Organizations develop mission statements that define their purpose.  They do this because they know that businesses do their best work when they fully understand this purpose and are clear on their goals.

CSI schools’ mission statements often use words like “equip students”, “love God”, and “Christian perspective”.  One could say Christian schools are purpose driven. Teachers lovingly equip students to live for Christ. They integrate truths of Scripture with truths of Creation.  Students gain knowledge, acquire skills, develop convictions and practice behaviors. But in Christian schools, student goals mean more than “being the best they can be,” or “becoming good citizens,” or “becoming lifelong learners.” Christian school graduates must be equipped to glorify God and serve others. Schools work at this in classrooms and special projects, but know well that students will soon have larger stages on which to display their learning and their hearts.  Christian schools shape students for life.

Christian schools are also purpose-driven in another way.  Christian education is unique in that it operates from beliefs that the world was created by God and is purposeful to its core.  God’s purposes are on display from Creation through the fall, to Christ’s redemption, to God’s call for renewal in the world.  We emphasize that every square inch of the universe belongs to God and can be studied and used to glorify Him.  All creatures and relationships, natural and manmade resources, historical events, aspects of language and mathematics and expressions of art or music can be joyfully explored and examined.

Sometimes students study parts of the whole. Sometimes they ask probing questions and want to know “why” and “so what?!”  This added dimension brings excitement to classrooms and deepens learning in complex ways, connecting it to the spiritual and emotional lives of students and teachers.  This multi-dimensional learning prepares students to make discerning decisions in lives that honor God’s truth.  Without this unique understanding and application, Christian schools would not fulfill their mission.

This year as a CSI consultant, I’ve been privileged to talk with many CSI principals.  Listening to them, two issues have emerged as crucial to survival of Christian schools.

First, we need to develop financial structures that will support Christian education in the future. The current economy makes this feature all the more critical.  Administrators have creatively addressed this challenge and CSI will continue to explore creative financial options with them.

Second, we must develop, communicate, and practice key components of Christian education from the Reformed perspective. As our constituency and staff become more diverse, our understanding of Christian education is less unified, and becomes less cohesive around mission and program.  Some administrators have encouraged CSI to develop staff and parent education tools to help administrators better explain their school’s unique mission to new staff and parents.  I’ve been compiling some key components. Please let me know what you see as important.  Feel free to respond to this blog or email me at JDeJong@AdaChristian.org.

Here are seven beliefs that shape what we do:

We believe that:

1. God is sovereign.  He created the world and gave it purpose.  We eagerly study it as part of God’s truth. We’re not afraid of what we might find.  We realize that learning can lead to important and interesting questions. Learning can be deep and complex. It can tell us much about God, creation, and how to live.
2. God has made each person in His image for His glory. Every student, staff member and parent is valued and respected regardless of academic potential, personality or socio-economic status. Classroom structures and learning opportunities are shaped by this belief so all students genuinely know that God loves them and has died for their sins.
3. Sin affects everything. We cannot earn salvation, nor can we become perfect.  But we can discern how sin affects people and systems in the world.  We examine culture, literature, governments, ecology, music, and other areas of the curriculum through the lens of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Renewal.
4. The gift of salvation affects both our eternal status and our lives now.  God calls us to love Him and our neighbor and to be faithful.  We explore and care for creation, restore relationships, work for justice, and use talents, gifts and opportunities. We work hard and stretch our students’ minds, bodies and hearts.
5. Christian education is holistic; it values and develops many aspects of learning.  Strong academic programs include math, communication arts, Bible, science, social studies, fine arts, languages, physical education, athletics, and sometimes more.  Each discipline is shaped by a Christian worldview and can be connected to other parts of the whole.
6. We need servant hearts.  We encourage students to see the world as much larger than their experience.  Schools give students opportunities to serve others in their classroom and community, and sometimes around the world.  Students observe adults modeling lives of service.
7. Christians are called to live in community. Christian schools must be grace-filled communities of students, staff and families. A community environment encourages openness and honesty, grace and patience, joy and faithfulness, excellence and growth.  Discipline procedures are developed on principles of fairness and long-term learning.  Problem solving takes place under common goals.  We rejoice in God and in each other.

Christian education is purposeful. We have the privilege and responsibility to lead well.

Tags: Shared Leadership

Focus is important. Focusing on your God-given mission is important.

