Sure, the school had faced many challenges, and Brianna knew that the school would face many more challenges. But she’d never been more excited for the school’s opportunities. Indeed, Brianna sensed that the challenges were themselves evidence of the opportunities. Brianna could see that in a staid and settled time, schools simply harrow on, without leaving the furrowed line. But in times of challenge, Brianna knew that schools must break new ground. And Brianna was excited to survey and plow the new ground. Finally, she might see the school incorporate some of the latest instructional methods and new facility designs, and refocus its programs. Both the board and school leader seemed poised to do so, and Brianna was ready to help, all in.
Opportunities
Some of the same challenges that schools face are also their greatest opportunities for enrollment growth, instructional reform, and program enhancement. Consider every challenge your school faces, except recasting it as an opportunity, and you’ll begin to see the possibilities. Responding to challenges is naturally reactive. And reacting can have the feel of compulsion and desperation to it, highlighting that one wouldn’t have changed if not forced by circumstances to do so. But recharacterizing those same challenges as opportunities gives one the opposite sense of hope and initiative, drawing on creative energies and productive forces. And sometimes, the opportunities have nothing in particular to do with challenges. Some opportunities just present themselves in the course of the steady administration of a stable program. In that case, the opportunities are for the bold and enlightened to pursue, as beacons on the horizon rather than islands in the storm. This chapter outlines a few of each form of opportunity, some arising out of challenges, and others just waiting for the bold.
Culling
Culling your school’s programs is a first opportunity arising out of the challenge of enrollment stagnation or decline, due to a dwindling and aging population, and decreased demand for education. In times of enrollment growth, schools continually add on, with little or no culling. Why rigorously evaluate any program, when the school is growing and needs more programming? Why rigorously evaluate and steadfastly train and equip school personnel, when the school is growing and needs all hands on deck? In times of plenty, schools can bloat in their programs and personnel, and in doing so lose rigor, effectiveness, and focus. A period of declining enrollment is the opportunity to cull ineffective, out-of-date, costly, and distracting programs. Declining enrollment is the time to close antiquated facilities and consolidate programs in the newer facilities. A time of economic reductions in force is a time to retain the better-equipped, qualified, and devoted personnel. Use your school’s seeming period of stagnation to revitalize the school and revivify programs and staff with sensitive and strategic culling.
Refining
A time of enrollment stagnation is also a time to refine and refocus programs, and retrain personnel. Your school’s programs may be essential but missing the mark. Courses may be appropriate but need new descriptions and content. Instructors may be skilled and devoted but need new methods and technologies. Facilities may be appropriate but need new furnishings and equipment. Policies may be out of date and for the board to rewrite to account for the new times. Marketing may be focused on the wrong audience with an outdated message. The specter of enrollment stagnation or urgency of an enrollment decline can be the driving force for program refinement. During enrollment stagnation and decline, look at everything your school does, and use the moment to refine it. In doing so, you may either save your school from irrelevance or set your school up for success well into the future.
Enhancing
A time of enrollment stagnation and decline is a difficult time to enhance school programs. The financial constraints that loss of tuition revenue and per-pupil funding impose can make it appear impossible to acquire new equipment, construct new facilities, hire new personnel, and provide new programs or amenities. But some program enhancements don’t take money. What they instead require is initiative and time. And during an enrollment decline or stagnation, time and initiative are both often more available than they are during periods of growth, when all management energies go into meeting growth demands. Your school may, for instance, already have the facilities and personnel for an exciting new program, research initiative, community outreach, marketing plan, or fundraising plan. If so, now may finally be the time to launch it. And even during a financial crisis, funds may be available for new programs, personnel, and facilities. Donors know when to step forward to fund new construction and initiatives. Your school may just need to ask. A crisis can be a good time.
Aligning
A time of swift technological and workplace change can be a good time for realigning the school’s instructional and co-curricular programs to account for field developments. When workplaces change swiftly, employers will tell the schools, one way or another, that their graduates don’t know what they need to know and can’t do what they need to do. Employers will either stop hiring the school’s graduates or hire and retrain them, while complaining to the school. Schools generally don’t find it hard to learn what employers think of the workforce preparedness of their graduates. Just ask them. Employers will tell school officials what they need and expect in the way of knowledge, skills, and character. Indeed, employers are often willing to partner with the schools in internship, training, and other programs. Use a challenging time of swift technological and workplace change to reach out to the employers who hire your school’s graduates to find out their workforce needs. Align your school’s programs to accommodate workplace changes.
Unifying
A challenging time of cultural change, division, and splintering can be a good time for a school to focus on unifying commitments. When everyone on campus has a similar upbringing, personal history, and set of values, a school may ignore instruction in their unifying and other positive effects. Yet when the culture splinters, schools can help communities find, teach, and celebrate common values and commitments. A school can be one place that welcomes everyone, respects everyone, and finds ways to instruct everyone’s children, youth, and young adults. Schools can preserve and amplify core commitments and common values. Use a challenging time of social, political, and national division to discern, celebrate, and instruct in those unifying values. In a divisive and uncertain time, reinvigorate your school’s culture and commitments with themes that unite and celebrate.
