You successfully finished your international Christian school’s accreditation visit—congratulations! You’ve received the visiting committee report, complete with new major recommendations. You’ve done some celebrating. And you know that you soon will need to implement your updated improvement plan.
Question: What do you and your colleagues need to do before implementing your school’s updated improvement plan? Here are 5 things you can do:
(1) Complete an after action review that helps you focus on your purpose, solidify your learning, and get prepared for next steps. Here are 5 of 12 questions from a sample after action review for schools using ACSI’s Inspire:
- What 3 words would you use to describe using ACSI’s Inspire?
- If you could do the self-study and visit over again, what might you do differently?
- To what extent did the self-study process actually get you flourishing?
- What will help you use the major recommendations as opportunities to get flourishing? What will hinder you?
- To what extent are staff and leaders using the 5 elements of flourishing as a framework for seeing Christian education?
(2) Review and then assess your improvement engine—your improvement purpose, perspective, process, plan, and practices. Use the following scale: Great • Good • OK • Poor
- Our purpose for improving is galvanizing, documented, gets used, and actually helps us improve.
- Our perspective on school improvement is based on shared understanding and on helpful mindsets (growth not fixed, thrive not survive), is documented, gets used, and actually helps us improve.
- Our process for school improvement reflects best practice, is documented, gets used, and actually helps us improve.
- Our plan for school improvement reflects best practice, is documented, gets used, and actually helps us improve,
- Our practices for school improvement reflect best practice, are documented, get used, and actually help us achieve our plan.
Reflect on your assessment results, and determine next steps.
(3) Decide if you want to include a separate action plan that is designed to get your students, staff, and/or leaders flourishing. Please give this careful consideration. I recognize that adding another action plan means more work, and I recognize that in Christian education, the priority is to get students, staff, and leaders holistically flourishing in Jesus.
(4) Use the new major recommendations to update your improvement plan, ensuring that your plan fully addresses:
- Each recommendation.
- The commentary of each recommendation.
- The root causes of each recommendation. Possible root causes include (A) an inadequate improvement engine, (B) unhelpful mindsets, (C) insufficient staffing, (D) inadequate policies and procedures, (E) faulty assumptions and misunderstandings, and (F) insufficient shared understanding of a given facet of Christian education (for example, curriculum, well-being, using student assessment data, and helping students grow strong in Jesus).
Note: For a tool you can use to check your plan, see School Improvement Reflection Protocol, p. 2.
(5) Work with an external coach to…
- Review your after action review, improvement engine, discussion of a separate action plan on flourishing, and updated action plan; and then to make revisions as necessary.
- Regularly reflect on school improvement, including the implementation of the updated plan.
Note: On a time-permitting basis, I provide free coaching for staff and leaders serving in international Christian schools. Interested? Please contact me.
Photo by Tony Hand on Unsplash
Here are 5 related blog posts:
- At your international Christian school, what does and doesn’t help you and your colleagues improve?
- When doing school improvement, when are you and your international Christian school colleagues at your best?
- To what extent do you intentionally use your school’s accreditation recommendations to help others flourish?
- International Christian school leaders, how can you stay deeply focused on flourishing?
- Which do you prioritize? Getting the task completed OR getting others flourishing?
Bottom line: Get off to a good start with implementing your updated improvement plan!
Get flourishing!
Michael
Get Flourishing 