How to Best Evaluate and Monitor the Success of your Strategic Plan | Webinar

Alright, let's go ahead and get started. You can continue introducing

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self in the chat. We are very excited to have you here. Be sure to share with everyone else where you come from and what

your

word is. describe

strategic

plan

ning my name is andrea gaches sordrea I am an associate partner with educational elements um before I was at ee I was a special education teacher and coach and I was very excited to share what we have learned along the way about

strategic

plan

ning. Think about the different roles I have played. I've seen the impact of strategy and how it can help, you know, facilitate decision-making and help us move forward in new ways, so I'm really excited to share some of this information. you and um I'll pass it on to Shelby so she can introduce herself.

Hello everyone, Shelby, I'm joining you here from Austin, Texas, so hello to the Austin crown. I see we have some Houston. Looks like maybe Grand Prairie will join us. I am a managing partner in educational elements and, like Drea, I have done quite a bit of strategic planning. In fact, I'm in the middle of some pretty big strategic planning projects here in Texas as we speak, but I love this job. I love the strategy. type of consulting I am also a researcher by profession. Before getting to educational elements, I did some research-based consulting and then worked in education policy for several years at the Education Policy Center in DC.

That 's what I did. After leaving the classroom, I started in education as a teacher in North Texas, so it's been a fun professional journey, but I think that role as a researcher pairs very well with this strategic work, so I'm looking forward to this today's conversation specifically because I think it brings us to that marriage between data and strategy, which is a really fun place to play. I am very happy to be here, thank you Draya. Many of you here are probably familiar with us, but. um, for those of you who are new to the educational elements, I would love to share a little bit about us, um, we are in an educational consultancy committed to the transformation of schools and districts, as you can see, we just turned 10 years old, which It was very exciting for us, um, We work with thousands of districts across the country, but I think the things we're most proud of are the deep relationships that we built, so you see most of the people we work with come back. to work harder and I think that just speaks volumes. to the incredible work we see in building relationships that we have and the last piece that I share because I think it is a kind of commitment to all of you, we receive very positive feedback on our workshops and we hope that we are not different.

Along the way, if there's something you're interested in learning, have questions, and want to know more, feel free to share it in the chat. We want to make sure this meets your needs and a few other things. So, if you've worked with us before, you may know the different ways we engage with people, so we start with blended and personalized learning. Today we're going to talk about strategic planning, but we also wanted to share some of the different avenues we went into. districts, so we made a lot of changes last summer and we're thinking about it again this summer to return to school in the midst of the pandemic, leadership work on equity, teacher retention and, um, just our team work and culture, so if there's anything else that's what's most important to you in your community, these are other services that we provide and there will certainly be more

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s and, you know, information that will come through the pipeline that we'll talk about a little bit more at end of the

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, there are definitely more opportunities for you to learn and grow with more people on our team.

So I want to talk a little bit about our strategic planning approach because that's why we're here today. We're talking about what makes it different or really. our our seal what do we think is important when it comes to strategic planning and organizations? So I want to talk a little bit about why we think it's important. I think traditionally what happens is we've brought people together in a small group of people to create a plan and then we try to invest people, so we try to get our community to invest and that has worked in the past and I think, until certain point, you know there's a focus on doing the work before implementing it, but it's really what we want. changing our strategic planning approach or mindset is that we invest and create at the same time, so it's not like you're introducing a whole new plan because you've invested your stakeholders in your community along the way, um, we think that that leads to your plans actually being used instead of gathering dust on a shelf and leads to some really transformative changes in your communities and we do that through responsive planning so this is just kind of a collection of different definitions that we use, but responsive planning is developing a plan that prioritizes process over product, so this really helps you sustain your plan to adapt it to meet your needs and then pivot, so how can you make changes along the way? of the path that respond to the changing needs within your community?

To talk about some examples of that over this time, and a lot of that is really based on how you gather information and the last things I want to share about why we think this is so important is that, a few different things. This happens when you engage in responsive planning, we believe that it brings people and many perspectives are presented to our consultant rather than being consulted for feedback, they are included not only to provide feedback but also to create some of the solutions, so we also we provide time. to get feedback, but also time to design, it really creates great integration and ensures that people are working together, which really lays an incredible foundation for continued work.

