| Making Mission Statements Matter |
| Written by Dr. David Penberg | |
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The other day in our staff development session we had the entire faculty return to our mission statement. The purpose was to reexamine it in light of how it informs what we do here: teach and learn. We were asked to choose an idea, a word, or a phrase that resonated and to identify how it is reflected in some aspect of school life: how we teach, what we teach, how we relate to one another, what we value. It was an important dialogue; on an area we do not scrutinize enough. I wonder, how many of us: parents, teachers, staff, board members have had similar reflections. The unanimous conclusion at the end of our 55 minutes was this: No mission is fixed. But for it to matter, to be a thing that inspires and guides a school, it needs to be reviewed and examined periodically. Unfortunately most mission statements are like television commercials. They exist as window dressing, they make visual noise, occupying our attention spans in the moment, and then get put away in the bin of what the educator David Perkins calls “couch potato information”. I don’t think that any of our community wants that for BFIS. If we are to become the extraordinary school we all want BFIS to become, we won’t allow that to happen. A mission statement should be like a building. It should contain a sense of symmetry and solidness while being integrated with all aspects of its surrounding environment. So how do we ensure that this building inhabits every aspect of this place called Benjamin Franklin? How do we stay committed to presenting and encouraging multiple perspectives in everything we teach? How can we make deeper more profound connections to meaningfully connecting teaching and learning to the world? How can we strengthen and expand the partnership between children, teachers and parents? How can we help kids become more personally responsible to themselves, each other, and to making it a more humane world? There are no right answers here. There is living the questions, and probing answers. It lies at the essence of what our community compact is about: how we hold ourselves accountable for living the mission and integrating it into everything we do here.
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 March 2009 11:06 |