Future Ready Leadership

Educators should lean into a holistic and intentional framework to make sure every student can succeed after high school.

By Eric Fox

I attended the CCOSA Summer Leadership Conference in 2019 and took a picture of a slide that I still reflect upon often. It contained a quote from Victoria Bernhardt, who stated, “Schools are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting now. If schools want different results, they must measure and then change the processes to create the results they really want.”

That quote inspires and challenges me. When I notice certain outcomes, I ask myself why those are the typical results. What is in place explicitly that leads to those outcomes? What am I allowing to happen that leads to those results? It doesn’t matter if it is staff retention, tardies, test results, or pep assemblies, our outcomes don’t spontaneously develop. This has also caused me to take a deeper look at what is happening to prepare students for their futures.

I used to reiterate that we should strive to prepare students for their first steps off the commencement stage. We know they will inherit a society much different than our own. Technology, communication, economic developments, and even engaged citizenship will look different, so how do we prepare them to successfully meet those requirements? Some of our students will engage in careers and jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.

Since the pandemic, I have started to think more about not only preparing them for life after the commencement ceremony, but also thriving in the life they are living today. There are many components to this, including providing supports and teaching opportunities for goalsetting, mental health, interpersonal communication, and many others that aren’t measured on a state assessment.

At Jenks Public Schools, our work with students has provided three mechanisms to assist in this process of developing students who are life-ready after graduation while also seeking to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them while in school.

1First, we have worked with the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) system for several years. AVID’s mission is to close the opportunity gap by preparing all students for college and career readiness and success in a global society. In an elective class, students learn skills for success in careers as well as in postsecondary education. Some of these skills include academics— such as taking focused notes or annotating a text—but they also include learning self-advocacy, how to communicate with peers and adults, time management, and how to handle conflict or disagreements. AVID students also visit college campuses and have guest speakers who share their stories of selfdiscovery and career pathways.

2Second, we work intentionally with our Individual Career Academic Planning (ICAP) program through a student advisory program. Early on, our ICAP team leaned into the mantra, “You can’t be what you don’t see,” so we assist students in exploring multiple pathways and options. Our advisories meet daily with specific ICAP activities each month that include self-assessments, strengths finders, goal setting, and career exploration as a few of the pieces. We also take all seniors to a senior conference called “PrepYou” and strive to make this a memorable event and a can’tmiss activity for the senior class. We use student surveys to determine interests and invite speakers to meet with small groups of students throughout the day in a conference setting. We find taking seniors off campus for this event helps them feel like it’s not just another routine day at school, but one 100% student focused on what they want to learn about for future success.

3Third, we’ve leaned intentionally into our stakeholders for their insights and desires for what they want a graduate to know and be able to do. In 2017, I went with a team to visit the Greenville County district in South Carolina, where every school in the massive district explicitly had a “portrait of a graduate.” This meant that the first-grade teacher knew how he was contributing to his students’ success in the district and how he was preparing them for graduation. This meant that the middle school geography teacher knew exactly what was expected of her in terms of preparing students to be solution seekers and collaborators. This past year, our school district engaged in a similar listening tour of parents, community leaders, staff members, and even students to explore what was valued and needed in our graduates.

The Jenks Portrait of a Graduate process took lots of study, conversation, listening, reflecting, and vision casting to develop characteristics we believe will help prepare our students to be future ready regardless of what pathways they traverse after graduation. We want a graduate of Jenks High School to be an effective communicator, self-advocate, problem solver, and collaborator and be resilient and empathetic. It is a common touchstone, goal, vision, language, and aspiration. It can and should guide our decision making, the deployment of our resources, and even logistical decisions about program development, staffing, discipline, curriculum, and extracurricular activities.

Whatever results you are noticing in your students are a result of the processes you have in place—or perhaps those that develop without great scrutiny. As we enter the transition of a new fall season, I encourage us all to reflect upon the changes we want to see in our students, in our staff, and in our processes that will ultimately lead to students who don’t merely survive the road ahead but find a way to thrive even in the unknown. ■

Eric Fox has worked as a public educator in Oklahoma for three decades in the Moore and Jenks school districts. He is the assistant principal at Jenks High School and was named the 2020 Assistant Principal of the Year by OASSP. Fox currently serves as the OASSP Region 5A representative and the NASSP State Coordinator.

OASA is continuing its efforts to provide strong advocacy and quality member services while also producing the highest quality guidance and training. Legislative interim studies are being scheduled, and OASA plans to be there to monitor those that will affect school leadership. Studies on school insurance costs, graduation requirements, the Oklahoma School Report Card, and reading scores are just a few of the areas OASA is monitoring. Additional information is available in Dr. Jeanene Barnett’s synopsis on page 11.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) sent out initial state aid allocations to schools in July and adjusted them August 7. Since over $500 million was added to the formula, the factor increased $312/WADM from the final factor last year, bringing the total factor to $4,162. OASA made an early prediction of $4,166 in May but did not figure in the money the state held out for raises for schools off the formula. The good news is that with the money held out for mid-term growth and anticipated growth in ad valorem, OASA is anticipating a good increase at mid-term as well. That estimate is detailed in Derald Glover’s article on page 8.

In July, Dr. Deering, Kevin Hime, Dr. Matt Posey, and Sherry Durkee attended the AASA Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C. They were able to meet with Oklahoma legislative members and staff to discuss school issues and talk about the great things happening in Oklahoma schools. We would like to see our AASA membership grow to over 200