Maxims, Routines and Practices Can Make Your School’s Vision a Reality

Administrators and an instructional leadership team came together for a full day each spring to talk through where they were as a school and where they wanted to go. Out of that came the instructional focus for the next school year.

Mandy Ballenger, Livington’s principal then and a district director of HR now, conducted staff surveys at the end of each semester. She measured progress against a baseline for five years running, allowing her to see areas of growth and stasis on the maxims.

Ballenger used student surveys to help identify areas of success, and whether the school was achieving intended outcomes like collaboration skills. Further, the surveys allowed students to nominate staff members they felt were doing a great job teaching them the targeted aptitudes. Staff was then recognized for their achievements based on those nominations.

Staff was asked to nominate students who were demonstrating the skills outlined in the maxims for special recognition. These requests were specific and strategic, notes Ballenger. “One week we’d ask to identify a ninth grader who did a great job on collaboration. Then maybe the following week it would be a tenth grader who did a great job with creativity.” By holding these examples up, she made sure students and staff were always talking the same language. 

This was in a time before COVID. School administrators visiting classrooms would make part of their observation whether the maxims were appearing. They gathered this data on a Google Form, and shared it back out, so staff could see what was going on school wide.

Sharing the school vision and maxims became part of onboarding. New teachers were briefed the day before the school year started, with time for newbies to talk with veterans about how they went about embedding maxims in the classroom.

Teachers began innovating in how they integrated vision-related skill-building. A chemistry teacher started putting checkboxes on the bottom of slides. He made explicit connections between his lessons and one or more of the maxims, by checking off whether it built collaboration or communication skills.

To assure that the student vision of readiness reached all parts of the school, classified staff were encouraged to participate in nominating students for awards. Secretaries, TAs and others were always well represented in submitting those nominations.

To measure progress, Livingston instituted annual student exit interviews. Seniors were interviewed by members of the community. They were asked to address what they had learned about the targeted student readiness skills and how they would apply them in their future. The top-rated senior interviewees were then selected to interview sophomores, as a preview of what would be expected senior year.