(4) A comfortable compensation and benefit package that allows them (A) to flourish, (B) to stay in Christian education for their career, and (C) to retire well.
Leader, ensure your workspace is welcoming for you! Why?
(1) Because a welcoming workspace helps you flourish.
(2) Because having a welcoming workspace increases the likelihood of productivity (I work best in a space with the right temperature and good lighting) and well-being (having a standing desk helps me).
(3) Because not having a welcoming workspace increases the likelihood of reduced productivity and reduced well-being (think neck pain and back pain).
(4) Because having a welcoming workspace is a best practice.
Question 1: For you, what’s an unwelcoming workspace like? For me, it’s a space that’s too hot or too cold, that’s too humid or too dry. There’s no natural light, I can hear too much external sound when my door is closed, and the furniture doesn’t fit my 6’2” frame.
Question 2: For you, what’s a welcoming workspace like? For me, it includes natural light, a standing desk, plants, a bookcase, a round table with comfortable chairs, student artwork and photos, and personal touches, like a family photo.
Question 3: What can you do to make your workspace more welcoming? What can you do to help your workspace increase your productivity and well-being? One thing that comes to mind for me is better computer and screen cable management.
Michael P.S. Try this ChatGPT prompt: Act as an interior decorator. What are 20 differences between a welcoming office space and an unwelcoming office space?
Like you, I want to get better at improving. I want to more effectively and efficiently improve. I want to find ways to go farther faster.
Let me ask you 3 questions:
Question 1: What steps have you taken in the past 12 months that actually helped you and your international Christian school colleagues do school improvement even better?
I’m asking because I want to find out what’s working for others and try it out.
I’m asking because working on school improvement goals is a challenge—one that can crowd out working on ways to do school improvement better.
I’m asking because you might be making school improvement harder to do than it needs to be.
Include a well-being component (for example, ask everyone to share a recent high and low).
Help everyone know how each meeting fits into the big picture. You can do this by connecting (as appropriate) the mission, vision, improvement process, and improvement goal to each meeting.
Includes key components like reviewing the purpose of school improvement; assessing the current situation; developing and implementing an action plan; assessing, celebrating, and reporting progress; and determining next steps.
(10) Address the root causes of each action plan, for example: unhelpful mindsets, insufficient staffing, inadequate policies and processes, faulty assumptions and misunderstandings, a lack of training/expertise, and 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).
How can you use the working genius model to enhance school improvement? What comes to mind for me includes the following:
(1) Be sure to galvanize others. It’s not enough to invent a solution and then use it. You need to galvanize people—get them energized, inspired, and moving! (Lack of galvanization can result in people being uninterested, uninspired, and unengaged. Not good.)
You need to galvanize people before the work starts, and you need to regularly galvanize them as they work. One way to do this is to remind them of the purpose of improvement and how addressing this problem/growth area will help others flourish.
(2) Assess your Steering Committee/Leadership Team in terms of working geniuses to ensure you have a good mix. Read this helpful article, assess the geniuses represented on your team, and determine next steps.
(3) As school improvement coordinator, assess your own working geniuses, how they fit with your school’s improvement efforts, and determine next steps. For example, to coordinate efforts to implement the school improvement plan, you need Tenacity. If Tenacity is not one of your working geniuses, you’re going to need to find a way to adapt.
Instructional coaching (aka meeting teacher needs) helps international Christian school teachers flourish. As a result of instructional coaching…
(1) New teachers are mentored through the steep learning curve of the first couple of years so they stay in the field and flourish.
(2) Somewhat experienced teachers receive targeted support to keep adding tools to their pedagogy toolbox. (Some may struggle in one or two areas that keep them from really flourishing, and they can get help in those areas.)
(3) Veteran teachers get encouragement, a resource every now and then, or a colleague to bounce ideas around with.
(4) Teachers and leaders learn to use data knowledgeably in decision making. (Did your school get an accreditation recommendation related to data use? No shame here—most schools I know have.)