We also found that prioritizing sprints or short periods of planning time allows people to pivot and become more receptive and finally I think this is evident that I think it is important to underline that clear and constant communication allows you to integrate your beliefs and I think that all of this will be highlighted today and, um, you. Once you have a plan, you will know how you will transform it. So we really want to see. I want to share a little bit about how different layers of our team or our organization impact each other, which is why we believe that responsive classrooms are at the core of our work are leaders who support those classrooms, so teachers, school leaders, district leaders, they all make sure that students get what they need in the classroom and become part of responsive teams so that all of these groups work together in a way that responds to new and changing information and that leads to you being in the water in your organization's culture and really the results or the things we see changing are on the right side, so when your procedures change they become solid but become adaptable your teams become agile but also aligned your leaders become really resilient and able to innovate and finally your classrooms are your teachers are really open to responding to strengths and needs so just a little context on strategic planning why we think it's so important and why the change to responsive planning and today we want to talk a little more about what that means so here are our goals for today thank you jaya I can explain this to us so I mentioned in my introduction that today is kind of It was a fun conversation to me, particularly because we can intersect the data conversation with the strategic planning conversation, so our number one goal is to consider the role of data specifically in this kind of especially responsive strategic planning that that dream just described to you. and we want to identify some ways that data can make your current strategic initiatives or, if you are working on a strategic plan, how the use of information and data can make you more responsive and then we also aim to highlight some examples of the

best

practices or some real case studies where we've seen this work very well, so with that in mind, let's talk a little more about traditional versus responsive strategic planning, especially when it comes to data specifically. and the role of data in a strategic plan, you've heard us say this phrase a lot at this point, but it's exactly what it sounds like when we want to build a plan that's able to be agile and respond consistently. to changing needs, changing environments is something we have firmly believed in long before the events of 2020 and 2021, but we know that we have never experienced, even you know more than in recent years, how important that type of planning can be like that, so when it comes to data, traditionally you often see data being used and sliced ​​as a sort of summative measure, you'll have a strategic plan and then you add data at the end to say okay, These are the specific ways that we are going to determine whether or not we met our goals, whether we were

success

ful or not, so it's this evaluative thing that happens at the end of a plan or maybe even at the end of a year of each of the plans. but when we look at that in a more responsive way, we're actually using the data as a more formative measure and in a couple of ways we use it to understand the extent to which we're making consistent progress, so that it's not just about

success

. at the end, but as we move forward, are we seeing the indicators that we want to see that we're going to have the impact that we originally planned and then if not, is there a pivot point?

Is there a pivot point in our strategy? I actually need a different plan at this point because something else has changed, so the role of data there is different and it's a good way to summarize that, actually, on the next slide, Andrea is thinking about when you think about data and how they should be. used in the strategic planning process is not the end goal, it is something we use to continue refining our approach. We believe that the planning process is continuous and something you continue to learn from, but you can only learn from it if you have new ideas. information and so that the process of collecting data, reviewing data, data conversations is something that is used throughout the process, so I'm going to go into this a little bit more, I'll give you some examples, you can really start to go deeper into this.

Many of you may have used or heard of using a theory of action when it comes to strategic planning. This idea that they're ahead of time when they identify a strategy, follow through with it, and plan why they feel that way. the strategy is the right one, you have a theory that you are implementing here, a theory of what will actually happen if you make this decision in a traditional type of strategic plan that might have a theory of action, you usually see these two parts, you see the whole of practices that I'm pointing out on the left side of my screen, the initiatives in your plan, the decisions you're making, the key actions, this is what we're going to do and then from again, a summative point of view, you have some desired outcomes that you're going to measure, maybe it's an impact on students, maybe it's an impact on staff, an impact on your community, but when we look at that more responsively, this comes up. intermediate segment that we want to include in our strategic plan in our theory of action specifically and those are medium term results, there are things that happen between those two points um in the access here, like the decision that we made to include this.

Initiative, the outcome that we hope to see, we want to include in our theory of action what we think might happen between those two and have some really intentional plans and I think there are ways to measure those outcomes that we see between those two. I'm going to break it down a little bit more and since I think there's actually a continuum here, there's a lot of different things that happen in between that are worth attaching some data to and considering when you're developing your plan, so I would say First up is the fidelity. If you make a decision about a program that you want to include in your strategic plan around an initiative, it is very important that you measure whether it is really happening as you expected, for example, if you decide that you are going to incorporate it. personalized learning practices in your classrooms invest in a lot of teacher training you want to measure first whether it's really happening is the initiative just as you planned it really being executed the way you intended or the way you planned it as well that that's the first part of the continuum, then we go into "okay", if so, you know it'shappening as we planned, is there any effectiveness here that we're seeing?

