The Remarkable Vision Formula: How to Create the Campus of Your Dreams [Part 1 of 3]

Introduction: Rowing In the Same Direction

One summer, Sarah Van Brimmer was hired as a literacy coach at a Title I school in Florida. The school was officially failing—it had an F rating from the state. Its ELA proficiency was under 30 percent, its literacy and math scores were low, and it had high turnover amongst staff. In fact, Sarah was one of over a dozen new staff members who would be starting that fall. She and her new colleagues were nervous about all of the challenges they’d be facing.

Sarah’s leaders, though, were determined to rise above the challenges. The principal and assistant principal decided to host a retreat for the entire staff to build connections between all of these talented teachers.

They came together to do fun team-building activities and discussed the book, Engaging Students With Poverty in Mind: Practical Strategies for Raising Achievement by Dr. Eric Jensen, taking turns in groups to present on different sections. They talked through the values they wanted to exhibit as a team and what their collective vision for the school would be.

“[I had a] freeing moment [by the end of the retreat] where I knew I made the right choice,” Sarah said. “I was so nervous going into this new unknown, but meeting everyone there and seeing the vision and values we were committing ourselves to made me feel like this is the place for me. It made me feel like I found my tribe, my group of people who had a common vision in mind for public education. That stuck with me as a leader.”

What Sarah’s leaders knew was that something remarkable happens when you have a vision.

As educators, we face massive challenges every day. And it’s easy, in the midst of those challenges, to lose sight of our collective purpose. It’s easy for our staff to get caught up in silos, everyone doing their best in their own classroom but ultimately failing to make progress as a team.

You know what this feels like.

It feels like you’re coexisting, working around each other but not with each other. You realize you haven’t had a personal conversation with the teacher down the hall in at least a month and you never followed up to ask them how their mom’s surgery went. Weeks go by before you remember to text a friend back. At home, marriage and parenting happens in the margins as you speed back and forth between your various obligations.

It happens. We’re all busy. But at some point, we have to stop and make sure we’re still rowing in the same direction.

What happens when the people in a boat try to row in different directions?

They stay in the same place.

They get stuck.

Sarah’s leaders were wise to take action before that happened. With their careful planning and facilitation, the retreat worked to bring everyone together in a shared sense of collective efficacy.

You can do the same thing for your school. No matter what challenges you face, as a leader, it’s up to you to get everyone on the boat rowing in the same direction. You can do that by creating a Remarkable Vision.

The Remarkable Vision Formula

A Remarkable Vision sets a destination so compelling that everyone wants to row together to get there. It’s a vision worthy of everyone’s attention. It’s striking and memorable, able to be remarked upon. It gets people talking.

A Remarkable Vision starts with you, the leader. You’re the Ruckus Maker! It’s your job to dream up what’s possible, define expectations, and hold everyone accountable. This book will help you do all of that.

It begins with a focus on your own aspirations and goals because, before you can lead others toward a Remarkable Vision, it’s important to first understand where you are now as an individual and where you want to be. But it can’t stop there.

This isn’t about insisting on your priorities or your way of doing things. It’s not about pulling everyone along with you; that’s just rowing against the tide. No, a Remarkable Vision has buy-in. It’s built in collaboration with the people you care about and serve.

So the next step is to take a closer look at your family and how a Remarkable Vision can help you to be your best self at home. I believe an effective leader is someone with work-life balance who prioritizes family relationships above work ones.

Only then, after your personal and family life has received fair attention, will you move on to envisioning the school of your dreams. And that’s the key to a Remarkable Vision: it’s customized to you—to your life, your family—and to your school.

I can’t tell you what your vision should look like because I don’t know your dreams, hopes, circumstances, challenges, and endeavors for yourself, your family, and your team. Instead, I’m going to help you discover your vision through a five-step process I call the Remarkable Vision Formula.

In order to create a Remarkable Vision, you need to:

1. Retreat.

2. Visualize the future.

3. Define expectations.

4. Seek feedback.

5. Implement the vision.

We’ll talk more about this process in Chapter 1 and then apply it to three important areas in Chapters 2–4: your personal life, your family, and your school. Finally, in Chapter 5, we’ll talk about Remarkable Execution: What does it look like to make your vision a reality every day?

Once you’ve created and implemented your Remarkable Vision, you’ll start to notice some incredible changes right away. As other leaders have found, you’ll see that:

✔ You feel excited and energized to show up each day.

✔ You’re able to set the right boundaries around your work and life.

✔ You won’t hesitate to fix things in your life that need fixing.

✔ Your family will be healthier and happier when you show up as your best self for them.

✔ At school, you’ll see your team collaborating and helping to meet each other’s needs.

✔ You’ll notice consistent progress towards your goals—both your individual life and family goals, and your collective school goals.

✔ You’ll attract the right people who want to be part of that vision.

How cool would that be?

Get Away

I designed this book as a guided retreat because, as you’ll see in Chapter 1, retreating makes it possible for us to create. My hope is that you’ll take it with you somewhere special, somewhere that makes you happy, somewhere you can dream. Each chapter will help you reflect on your life and design your own Remarkable Vision.

One of my favorite places to go, and where I’ve started to take other leaders to retreat, is Taos, New Mexico. Whether by myself or with other leaders, I go on hikes, eat incredible New Mexican cuisine, and spend time journaling by myself in a place where I can’t be distracted by my dog, Alba, or by my normal routines and responsibilities. Retreating gives me the mental and physical relief I need to dream up new ways that I can serve leaders better. And I’ve seen it work wonders for the leaders I work with, too.

Sarah had been inspired and motivated by the collective vision her school’s staff had discussed at their retreat, but they still faced significant challenges, and making progress on that vision was exhausting for Sarah. While coaching her, I could see how discouraged and burnt out she was becoming. We decided that we would pause our coaching sessions over the summer so that she could take a break and travel.