(5) Teachers experience focused, effective professional development. (This includes special speakers, regular meetings, differentiated exploration.)
(6) Teachers align a relevant, consistent curriculum and content with standards and current best practice. (My first year of teaching, I announced the next novel study according to the curriculum I’d been given, and the students told me they’d read it already. That was frustrating.)
Like I said, instructional coaching (aka meeting teacher needs) helps teachers flourish—and unfortunately, in my experience, instructional coaching is underemphasized in international Christian schools for 3 reasons:
(1) Coaching, instead of being seen as something that helps all teachers flourish, is seen as something to help struggling teachers survive. Given that coaching is not frequently used, no one really feels comfortable offering or receiving such support.
(2) Various people (for example, principals, curriculum coordinators, and department chairs) are assigned various tasks to help teachers—but these tasks do not fully cover instructional coaching, and sometimes overlap without sufficient communication by responsible parties.
(3) Those involved in helping teachers have not benefited from training in instructional coaching.
I sure wish I had had the benefit of this course before becoming a department chair and a curriculum coordinator. If I had, I think I would have been able to help teachers flourish more effectively and efficiently. Here’s why:
(1) The course defines instructional coaching. The authors say, “You will encourage teacher growth through modeling, reflection, data analysis, and high-quality professional development, and this comes in many different forms” (Unit 3, Lesson 2, The Tier-Coach-Grow Model, p. 1). Then they lists some of the ways this can happen:
Supporter of student learning
Supporter of effective instruction
Curriculum and content facilitator
Data coach
Facilitator for change
Learner
Professional learning facilitator
Resource provider
Note: First, this definition was really helpful to me. When we don’t all agree on a definition or have a common vocabulary, it feels like I am playing a game of blindman’s bluff, swinging wildly at partially perceived but not fully articulated needs. I don’t know what exactly it is I’m doing, who else is doing it, and how we can best do it together.
Second, for schools I served in, I don’t recall all of the above being fully provided. For example, one school didn’t provide data coaching, another didn’t provide curriculum facilitation, and another school didn’t provide professional learning facilitation.
What’s your experience?
How does your school define instructional coaching?
What additions might you need to make to your definition so that your teachers receive full-orbed instructional coaching?
(2) The course offers helpful content, for example:
(A) The suggestion to have a data wall in my office to model data usage for teachers. (This seems so obvious–why didn’t I think of it before? Maybe because I’m not confident in my own data usage, and so I need the following resource.)
(B) A schoolwide data guide giving 5 categories of data (discipline, engagement, classroom assessment, norm-referenced testing, and process/implementation), types of data in each category, and examples of how to use the data.
(C) A culture of learning self-assessment tool listing 8 qualities (growth mindset, teacher ownership, avenues for collaboration, leadership values PD, common mission/vision, data valued, sense of trust, and focused school-wide goals). For each quality, it gives negative signs indicating that the school’s culture is toxic and positive signs that the school’s culture is ripe for learning. This would be a great faculty discussion piece, given the authors’ claim that a culture ripe for learning is a prerequisite to any change. This is something that I’d want to work on before putting a lot of effort into professional development and change initiatives.
(D) Checklists of what to do before, during, and after professional development to make it most likely that learning takes root in helpful and lasting ways. Most of these things I learned bit by bit, by experience, for instance, with facilitating professional development book discussions. But it’s great to have these concise lists all in one place, whether for running a cross-check on a big event or a check-up on regular meetings.
(F) A plan for tracking coaching contacts that gives me a quick look at who I met with, when, what we did, and what follow-up I need to do. This is a tool I now use daily.
(G) Three complete bonus lessons on how to support teachers in some specific practices like teaching students time management skills, planning for different student work paces, maximizing instructional time, and streamlining transitions. These are great materials that can be given directly to teachers, and they are also good models of the types of materials that I could develop on my own.
Bottom line: Help your teachers by providing instructional coaching. (Hint: Enroll in 40-Hour Instructional Coaching today!)
