Does Your Team Have a Vision?

I’ll often start off with a teaching team by asking them to tell me about their vision for the classroom. And then I’ll ask how their classroom vision ties into the organization’s vision. And I can’t begin to tell you how often teams have no idea. The program vision might be in a handbook somewhere or in the program manual but often not front and present. Well, there’s a great saying that goes like this… “If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know when you get there?”

Highly effective teams have a clearly defined direction or vision. Like a road map, they are clear about the destination and what it looks like when they get there. For example, most of our programs have a vision for the organization. Good teams are familiar with the vision and can talk about it. Highly effective teams go even further and create a vision for their classrooms and understand how their day to day actions tie into the larger vision.