I'm Not Data-Driven

I'll admit it; I'm not data-driven. I do look at our school's data and we have discussions about how we can improve, However, there's so much data available today that it's hard to decide which ones to pay more attention to.

There was a time when I meticulously took all of our students' academic information and put them on spreadsheets. I color-coded them to identify those who may need more support. Then I realized that it was the teachers who should be doing that with their students if we wanted to see gains so I asked teachers to send that information to me. Today, our Instructional Coaches meet with the teachers to review their data and make decisions regarding interventions.

We also carefully reviewed the behavioral data to see if there were areas on campus where we were getting more disciplinary referrals or to see if there were trends with grade levels or groups of students. Our monthly Peer Reviews and Triage Meetings are an opportunity to discuss concerns for individual students and to come up with a plan of action to support those identified students.

However,  I don't spend an inordinate amount of time looking over our data to determine next steps. Although I know it's important to review data regularly and to gauge progress towards our goals, I prefer to look at the big picture.

In my personal life, I was not a data keeper. My husband is pre-diabetic and every morning, he pokes his finger and takes a reading of his blood sugar level. Some days he is high and needs to monitor what he eats or maybe he needs to do more physical exercise. Luckily, I don't have pre-diabetes so I never felt the need to take data. However, last Christmas, my husband gave me a present - a bright pink Adidas pullover - and it was too tight. He offered to have it changed, but I saw this as an opportunity to improve my health habits.

At the start of 2017, we had a Wellness and Fitness Challenge at our school for all of our staff. Everyone was placed on a team, and we set our own healthy goals. The team captain was tasked with checking each week to see if we reached our goal, and we had a partner who encouraged us to keep going. It was then that I set two goals for myself: at least 5 days a week, to take 10,000 steps and to have a salad for one of my meals. I started a journal to document my progress. The Wellness and Fitness Challenge ended but I kept going.

Well, recently, my husband and I were going on a trip and I decided to try on the pullover since it would be colder where we were traveling to. It fit! I was tickled pink (literally) to wear it.

I know that keeping data deliberately was what helped me get to my goal. The thing is that my goal wasn't to lose weight; it was to eat healthier and make sure I got in my 10,000+ steps. It helps that we have a wide-spread campus. I love walking around, taking pictures and sharing with the staff and school community. My data was easy to track, and I think there were less than 5 weeks when I didn't meet my goal.

As I reflected on this data-keeping experience (which I intend to continue), I made a few connections to keeping data at school:

• Data-keeping can be used effectively and efficiently by teachers; it doesn't have to be laborious or difficult.
• Data-keeping is only useful if we monitor regularly and use the data to make positive changes in our teaching and learning.
• We should teach our students to keep track of their own data. This can be an important strategy to achieving our personal goals.
• Goal-setting is easy; monitoring and recording our progress via data-keeping takes commitment. It's so easy to lose sight of our goals when there's no accountability.
• We can spend so much time tracking and analyzing data, but perhaps more important is the big picture. Why are we keeping and analyzing data? There must be a purpose for our data, to improve what we're doing in the classroom to positively impact student learning. 

While I believe data is important as part of school improvement, I also think we need to be careful about being so data-driven that we lose sight of what's really important: our students. As this quote states:

Finally, I decided to do something I'm not comfortable doing - sharing this photo of myself and my grandson Jayden in my pink Adidas pullover.