How focused are you on your God-given mission? To find out, take the following self-assessment. Use the following scale to rate each item:

• 4 Consistently
• 3 Usually
• 2 Sometimes
• 1 Rarely

1. I’m comfortable reciting the mission verbatim in casual conversation.
2. Each day I talk with others about the mission.
3. I tell stories about the mission being implemented.
4. I provide opportunities for others to tell stories about the mission being implemented.
5. Our publications promote our mission.
6. I know what it takes to achieve the mission.
7. I can readily explain how each of my daily activities contributes to achieving the mission.
8. I help others understand how they contribute to achieving the mission.
9. I know the current level of mission achievement.
10. I use meetings to celebrate progress on achieving the mission.
11. I focus on closing the gap between current and targeted levels of mission achievement.
12. I get the training I need to carry out the mission.
13. I provide others with the training they need to carry out the mission.
14. When making proposals, I explain how the proposal targets mission achievement.
15. When others make proposals, I ask, “How will this help us achieve the mission?”
16. I use meetings to celebrate progress on achieving the mission.
17. I’m focused on achieving the mission.

Now, use your self-assessment data to identify 1 or more action steps you’ll take to increase your focus on your God-given mission.

Focus. Today.

Tags: Mission

Administrators have crucial roles in selecting people to serve in your school. If your school has people who don’t fit the job or the community, everybody gets hurt. It becomes harder to serve students and parents, it can disrupt staff relations, and it’s difficult for the ill-fitting new person. What could have been a time for exciting growth turns into anxiety when things don’t go well, followed by the shock of another change.

Selecting qualified new people isn’t easy, contrary to what many decision makers think. Yes, as an administrator you “know how to talk and how to ask questions,” you’re probably quite perceptive about people. Those gifts just may not be enough to ensure doing well in hiring.

Choosing the right staff requires predicting how applicants actually will perform in your school. Such predictions require more than accurate information on past performance (current legal requirements can make getting reliable, complete information rather difficult). The root challenge may come from understandable attitudes that influence how applicants and decision makers act, think, and feel in the selection process.

Applicants, naturally, may approach the selection process with an intent to “sell” themselves. Their job, as they see it, is to present themselves in such a way as to convince the hiring decision makers that they are the best person for the position. All their actions and communication  focus on doing a superior job of selling themselves. And when people try to “sell” themselves, their communication may unwittingly become inaccurate or distorted.

In today’s highly competitive job market, applicants often are coached on how to make the best impression. They learn how to highlight (over-emphasize? exaggerate?) their best qualities and/or minimize those features and skills that may not be ideal for the job.

This sales attitude can be a problem for those doing the hiring, too. Especially when they find themselves attracted to a given candidate, interviewers may seek to sell her or him on joining the school. They do all they can to portray the school in the best possible way.

There’s one huge flaw in this understandable process: candidates and schools may present themselves in almost idealized (and unrealistic) form and/or they may perceive the other party in an unrealistic idealized form. It’s not unlike the delightful perspective young men and women have of each other in the early stages of courtship.

To make superior, mutually beneficial hiring decisions, applicants must participate openly and candidly in the selection process so as to present realistic messages about themselves. They must also look as closely and neutrally as possible at the school and its communities to see if they themselves are the best match for this school and community.

When desire for mutual understanding drives candidates and applicants alike, it is far more likely – humanly speaking – that the selection will be mutually beneficial and mutually satisfying. Because applicants and decision makers are together trying to figure out if they have a good match, communication can become more open and more realistic. With open, more realistic communication, the odds of a successful match go up dramatically.

Applicants and administrators with a competitive mind-set can lose when they “win.” Applicants who convey an inaccurate impression later discover they can’t do what’s required. Those who oversell their organization find that new staff are quickly disillusioned. Everyone loses.

Tags: Employee Selection

Even if you individually have full authority to decide who should be selected for a position, you can benefit from help from others. If authority to decide is shared with other people, it’s even more important to figure out if you need help and from whom.

Getting help from others need not mean that they help make the selection decision. Help can range from simple brief social contact (a courtesy that shows candidates something about your school’s climate), to initial screening of résumés, to advisory interviews, to contributing to the selection decision.

It’s essential that all who are involved understand precisely what you expect from them. And if they help make the selection decision, make sure that they understand and accept the standards to be used. Without that understanding and acceptance, you’re likely to create more problems than it’s worth.

It may pay off to involve others even if they don’t improve the selection process. If they’re involved, they’re more likely to accept your decision and help make it work.

People who’ll work with the person to be  selected (as colleagues and/or as internal customers)
can often spot characteristics that other decision makers may miss. With the right guidance, they can serve as an Advisory Committee. They know what they’re looking for and may have a far better sense of how well someone will fit in. Consider this true-to-life event.

