benefits of nuclear energy. Most of the critics say that nuclear power is far too dangerous for widespread use. At the present time nuclear energy seems to be the best alternative source over†¦show more content†¦And by the 1960’s nuclear power had been established as a quality energy source. Nuclear power plants are much like coal or natural gas power plants because they use fission energy to heat water into steam, which powers turbines in gener ators that make electricity. Uranium-235 is packed in hollow rods at the core of a reactor; these rods can last from four to six years inside a reactor before they need to be replaced. Inside the rods is where the fission takes place. The rods are lowered into water and when the fission in the rods takes place it produces great heat and the water is boiled producing steam that powers the turbines. This all takes place in a controlled system that allows no radiation to escape the core of the reactor. Reactors are generally encased in steel and concrete to shield the radiation. The huge towers seen at a nuclear power plant release the excess steam from the system. This steam contains no radiation. Safety features on these reactor cores include emergency cooling devices to prevent meltdowns. If the reactor core is not cooled the heat is so great (300 ° C) it would melt the concrete and steel, which encloses the core. The amount of uranium needed to run a nuclear power plant is far less than the amount of coal needed to run a coal power plant. One pound of uranium can produce as much energy as 1,500 tons of coal and millions of barrels of oil (Gibson). 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With today’s current technology, the emission of these atoms as well as the energy released can be controlled and used in

Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management

Question: Discuss about the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. Answer: Introduction: The current study focuses upon the factors pertaining to Breyers ice cream that shall facilitate in determining the market entry strategy in the consumer goods market in Thailand. Leih Teece (2014) mentioned that in case of launching a product into a new market, it pertinent to note the probable attributes of the product that can counter the features of competing products. Discussion: The core functions pertaining to Breyers ice cream is to facilitate consumption of a food product. Shaw (2015) advocated that in case of market entry strategy, it is relevant to note that despite having sound attributes many product fails to capitalise upon the uniqueness that their products tend to have. In the context of tangible attributes pertaining to product of Breyers, the primary attributes relates to the contents that ice creams generally tend to have such as presence of homogeneous fats, creams and flavoring along with proper packaging that ensures that the product is kept in an appropriate manner. In this context, the products offered by Breyers tend to differ from that of its competitors owing to its packaging and contents (Breyers 2016). In terms of augmented features that can differentiate Breyers products the management at Breyers requires to launch its flavors selectively as well as introducing ice creams with certain localised flavors that complements Thai cuisine. The potentiality concerning increase of market share by Breyers in the ice cream segment of Thailands fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) is considerable. Moreover, in the context of potentiality, it can be construed that Brayers can introduce additional set of flavors or launch set of ice cream cones and or ice cream bars. Conclusion: Thereby, it can be inferred that the product shall be able to create its consumer base through creating individual attributes pertaining to its products that are hard to replicate. Moreover, the consumers will be able to receive additional set of products under Breyers brand and thereby the prospective consumer base of the brand can be enhanced by it through the potential and augmented product. References: Breyers. (2016). Breyers Ice Cream and Frozen Dairy Desserts. [online] Available at: https://www.breyers.com/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]. Leih, S., Teece, D. (2014). Market Entry Strategies.Leih, S. Teece, D.(2014), Market entry strategies, In D. Teece and M. Augier (eds). Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management, London. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Shaw, K. (2015). Foreign Market Entry Strategies.China-USA Business Review, 395. Xu, H., Taute, H. A., Dishman, P., Guo, J. (2015). Examining Causal Relationships among International Experience, Perceived Environmental Uncertainty, Market Entry Mode, and International Performance.International Marketing in the Fast Changing World (Advances in International Marketing, Volume 26) Emerald Group Publishing Limited,26, 135-156.