Focus & Equip (2010.04): To what extent do improvement plans guide staff work?
01/04/10 20:38 Filed in: Focus &
Equip
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1-2-14 Shinkawa Cho, Higashi Kurume Shi, Tokyo 203-0013
How often do you use restatement to encourage others?
I like getting encouragement. I like it more than getting critiques. Encouragement feels better and actually results in me working more effectively.
I believe in the power of encouragement, so I want to encourage others. One way I encourage others is by listening to what they say. And one way I demonstrate that I’m listening is by restating what the other person has been saying. Through restatement I show I’ve been listening and that I want to understand. For example, I might say, “If I understand correctly, you’re saying that ___. Is that right?”
Question: How often do you use restatement to encourage others?
Question: What action steps will you take to ensure that you consistently encourage others through restatement?
*To learn more about encouraging others, click here.
To what extent do improvement plans guide staff work?
The goal isn't to have improvement plans. The goal is to improve your organization by completing improvement plans. And to be completed, the improvement plans must guide the work—they must be central, not peripheral.
Question: To what extent do improvement plans guide staff work? (Here’s a perceptive response I received from a friend who serves as a school administrator and who rightly notes that the more staff have ownership of improvement plans, the more likely it is that staff will use improvement plans to guide their work: "Go for it, but I think the first essential question is ‘To what extent has your staff been involved in developing the improvement plans themselves?’ followed by ‘To what extent does the staff own the improvement plans they are expected to implement?,’ implicit in that being ‘If the administration dropped off the planet, would the plans still get implemented?’ Then you have a plan!")
To get an idea of the extent to which improvement plans guide your organization’s work, take the following assessment. Rate each item, using the following scale:
4: Consistently • 3: Usually • 2: Sometimes • 1: Rarely
___ Staff understand the improvement plans.
___ Staff know which improvement plans they are to implement.
___ Staff can explain their role in a given improvement plan.
___ Staff implement the improvement plans.
___ Improvement plans guide staff work.
3 questions:
Students connect memoir, life, and Biblical teaching
Kim Essenburg, English 10 teacher at
Christian Academy in Japan, reflects her assessment
results:
The Holocaust memoir Night grabs my 10th graders. Maybe because the narrator is their age when he suffers such horrific cruelty. Maybe because it’s real—my students are face to face with the Fall, with how people can degrade one another.
Then they begin to make connections. To the way South Koreans view North Koreans. To the way laughing at another can make them feel better about themselves. To what the Bible teaches about who people are and how we are to treat them. Here are some of their connections:
Empower others to help students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like
Here's a set of DRAW questions you can use for a discussion of “How can you help your students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like on a classroom assessment?”
Define: Get the facts defined.
What do your students think effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like?
Respond: Get the facts responded to in terms of feelings/experiences.
1-2-14 Shinkawa Cho, Higashi Kurume Shi, Tokyo 203-0013
How often do you use restatement to encourage others?
I like getting encouragement. I like it more than getting critiques. Encouragement feels better and actually results in me working more effectively.
I believe in the power of encouragement, so I want to encourage others. One way I encourage others is by listening to what they say. And one way I demonstrate that I’m listening is by restating what the other person has been saying. Through restatement I show I’ve been listening and that I want to understand. For example, I might say, “If I understand correctly, you’re saying that ___. Is that right?”
Question: How often do you use restatement to encourage others?
- Consistently?
- Usually?
- Sometimes?
- Rarely?
Question: What action steps will you take to ensure that you consistently encourage others through restatement?
*To learn more about encouraging others, click here.
To what extent do improvement plans guide staff work?
The goal isn't to have improvement plans. The goal is to improve your organization by completing improvement plans. And to be completed, the improvement plans must guide the work—they must be central, not peripheral.
Question: To what extent do improvement plans guide staff work? (Here’s a perceptive response I received from a friend who serves as a school administrator and who rightly notes that the more staff have ownership of improvement plans, the more likely it is that staff will use improvement plans to guide their work: "Go for it, but I think the first essential question is ‘To what extent has your staff been involved in developing the improvement plans themselves?’ followed by ‘To what extent does the staff own the improvement plans they are expected to implement?,’ implicit in that being ‘If the administration dropped off the planet, would the plans still get implemented?’ Then you have a plan!")
To get an idea of the extent to which improvement plans guide your organization’s work, take the following assessment. Rate each item, using the following scale:
4: Consistently • 3: Usually • 2: Sometimes • 1: Rarely
___ Staff understand the improvement plans.
___ Staff know which improvement plans they are to implement.
___ Staff can explain their role in a given improvement plan.
___ Staff implement the improvement plans.
___ Improvement plans guide staff work.
3 questions:
- To what extent do you want improvement plans to guide staff work?
- How can you help staff use improvement plans to guide staff work?
- What are you going to do?
Students connect memoir, life, and Biblical teaching
The Holocaust memoir Night grabs my 10th graders. Maybe because the narrator is their age when he suffers such horrific cruelty. Maybe because it’s real—my students are face to face with the Fall, with how people can degrade one another.
Then they begin to make connections. To the way South Koreans view North Koreans. To the way laughing at another can make them feel better about themselves. To what the Bible teaches about who people are and how we are to treat them. Here are some of their connections:
- “Whether it is in the form of murder, bullying, or stealing, people are being treated with less dignity than they deserve....as Christians, we must honor one another as created in God's image and love both our neighbors and our oppressors.”
- “People always say that they want to make the world a better place, but they think too big or they don’t think at all or say that’s awful and sit and do nothing. But...one specific thing that I can do is to stop criticizing people...and…‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mark 12.31, Matt. 22.39).”
Empower others to help students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like
Here's a set of DRAW questions you can use for a discussion of “How can you help your students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like on a classroom assessment?”
Define: Get the facts defined.
What do your students think effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like?
Respond: Get the facts responded to in terms of feelings/experiences.
- What’s encouraging/discouraging about your students’ understanding of what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like?
- What’s easy/hard about helping your students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective looks like?
- To what do you attribute your students’ current level of understanding?
- On a scale of 1-10 (10 being high), how clear are you on what effective application of a Biblical perspective on a classroom assessment looks like?
- What are 3-5 ways you could help your students understand what effective application of a Biblical perspective on a classroom assessment looks like?
- What will you do?