September: When the Plan Meets Reality

In August, I asked a question: Are we ready, or are we just opening?

Now September is coming to a close. The doors opened. The children came. And, as happens every school year, the plan met reality.

What looked good on paper in August is now being tested by what actually happens every day.

That is the thing about plans. We can prepare, anticipate, organize, practice and check every box we know to check. Then real people enter the equation.

Children.

Families.

Teachers.

Bus drivers.

Cafeteria workers.

Paraprofessionals.

Support staff.

And suddenly, the question is no longer whether the plan looked good. The question is whether it worked. September has a way of answering that question.

By now, teachers know more than the names on their class lists. They are beginning to know their students. They know who raises a hand before the question is finished and who needs a little more time. They know who comes to school every day ready to go and who may need someone to ask, “Do you need a hug?” before asking for an assignment.

Parents know more too. They know whether the morning routine actually works, whether communication is reaching them and whether the systems designed to support their children are doing what they were intended to do. School leaders learn what worked the way we planned and what did not.

September is not about perfection. It is about reflection.

It is about being willing to look at what we planned, compare it to what actually happened and tell the truth about the difference because we will not always get everything right.

That may be one of the most important things leadership requires us to acknowledge.

When we get something wrong, the answer cannot be to explain it away. We have to own it. We have to understand what happened. We have to listen to the people who were affected. And then we have to do the work to get it right.

That is accountability.

Not blame.

Not defensiveness.

Not pretending the problem did not happen because most things went according to plan.

Accountability is taking ownership of the things that did not work and staying with them until they do.

Our opening of school gave us some very public examples of that lesson. Transportation challenges disrupted the beginning of the year for thousands of families. PGCPS acknowledged that approximately 10,000 students needed transportation assignments when school opened and that additional routing problems continued to require correction afterward.

For a family standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus that does not come, that is not simply an operational problem.

It affects a child getting to school.

It affects a parent getting to work.

It affects a teacher wondering where a student is.

It affects a school trying to begin instruction.

And it reminds us that systems are ultimately experienced by people.

That lesson reaches far beyond transportation.

A policy can look right on paper.

A schedule can look right on paper.

A lesson plan can look right on paper.

A new program can look right on paper.

But eventually, every plan has to meet a child.

And when it does, we have to pay attention to what happens next.

That is where data matters, but so does listening.

Numbers can tell us that students are absent.

Families can help us understand why.

Assessment data can show us where students are struggling.

Teachers and students can help us understand what they need next.

A report can tell us a service was provided.

The people receiving that service can tell us whether it actually worked.

Leadership requires both.

After 28 years in school buildings, I have learned that some of our most important work begins with three simple questions:

What happened?

Why did it happen?

What are we going to do differently?

Those questions are not signs of failure. They are how improvement begins.

There is grace in getting another opportunity to make something right.

There is also responsibility in what we do with that opportunity.

As September comes to a close, the excitement of the first day has settled into the rhythm of a real school year.

The pictures have been taken.

The new supplies have been opened.

The routines are becoming routines.

Now we know more than we knew in August.

And knowing more requires us to do more.

Keep what is working.

Fix what isn't.

Own what we got wrong.

Listen to the people experiencing it.

And keep working until what we planned on paper becomes what children and families actually experience.

Because the goal was never perfection.

The ultimate goal is to get it right.