For school improvement, what you do matters, how you do it matters, and why you do it matters. So leaders, be sure to overcommunicate all 3—what, how, and why!
(1) What: Overcommunicate “what” to ensure that everyone understands what your school’s improvement goals are. One way to help is to give 1-3 word titles for each action plan, for example: data usage and curriculum development.
Quick check: If I ask each staff member and leader at your school what your school’s improvement goals are, what percentage of people will answer correctly within 10 seconds?
(2) How: Overcommunicate “how” to ensure that everyone has shared understanding of school improvement in terms of:
Perspective: What’s your school’s understanding of school improvement and what mindsets does it use for school improvement?
Process: What collaborative process does your school use?
Practices: What best practices do you use for school improvement?
Quick check: If I ask each person at your school, what your school’s improvement perspective, process, plan, and practices are, what percentage of people will readily provide correct responses?
(3) Why: Overcommunicate “why” to ensure that everyone has shared understanding of the purpose of school improvement. For me, the purpose of school improvement is to get students, staff, and leaders flourishing. What’s your school’s documented purpose?
Quick check: If I ask each person at your school, what your school’s purpose for improvement is, what percentage of people will readily provide the correct response?
In my experience with school improvement, schools seem to start with “what” (the major recommendations or action plans), pull in “how” as necessary, and incidentally address “why.” Simon Sinek suggests the opposite: start with why, then explain how, and finally address what. Using this order helps people engage:
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.
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.
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.
International Christian school leaders, doing alright does not equal flourishing! So, don’t be satisfied with doing alright—instead, strive to flourish! Why?
Because God calls you to flourish, not just to do alright.
Because when you’re flourishing, you serve more effectively because you’re growing and thriving (instead of just doing OK, good enough).
Because your international Christian school needs flourishing leaders who “function at extraordinarily high levels—both psychologically and socially. They’re not simply people who feel good. Flourishing goes beyond simply happiness or satisfaction with life. Beyond feeling good, they’re also doing good—adding value to the world” (Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3-to-1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life, 2009, p. 17).
Let me explain further by providing a description of what it looks like for leaders to experience each of the 5 elements of flourishing at the “doing alright” level and at the “flourishing” level:
(A) Passionate purpose:
Doing alright leaders experience decision-making that is somewhat guided by purpose statements, some shared ownership for school improvement and mission achievement, and a board that monitors the leaders’ responsibilities.
Flourishing leaders consistently experience decision-making that is guided by and aligned with the purpose statements, deeply shared ownership for school improvement and mission achievement (see Construct: Responsibility, p. 14), and an inspiring board that rigorously monitors the implementation of the purpose statements.
(B) Resilient well-being:
Doing alright leaders experience some exercise and some daily devotions, a Christ-centered environment, and a supportive board.
Doing alright leaders experience an adequate work space; plans, policies, and procedures; and discussions about resource management and resource planning.
What about you? What’s the difference between doing alright and flourishing? For a leader, what does it look like to be doing alright for each of the 5 elements of flourishing? For leader, what does it look like to be flourishing in each of the 5 elements of flourishing? What’s 1 action step you can take to toward flourishing?
Intentionally and thoroughly address root causes of each of your accreditation recommendations! Why?
(1) Because addressing root causes helps students, staff, and leaders at your international Christian school to get flourishing.
(2) Because addressing root causes increases the likelihood that you’ll address the actual problem, prevent future problems, and achieve lasting change.
(3) Because not addressing root causes increases the likelihood that you’ll address symptoms of the problem, face the problem again, and achieve temporary change.
(4) Because addressing root causes is a best practice.
Let me ask you another question:In the chart below, which international Christian school is more likely to actually improve?
School #1
School #2
Proactively frames the recommendations as an opportunity to help students, staff, and leaders flourish
Reacts to the recommendations with urgency and possibly thinks of the recommendations as something the staff is forced to do
Focuses on prevention (addressing root causes) and on completing the recommendations
Focuses on getting done with the recommendations
Documents root causes
Doesn’t document root causes
Intentionally and thoroughly addresses root causes in the plan and completes the recommendations
Gets done with the recommendations
My answer? School #1.