Are we really seeing the changes we hope to see? we define it in our theory of action and if so, then we can start to make an impact and there are probably some short-term impacts, some medium and long-term impact measures that we can incorporate into our plan. Let me explain how You can imagine, I think I've written this up in a sort of decision tree, so I'll walk you through that process here. This is something we added recently because we discovered while talking to districts. explaining it or explaining it became a yes or no conversation, so we're still playing with this language, but I think this kind of visual helps, so as I mentioned in that continuum, often the first question is whether our initiatives are they being implemented as intended if the answer is no then it's definitely worth thinking about.

Why isn't there something we need to improve just in terms of how we are implementing something? Is it an implementation challenge or is there something else there? But obviously we have to figure it out before we can get to any other part of our plan or our theory of action here, but if the answer is yes, we are actually seeing it being implemented as we planned, the next question is whether the changes produce some desired short-term effects, the answer may be no, so let's get back to that. example of personalized learning, if we expected that by doing so we would begin to see that perhaps children make more decisions for themselves about their own learning, take more ownership or advocacy for their own learning, if we don't see that the question is: still?

What is the correct priority? Are there other things? For example, maybe kids are returning to their classrooms for the first time in a year and a half and maybe there are a lot of social and emotional challenges there or relationships that need to be built before we can even get to this place of student advocacy, it could There's a pivot point there that's really important to identify and react to before you double down on your initial plan to dig in and commit very deeply to student advocacy or personalized learning. saying that that's the right decision, but using that as an example that you know maybe there's an adjustment in your approach based on the kind of context and changing environment around you or maybe the answer is yes, we're actually seeing some indicators that this is so. producing some short-term changes that we expected to see and then the question is: are there sustained long-term changes in the specific target population that you expected to see?

Yes, great, wonderful, this has this theory of action, this theory that you articulated for you and your team is coming true and this is exactly what you want to see if no, no, if not, then the question again is why? no and there are more conversations to have there, so again, as you can see, this is, um, it's I don't want to say difficult, but there are many layers of conversations here that are easily skipped because they require more socialization. They're the conversations that happen on your teams that we'll talk about in a second that really should be. happening continuously instead of setting a plan and then reviewing it again a year later or worse three years later without having these interim conversations and looking at the data to see how everything is working, so I'm going to take a step back and tell you a story that can hopefully help you connect what I just shared with you and kind of a real life example.

So, this kid, this is my son Miles, he's in second grade and like most people around the world. At home, we started second grade remotely this year and my husband and I work full time, so we also have a younger child who is in pre-K right now, so this was a big adjustment for us. We used to get our kids ready for school or take them to school and then my husband goes to the office. You know, sometimes I'm home, sometimes I'm not home, so we're all home all the time. Working for some of us at school was a pretty big adjustment for us and one of the parts of our day that was particularly stressful was the morning hour where everyone was trying to get ready for the day the same way Miles is. in this day and age where, for example, there are some things where he's independent about other things that he's not and it was something that needed to change we were having chaotic, stressful mornings um and then we had this theory, you know, we thought that Miles he may actually be more independent in the morning if we give him specific information that he doesn't need to get from us, he can make some decisions for himself, maybe this will have a broader impact on him overall, just encouraging his own independence and resolve problems, so we created a theory of action that we decided well, we will help you get the information you need.

Make sure he knows what the weather is like in the morning. Make sure to set an alarm for him so he can wake up on his own. He has access to her. all the things you need to get ready in the morning toothbrush change of clothes your materials for the day but the goal would be for you to be able to do all those things without us so we can get our little brother ready we can get ourselves ready and then in This is the little time we have together in the morning, maybe it's more peaceful, we can enjoy each other, we can prepare, um, more successfully for the day, so that was our theory of action, first we had to check to see as.

Is working? Does he really wake up with the alarm in the morning like we said? Is he dressing as we planned? You know, as long as we make sure he knows what he needs to dress for during the day. Will you receive the materials from him? Together there is that kind of fidelity question that we needed to answer first and then we had to pay attention to that, well, but then, are you preparing? Do you know how many mornings he keeps coming to us and asking us questions and needing help? him, are we seeing early indicators that we're making some progress here and then if the answer is yes, then it's kind of an evaluative point of view?

Are our mornings actually more peaceful? is this happening? Do we see him being independent in other aspects? You know, we're now two-thirds, maybe even three-quarters of the way through the school year, and this has been a huge success, it's completely changed our lives. Miles is getting ready alone in the morning, but kind of the moral of this. The story is that we had to check those things along the way to make sure this worked as intended, so let's just put this in a table format here so you can see. These were the decisions we made and the results we made.

