Prompt 1: Set Goals
10-9-19
- Goal: Create a “strategic” plan for IDEA 3.0 in the next six weeks that charts the pathway for our school to become a leader in the field of career and technical education. Ideally, this plan would also launch the Big IDEA Coop that serves as a hyper-local incubator for any idea. Coop projects would be vetted (and eventually funded) with this protocol.
- Benefits
- Positive review from PCSB (our school’s authorizer) in December 2019
- Continued operation and flexibility to achieve our school’s unique mission
- Renewed inspiration for the team to unite behind a new vision/purpose
- Increased student and family buy-in to IDEA and the student’s post-secondary plan
- Empowering IDEA students, graduates, and Deanwood community through a cooperative model of community wealth building
- Provide a path for personal sustainability for work/job that I love while building internal organizational capacity
- Obstacles
- Local, state, and federal education regulations
- Adult mindsets
- Time
- Partners
- IDEA board, staff, families, and students
- Colleagues (other DC school leaders)
- Connections (former DME, business leaders, etc.)
- Benefits
- Why did I select this goal?
- See benefits listed above
- How did I decide it’s the right goal for me?
- It’s the intersection of my number one professional priority and personal passion
- What does it feel like to share this goal publicly?
- Depends how public it actually is, I suppose
- What edge is this goal creating for me?
- See above (1.a.v.)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tL2M6aT8mKS3aTNMIIvWjUC237hMHC-zrtLUemEENBc/edit?usp=sharing
CPA Incubator 
Hey Justin – thanks for sharing. I wasn’t able to follow the links, and I’m not sure I have a full sense of what you envision here–maybe that’s why you want to write a strategic plan! What is the personal passion that this project connect with? How do you see this project as a path to personal sustainability? And whats your secret for avoiding the adult mindsets you see as an obstacle? How an I avoid them too??!?!
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Justin. I’m glad you’re here. Kudos on your first post!
“Launch the Big IDEA Coop that serves as a hyper-local incubator for any idea”
I love “hyper-local”. I’m not sure about “any” idea. ….perhaps you’re trying to strike a balance between focus and openness. Why not go all-in on the main thing you’re hoping this will do…
What’s holding you back from writing out more about exactly what this “Big IDEA Co-op” is? Or how this hyper local incubator will work?
“Provide a path for personal sustainability for work/job that I love while building internal organizational capacity”
What have been your biggest challenges to building internal organizational capacity?
How will this be similar or different?
“It’s the intersection of my number one professional priority and personal passion”
This is a powerful statement.
Clearly this seems like you’ll have the motivation to make good on this.
What are the 3 biggest things that could knock you off your horse on this?
What things aren’t you being honest about yourself around this?
Who is really essential to making this happen? Have you talked to them about this yet? Will you after December’s charter renewal?
What are the 3 most important things you need to focus on between now and re-authorization that will get you through December?
I’m grateful you’re making time to be part of this CPA Incubator. Are you seeing this as a gift to yourself?
Why not?
What if you treated it as an investment in yourself because you know your most important work is really worth it?
Thanks for being here.
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Hey Justin, thanks for sharing.
Why is education your core passion? When did that start? Where does it come from?
What would be potential ways to get stakeholders involved in creating the original strategic plan you mention? Is there a PTA and a teachers’ union or gathering that you could use as spaces for brainstorming/co-creating? Are there ways of getting student voices involved? Could you have an essay contest for the older kids? Or make “Idea 3.0” a theme for the week and every class has to dream up and create something that contributes to that vision (in my mind there are hallways papered with kids’ drawings of how it could work)
What would you as a child, 15-year old Justin, have wanted if he were attending your school?
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Ambitious!
I’m wondering, how does your school and your leadership embody the school you want to become? How do you model the type of student you want to engage and type of student you want them to become? How do your teachers and your board do that?
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