Читать книгу From Reopen to Reinvent - Michael B. Horn - Страница 36

Without clarity around purpose, educators are often caught in what famed author Stephen Covey called “the activity trap”—working harder at the things schools do just because they are the things they do, not because they are the most important things.

In one of the best-selling nonfiction books of all time, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey wrote how beginning with the end in mind is critical. Without a clear understanding of your destination, you won't know if the steps you're taking are headed in the right direction. “People often find themselves achieving victories that are empty, successes that have come at the expense of things they suddenly realize were far more valuable,” Covey said.

Covey's basic argument is that “all things are created twice.” The first step is to create something in the mind. Then there's the physical act of creating something to make it real. If you haven't thought through what you want a school to do up-front, then it's easy to let past habits and inertia shape what schools accomplish by default.

If famed leadership and management scholars Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis are correct that “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things,” then management is all about executing, but leadership is about clarifying purpose and priorities, Covey argued in his book. To be clear, this can and should be an iterative and emergent process based on putting something into action, learning, and adjusting course. We talk a bit more about that in Chapter 10. But not deliberating about the end reduces educators to “straightening deck chairs on the Titanic,” but not ensuring that the ship isn't simply headed down.⁶

As Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe wrote in the context of education in Understanding by Design,⁷ good teachers start with the goals and how they would know if students have met them. They then backward map all the things they need to provide to get to those outcomes. The same is true for good schools.