When I became the Activities Director at Lincoln Christian School one of the first things I started to work on was a system for evaluating each of our co-curricular activities. I wanted to start from scratch and really step back and ask, “How do we define excellence and how do I evaluate whether or not we are achieving it?”
In asking that question what I was actually asking was, “What do we value as a school and what does it look like for our co-curricular programs to live out our values?” Fortunately for me, our school has made a concerted effort to rework our core values, articulate them succinctly, and post them in easy to read posters around the school. In many ways, what we value as a school has never been more clearly articulated.
I pulled up my copy of our school’s core values on my computer and began making a list what it looks like for a co-curricular activity to live out our core values. It was a long process and one that never really ends; I tweak and adjust our evaluation system all the time.
Here’s my point: Our values determine our evaluations.
If you value winning then win loss record is going to be a key part of your evaluations. If you value participation then roster size is going to be a key part of your evaluation. If you value character development then implementation of character building curriculum will be a key part of your evaluation.
A lot more could be said here, but the key question you must ask for yourself is this: What do my evaluations of myself reveal about what I actually value?