“What am I doing here?” is a good question to ask oneself frequently. The context of this question is your workplace, your career, your job. I surmise that many respond with confidence that “I am doing the work I want to do and have trained for and I am pleased with where I find myself.” Or, “I find my work to be both challenging and rewarding. What I do matters to me and to others.” To these responses, I say “Great! Keep on keeping on.” When considering their work, these folks smile, become energized, and talk with specific examples that illustrate what they do and how their work is a positive contribution to their industry. What they do helps their employer to achieve positive qualitative and quantitative organizational goals. This is “moving the needle” – how you measure performance – toward success.
Others may be both discomforted and disappointed when looking for an answer. This leads them to not ask the question very often. For these folks, I need to rephrase the question. “Is what I am doing here meaningful to me or to others?” “Is what I am doing important?” “Does what I do make a difference?” Already the fear that the answer may be “no” or “not much” may have them rethinking the wisdom in pursuing the question.
When considering these questions, you must come to grips with the “what am I doing and why am I doing it?” As a high school and later college student, I worked summers and vacations in a meatpacking plant. I helped to reduce animals to meat and agri-products. My goal, however, was to earn money. My needle was my bank account and success meant having enough money to pay for the next year of college. As a junior high school teacher, I taught English and social studies. My goal was to cause children to learn our grade level curricula. My needle was a measurement of what they knew, could do and how they solved learning problems on September 1 compared with the same measurements on June 1. Success was achieved when every child was ready for the next year’s curricular instruction. As a wrestling coach, my goal was to cause wrestlers to win and how to think about how they won. Success was measured in wins through a personal commitment to healthy goals. As a high school principal, my work was to cause every teacher to cause every child to learn their grade level curricula – to be a needle moving teacher. Success was measured in finding positive cause and effect relationships – what instruction would cause learning improvements. The scope of these cause and effect challenges increased when I was a district administrator. In each context, the “here” changed, but the “what I am doing” did not. My goal always is to move the needle. Sometime the needle was a direct cause and effect and easy to measure. Hours in the hog kill equals payroll. A wrestler’s hand raised in victory. Some time the needle of cause-effect was less direct and not easy to measure, as in learning and learning performances. Yet, in every situation, “What am I doing” is about moving the needle.
When you add the “here” to “what am I doing,” you give the question personalized immediacy. For educators, “here” requires you to be introspective concerning your current assignment and the educational objectives that are attached to the assignment. “Here” is all about you and your ability to move the needle of learning for the children you teach, coach or direct.
Too often we consider only one needle in education – academic performances. Make no mistake, academic performances are extremely important, yet there are other needles of importance beyond test scores. And, these needles also move as a result of a teacher’s work efforts.
- Daily school attendance
- Child behavior
- Willingness to engage in learning
- Persistence
- Self-esteem
- Collegiality
- Problem solving
- Creativity
- Career preparation
- Artistic and aesthetic appreciation
- More
Identifying needles to be moved does not rest with you alone. If it did, any needle movement would do. Identifying needles to move relates to the goals of the school and its community, the realities of learning challenges each student and all students present, the current status of measured needles, and the skill sets of each and all teachers. Picking priority needles leads to the determination of targets for how far and how fast the needle must move in the macro sense of whole school or classroom and in the micro sense of each child. Moving needles is hard work and it begins with selecting appropriate needles and targets of needle movement.
The rest is easier. Needle movement is doing the work needed to move the needle. In a meatpacking plant, you do the bloody work of earning a paycheck so that your bank account will let you do what comes next in life. In teaching, it is causing all children to become proficient learners and to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and problem solving at a quality level. In educational leadership, it is focusing school resources to cause all children to achieve high quality outcomes in academic, activity, arts and athletic programs, and to be proactive and healthy problem solvers.
Educating is moving the needle.