The Advisory Committee did not make the decision but their unique approach helped everyone discover what was best in this situation.

Tags: Employee Selection

Strategy One: “Tell me about yourself”
Strategy Two: “Tell me what you did or what you would do.”
Strategy Three: “Show me what you’ll do.”

Learn to predict the future

Your job as interviewer is to infer how candidates will perform in the positions they are seeking. Typical “selling” strategies are unreliable; candidates who are trying to sell themselves (rather than explore whether or not they and the job are a good match – mutual selection) are more likely to give answers they think you want to hear than they are to answer in ways that reveal what they probably will do. This selling emphasis need not be conscious or deliberately deceptive.

You can’t reliably predict future behavior based on what applicants say about their values, principles, or theories, usually in answer to general questions. Most applicants will give you the “right” answers — answers currently on vogue.

You’ll be far more astute in predicting future behavior if you learn what candidates did in the past. These strategies encourage them to describe their past performance or show how they’ll act in similar situations in your school. They stimulate candidates to reveal how they may react in relevant situations. As one glib, uncomfortably smooth candidate said, “Boy, your questions never tipped me off on what you wanted.” To which the interviewer replied, “Yeah, you had to be straight with us!”

How the strategies for mutual selection work

Although the strategies in a logical order, in a lively, creative interview you may shift frequently from one strategy to another or combine multiple strategies at once.

Guidelines for Strategy One

If you begin with Strategy One, you let candidates show how they see the job. More important, Strategy One doesn’t telegraph your thoughts about the job.

Consider explaining Strategy One this way:

Make sure you know how you want to begin. At first, you may need to write, then memorize precisely what you want to say.

Success in Strategy One occurs when applicants share what they’re thinking without trying to impress you with the “right” answers.

Guidelines for Strategy Two
“Tell me how you handled this situation on prior jobs or how you would handle it at our school.”

Ideally, candidates explain what they did in comparable situations in their prior jobs. For example, if what a candidate said in response to Strategy One led you to think he may have trouble with colleagues, use Strategy Two to learn if those teamwork challenges were handled in past jobs or how he’d respond (not what he thinks) if a similar challenge developed on this job.
Your approach might sound like this:

Using these strategies requires preparation.

Guidelines for Strategy Three
“Show me what you’d do in this situation.”

Use of Strategy Three often follows Strategy Two, especially if you’re feeling a need to test what the applicant said. Astute, quick-thinking candidates may give explanations consistent with current ideas about what’s good to do — but you sense that it’s not what they’d actually do.

Feel free to build on the situation used for Strategy Two. Another option is to shift to a similar situation that may require re-thinking.

Strategy Three is almost impossible to bluff. Almost all candidates will reveal their probable behavior, unless you’re interviewing a skilled actor! When you engage candidates in Strategy Three, you get to see them in action — almost like a sports tryout.

Here’s how to get Strategy Three on the road. You (or perhaps a colleague, if you’re doing a team interview) will take the role of the “problem person” identified in the situation. The applicant then takes the role linked with the case study or scenario designed to focus on some behavior needed for the job.

For example, you take on the role of an employee who’s badly upset about what her principal did yesterday. Ask the candidate to be the principal. Then watch how the candidate handles this stressful situation.

You must know how to interpret what applicants do in Strategy Three. When scenarios for Strategy Three are well designed, you can identify possible responses in advance — and know what you think those responses could mean.

Payoffs from using these three strategies will be substantial: you and the candidates will have a superior understanding of whether or not there is the match needed for future success.

Tags: Employee Selection

Most applicants need help understanding, appreciating, and getting into a mutual selection mind-set. Remind them that both of you must learn about the other to determine if a longer term relationship will be mutually advantageous. Encourage them to be direct and candid. Be direct and candid yourself regarding what the school needs from their position.

As always, what you do will speak more loudly than what you say. Be sure you don’t reveal negative reactions to what applicants say or do. Yes, some comments may be “off the wall” and seem to require at least a raised eyebrow, or two. If possible, don’t. When applicants sense negativeness from you, they are less likely to respond candidly. Maintain a cooperative tone.

Continue to show maximum courtesy and respect even to applicants who don’t qualify for the job. Their reaction contributes to your school’s reputation in the Christian school community and elsewhere. Ensure that they get some benefit from the interview.

