Clarity In Your School

The title of this post can either make you cringe or make you feel like a million bucks if you feel like your school, staff, and administration has a clear vision of what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Recently the infamous Seth Godin, on his blog had a post titled “What’s It For?”  Relating it to numerous business and personal fields he goes into a thought process that leads us to understand sometimes we are telling our workers and public we are doing something, producing something, or making decisions about something based on a reason.  Unfortunately, this is not always our real driving reason behind what we are doing.  All of a sudden everything becomes very unclear…

“Being clear about what we’re doing and why is the first step in doing it better.  If you’re not happy about the honest answer to this question, make substantial changes until you are.”

What does that mean for you and your administration?  When decisions are made, both big and small, are you asking…  Why are we doing this?  Is this in line with our purpose/vision?  All too often I have seen myself make a decision within my classroom based on what the state is telling me I need to get done.  I get caught up in the day to day and don’t take a minute to ask myself, “Is this the best decision?  Does this match what my purpose/vision is for my students?”  A majority of the time if I was to stop and ask myself this I would find that I need to revise and realign my plan so that my students are really getting what they need to become life long learners who know their individual strengths and how to work as a team.  Unfortunately if our administrators, congressmen, and educational leaders are making decisions based solely on reaction to others and not on a clear vision of what our end educational goal is we are going to feel the effects down to the number of pencils we can buy a year.

So what can we do?

A wise man once explained to me that education is a “dynamical system”.  It is always changing and evolving and every decision has ripple effects.  We need to be the generation of educators that continue what has been started by phenomenal teachers and administrators before us.   We need to make ripples that make shifts in this dynamical system.  We need to ask questions of our organizations that get to the core of their decisions.  Be an influence of accountability for the people around us and ourselves.  When decisions are made, both big and small, ask…  “Why are we doing this?  Is this in line with our purpose/vision?”

Ask… be the one to help bring clarity to a messy education system.