How to Write Goals For Your Charter School
Does the school you lead, teach at or govern have goals?
I mean written down goals that are measured and evaluated each quarter, six months or a year to demonstrate the school’s progress towards its ultimate vision?
No one at the end of the school year says, wow, we crushed that financial audit or performance framework.
Don’t get me wrong, they are important aspects of your school - but they don’t inspire and do not result in significance.
If you don’t have written down, inspiring and celebrated goals, it is alright. You are not alone.
However, I think baseball great Yogi Berra was trying to tell us something when he said, "You've got to be careful when you don't know where you are going, you might not get there."
Now, one of the main problems in setting goals for schools is the principal or team writes a goal that does not lead to inspiration for all involved.
They set a goal that they know is attainable and it does not take any new ideas or innovation to achieve.
They don’t aim too high and miss, they aim too low and hit. They play it safe.
I’ve been guilty of this. I set goals to maintain the business, maintain my weight, maintain my impact.
But then I was asked by my mentor.
Why are you settling for less?
If you are going to set a goal for what you already know you can do...you are already developing a habit of settling for less.
He then said, “Tom, you are trading your life for the accomplishment of this goal. It needs to be worthy of your value. Your goal needs to fulfill your purpose. Marry your Goal."
A second problem in goal setting is most times goals are written in silos with not a great deal of information. There is a ton of energy identifying foundational baselines and then setting a “realistic” growth percentage over the next 3-5 years. Not very inspiring.
But what if you were to pull a team together of different stakeholders and truly identify What would it feel like to be a true agent of Change? Brainstorm a list of powerful questions based in the areas of moving from success to significance.
Here are some questions to get you started.
- What specific goals should a charter school have?
- What is it that our school is looking to accomplish?
- What is it that is most important to the overall success of your organization? How do we improve on that?
- When you envision the school functioning at its highest level, what will be the tangible results for children and adults?
- As a leader of the school or your classroom, what is it you aim to create?
Thought leader and best selling author James Allen taught us that “thoughts are things”.
Everything you are surrounded with right now, including the phone or computer you are using to listen to this call...started with a thought.
Ultimately, then anything you envision your school being and doing for children, families and the community...CAN BE Accomplished.
But until you take the time to envision what that looks like and what it would mean to significantly impact the community...you cannot write down goals that will inspire not only you to achieve, but those you lead.
If you need a little help in getting your goals setting process going, our team developed a workbook that highlights the 10 of a high performing charter school.
Download it here for free and share it with your team.
Then, follow the exercises for each area of your school and then use it to set your vision and write inspiring goals.
Happy goal setting!
Tom
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