When targets are not met, we focus on all other things except the very objects of vision. Physiologically, the objects of vision are the eyes. They are two and yet we never experience a double vision. Eyes move together, see objects together, weep together, cry together and sleep together. This unique characteristic shared by both eyes, aided by the muscles holding them, gives us a clear stereoscopic and binocular vision as humans. Tension only comes if eyes are forced to look at each other. Not only does it bring discomfort to the person but it also creates a defect to the vision a person is supposed to be having called squint. It is indeed when targets are missed in an institution that we start picking up the possibility of such defects. Squint institutions! Talk about targets, exactly what are targets? Results, performance, production, turnover?
The above scenario or rather metaphor only crossed my mind after the announcement that our school principal is leaving us. The circumstances under which he is leaving us only confirmed to me what I have known all the time I was working with him. That he was a visionary leader who always had the interests of his subjects of work at heart. It is then no wonder that those who could value and acknowledge it from afar, head hunted him. Which brings me to this irony or should I say realization….A non-performing school isn’t necessarily headed by a failing head. Part of me is so happy for him but the other part is sad because of his unshared mission, which was forever blocked to trickle down on well deserving learners. Unshared not because he never disseminated his wisdom and vigour, but because we selfishly rejected to assimilate his positive attributes and work pursuits. He definitely possesses qualities of a servant leader yet this one particular school failed to espouse that. And when I say the school I mean we as teachers. He was and still is the sharpest EYE every institution could ever wish for, but most unfortunately from where he is now leaving, he never had a strong joined human resource that could “synchronize” with him as the other eye component in order to meet the targets.
South Africa has just held one of the best soccer world cup ever held in the whole world without any prior experience. If one was to try and assess the possible contributory factor to the kind of success this country ever experienced, it is again… common vision. All races, myriad and different as they may have been, never focused on each other or their squabbles but they “synchronised” just like the eyes do and all that they could see, hear or breath, was the task at hand… to make this country’s hosting of world cup a great success. Not only was this target met, but racial tensions were put aside and all that prevailed in the minds of every South African citizen was soccer…the ultimate target. It is therefore to a larger extend… One common vision that brings about the meeting of Targets.
Like it has eminently been alluded in the above metaphor, in a school situation; when eyes focus on each other (that being teachers), no vision is ever attained, tension prevails and most devastatingly, what is missed…is learner performance. When teachers focus on their personal interests, every planning, instruction and learning is geared up to meet those needs and never the primary beneficiaries’ needs. An army of learning facilitators, school developers or even management consultants can come to visit a school of this nature to bring about change, or even monitor but for as long as teachers choose to focus on each other and never on learners as it is supposed to be, performance will always be reduced and never enhanced. The culture of the institutions we serve and our heeding to the call of our profession are all of the muscle we need in order to hold us together as effective objects of vision – as teachers we are the EYES OF THE NEXT GENERATION.