An out of state candidate for the administrative job sauntered into the interview room. He greeted interviewers with ill-chosen grammar, then launched into a mini-monologue that portrayed his qualifications with hyperbole (compared with his application information).

Refrain from actions that emphasize status and power. Interviewers who sit facing applicants risk being seen as imposing. Applicants feel they are “on the hot seat.” Power positions inhibit open, candid conversation and subtly put applicants at a disadvantage. The result is reduced cooperation and comfort.

Positions to avoid are:

• Sitting behind a large desk with awards, trophies, and other trappings of success predominately displayed around you.
• Sitting in a larger, more luxurious chair than the candidate.
• Standing, while the candidate sits.
• Crowding the candidate’s space.
• Dramatically manipulating your voice and style of communication.

Using these tips doesn’t guarantee an informative interview. But these tactics will make it harder for your and for candidates to operate from a mutual selection mind-set.

Additional common flaws

• Rather than listening, you consume time telling candidates how wonderful your school is, how supportive the parents are, and how positive the community is.
• Compare candidates with people who held the position previously. Let candidates know you’re trying to find someone “just like Joanne” or, “just the opposite of Joanne.”
• Ask “puff ball” questions: “Do you make good decisions?” (Who would say no?)
• Ask about personal matters that are not job-related, which may even be illegal.
• Fail to get a comprehensive understanding of candidate. Focus primarily on a few items like classroom control, creative projects, or willingness to help with extra-curricular activities.

Antidotes

1. Yes, there is a place to share information about your school. But especially at the beginning, focus on the candidates. Learn all you can about their experiences, their beliefs, and their hopes. Spend at least 85% of the interview time focused on candidates.
2. Experience with past employees of course affects your current choices. It’s far more important to have appropriate performance and qualification criteria. If you’ve not established them (or recently revised them), now is the time to refine them. Keep the criteria visible as you interview. Consider giving candidates their copies so they can address them more cogently.
3. Ask candidates to explain what they have done in specific situations that they may face in your school. If they haven’t been in such situations, ask them what they would do if such a situation developed.

Tags: Employee Selection

Questions, naturally, are a primary tool for interviewers. That’s good – but it can be bad! Questions may be helpful but they can be dangerous. For superior interviewing, you need to know what kinds of questions you’re using and how to use them effectively.

Consider these tips. Try them out in your next interviews, or even in casual conversation.

1. Ask questions that require more substantial answers than a simple “yes” or “no.”

“Do you make good decisions under pressure?” almost begs for an uninformative “yes!” A better question: “Tell me what you did recently when you had to make an immediate decision on an unexpected big problem. How did you approach the situation? Why?”

2. Ask for responses on a continuum.For example, “Do you prefer to work in situations where the instructions are explicit and clear, or in situations where you decide what to do and how to do it, or some place in between? Why do you prefer what you do? Give me examples, please, from your prior work.”
3. Ask candidates to make comparisons.You might ask, “Would it be harder for you to deal with a student who has a history of drug problems or someone whose intelligence is very limited? Why?”

Sample questions, with analysis of possible responses

1. You said you don’t like it when principals check everything you do. You prefer to make your own decisions within the boundaries of Christian education principles. How do you react when there are specific requirements from a principal because of a new situation, or a particular student or parent?Look for
   Signs that he is willing to take marching orders, as needed
2. From your reports, you’re an independent person. What happens when you’re part of a teaching team? How do you work with others when it is needed?Look for
   The extent to which her independence reflects an unwillingness to work with others, or inability to work with others, or simply a preference that can be put aside as needed?
3. You’ve described yourself and have been described as being “inflexible.” What are prior situations where you chose to be “inflexible”? Please explain why.Look for
   Whether or not his resistance is primarily to “forced change” or is a more general unwillingness to change.
4. Your test scores describe you as “intuitive,” relying on “experience and feelings,” but not paying a lot of attention to details. In our interview, your conversation is filled with details. What accounts for the difference?Look for
   Signs of inability to generalize, to see the “big picture.”
5. Please select a situation from last year where you had to make a decision in dealing with the parents of a troublesome student. What steps did you take in making your decisions?Look for
   Awareness of personal decision making procedures.
   Quality of personal decision making procedures.
6. You’ve researched a process for teaching basic science. You’ve concluded, based on facts about the process, that our school should adopt it as soon as possible. Other faculty seem less impressed. How are you likely to respond to their objections?Look for
   Willingness to respect and adapt to others’ perspectives
   Creative thinking on how to deal with differences
7. You indicated your family, church, recreation, and social life are especially important to you. You won’t sacrifice them for work at our school. How, specifically, did these factors affect your work decisions last year?Look for
   Clarification of overall priorities in life
   Indication of how conflict between work and other priorities may be handled.

