Your Morning Boost - Archives as a Tool for Vision Setting and Strategic Planning

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeyer Leader Services, where together we are transforming education, one leader at a time. Now get ready to amplify your day with your Morning Boost. Good morning, Welcome to the middle of the week, a perfect time for your morning Boost. Happy Wednesday, everybody. We are continuing our incredible series with Kristin winn Becker of History IT and today we're talking about the truly inspirational side of institutional memory. We're moving beyond practical management and into the realm of vision setting and inspiration. We'll be discussing in what ways can archives serve as a tool for vision setting or strategic planning at the school leadership level, and then moving into the truly captivating subject of what kinds of stories are often hidden in school archives and how might they inspire current students or staff. This conversation will help you see your archives as a source of energy and purpose. Where is your kid headed after high school? We are from carpool to college to accomplished educators college and career consultants and parents who guide families through the entire journey from freshman year planning to senior year's success. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Kristin, let's talk about the big picture and in what ways can archives serve as a tool for vision setting or strategic planning at the school leadership level. Well, I mean, I think that may be a bit cliche to say, but you can't know where you're going without knowing where you been, right, So having access to your content helps inform you know what you've done, what initiatives have been undertaken, and how do they go, what were made potential pitfalls, what we're celebrations. How can we you know, build on that knowledge in order to help share the vision. Also, so much about you know, school identity, any kind of identity is about being a part of something greater than oneself, right, and that what you're a part of isn't stuck in today. And so in order to help nurture and foster any kind of community, it's important to form that environment that people understand that they're that they're part of something greater, and that thing that they're a part of has a shared past. Can you share a specific example of how a school is used it's archives, maybe to inform a major initiative or a campus change. So a lot of our clients won't be surprising, I'm sure to hear connect with us when they're considering a major milestone, you know, so a fiftyeth one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. The McCauley School in Tennessee is doing this. There were a five year project to build their digital archive over that time leading up to their milestone, and they're utilizing their historical photos, letters, documents, video, you name it to kind of help build toward having all of the content to do that. We have other examples where if you think about any kind of major campus renovation, having access to that sort of content, that's really Those are the types of events that bring organizations to work with us. Yeah, that's interesting because I'm sure that anytime you have a project like this, there's gonna be some pretty crazy stuff, amazing stuff that nobody had any idea until you get into that. What kind of stories are often hidden in school archives and can those be something you can use to inspire your current students or staff. Absolutely so, we always find surprising stories. For sure, there's always the things that we expect to find. I think. I think the benefit of one of the many benefits of pursuing kind of a comprehensive digitization project and not just kind of cherry picking in order to tell one story is that these hidden stories emerge. So any school is going to any like great marketing team is going to tout the great story, the great successes, the celebrities, you know, like so to say that they're a part of this tradition, and that's appropriate to do, but and that's cool to be affiliated with. But really all of the stories, like you know, think about the stories that resonate with people. They're seeing yourself in the story, right, and so you're not necessarily going to see yourself as the next CEO of Fortune five hundred or and so, you know, being able to present everyday life in a school over time, the lesser known teachers, students, social movements on campus, whatever it is. Being able to make those voices come out shows really the breath either the evolution of school, celebrat its diversity. Really whatever stories that that particular school has. Wow, that's powerful stuff, Kristin. I mean, the message I hear is that your archive is a tool for vision setting and it just provides the institutional knowledge that is just needed to inform smart strategic planning by showing where you've been and really, honestly, more importantly, using those real, diverse stories just fosters a strong sense of community and shared identity across all of our stakeholders in our entire campus. That's really awesome. Thanks again for another wonderful boost today. Thank you for listening to us on a Wednesday. Boosters out there. We'll be back again tomorrow with more from Kristin as we still dive into this whole idea of archiving our past so we can use it for the future. Thank you again for listen. We will talk with you again tomorrow. That concludes another episode of your Morning Boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeier Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Until then, keep boosting your impact.