No Excuses Leadership

Two Choices: 100 or 0

When I became a classroom teacher in January of 1995, the push for individualized instruction started to take shape.  Focusing on students as individuals replaced whole group instruction, which was the common practice at the time.  Clearly, this was a great shift.  However, somewhere along the way someone, or a group of someones at the highest levels, created a push to set goals that were “reasonable”.  Their best intentions were bastardized though as schools, districts, and even classroom teachers began to lower the bar for students so that the goals that were set became “achievable”.  I’m sorry, but I call B.S.  If we’re going to go All In as leaders, we better damn well know what that means.  It means to talk about all students meeting every standard all the time.  Difficult?  You bet it is! But exceptional results are always difficult to achieve.  When you set the bar, you set it as high as you can.  Therefore, there’s only two numbers you should be talking about, 100 or 0.

TAKE ACTION

100 percent of all students will achieve standards
or
0 number of students will not achieve standards. 

No matter how you say it, the expectation is still the same.  If you’re going to go All In, don’t screw around.  Set the bar high and do it right!

BE BOLD

Check out this clip from one of the best of all time, Zig Ziglar.  Listen how he talks about going all in.
 "When you get into something, grab that sucker and get with it!"

Zig Ziglar Goes All In