Tags: Employee Selection

American education, and our Christian schools, need transformative administrators—school heads who are strong educational leaders and highly competent school managers. Such people are too few and are in high demand. But their skill is not enough. No school is better than its teachers. Great schools have great teachers. Great teaching transforms hearts and minds.

How can administrators make sure they get great teachers? Reading “Most Likely to Succeed” by Malcolm Gladwell (author of best selling The Tipping Point and Blink) in the December 15 New Yorker magazine gave me some new ideas. Gladwell looks at teacher quality and selection, asking (his subtitle) “How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?”

Gladwell uses a National Football League (NFL) analogy, a highly entertaining account of how quarterbacks are picked. He cites research that shows “no connection between where a quarterback was taken in the draft – that is, how highly he was rated on the basis of his college performance – and how well he played in the pros.” The problem: “A college quarterback joining the NFL . . . has to learn to play an entirely new game” which can be “measured only in a real NFL game.” The same is true, writes Gladwell, with much more at stake, in teacher selection.

Gladwell makes the point—and I agree—that teacher quality trumps all other factors, school funding, class size, and curriculum design in improving American schools. “The U.S. could close the gap [between performance of American children and those of other countries] simply by replacing the bottom six percent to ten percent of public school teachers with teachers of average quality.” But, Gladwell continues, “there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like. The school has a quarterback problem.”

Predicting success in the classroom, says Gladwell, is as chancy as predicting it on the NFL gridiron. He cites researchers who investigated “whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree.” Their conclusion: “Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom.”

Gladwell peers over the shoulders of researchers and finds that certain demonstrable teaching competencies have been identified that distinguish the most effective teachers from the average, and the sub par. Feedback, “direct, personal response by a teacher to a specific statement by a student — seems to be most closely linked to academic success.” Another is “regard for student perspective,” that is, “a teacher’s knack for allowing students some flexibility in how they become engaged in the classroom.” Managing student behavior in a classroom is the sine qua non, most educators agree. The “eyes in the back of the head” ability enables a teacher to stop a chain of misbehavior before it happens. Gladwell’s researcher calls this “withitness.” “It stands to reason that to be a great teacher you have to have withitness. But how do you know whether someone has withitness until she stands up in front of a classroom of twenty-five wiggly Janes, Lucys, Johns, and Roberts and tries to impose order?”

Gladwell sees profound – and heretical – implications:

1. First, “we shouldn’t be raising standards; we should be lowering them. . . . Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree.”
2. Teachers “should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before.” Education “needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.”
3. Selection from apprentice teachers should be highly discriminatory: “You’d probably have to try out four candidates to find one good teacher.”
4. Tenure “can’t be routinely awarded the way it is now.”
5. The rigid salary structure of the teaching profession would change; teachers would be rated and paid based on performance. “An apprentice should get apprentice wages. But if we find eighty-fifth percentile teachers who can teach a year and a half’s material in one year, we’re going to have to pay them a lot….”

Contrasting teacher selection with the process used to find outstanding financial advisors, Gladwell asks “What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?” Good question!

The Quarterback Problem in Christian Schools

Here is the context in which I see an urgent need to pass on the legacy of passionate and truly excellent, deeply committed, and highly skilled Christian teachers — without whom Christian education is merely a concept.

This fall I visited the heads of 33 CSI schools and spoke by phone with several dozen more. As one of four part-time consultants, I asked principals and superintendents on both coasts and in the CSI heartland, “What are the issues your school faces?” Not surprisingly their answers clustered around two themes:

1. How to maintain enrollment and stay affordable (fiscally viable) in the face of growing competition, changing demographics, and demand for higher quality education from “consumer” parents.
2. How can we pass on the legacy of Christian education, passionate and dynamic, training minds to “think Christianly” while nurturing hearts to love the Lord deeply and passionately and their neighbors as themselves?

No doubt Christian schools have always faced these two challenges. But I heard a new level of urgency and concern. These appear to be not perennial nuisances, the common cold of schools, but threats to survival. Thoughtful school heads told me, earnestly and deliberately, we have to adapt. We have to transform our schools or face being irrelevant, impotent, and dispensable.

• One head told me, “We’re in tough economic times and we’re 12% over budget.”
• Another said, “We struggle with people’s commitment to Christian education.”
• A third advised, “CSI could help local schools be genuinely centered on the teachings of Jesus…not preserving the status quo…and to help students think Christianly. Have they been trained? Have they encountered God?”

