What Matters to Me?
A few years ago, I took part in a 21-day instructional leadership challenge. This challenge focused on how to look for and talk about what good teaching is. This was a great experience for me, as it helped me pay attention to the specific actions and activities that teachers do that improve the learning of their students. It also provided an effective way of talking about teaching to create conversation and discussion, which helps propagate good ideas across the school.
As part of this challenge, one of the steps was to identify the things most important to you, your values. This particular challenge suggested a card-sorting technique that helps you identify the ideas that resonate the most with you. I was a little skeptical of the activity but I found a website where you could try it. I took a few minutes to go through the steps of sorting, and choosing, and whittled the card stack down to 5 words. When I looked at the 5 words I had left, I realized that these words represented everything I had been striving to improve in my career. Family, Relationships, Effectiveness, Communication, and Learning. FRECL.
What is FRECL
FRECL now serves as a touchstone upon which every action I take must be compared against. Every action I take must be improving upon or reflecting the ideas of FRECL.
Family – Maintaining connection with the people closest to you. All other values work to support this value.
Relationships – Knowing the people you work with and connecting in a way that matters. Relationships are in a constant state of deterioration and require intentional effort to maintain.
Effectiveness – Focusing your time on the right work. Prioritizing your time for the things that will have the greatest impact on outcomes. Managing your time so you can get the important work done in the time you have.
Communication – Always saying what you mean; Knowing that communication is what the listener does, and the speaker has the responsibility to communicate in a way that the listener will understand. Recognizing that people communicate differently and finding effective ways to communicate. Knowing that work isn’t done until you have communicated it to people who need it.
Learning – Always finding new ways and new connections. Recognizing that in an industry that is changing by 10% per year, you are regressing if you are standing still
So what are your values? How do they show up in your work? How do you share them with your students or your children?
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