Help OSI Fellow Dinorah Olmos establish communications with the parents of some students at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School to participate in her fellowship project.
Through a series of educational workshops and parent engagement, Dinorah Olmos will establish La Escuela, sus Hijos y Usted: Empowering Latino Parents to Support Student Success as an initiative designed to educate, empower, and inspire Spanish speaking Latino parents to effectively engage in the parent-school community at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School.
She hopes that in the long term, this reduces the dropout rates among Latino students, increases their graduation rates, and fosters greater post-secondary school success.
“I want to help new immigrant parents, so they are better prepared to help their children succeed,” says Olmos. “This has been a lifetime project.”
The core work in every shura
Crafting a good strategy and executing it is part of the core work in every shura.
When we use the word strategy we are referring to active problem solving.
So, for example, when a person starts a shura, she tries to provide an insightful context that helps participants understand the challenge being introduced.
This includes uploading as many relevant documents as needed to deepen everyone’s understanding.
Accurate and concise problem statement
Strategy begins here, with an accurate and concise problem statement description.
Once suitably informed, participants actively engage in dialogue to determine the best course of action to take. The focus is on trying to determine what is the most important part of the problem that needs the most attention.
Emphasis is on “most important.” The selected course of action guides all subsequent actions, ensuring that they reinforce each other. This is what adds strength to strategy.
Keep everyone informed
Then the work of the shura shifts to the Deliver phase. This is where all participants are expected to commit to entering and carrying out action steps that help accomplish objectives.
Only the important action steps should be entered. Even though some participants may think that every action step is important, they must be prioritized. The top priority steps are the most important.
As part of the strategy execution process, they must be entered before the task is performed.
This allows other participants to see what action steps are intended to be carried out. It helps inform them of the thinking that is behind the planned actions before actually using the time and resources to perform them.
Now comes the hardest part. We have to follow through on what we say we are going to do. And we need to hold everyone accountable.
All of this is what helps make a shura successful.
The person who starts the shura is called the shura initiator and is responsible for explaining the shura context and providing a timeline for completing its phases of activities. This information is displayed in the Overview section. All text in this section is indexed to optimize search results to make it easy for users to find your shura. So, be sure to include all the important keywords in this text.
Following this, the shura moves to the Discuss phase where all participants share their points of view on the issue as they recommend various courses of action to take. They are expected to provide evidence in the form of linked references or uploaded files to support their viewpoints.
After the discussion time period has ended, the shura moves to the Decide phase. Here is where each person selects their preferred course of action based on their best judgment. The ShuraForAll tool will compile selections and present the results to everyone. Once the course of action is agreed on, the shura effort moves to the Deliver phase.
This is where participants try to put the selected course of action into motion by setting objectives and carrying out action steps. Each person either joins an existing team or starts a new team and then performs the work. ShuraForAll charts the progress along the way, letting everyone know how things are going.
Each shura displays a set of metrics that inform all participants how things are going. Below each shura phase (Discuss, Decide, Deliver) icon is a score that indicates overall performance.
For the Discuss phase this metric is the ratio of the number of unique participants who have submitted at least one comment to the total number of participants in the shura.
For the Decide phase this metric is the ratio of the number of unique participants who have selected a preferred course of action to the total number of participants in the shura.
For the Deliver phase this metric is the ratio of the number of unique participants who have self-assigned at least one action step to the total number of participants in the shura.
As work is performed in the Deliver phase, the tool automatically calculates the Achieve Rate metric for each participant. This is a measure of completing the action steps that are given a higher weight or greater priority. A higher Achieve Rate indicates that the person is completing the more important action steps.
Since a participant can work on more than one team, the Achieve Rate is calculated in the context of work performed for each team, as shown below.
The Achieve Rate is also calculated as a composite score for all the participants who are working on a given team. This score is a measure of team performance.
Additionally, the Achieve Rate is calculated as a composite score for all the participants who are working on a given objective. This score is a measure of objective performance.
An example of objective level and team level performance Achieve Rate measures is displayed in the Shura Profile Report. This report is generated for each shura and is updated in real time as work is performed.
Both the Shura Profile and the My Profile Report can be produced by selecting each from the user menu.
An example of My Profile Report is shown below.
All reports represent progress made up to the point the report is produced.
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