I wanted to see early is that you know five days a week he's preparing himself and these were the results that we measured if he's more independent if we're seeing some more independent decisions from him if our time with him is better quality in tomorrow absolutely and we've reduced the amount of chaos in the morning, um, it sure has been something we've been able to say yes to, so we connect this to your context and what this might mean for you. Place this table here so that when you receive these materials from us, this is something that you can review and, either independently, you can copy this table and add examples from your own programs or initiatives. and your plan identifies some intermediate outcomes or like the ones we've listed here, you might want to start with fidelity if, uh, if that's still a question for you, or you're at the point where you want to get some sort of mid-project check-in. of period here related to effectiveness and then you may already have some outcome indicators that you identified when you decided to include this program or initiative in your plan, if so, they will go to the right A quick example that we added here is if your program, their initiative and their plan was to create stronger onboarding experiences for new teachers and if the result on the other side of that which was part of that theory of action is that this is actually going to help us retain new teachers long term. term.

The challenge is fine. What do you need to see in the middle that will give you an idea that this is really working? We believe we are still on the right path. An example could be. You see higher satisfaction rates among teachers during their first year, possibly measured through a survey or employee engagement indicators or more qualitative data, like conversations they have with their mentor teacher, but again the idea here is that you're thinking differently. really intentional way. some midterms and progress measures and not just think from an evaluative point of view, so we want to show you some more examples here.

I'm going to hand it back to Drea so she can walk you through some of these, but this is getting down to the last goal that we had for you today, which is to be able to apply this to your own worlds and I'll also mention if you're thinking of questions , save them where dre will walk you through some examples here and then. We'll also have plenty of time for some questions. We'd be happy to do this, so please think about questions if you have them. Thank you. So, she may not understand this saying exactly well, but Shelby always talks about this.

We're thinking about data that often our districts are data rich but information poor and I think I got it right, let's look at something like that, okay, but I think that really stands out here by prioritizing time for our teams to talk about data and I. We know that we do this traditionally in many different ways, so we often have professional learning communities where teachers come together and talk about their own data and whether there is a department or curriculum and instructional team that is thinking about implementations of different things that you're probably familiar with talking about data, but what we thought about the addition that I think we added here is making time for teams to talk about data related to their strategic plan and that's very important because, first of all, allows it. makes sure that you're actually using the data that you're collecting, so there's a lot of information out there that's really about synthesizing and understanding what your current state is, so I wanted to highlight some examples of a district and how they talk about the data , so you can see two things here on the left side, there are some slides of when and this is a district in New Jersey, you can see some examples of the decision making that needed to happen as a result. from coba 19. so you knew that when they were opening the school, which I'm sure is similar for many of you, they had to take a lot of information into consideration, some of it was incomplete, some of it was very useful, but it also informed how they took their decisions, I think something that helped them talk about this is that, um, you can see in the top left that there are a number of cases in their community and then they talked about what the risks were of making decisions based on the data that they were coming in so you can see on that side, what were the disruptions around the information that they had?

As a result, they were making decisions about whether to open or close hybrid learning or in-person learning. based on the information available to them from the cdc um, so this affected staffing, it affected quarantine needs, how they hired, how they used their substitutes, and what they did was they actively used the data that they had and They then translated them into the decisions they were making and were able to communicate them to members of their community. The way this connects to your strategic plan is correct. They had a lot of different initiatives that they were hoping to start in 2020 and obviously they had those. change as a result of, you know, changing circumstances, but because they were actively analyzing the information they had, they were able to communicate and discuss very clearly.

Okay, are we still on the right track? It's something that we want to make sure that we're committed to doing right now, it doesn't mean that we're abandoning it completely, but it does mean that we're making an active choice with the new information that we have, because they've already had that space in their strategic planning process to talk about data or talk about information became less uh um you know the data is out there and we don't know what to do and it became more about what information we have and how we can use it. that to make our decisions, the more comfortable people are doing that in a moment of general strategic planning, the more likely they will be able to apply that when things are really high risk like they were um, you know, over the last year.

Trey, do you mind? If I add that before you switch, I think this is a really critical point around these team conversations. They are really what will drive you. You know how much your team does or does not look at the data or use it. I think this. It's a question we get a lot fromleaders, especially around our work and our data culture, they will come and say, you know, my people just don't look at the data. I give them these really fancy control panels and you know they have access. To all these things, I have all this interesting data, but they just don't use it and my answer is always how much do you ask about it?

