ISM offers up thought-provoking book suggestions that will provide some insight, training, and professional development for you.

When you think of journaling, you probably relegate it to the personal—your thoughts, feelings, and impressions of things that happen in your personal life. You can use journaling to manage stress and for self-exploration, by recording your feelings, and not just noting the event.

Q: We need to hire for a few remaining openings over the summer. Do you have any tips on conducting reference checks?

An experienced Head of School that we know recently told us a sad story. Sinking down into his chair at the end of a long day, he sighed. “I think we missed another opportunity today,” he said, beginning to tell us his tale.

We wanted to reprise a few past tips to help you enhance your HR practices this summer. We’re happy to share these before taking our own e-letter break for the summer.

As Development professionals, it is a given that you treat your donors and prospects truthfully and ethically. You are representing your school, and you are asking your supporters to put their trust in your school for the proper stewardship of their money. To that end, the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) with the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), CASE, and The Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits, has developed The Donor Bill of Rights. These principles have been endorsed by numerous organizations.

The academic year may be over, but as Development Director, you are working feverishly—trying to collect those unfulfilled annual fund pledges to close out the year. You are also prepping for the next annual fund! Feels like a hamster wheel, right?

Q: When a family that has made an annual fund gift leaves your school during or at the end of the annual fund year, do you count that family in your participation rate? And what about divorced families? Do they count as one or two household?

Typically, a class period is 40-to-50 minutes long. And in that time, ISM research shows, the period only yields 35 minutes of actual instruction time. That may be enough to convey information, but what about time to discuss, explore, and find connections? In-depth study can be difficult, especially with students (and parents) who increasingly demand more subjects, more AP, more specialized study. Ultimately, your schedule becomes increasingly complex, students and faculty become more stressed, and your space “shrinks.”

Education Week, reporting on the just-released study by the National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical center of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, noted that private school enrollment fell from 6.3 million students in 2002–2003 to 5.5 million in 2009-2010.