While both schools get the recommendations done, School #2 places too much emphasis on getting done, on urgency. School #2 is about, for example, getting rid of the weeds by pulling off the tops of the weeds (not the roots)—which is sort of like students who work for grades (not learning). Not good.
Meanwhile, School #1 sees recommendations as an opportunity to grow, to prevent problems, to address root causes. School #1, for example, is about getting rid of the weeds by pulling up the weeds by the roots and by putting weed killer on the yard—which is sort of like students who focus on learning (while getting good grades).
Your turn—for each recommendation you received from your last accreditation visit, ask yourself the following questions:
(1) What are the root causes of this recommendation? Possible root causes include unhelpful mindsets, insufficient staffing, inadequate policies and processes, faulty assumptions and misunderstandings, a lack of training/expertise, and 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).
Reflection can help you and your colleagues to improve your international Christian school! Why?
Because reflection helps you and your colleagues flourish.
Because reflection helps you and your colleagues to step back, assess what’s happening, and determine next steps.
Because not reflecting can result in you and your colleagues not seeing the big picture, not understanding what’s happening, and not determining next steps. Not good.
Because reflection is a best practice.
To what extent do you and your colleagues reflect on school improvement? What does reflecting on school improvement look like at your school? What it looks like for me includes weekly reviews, quarterly reviews, and annual reviews which include using this reflection tool and after action reviews.
What helps you and your colleagues reflect? I find that a set of questions helps me and my colleagues reflect. Here are 4 questions that can help you and your colleagues:
(1) How are you doing right now? Use the following scale: 10: flourishing • 1: flailing
(2) How are you doing with regard to school improvement?
What 3 insights did you personally gain this school year regarding school improvement?
What 3 school improvement accomplishments for this school year do you want to celebrate?
What 3 concerns about school improvement do you personally have going forward?
(3) What’s driving your school’s improvement efforts? For me, a school’s improvement is driven by the 5P improvement engine:
Purpose
Perspective
Process
Plan
Practices
(4) How can you enhance what’s driving your school’s improvement efforts?
(1) Because using what helps you improve gets you flourishing.
(2) Because using what helps you improve keeps you focused and persisting when the going gets tough, keeps you open to new opportunities, and keeps you working both effectively and efficiently.
(3) Because using what doesn’t help you improve can cause you to give up when things get tough, to avoid growth opportunities, and to work ineffectively and inefficiently. Not good.
(4) Because using what helps you improve is a best practice.
So, what helps and doesn’t help you to improve? When thinking about what helps and doesn’t help you as a staff member or leader of international Christian school to improve, what comes to mind for me include the following:
What helps…
What doesn’t help…
Keeping your galvanizing purpose for improvement in the forefront of your mind.
Having no clear purpose for improvement or having one that doesn’t galvanize you.
Having a perspective on improvement that flows from a growth mindset.
Having a perspective on improvement that flows from a fixed mindset.
Using a process that includes reviewing your purpose for improvement, assessing your current situation, taking action steps, assessing and celebrating progress, and determining next steps.
Having no documented process, or having a process that doesn’t include key components.
I say your improvement engine “can help” because how much it helps depends on its quality. If your engine is great, your engine will really help you improve. If your engine isn’t great (like if you’re missing components or if your components aren’t of good quality), it might not help all that much.
My second point: Your 5P improvement engine is what actually drives your improvement. So check your engine before taking action on your goal.
Let me put it another way: Imagine your goal is to drive from Los Angeles to Seattle to New York City to Miami and back to Los Angeles, a long trip. Before driving, you’d want to make sure your engine (not to mention the rest of your car) is in good working order.
Before taking action on your goal, make sure you have a great 5P improvement engine!
Get Flourishing 
