Mapping a District's Past Can Influence Its Future.

Do you believe you could influence your school system's current direction by better understanding its past? Do new employees join your district with a need to understand the culture of their new workplace? Is it important for your organization to learn from its mistakes?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you might consider investing the time to develop a "history map" of your district. A history map is a timeline of critical events in the life of the school district.

The Madison School District in Phoenix, Ariz., with 5,000 students in pre-K through grade 8, recently pieced together the 107-year history of the district. We have found the history mapping process especially important to our district's strategic planning. In our quest to move forward, looking at our past has helped us shape our educational destiny.

A Documented Timeline

We started with a small planning committee of four people who then identified others who should serve on the larger map development committee. The larger committee included key district employees, both past and present, as well as several staff members who were relatively new to the district. In all, 45 people attended our first, full-day planning session.

We identified six areas in which to group our historical findings: national and world events, national educational reform, state and local issues, district ideas and themes, key people and groups in the district and the Madison schools.

We compiled a list of what we saw as critical events under each topic. We posted our work on walls of the meeting room so that all participants could view and comment on the work of the whole. Sub-groups of the committee identified periods of the district's brightest moments, growth periods, stressful times and darkest hours. Each sub-group reported its findings to the entire committee. Lastly, we worked to gain a consensus among the committee's 45 members as to what these red-letter dates meant to the district.

Now we could begin to categorize the historical findings into three areas, which we labeled past patterns, lessons learned and implications for the future. One example of a past pattern for us related to staff development. A lesson learned was that one-shot, in-service programs never have been successful. An implication for the future was to make any staff development needs ongoing and in depth.

It's important to remember that these findings are not just the superintendent's opinion but a group assessment based on a collection of documented facts. These findings then can be put to use as a school system makes improvements in its instructional program.

Seven Suggestions

For those interested in developing a history map of their own district, I have identified seven important steps:

* Ensure wide representation. When assembling your main committee, be sure to include a broad representation of your school community. For example, new, tenured and retired staff as well as key community figures, parents and graduates are great committee resources.

* Research extensively. Collect as much documentation as you can about your district. The city library may have information your district no longer maintains. (You want to be able to back up your map with proof that an event happened when you say it did.)

* Tap long-time residents. The committee should use key people in the community to recall distant events. We consulted with one of the school district's previous superintendents who had a lengthy tenure as one way to gather credible information. He and other retirees from the district contributed significant details on the major events in our history.

* Tell all sides of your history. Don't ignore or minimize some events because they may be too painful to bring up. If you tell only part of the story, people will not respect your map or its findings.

* Go public. Once your map is finished, display it in front of as many people as you can. We painted ours on the wall of the board room in our district office, where it serves as a constant reminder that we have a rich history and our actions today will affect our future in many ways.

* Plan events around your map. We schedule training sessions for new teachers and substitute teachers, district meetings, committee sessions and luncheons in our board room to expose the district's history map to various stakeholders.

* Offer support at the top. As with any initiative that you want to have a lasting impact, top management must wholeheartedly support the mapping process or it is not going to be taken as seriously as it needs to be.

History mapping, like strategic planning, is an ongoing process. As a result of what we learned, this significant investment into our district's future assists us in setting district goals and action plans specific to our actual needs.