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Setting a Mission and Vision for your School

Dr. Jim Christensen

May 11, 2022

Boston, Massachusetts

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Clarity in Starting a School

Why do you want to do all this work to start a Charter School?

How do you know your community wants the school?

What is your elevator speech for your school?

“Passion and Aptitude Together Create Great Outcomes”

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Mission and Team�Which is most important?

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We exist to Execute a Mission

“So…what do I do with this?”

Senior leadership buy-in with passion about the mission
Compelling mission statement that captures attention
Inspirational implementers of the mission
Resources provided to execute the mission

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Creating a collaborative Mission and Vision

Common mind-sets a developer goes through

Stages

Expect the ups and downs

Excitement and Interest

“This will be a great school!”

Retreat

Awareness

Developing Mind Frames

“Where my kids go now is good enough”

“I think we can do better-We want to do better”

My outlook to do this hard work has permanently changed

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Foundations of Planning

MISSION

VISION

VALUES

GOALS

WHY?

Why do we exist?

WHAT?

What must our school become to accomplish our purpose?

HOW?

How must we behave to achieve our vision?

HOW?

How will we mark our progress?

Fundamental Purpose

Compelling Future

Collective Commitments

Targets and Timelines

Clarifies Priorities and Sharpens Focus

Gives Direction

Guides Behavior

Establishes Priorities

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Foundations of Planning

Why do we exist is your Mission

Our mission is to nurture, empower, and inspire all of our children to become successful learners in a world full of possibilities.

Our Mission is to build relationships and processes that bring out the best in students.

Write down your mission and keep looking at it and adjusting it.

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Looking Ahead

Take time to reflect on the following questions.

Envision our school in five years in the future. You just opened the newspaper and are reading about your school. What does the headline say?

What are five specific commitments you made that could have contributed to the headline and the accompanying story?

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What is a Vision?

-A vision uses descriptive words, phrases, or pictures to illustrate what one would expect to see, hear, and experience in the school in the future 3-5 years. (Perfect Picture)

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Thinking First

Things to consider as we get ready to begin this work:

Who are we serving?
How will our community of interest be engaged in this proces?
What kind of school do we seek to become?
What do we want for our students when they leave our care?
What does a day in the life look like at our ideal school?
What are our aspirations for the school?
Why will there be a waiting list to attend our school?

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Getting Started

In the first column draw a picture of an eye, in the second column draw a picture of an ear, and in the third column draw a picture of a heart.

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With your Developing Team

-List concrete behaviors under the three columns, for what it LOOKS like, SOUNDS like (teachers talking about learning), and FEELS like (a sense of belonging) in our perspective school when everyone understands and is working toward the mission.

-Repeat this process again from the perspective of the community/staff/students: what might the school look, sound, or feel like to them.

-Repeat this process a third time from the perspective of the parents.

-Post your team’s chart on the wall.

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Look at the posters….with your team

-With a marker, go to each poster and underline words that are the same between posters. Please underline a word, even if it is already underlined.

-I will write the words that have been underlined on the whiteboard.

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Using the words on the whiteboard-with your team

-Construct a vision statement using the words on the whiteboard.

-Place your team’s vision statement on the chart where it mostly fits

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On your Own…

During that time, please look at all of the proposed vision statements and PUT A STICKER ON THE ONE THE ALIGNS WITH YOU THE MOST.

From there, our Guiding Coalition Developers will draft a vision statement that we will then post for everyone to see and begin to live.

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Collective Commitments

How are we going to start a school to achieve our mission and vision?

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Continuing the Vision Work

Write things that we might do to advance the school’s vision on Post-It notes.

Ideas should be expressed as action statements.

What Steps might we take?

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Prioritize

Our High Impact, High Probability Ideas.

1.)

2.)

3.)

4.)

5.)

6.)

7.)

8.)

9.)

10.)

Fist to 5 protocol as reminder: 3-5 means you can live with it, 0-2 means we need more discussion

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Next Steps…

Guiding Coalition will put the finishing touches on our vision statement and will present it to our community and support systems. If they feel revisions are necessary, we will bring it back, if not, we will move forward with publishing it.
We will hand out a sheet with our mission, vision, and collective commitments on it.
Sign your support of our mission, vision, and collective commitments.

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