Mar 26th 2009
Speaking as a trusted colleague I urge you to “Hold on there Bucky”
Before you spend all your stimulus money too hastily….I strongly encourage you to consider these important questions informed by the thinking of Doug Reeves, Michael Fullan, Steven Covey and Michael Schmoker:
• “First things first” Where are you going as a unified school system?
• Do you have a coherent vision of what the “graduate of 2015” should know and be able to do in order to become a productive and contributing member of a global society?
• Do you have a thoughtful design to reengineer your school system to produce 21st century students educated by 21st century educators? Is your implementation plan intentionally designed to get you there?
• Have you conducted a brutally honest "initiative inventory to transparently track the number of irons you already have in the fire?" Do you have a systematic method for analyzing implementation of every initiative in your system to really know if you are realizing an “impact return” on your investment.
• Have you asked yourself this key question: what is the relationship of your previous initiatives to student achievement? In this day and age, with a full blown recession impeding your ability to move ahead, can you really afford to continue to invest in initiatives that do not produce results!
• How can you leverage your resources to save valuable time and intellectual capital for administrators and teachers?
• Does your professional development strategy actually lead to positive changes in teacher practice and result in improvements in student learning?
• How can you make strategic and smart resource decisions to reduce the level of anxiety and stress for you and your staff members? How will you preserve the psychological and physiological staying power of your staff in order to realize your goals and sustain your accomplishments!
• How can you best communicate the reasoning behind your decisions to your internal and external stakeholders?
• How can you insure that stimulus funds invested this year will yield long-term impact results?
“If you put your ladder against the wrong wall and climb to the top of the ladder, you may be on the top rung but your ladder is still leaning against the wrong wall”
Read Past Blogs >
Look before you leap
Striking the appropriate balance between urgency and Importance:
I have noticed several of my education colleagues scrambling around like the proverbial “chicken with their head cut off” trying to decide how they are going to spend all of their new stimulus package money with a compressed time frame of two years…….Speaking as a trusted colleague I urge you to “Hold on there Bucky”
Before you spend all your stimulus money too hastily….I strongly encourage you to consider these important questions informed by the thinking of Doug Reeves, Michael Fullan, Steven Covey and Michael Schmoker:
• “First things first” Where are you going as a unified school system?
• Do you have a coherent vision of what the “graduate of 2015” should know and be able to do in order to become a productive and contributing member of a global society?
• Do you have a thoughtful design to reengineer your school system to produce 21st century students educated by 21st century educators? Is your implementation plan intentionally designed to get you there?
• Have you conducted a brutally honest "initiative inventory to transparently track the number of irons you already have in the fire?" Do you have a systematic method for analyzing implementation of every initiative in your system to really know if you are realizing an “impact return” on your investment.
• Have you asked yourself this key question: what is the relationship of your previous initiatives to student achievement? In this day and age, with a full blown recession impeding your ability to move ahead, can you really afford to continue to invest in initiatives that do not produce results!
• How can you leverage your resources to save valuable time and intellectual capital for administrators and teachers?
• Does your professional development strategy actually lead to positive changes in teacher practice and result in improvements in student learning?
• How can you make strategic and smart resource decisions to reduce the level of anxiety and stress for you and your staff members? How will you preserve the psychological and physiological staying power of your staff in order to realize your goals and sustain your accomplishments!
• How can you best communicate the reasoning behind your decisions to your internal and external stakeholders?
• How can you insure that stimulus funds invested this year will yield long-term impact results?
“If you put your ladder against the wrong wall and climb to the top of the ladder, you may be on the top rung but your ladder is still leaning against the wrong wall”
