Avoid text-heavy, prose-like e-mails. E-mails are not meant to be novels or creative outlets.

Use spaces, bullets, and other signposts to help your reader determine what is important. A common error is to embed many questions within one paragraph. What often happens is you get a reply but only to your last question. If you really want to get clear replies to your questions, bullet them. Give or request a timeline or indicate urgency. Use clear subject lines to help your reader determine when they need to reply.

e-Mail: uSe it, dont abuSe it!

In our current digital state we can find ourselves using e-mail for almost everything at all times of day: urgent issues, missives about our complaints, quick questions, complicated student issues, tricky parent situations, and so on. The thing we want to remember is that although e-mail is always convenient, it is not always appropriate. Lets talk about some examples. Reflection Question: What do you do when you have a thought you want to share with someone at your school? When e-Mail is the preferred path Now that you will ask yourself Do I need to send this? before hitting the Send button, lets talk about when it is appropriate to use e-mail and when it is not. The four most common e-mail offenses that all of us commit are as follows: 1. Using e-mail in an emergency 2. Using e-mail to resolve conflicts or disagreements (I have a personal rule on this one: If I find myself irritated by an e-mail, I have to wait at least twenty-four hours to reply.) 3. Using e-mail to deal with complex issues 4. Using e-mail to give unsolicited feedback or to try to initiate major change Lets explore each of these in more detail and get clear on when it is appropriate to use e-mail and when we may want to make a different choice. When E-Mail May Not Be the Most Appropriate Choice Using e-mail in an emergency. For whatever reason, some schools create e-mail urgency addictions on the part of both the teachers and the administrators by using e-mail for

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urgent situations. If a principal, for example, has to constantly check her e-mail for behavior situations, then that principal is not going to be able to be proactive in approaching other student culture issues. If a teacher has to run to check his or her e-mail every hour to look for urgent updates, he or she cannot be focused on teaching. E-mail is not for emergencies. Set up different protocols in your school for emergencies, preferably using the cell phone for communicating urgent issuesor an old-fashioned note sent by student messenger to the principal. Using e-mail to resolve conflict or disagreements. Just avoid this. You know why. Nothing good ever happens. Set up a time and speak in person. Avoid starting e-mail wars. Or if you receive an e-mail that may be laden with emotions, pick up the phone or have a meeting to discuss the issue. Using e-mail to deal with complex issues. This is another no-no, unless absolutely necessary. Why? Because complex issues usually involve multiple people and lots of nuance, neither of which lend themselves well to e-mail. For example, Ive seen one member of a grade-level team send out a lengthy, winding missive to his team to propose an overhaul to the grades approach to teaching writing. Within this e-mail there are questions on how writing time is currently structured, how students learn and read and write, and what best practice research says on this topic. Given the scope of the topic (and likely strong opinions!), this topic would be better saved for a department meeting. Using e-mail to give unsolicited feedback or to try to initiate major change. Lets start from the bottom up. Change is good. Change from teachers is especially good. Writing an e-mail to your principal that is incredibly long-winded and replete with issues, ideas, and an unclear aim is not an effective way to use e-mail. Composing such an e-mail will end up being very time-consuming for youand cumbersome for your principal to respond toand most likely you will not get a reply. Reflection Question: Look through your sent e-mail messages. Are you using e-mail wisely? Could anything be written more clearly or saved for meetings?
Communicate Better: Moving Beyond E-Mail

Here is a list of ideas for when you can use e-mail to trigger communication on an issue, but you may need to solve the issue through some other means. Propose solutions. Earlier we discussed the common error often made via e-mail in which the sender throws out multiple thoughts or ideas and ends with the ubiquitous question, Thoughts? or Reactions? Be the person to offer a few solutions to the challenge you pose in your e-mail. By proposing ideas, you are giving people something to

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respond to so they dont have to come up with the possible solutions all by themselves. This will ease the load on them and increase the chance that they will respond. You will be amazed at how much more quickly things get resolved. Create daily huddles. If you find yourself e-mailing your co-teacher obsessively throughout the day (in spite of being in the same room!) or dashing off a missive to your gradelevel chair at the end of every day, consider adding a daily huddle to your calendar. You may find that meeting in person for a few minutes each day is all you need to discuss items that would constitute five to ten separate e-mails. Shut down the e-mail chains. Youve all experienced it: the back and forth that adds another person to a largely-irrelevant e-mail chain. When you review all of the messages in full, you notice that each person involved has raised a different issue (And what about this behavior issue? And while we are at it, should this student go on the field trip? And what about this incentive system overall?), nothing is moving forward, and the only thing created is confusion. Be the person to step in and offer a concrete next step. For example, Hey, guys, Im so glad we have so many opinions on this important issue. I think it makes sense for us to gather for fifteen minutes tomorrow to try and resolve this. If this works, can we each bring our ideas for solving this, and can everyone be free at 4 pm? Just reply to me directly and we will meet in Ms. Andersons room. You do not have to be the official leader of the team or grade to suggest this. Trust me, people will appreciate this necessary intervention.

This sounds great, but there is no way I can get my school on board with using e-mail like this.
This chapter can feel particularly daunting to start on your own because effective e-mail communication requires the cooperation of many people and cannot be conquered alone. If you like these ideas and think they could help your school tame e-mail (or use it more wisely), here are a few ways you could start: Tell your grade-level team or department what you have been reading about, what you see as a challenge with e-mail, and show them this chapter.

Ask them if they would be willing to try a simple set of e-mail agreements. If it works, you could start slowly infiltrating your school with these techniques.
If you have a great relationship with your principal, you could ask to start a temporary communications working group that will help save everyone time.

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get Started: next StepS

E-mail organization and habits are one of those things we tend to put off until a rainy day when we magically have a half-day appear so we can file the six thousand messages that have accumulated in the past few years. That day is not coming. This is one habit that I recommend you start immediately. Deal with the backlog later. Here is a checklist of how you can get started taming your in-box:

Review the list of structural suggestions to stage the initial intervention. Limit your total number of e-mail accounts. Unsubscribe to any junk or updates you dont bother to read. Get your smartphone synchronized with your computers in-boxes. Direct your family and friends to where you want them to go. Turn off the auto notifications. Get friendly with the delete button. Declare e-mail bankruptcy. Set up simple filing systems and get your e-mails filed. Follow-Up Projects Upcoming Meetings Administrative Processed Select times of day to answer e-mails and block them into your schedule on your Weekly Worksheet. Use the STAR method to go through your e-mails with a clear purpose. Scan Trash Archive Respond Establish clear writing habits. Decide if e-mail is the best way to communicate the information.

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