Successful Christian schools of the future will be dazzlingly good at their core business, education of head and heart. To borrow Barack Obama’s phrase, we will highly “value intellectual achievement.” And we will passionately and constantly focus on spiritual growth and character development. When CSI Executive Director Dave Koetje initiated the CSI Consulting Services he wrote, “In today’s highly competitive educational marketplace, Christian school educators can no longer be satisfied with random acts of teaching excellence. Tomorrow’s successful Christian school will be functioning off of well-defined and excellent Christ-centered education.”

Reading Gladwell’s article leads me to seven conclusions regarding teacher quality and selection in Christian schools. For successful schools of the future, and for God’s kids who learn in them:

1. We should cast the net more widely when considering beginning teachers.
   Consider more than “the usual suspects,” i.e. the most recent crop of graduates with teaching certificates. Be willing to look closely at people with non-education backgrounds with the right set of intellectual and personal qualities.
2. School heads should recruit aggressively and widely, considering that finding, hiring, developing great teachers is their most important task.
   They should study videotapes and teaching demonstrations as well as conduct interviews and read recommendations.
3. Teacher observation, especially those new to the school and the profession, should be frequent and thorough.
   Supervising administrators should coach them as apprentices.
4. The evaluation process should require and consider evidence of “value added,” i.e., teacher effect—how much the performance of her/his students changed from the beginning to the end of the semester or year.
5. The first two years of teaching should be explicitly provisional, regarding “rookie” teachers as apprentices. Re-appointment to a third-year should not be routine.
6. Every teacher should have a written professional improvement plan that includes performance goals and professional growth activities, e.g. graduate courses and degrees.
7. Accreditation should check for evidence of teacher performance, not just degrees and teaching credentials.

Gladwell’s New Yorker article is more lively and engaging than this account might lead you to believe. Readers who go to the source (www.newyorker.com) will get a fascinating look into the N.F.L. as well as a dose of inimitable New Yorker cartoons—good medicine any week.

Tags: Uncategorized

You’re coaching a sports team. Here are 7 tips that can help you coach effectively:

1. Know your sport.
2. Know what constitutes winning (high score as in soccer or low score as in golf).
3. Before the athletic contest, tell your team the plan.
4. Watch the athletic contest.
5. Know the score.
6. Use your timeouts to celebrate achievement of the plan, increase focus on the plan, and encourage players to win.
7. Use your players’ stats to improve performance.

You’re leading a Christian school. Here are 7 tips that can help you lead effectively:

1. Know your mission.
2. Know what it takes to achieve your mission in terms of measurable student learning.
3. At the start of the school year, tell your staff what the plan is for increasing measurable student learning.
4. Watch students learning.
5. Know your students’ achievement levels.
6. Use your staff meetings to celebrate student learning, increase focus on student learning, and encourage your staff to achieve the mission.
7. Use your students’ assessment results to increase learning.

Remember, the real question isn’t “How can I coach effectively?” or even “How can I lead effectively?” The real question is “What am I going to do today to achieve our God-given mission?”

What can you do? Here are 7 options:

1. Memorize your mission statement.
2. Define the achievement of your mission in terms of measurable student learning.
3. Collaborate with staff to develop annual improvement plans that target mission achievement.
4. Schedule 30-60 minutes each week to do walkthroughs and/or to examine student work.
5. Use your definition of mission achievement and your student assessment results to determine your current level of mission achievement.
6. At your next staff meeting, ask teachers for examples of how students have increased their understanding and use of a biblical perspective.
7. At the end of each year, use your students’ assessment results to identify ways to increase your students’ understanding and use of a biblical perspective.

Tags: Leadership

Elsewhere in this email are guidelines on how to do a better job with confrontation. That piece assumes that we recognize and understand when our confrontations are off-base. This column is intended to remind you not only what a counterproductive attack looks or sounds like, but also to show why destructive conflict should be avoided.

In each situation Jerold attacks, challenges, or criticizes Jessica. Because the details of his attacks make little difference, they are not even included. You can easily imagine how an administrator might (mis-)use it. Notice that how Jessica responds to Jerold’s attacks virtually guarantees that the confrontation will be costly to both parties. Jessica’s responses all are destructive strategies: she consistently fights Jerold, not the problem. Later we’ll explore how the person being attacked can help to optimize almost any conflict.

Bottom line: Fight the person!

Tags: Influence Relationship