Communicating Effectively: Tools for Educational Leaders.

For school leaders, good communications is imperative as we communicate the state of student achievement in our schools, the needs of our school to patrons, the successes of our schools and the direction of our efforts. Michael B. Gilbert's Communicating Effectively: Tools for Educational Leaders is a reference work providing helpful advice for communicating with various individuals and groups.

Gilbert, a professor of educational leadership at Central Michigan University, says, "Communication occurs when the listener understands the speaker in the way that the speaker wants to be understood." To be truly effective as a communicator, one must consider the perceptions of the listener to the environment, his or her response to situations, motivations and the dominant mode of responding.

As educators, the author says, we are predominantly "believers," "feelers" and "thinkers" in our base. Students at risk tend to be "funsters" and "doers."

Gilbert offers practical scenarios for identifying one's own communication personality and the personalities of our colleagues. He provides specific suggestions on ways to interact with others so that the message we wish to communicate is truly understood.

(Communicating Effectively: Tools for Educational Leaders by Michael B. Gilbert, ScarecrowEducation, Lanham, Md., 2004, 171 pp., $31.95 softcover)

Linda Gray Smith Superintendent, Worth County R-III School District, Grant City, Mo.