Connecting
Just as schools today have the opportunity to stand up and shine as sound, principled, committed, and unifying places, schools today also have the opportunity to connect with the community and constituents, and help community constituencies connect with one another. When schools are flush and growing, they tend to turn inward to meet their growing needs. In more-difficult times, schools must look outward and reach outward to recruit students and families, promote the school, and connect school programs with community interests and needs. Take the spare time, personnel, and energies that declining enrollment leaves, and devote those resources to connective outreach. Invite community constituencies to partner with the school, showing them how the school can serve their interests. Also show them how the school can connect them with other constituencies to further their own interests. Good schools are networking hubs for students, their families, and alumni, and for the community. Make your school a vital community hub where residents meet, connect, and flourish, and your school will flourish in return.
Caring
Today, with all its uncertainties, anxieties, disorder, disunity, and stresses, is also a great time to care for and about individual students. If students lack an equilibrium, then schools can provide it. If students lack a sense of stability and security, then schools can provide it. If students lack a sense of direction, purpose, and hope, then schools can provide it. If students lack a sense of accountability and challenge, then schools can provide it. If families and society are not currently adequately nurturing the young, imbuing them with the hope, faith, and character to persevere and overcome in a challenging world, then schools can do so. Schools today can have a greater-than-ever positive influence on the young, at a time when students need that influence more than ever. Ensure that your school and its personnel are caring more than ever for each student, no matter that student’s challenges.
Protecting
Schools are also pursuing the opportunity to protect students from the adverse effects of technology including especially cell phones and other mobile devices and the social media, videos, and images they carry. What students do outside of school is up to students and parents. But many schools are seizing the opportunity to limit or ban devices on campus and, in doing so, giving students a reprieve from their adverse effects. Schools can also teach students about the harm of device overuse and the harm of the degrading images and content that devices can convey. Schools can be a shelter in the digital storm, giving students an authentic and stable social and physical environment in which to develop, outside of the artificial and unstable digital world. Traditional after-school co-curricular clubs, athletics, and activities can be especially vital in protecting students’ minds from digital overload and fostering student cognitive, physical, mental, emotional, and social development. Schools have a real opportunity to be the bastion against digital deform.
Equipping
Beyond simply sheltering students from digital inundation, schools can also equip students to navigate the digital and technological world. Instruction can help students distinguish helpful, valuable digital content that informs and instructs from harmful, degrading content that depletes and destroys. Instruction can also help students evaluate the source and quality of the information devices so readily and continuously convey, to detect fraud and propaganda, and avoid manipulation. While teaching students responsible use of artificial intelligence, schools can also instruct students in how artificial intelligence can mislead and disable students, stunting their own intellectual and skills development. Schools can both equip students for the technological and digital world, and equip students with the discernment and perspective on how not to allow that world to undermine character, values, and growth.
Celebrating
Schools also have the opportunity in challenging times to celebrate their successes and the successes of their students and programs. Ultimately, school success is not really about the growing numbers. School success is about each accomplishment of each student in growth, development, and overcoming life’s natural and unnatural challenges. Challenging times help instructors, administrators, and other members of the school community notice, appreciate, and applaud every small success. Challenging times are an opportunity to commit to a culture of celebrating success. That commitment to positive reinforcement of student striving, discipline, and accomplishment can contribute to transforming not only the school’s culture but also the academic performance and general growth and development of the school’s students. Examine how your school recognizes, rewards, and praises its students. Find new ways to give those positive reinforcements, especially in challenging times. In doing so, your school will have equipped a new generation of strivers and overcomers with the grit, determination, and hope that a good life requires.
Reflection
What do you see as your school’s greatest opportunity? Does your school have programs it needs to cull? Does your school have personnel it needs to retrain and reassign? Does your school need to refocus and refine its programs? Can your school create an attractive new program or program enhancement to meet current enrollment challenges? Does your school need to realign programs, courses, content, and skills instruction to the changing workplace? Has your school articulated a unifying vision and themes to overcome the divisive societal, cultural, and political mood? Is your school an intentionally connective place that draws the community together? Do students value your school as a place for their healing and nurture? What is your school’s policy on device and social media use on campus during school hours? Do your school’s instructors help students distinguish helpful from harmful digital content and evaluate the quality, source, and intent of content? Does your school consistently celebrate student striving and success in multiple forms and multiple ways?
Key Points
Schools have great opportunities, even in times of great challenge.
Schools facing challenges find it easier to cull outdated programs.
Schools facing enrollment declines can focus on refining programs.
Schools can use enrollment declines to justify enhancing programs.
Times of workplace change give schools new alignment opportunities.
Times of social division can make schools unifying places.
Times of social isolation can make schools vital connective places.
Schools today have great opportunities to care for hurting students.
Schools today can protect students from digital device harm.
Schools today can equip students to navigate the digital world.
Celebrate student striving and success in challenging times.