Do you know how much you talk about it in your team meetings because what you ask? about is what they will prioritize, so if you start your meetings by looking at the data together or you start your meetings with a question about something you learned today or learned this week from the xyz report, if you ask about it, it will be prioritized and then it will become habitual It's something that they just incorporate into their practice because they know you're going to ask about it, so I think this is a very good example, but a lot of how much your teams and you individually will use the information comes down to those habits that you build in your teams are amazing, thank you, so what I love about what Shelby just said is that you have to create the habit of talking about it so it doesn't become intimidating and I think a big part of that is working hard to create psychological safety within your team, so this is a term that I think has become quite popular as a result of Amy Edmondson's work.

She defines psychological safety as the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas questions concerns or mistakes and um I want to share a little bit about her research, but I also want to share a little bit about some examples that we've seen so she studied different medical teams to see who made the most mistakes and who was the most successful and what they found. that there was a difference between the teams that talked a lot about their mistakes versus the teams that didn't, didn't do it as much, so what they found was that when they were teenagers with high psychological security they talked about mistakes. and solve problems along the way and build a lot of trust, so the mistakes they were making were much smaller and they were able to solve them together, alternatively, in teams where there was little psychological safety, they didn't talk about mistakes and They would know that they wouldn't ask questions like the nurses wouldn't question doctors or texts wouldn't question doctors or nurses and, um, that led to more significant, life-threatening errors because people didn't feel comfortable sharing or contradicting their colleagues and I think this work It's incredibly impactful, obviously it has a very severe impact on the medical field, but I think this happens in education as well, so we have to do it, we can't just wait for psychological safety to happen, we have to really intentionally build that and the way you What I can do is these three steps and I'll break them down a little bit as well to frame the work as a learning problem, so instead of saying, "You know, this is a problem that we have to solve and we can't fail." . actually change it and say, you know we haven't been here before, we can't know what's going to happen and we need everyone to help us and I think something like this, the pandemic, has actually made that more true for teams.

Well, while it has been an incredibly devastating and difficult time for all of us, I think it has forced many of us to admit that we have never been here before and what we have to do to move forward is learn together and make sure that we are actively seeking out each other's ideas, thoughts and feedback and I think that's something that teams with high psychological safety have been able to iterate and change quickly rather than, you know, when there's low psychological safety in what we're trying. to stick to an original plan, the next thing is to recognize your own probability and I think this is important for leaders, so as they think about building psychologically safe teams that talk about data or talk about, you know, the mistakes that they're making. down the road being able to say and I don't have the full picture and I need your support I need to hear from you we'll help people highlight that as it relates to the data and how we interpret it ourselves think about Well, there are a lot of times that when I look data, I know that when we work with school districts, I often look for a difference of opinion between what teachers and leaders say, and that's something I really care about and tend to look for.

That's a great perspective, but it's not the only perspective. My colleague often looks at strength over time and by looking, knows what has changed since the last time we conducted the survey or the last time we looked at a classroom and both perspectives. They're incredibly important and together they can create a fuller picture or a fuller story, but if we don't have the space to talk about it and think about our different preferences and acknowledge our biases, then we're not really going to be. being able to build a community where we are psychologically safe and then the last piece is modeling curiosity, so a few different things and I'm going to share another example, but I want to break them down individually, I mean, you know.

I'm learning and that's how I'm adapting along the way, often our CEO, Anthony Kim, I think he does it very well, he models his own learning, even sharing silly things like, he, at the beginning of the pandemic. trying to get better at jumping rope and he put on Twitter I'm, here I am, this is my current skill that I'm trying to develop, you know, to keep my sanity while I'm quarantined in an apartment and, um, he would post different, uh . progress videos along the way to show that you know how he was improving and you can see a significant difference in his style and even in hindsight you look back and say oh wow, you really needed to work on that and be able to model and share that.

I know I need to learn and I'm actively learning and I'm going to put myself in the position to show you that I'm not an expert. It really helps other people feel like they can do the same thing as a leader, I think these are all really important steps to consider and learn from um and you know, bring them to your team um the last anecdote I want to share is about a community forum. which Shelby and I were recently where We were asked to go talk to the Spanish speaking community about their strategic planning initiative and it was conducted completely in Spanish and we translated all the important information that the community had been communicating also in English and the we create. a really intentional space for people to build that psychological safety, so we framed the strategic plan as a learning problem and had people share: do you know what you like about your community?

