Meet Brian Nicol - School PR Pro

Brian Nicol
Communications Coordinator for Howard-Suamico School District

1. How did you get you start in education and School PR?
 
After eight years as sports information director at my alma mater, UW-Green Bay, I went back to school at age 30 to get my teaching license and began teaching 6th graders. I earned my master’s degree and principal license while working in an incredible 5th-6th grade intermediate school for eight years. Our district created a communications and development coordinator position in 2014 and I was encouraged to apply. Leaving the classroom has been the hardest part of the new job, but I’m learning a lot from great leaders in and out of our school district and hopefully bringing a classroom perspective to my School PR work.

2. What is your favorite part of the job?
 
My favorite part of the new job is visiting schools and classrooms to help them tell their stories. Teachers are humble to a fault, but social media is breaking down some of those barriers. I love it when a teacher asks me how to sign up for Twitter one day, and is tweeting out classroom updates the next. I don’t apologize for my bias; teachers are making a difference every day for kids and anything we can do in School PR to support them is worth our effort. Full disclosure: my wife teaches kindergarten and approves that message. She also joined Twitter this year under immense household pressure from me and our 11-year old son. A close second favorite is learning from our district leadership and working behind the curtain in support of a progressive PreK-12 organization.

3. What piece of advice can you give other School PR pros?
 
Connect; be humble enough to ask for help. If you are an educator, rely on the network of teachers and principals you’ve built up to this point. Regardless, connect with a local NSPRA chapter. Our state level WSPRA group has been a great boon to me in my first year and the national NSPRA conference was excellent. Many of us are one-person shops, or we are splitting time between communications and something else. There are helpful, willing colleagues out there we can learn from. I’m no fundraiser, I’m a math teacher, but part of my position is supporting our Superintendent in fundraising and development. That means I have a lot to learn to be effective.

4. What are three things you think will change the landscape of School PR in the next five years?

• Drones. Cost keeps coming down and increasingly they will be showing up at our events (like our surprise fly by hours before our first football game last week). Policy lags the technology, but districts, municipalities, and even the FAA are scrambling to catch up. This item is on my plate right now. How can we have a policy that mitigates risk and still allows for learning opportunities and all the great images drones can bring to help us tell our story? Stay tuned.
• Parenting generation of digital natives. My first year as a teacher was 2006. I taught using an overhead transparency projector and came home with a left-hand full of marker smudges. My 5th grade son has never seen a transparency projector and he brings an iPad home instead of books. If I sent my first e-mail in college (early 90s) and that means people born that year are now parents in our district and have had access to e-mail their entire lives, not to mention social media. This is one of my core audiences. They think about information differently than I do. Whose perspective needs to change, mine or theirs?
• Politicized debate over public schools and funding. I’d like to be optimistic and say that the pendulum is swinging toward public schools being viewed as an investment and not an expense. Realistically, we haven’t hit “bottom” yet - idealogues are leading the conversation rather than the educators. But the tide will turn and then it will get better. I believe School PR pros have a role to play here, that’s why districts (in Wisconsin) are adding positions like ours to support the cause for the good of our students, teachers, and communities. I believe when communities support public schools, everyone benefits.

 
5. Where can people find out more about you? Twitter? Blog?

My personal Twitter is @bsnicol2, professional Twitter is our school district @HSSD. I just started a self-indulgent blog that touches on my transition from teaching to School PR and what it’s been like starting over in education at age 40-something - http://lessonslearnedinschoolpr.weebly.com/