Working Together to Achieve School Goals

Having clearly defined goals triggers behavior. Having a clear, compelling goal mobilizes your focus toward actionable behavior. 

“In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.”  -Unknown

In successful schools, you can expect that everyone understands what the goal is. But in other schools, unfortunately, this is not the case. You may see everyone working hard to achieve a goal but ultimately fail. Why? 

Because their goals are not aligned with each other.

Students and/or teachers have goals, but they are not linked to the overarching goals. Effort and resources are being shot like arrows that go in different directions. Everyone tries their best, but their results are inconsistent. Sometimes they hit the overall goal, sometimes they do not. When this inconsistency happens a lot, despite giving your best effort, it will produce discouragement and frustration. 

In order to avoid that scenario, as school leaders, you should reflect on the goals and the culture surrounding goals at your school. 

Here are some questions to help you with that.

• What are you hearing teachers say about goals? 
• Do the teachers understand the goals? 
• Are they excited about the results of their students?
• Are they frustrated with the performance of their students? 
• Are they venting this frustration in the form of excuses or blame?

When a teacher is focused and working towards an achievable goal, they know that every instructional minute matters. Reflect on the strongest teachers achieving results at your school. Here are some questions to help you with that:

• What are they doing differently in the classroom? 
• How are they maximizing instruction and meeting student needs?
• How do they use student data (formal and informal) as part of the ongoing cycle of instructional improvement? 
• What do they know about their students?

Many of the strongest teachers that I have met have instructional goals for students. They can also tell you exactly where their students are performing in relation to those goals. Even if there are no school goals, they have data ownership for the results of their students. As a result, the students in their classes consistently hit the achievement targets year after year. 

The problem occurs when you only have a small percentage of teachers who know their goals and own the data. It is difficult to meet schoolwide achievement targets when only a few are consistently achieving results. This can be a leadership challenge, but there is hope – you can turn this around if this is happening at your school. 

It all begins with sharing the goals and a vision of achievement with your teachers. This is a very crucial part of the process. A great example to see its importance is through be parable of the bricklayers. 

An architect designs a cathedral and hires 3 workers. These workers were asked, “What are you doing?”

• The first answered, “I’m just laying bricks.”
• The second replied, “I’m working on a wall.”
• The third exclaimed, “I’m building a great cathedral!”

Of the three workers, which one do you believe would be the most productive and believed that he/she was part of something bigger? Which one would you rather have on your staff?

This is where good school leadership shows up. A good leader makes sure that everyone knows the priorities and remains guided by a single vision. More than just how you cheer them on, this requires action that says you’re ready to lead them on. 

Think about how you are supporting your teachers. Are you encouraging them but have no clear vision or direction? If you’re doing this, I am guessing that you are not getting the results that you want for your school. Encouraging with no direction is like subtly telling your teachers to just try and do everything. 

This might feel valuable and even noble, but it can also push educators who already feel overwhelmed to take on even more. Most often, “more stuff” that is task-orientated doesn’t produce better results. Cheering alone provides no direction forward and encourages a “let’s do more” behavior. This approach will only lead to burnout and frustration. 

Leading, however, directs and inspires. It involves letting your teachers know that they can do anything, but they can’t do everything. With your direction, staff can keep a laser-like focus on the big goal and prioritize everything else in relationto that goal. This vision keeps your teachers aligned with the school's goal. The targets define what success will look like at each step. But the thing that will guide you on what to do is still data.

You may be asking what this has to do with data – everything! I have seen time and time again that if a school culture isn’t based on data, it will not impact results. Ask yourself, when data is shared with staff, what happens?

• Do you have staff coming to you about their results before it is released?
• Do you see teachers dreading the upcoming data meeting?
• Do you have teachers continuing their discussion beyond the meeting end time?
• Do you see staff packing up a few minutes before the end of the meeting and leaving as soon as they are excused?

Your answers to these questions will help you evaluate data ownership and the data culture at your school. We will discuss more on data ownership in future blog posts. The first step is communicating clear goals and a vision of achievement. These goals should be based on a proper interpretation of data. It is important to share these in a way that inspires and encourages teachers to take ownership of their results. 

Before you present data to your teachers, ask yourself these questions:

● How will I create a positive school climate around your data and student results?

● How will I share your goals and results with teachers?

● How can I provide motivation and inspiration during data meetings? 

● How can I lead and inspire the group so that they take ownership of the results and the data?

How will you know if data ownership is occurring at your school? The teachers will ask for help with strategies, instruction, support, etc. It’s possible that they want to make a difference but may not know how to do it. In a safe data climate, they will ask for what they need. 

As a leader, you can begin to align your resources to give teachers what they need to make an impact. A school leadership team or outside advisor (from within the district or out of district) can be very helpful in problem-solving and discussing possibilities for impact.