What are some things you want to make sure we avoid? What are some things that are challenging that you want to make sure we address and I was really struck by the superintendent who eventually you know doesn't speak Spanish so he asked us to go translate and he modeled vulnerability and fallibility. He stood up and said, you know this is incredibly important to me. I'm still learning, but I know your community is a priority for me and I want to make sure I understand your needs. And I think in that moment he created a community. where we could talk more about it and I think it signaled to both parents and their staff that this was going to be important, so through that they laid the foundation to have ongoing conversations, so I think along the line, there could be, you know, this is what I heard and this is what we're hearing as a result of some of the changes that we've made, so just some tips on how to continue to build psychological safety because you know.

Data is so important, but you can't really get to the core of challenges or problem solving without building in the psychological safety piece. Yes, I agree, dre, and I'm glad we're spending more time on it. This one because I think you know, getting back to the point of how the difference between the traditional role in strategy or data and strategic planning and a more data-responsive role, it all comes down to this right, it all comes down to feeling safe enough. having these conversations in the middle of this is working, one of the things we talk a lot about in our data culture work is you know you shouldn't

evaluate

your team based on what the data says, but based on their use of information is correct, again, from an evaluative point of view, do these indicators say that you are doing a good job or not?

What's more, are you using this information to continually improve and grow your practice? I love this, this is less of a specific example. than the one that fear just gave, but going back to that example of incorporating personalized learning strategies as part of your strategic plan. I can remember a conversation where it was more of a fidelity conversation with the teacher, so you decided we're going to be more personalized in our instructional practices in your classroom, is that happening? She could go to her data and say, you know, I said I was going to do guided instruction with small groups four days a week, but I'm only doing it two days a week, it's something I can improve on, so she had this skill and She was praised for that, it was something she received a lot of support for, and she used the data to identify a way she could implement this strategy. more faithfully rather than waiting a year back and looking at your kids like you already know the data from the summative tests and saying you did a good job or you did, so either way I think this point is vitally important to be able to use it. data in a responsive way, so thanks for explaining this to us, Andrea, yeah, well, Shelby, um, so we've been talking about what happens when plans are in motion and what you want to take on as you build those teams.

In

monitor

ing the plan, I think often the shift that we see when we go from traditional planning to responsive planning is really working on being attached to the outcome or not being attached to just one way to achieve the outcome and I think Shelby talked a lot about this as well. : When we have those intermediate indicators, we can change and adapt and we know that our plan is destined to change, but we are incredibly motivated by the process or by the experience that this has had within the community and, therefore, another thing that I want to share is that to establish that your plan is meant to change, you really have to build a culture of trust and a culture of feedback loop and sharing, and it's interesting.

I was recently on another webinar that I was listening to, so I don't know if anyone was on that one too, you'll know if, um, but they were talking about how trust is essentially keeping your promises and how much more you can create opportunities to seek feedback, but Also explain what you are going to do with them and how it will change your practice. It's a great way to build trust and improve the culture within your organization, so I want to talk. A little bit more about South Brunswick and how we saw them do this by developing continuous feedback, so in their initial plan they were very involved during the creation of their strategic plan, so they had empathy interviews, we had a lot of surveys . indicated by that graph, the pie chart, there were family forums and then the bottom left image is actually a problem solving session that they led, so they said, "Okay, you gave us this feedback that these are the four areas that we really need to work on.

Obviously we have some ideas, but we would prefer to hear from you what your feedback is, what your ideas are about what you would like to see, as a result, the community provided ideas and they became things that they incorporated into their strategic plan. And then they developed their plan in early 2019, so as you can imagine, cup19 obviously adapted their plan or maybe forced them to adapt their plan, and obviously we're using this example, but I think this could be true in any year. . This year was obviously one that really shook up our plans and made us think in very creative ways, but they use the same avenues that they use in their initial strategic planning process to continue to gain information and leverage feedback to adapt their plan. so again, let's go back to using the local data that they had, they talked about positive cases, they shared ongoing information about the staff who were quarantined students who were going hybrid and virtual and they talked about the positive cases that we mentioned earlier and they used the The pathways that they had created before to share this information highlight decision-making and ask for feedback on how families and communities wanted to see adaptation and support, so instead of having in-person forums, as I know the images on the left are . from another time, um, but they started leading um virtual forums, so they brought families together to talk.

