The importance of scheduling the parade...

I live in St. Louis.  We are not afraid to host a parade, we've done it a lot lately in honor of the St. Louis Cardinals.  Here's an image from the 2011 World series parade:

Image from Fox Sports

I was listening to the latest edition of the EntreLeadership podcast when Dave Ramsey said something that made perfect sense.

Here's the episode link: https://www.entreleadership.com/podcasts/les-parrotthow-conflict-can-help-you-wi, Dave's interview starts 24 minutes into the podcast.

If you aren't planning to win, you're planning to fail.  If you're not planning the celebration, will you set yourself up for a win?

Dave's exact quote:
"You don't schedule a loss, you schedule a win"

I'm working on our school's Comprehensive School Improvement Plan and couldn't help but think about that statement.

Sure we have a goal, a scale for measurement, and action steps to accomplish the goal, but do we have a date for the celebration?  How will we celebrate?

Whenever you start a task, a goal, an assignment, a unit, a season, a game, think about this and plan for it: How will we celebrate?

Can I be defined by a number?

My colleagues and I were having a great conversation around Data, Data-drive decision making, and numbers.  It was riveting and got me thinking.

Is there a number, any number really, that I would want to define me?

Credit Score

Test Score

BMI

Reading Level

AimsWeb Benchmark

IQ

Driving test score

Often I'm in meetings when we talk about kids, then list numbers associated with that kid.  Do we spend enough time on the qualitative descriptions of students than we do the test scores that they achieve.

What if we started discussing:

Likes/Dislikes

Family History

Home life

Favorite colors/foods/songs/movies

I'm not asking to eliminate ALL data from conversations with students, I'm just asking us to not LEAD with data.  Let's lead with the things that make a student special, unique, individual and real.

I'll be honest and say there is NO, I repeat NO, number I want to define me.  Please don't let numbers define the kids in your schools.