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Your Mission Statement, Should You Choose to Accept It

One thing that I am hoping will happen as the School District of Philadelphia transitions to leadership is that we re-examine and rewrite the district’s mission statement. You see it everywhere, posted in school buildings and on our website.

Children come first.
Parents are our partners.
Victory is in the classroom and facilitated by a strong instructional leader.
Leadership and accountability are the keys to success.
It takes the engagement of the entire community to ensure the success of its public schools.

I have been looking at that statement, especially the third sentence, for two and a half years and I still don’t know what it means. Victory is in the classroom? What are we fighting? How does one facilitate victory? And when did I become an instructional leader? I like being a teacher.

You know what is nowhere in this statement? How a good school and a good education helps our students. Not a word about helping them think clearly about their problems. Not a thing about preparing them to take responsibility for their lives. Nothing about building connections that will help them take their dreams and make them real. Nothing about building bonds that will make our city and our nation a stronger community. How can we talk about victory in the classroom if we won’t even articulate what a successful classroom looks like?

I don’t know if that’s the sort of thing you can put into a mission statement. It’s probably not something that could survive a bunch of committee meetings and draft versions. But then that makes me wonder what this mission statement is supposed to accomplish in the first place.

About

Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.

August 23, 2011 @ 8:40 pm
Education

2 Comments

  1. Ping from Earl Green:
    Wednesday, August 24th 2011 at 9:00 am | 

    You’ve got to be kidding me. This sounds more like the kind of mission statement that’s designed to placate stockholders. But, like you said, try getting even so much as a dozen people to agree on the qualities of a successful classroom environment is probably too lofty a goal. Better to just shoot for something nebulous like victory. If the goal is described in such amorphous terms, there’s no definition for whether or not you’ve reached it, and that keeps the wolf on the other side of the door.

  2. Ping from Dave Thomer:
    Thursday, August 25th 2011 at 10:30 pm | 

    Stockholders, elected officials, community leaders . . . they’re not that different. But I’ve never been a fan of the mission statement. The heart’s in the right place, but the execution usually falters.