Hey, this is the information we have now, these are the decisions we're thinking about, what do you think, how does this make you feel? about sending your child to school,what makes you think about alternative creative ways that we can make sure we're giving you and your student what you need and there were surveys throughout, so they started doing more pulse check surveys instead of long ones? those who got feedback throughout the week about, you know, community members feeling comfortable sending their students back in person and the support they were getting from their students' teachers, so a Along the way they were collecting small pieces of information that would help them adapt their decision.

I think another shrewd decision they made was to not ask questions that they didn't think would help them make a decision, so they were very clear that this is the information I need to make an informed decision and, as a result, That's the information I I'm going to ask, so I think creating your strategic plan in a responsive way really lends itself to adapting to change and data is critical to being able to do that, so. I'll pause here, I don't know, uh, Shelby, if you have anything you'd like to add. Yeah, just a quick thing.

We would probably look at the kind of Covid enforcement here, but it's worth borrowing your phrase that's worth underlining because I think I saw really great examples of teams, schools and districts doing this every time they responded to Covid, particularly when they were converting to virtual instruction or hybrid instruction, and I think it was because of this kind of recognition that we weren't really sure how. to do it, you know, we had some ideas, we put some plans in place, but then we really wanted to get feedback on whether this works. I saw some really cool student surveys.

I saw something really wonderful, like teachers conference with kids to ask them if this works. For you, how can this be better? Some really interesting conversations with parents about what you need to support your child's learning. There seemed to be some really strong efforts in ways I hadn't seen before to collect data as they went, but again, because it was coming from this place, we're not really sure if we're doing this right, I almost wish we could bottle it up. You know, put it in a typical strategic planning process because normally that kind of uncertainty or insecurity doesn't exist and I think that's what prevents us from continuing to ask for feedback.

It's more like we know how to do it. We're pretty sure we know what's going to happen and in most places, in most cases, that's true, but the power of getting feedback along the way and discovering those perspectives that you may not know or which you may have no idea, it's just another way to make sure that what you have planned actually goes as planned and has the results that you were hoping to see, yeah, I think Shelby, I think something to keep in mind about what we've highlighted here is that often the misconception about what data This is strictly related to academic performance or what we are seeing in the classroom and I think that, hopefully, these examples have highlighted that data is everywhere, information What you're looking for is really, you know, in different indicators and it really forces us to think very critically about what information we want, so I'll pause here.

I'll ask Shelby a few questions as we get ready, but please feel free to jump into the part we wanted. to save about 10 minutes for her to share some updates, but also make sure we've set aside some time for all of you to ask your questions. It looks like Rui is already making one, so feel free to add it in the chat or questions. function um rui's question is the traditional strategic plan is a document or text, this is still the

best

format and how often do we need to pivot great question um, I'll share my thoughts and then Shelby Movie can share yours too.

What we do in strategic planning is make sure everyone understands the components of your plan and why they exist. If you're going to have a vision that we think is a good practice or a best practice, we want you to know what the vision is meant to do and why you have it and then make sure to include it if you want to prioritize. Why do you want to have priorities? Do you want priorities or do you want goals or do you want beliefs or do you want I want aspirations, what are the different things that will help motivate you in the plan, so I think the first step is to think about what information you want to include in the plan and then what is the format, so I think for us we make a document.

That, you know, is an external document that doesn't change and is meant to show the high-level takeaways and the key points of your plan, but it can be on slides, it can be on a pdf, it can be on a website. , so I think any format that helps you communicate is better, so I guess to answer your question, I would say writing it down is important, but I think the most important thing is that it's accessible to your stakeholders and your community. Yes, I agree that accessibility is really important, I would also say that I wouldn't communicate it in a way that makes you feel like you can't change it.

You know there will be parts of you like us a lot of times when we define a vision or I'm sorry when we define a pivot, it's like a strategy change without a vision change, so the big picture, what we're trying to achieve is the same, that's the core, that's going to be our shared purpose, we'll stay consistent around that, but the ways in which we try to achieve that vision or that shared purpose, those can change as our environment changes, so when you think about the polished visual representation that you really know, like the strong representation that you put on your website, maybe print it in a large size. poster and hang it in your district office.

It would include the core components that don't need to be able to change and respond. Otherwise, it sounds silly, but I think a lot of people emotionally connect with that content because they've invested so much. by communicating it and now, even when you hit a roadblock and you feel like, oh, that might need to change, now there's this hesitation because then it's like, well, we have to redo our signs, you know, so I think having a high level to dream. point like your really is your main mission, you have your priority areas that you know will continue to be true, but maybe you don't go into as much detail and how in that formal representation it becomes a barrier in your ability to be liked.

