A list of goals and expectations for Bowling Green Independent Schools can be found on the desk of nearly every teacher, administrator and staff member in the district.

The five daily objectives are sometimes printed in the newspaper, handed out to students and are used to screen candidates who want to work in Bowling Green.

The expectations of the district - building relationships, engaging students, teaching 21st century skills, personal and professional growth and daily reflection - have been printed in a lot of places. But now they will appear as an example of outstanding educational leadership in Raymond McNulty’s book, “It’s Not Us Against Them: Creating the Schools We Need.”

Bowling Green Independent Schools Superintendent Joe Tinius said the district’s leadership team attended professional development seminars with the author throughout 2007 to gain innovative approaches to teaching students 21st century skills and how to engage today’s students in learning.

Tinius said the group wanted to develop a plan to incorporate what they learned from McNulty with what they were already doing to engage students personally. It came up with a list of five simple goals outlined with “I will” bullet points.

At the beginning of 2008, all employees of the district received the four inch-by-nine inch cards so they could quickly reference the main focal points of the day.

Tinius said the approach was made in an effort to put more emphasis on student learning and understanding of real world application than on just test scores. And McNulty captured some of the great things that happened in the district throughout the last year with the new goals and expectations in his work.

In the book, the author writes that the “straightforward” goals and objectives “are daily reminders that keep the focus on the overarching objective to support students so that they succeed.”

But Tinius said the results have gone far beyond just that.

“We are seeing relationships develop between not only teachers and students, but school bus drivers and students and cafeteria workers and students,” Tinius said. “There are more staff mentors at the elementary school level, the junior high and high school ... we have been increasing the amount of technology in buildings, like with the interactive boards in every classroom, and as a result, we are seeing students more and more engaged in their work.”

Tinius said the goals and objectives are to build relationships with students and hone in on their understanding of the real-world significance of learning.

“We’re trying to be much more than a test score,” Tinius said.

In that effort, Tinius pointed to a class he recently visited where students in a Bowling Green High School geometry class are using their newfound math skills with a software program to design a “school of the future.”

Tinius said the students will incorporate what they learn all year with the assistance of two local architects to present their development at the end of the school year.

“We’re seeing students doing projects and beginning to connect their work with the world in which they live,” Tinius said. “I think it’s important that they see what they are learning will affect them now and the rest of their life. It’s not just learning to perform on a test.”

And that philosophy was exactly what caught the attention of McNulty, senior vice president for the International Center for Leadership in Education. The author writes that by asking staff and faculty to reflect on what they did today to build relationships with students, Tinius “reinforces a student-focused culture while building collective conviction about the importance of the work in the district’s schools.”

“Joe’s leadership exemplifies a key skill of effective superintendents: the ability to understand and articulate both macro and micro views of the system,” McNulty wrote in the book.

Tinius said it was an exciting opportunity to be one of the case studies spotlighted by McNulty, who has been in schools throughout the country teaching his education leadership skills.

“Someone who has the opportunity to visit schools all over the country thought enough of our work to include it in his own book, and that’s flattering,” Tinius said.