STRATEGIC DIRECTION Developing a strategic direction as an educator means being clear about what you are trying to achieve with your students and your school. Our purpose in becoming clear about the direction in which we are trying to take our students helps us determine the strategies we then need to put in place in order to achieve this. Thomas Sergiovanni once told a wonderful story about trying to help a jellyfish cross the road which illustrates the need for a strategic direction and which is interpreted here. If you try to get the jellyfish across you will use all kinds of methods to do it. You will push, pull, kick, drag, coax etc. Along the way the jellyfish will collect all sorts of rubbish and you may need to stop occasionally to make sure you dust off and throw away what is holding it back and/or getting in the way. If you don’t do this, by the time you get to the other side you will be totally confused about what was there in the first place and what has been added, let alone where you were going and why. It may be that much of the additional matter which has been picked up is actually a nuisance rather than adding any value. Finally, because this is a complex exercise, if you do not keep your eye on the general area you would like to land, you may find yourself some way down the road far from where you actually wanted to be. While establishing a strategic direction and becoming clear about our purpose, this does not preclude us from retaining flexibility in what we do and our capacity to respond to opportunities. Like explorers of all types before us when we are moving in territory which is not too clear, we need to keep our eye on landmarks that do provide the strategic direction, while at the same time making our own maps. As teachers we don’t only need strategic direction these days, we also need to be cartographers. Hence Educational Cartography, a term coined by Professor Rosemary Wray is a further way of taking our journey as educators.
257
(C) Creating Resilient Educators