Adapt it as you go, I think that would be the balance I would try to achieve. Yes, please feel free to add more questions to the chat. A question I have for you. Shelby is. So what, if there is any? Do you have any examples of creative use of data or know of non-traditional types of data that people have used to help make decisions? Yes, I can think of two, one is very coveted and specific, but it was so eye-opening. moment where I'm thinking, okay, what's the post-pandemic going to be like, our example will be, but one of the ones you actually know, I love these matrices that we started using in our data culture work, where it was like the data that we decided . that we collect and the data that we decide to use, so you will have similar information that you put a lot of energy into collecting and a lot of resources into collecting, but you may not use it correctly or you may have information that you need a lot. but you haven't invested much in collecting that so that your data points can fall into those matrices, but in one of our brainstorming exercises about what kind of information falls into these, I had a district.

Tell me, you know, a lot of information that we need that we don't have is the similar bandwidth that all of our virtual platforms use. You know we had this great initiative where we distributed all of these hotspots to our community to help kids get access to online instruction, but some of them are selling out very quickly and we don't know why and we think it's because some programs use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and we have to figure it out and that's information that you would never have thought to collect and again an example very much like pandemic schooling, but I think the reason that example stands out to me What sticks out is that until we ask the right questions we won't know the type of data I need and I think there's often a disconnect between the decisions that are made around what data is important and the questions that the end users are asking here, so I'm not sure this answers your question, but I think The theme that came up from a lot of things is that we have to get back to team conversations, like there have to be these team habits where we ask the questions and then we make decisions. about the data that will be collected and that are connected to those. um there was another one I told you I had two examples and now the other one escapes me um I don't know that I would love to comment on that because I think there's something important there to highlight is that I think I often get into the habit of collecting things and saying, "This is well, we need reading levels," we need this type of information and we don't necessarily say what question should be asked and that when you have a team that actively says, you know we need to know. more about bandwidth or we need to know more about how to support families at home while they're, you know whether it's the pandemic or otherwise, how can they support their students?

It's like you have to ask the question first and then you have to attach the data you need to collect, so I appreciate that about your story too. Yes, that's so true. I thought of my other example very quickly. I know we're on time and this isn't a new idea, but. I think it's worth re-emphasizing it because I've seen it more and more. It's this idea of ​​student-led conferences and student-led conferences that are done with data. This is again sort of borrowing from our data culture work. There's a lot about the end user and I think there are these assumptions that the end user of the data is the school leader or maybe even the teacher when really we want it to be the student, right?

We want data to be something we are not. we collect so we can do it but we collect so we can do it with and I think these examples of using data for student-led conferences are really powerful to see how you know students are using their own information to create their own information. decisions about the type of learning in the future and the power or the learning that happens for both parents and teachers in those conversations about you know what the dialogue is that happens there and I think this connects to this whole conversation about the strategic plan because it goes back to the power of feedback where you know these conversations about how things are going and these measures of progress is not something you just do in the head office, you know these are data conversations to have with everyone who is involved , I think with the initiatives in your plan, yeah, I love it and I was a little inspired by that.

I think we have a great resource if you're interested in thinking more about building a data culture, kind of like what Shelby talked about in the design for the end. user or onboarding a team um and we highly recommend that you download our uh our guide, largely written by Shelby herself um and some other teammates, but it's a really great resource to start thinking about um, I love the shift of culture and thinking into How do we make this part of our fiber and how do we continue to talk about it? I highly recommend you do so.

This was part of our Learn Now and Plan for Next Year webinar series, so for the 21st and 22nd. and Oh, oh, sorry, that series is coming up, but this will take us to that, so in April We're going to explore what we're doing next, what we're thinking about for the next school year, so I encourage you to join us. for those events that are coming up, in the same place where you found this, our events, virtual events on our website and then another virtual event that I wanted to highlight was the systems level approach to teaching law, so a lot of people has been talking about and I know the term has varied the idea of ​​learning loss schooling loss learning recovery and but thinking about what are we going to do with the information that we have about our students, how are we going to make sure that we meet their social-emotional and academic needs? as they move into the next school year after a pretty disruptive year and a half, so if you're interested in learning a little more about this and participating in a conversation, that event will be on April 13th and finally if you want to continue learning of us, follow us on social networks.

You can follow our blog. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. You will receive these slides in a recording of this webinar. Thank you all so much for joining, uh, this was a great conversation and we look forward to connecting with you on an ongoing basis, so thank you all,bye thank you.