Who Do You Want to Be

Be who you are and be that well.

- St. Francis De Sales

Most schools try to be everything to all people. And for public schools, that is critically important.

For Catholic schools, however, differentiation is a key variable. What makes you different from your competitors? Do you know who your competitors are? Why should a family choose to pay you for an education that is otherwise free?

The National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) provides a graphic wheel with twelve reasons to attend Catholic Schools. It is broadly generic and applicable in many ways - but it doesn't help YOU answer the question for YOUR school.

In fact, there are two key questions here.

The first is WHO ARE YOU? Figuring this out is important, but can be accomplished by talking to your people. Your staff, your students, the families who choose you, your alumni - really anyone. And ask them why they chose your school. Ask them what they find rewarding about your school community.

This article (opens as PDF) published in Catholic Education in 2010 especially notes the importance of Catholic schools emphasizing their identity as Catholic schools. "Catholic leaders and other members of the Catholic school community must be challenged to ensure that the Catholic school identity of their schools is present, maintained, and enhanced for the very vitality of the school."

To figure out how to have that conversation, check out this article from the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) discusses ways to engage in this conversation with your constituents around the idea of a Collective Identity. http://blog.nassp.org/2014/01/01/does-your-school-have-a-collective-identity/

The second question then is WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

This one is a little trickier - and gets into questions that perhaps you alone cannot answer.

Very broadly speaking, there are two routes to figuring out who you want to be as a school.

• The first is to play into the strengths you have now - whatever you figured out about who you are, double down on those things. People think you're a sports school, offer more sports or opportunities to play. People think you're a great academic institution, add more academic highlights. People think you're filled with "nice kids" - make it an outreach strategy.
• The other option here is to actively decide what your differentiator will be - and set about making it happen. This one requires some buy-in and some strategy. It asks that you consider what is happening in your broader context while also requiring you to commit to a plan. It doesn't always work. It might even require a strategic plan. But it's probably the only way to make meaningful change.

In summary:

• Figure out who you are.
• Figure out who you want to be.
• Go do it.

It's as simple as that.