Mission Impossible

My school, like many schools and other organizations, has a mission statement. I can't tell you what it is. This despite the fact that we've had it for just over seven years now and I - along with the entire staff that was here at the time - helped create it. While I haven't done a scientific survey, I feel fairly confident in saying that if you asked five random staff members at my school what our mission statement is, there's a pretty good chance none of them would be able to tell you. And I feel even more confident that if you asked five random students at my school, they wouldn't know either. Which means it's mission impossible.

That doesn't mean I don't generally like what's in our mission statement (and, for that matter, our longer vision statement). You can read them here (pdf). I do want students to achieve their potential, collaborate and be life-long learners, and contribute to society. The problem is that when you have a mission statement that no one knows, and that has generic statements like that, it ends up being pretty meaningless. I've written about this previously, talking about core values and whether students can articulate the vision, but clearly it's still bothering me. I'd like something that's meaningful, and that we can post in each and every classroom so that each day, students and teachers could refer to it. Any student would be able - and expected - to ask, how is what we are learning today going to help fulfill our mission? And if the teacher doesn't have a good answer, then they should stop teaching it. Similarly, every teacher would be able - and expected - to ask the same of what students were doing with their time.

So I was feeling all good and outraged, but then I asked myself, "What's my mission statement?" Uh-oh. I don't have a good answer for that, even though it's something I've thought about. Some of the Language Arts teachers at my school do an activity with students called "What's Your Sentence?," based on an idea in Daniel Pink's Drive. In the past, they've put out an email to staff asking for their sentence that they can share with students, and I always star it in my email and stare at it for a week before feeling guilty and not replying. This will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog, but my problem is that I can't figure out just one sentence that captures it for me.

I usually start with a sentence something like this:

To help those around me become more passionate learners.

But then I start picking at it. Shouldn't I include myself in there? But that makes the sentence awkward.

To help myself, and those around me, become a more passionate learner.

And learner about what? Do I really want them to become a more passionate learner about something that isn't meaningful for them? Say, perhaps, our somewhat arbitrary curriculum? And so I try something like,

To help those around me discover and pursue their passions.

But then that doesn't explicitly mention learning, and becoming a better learner. And it leaves out "myself" again. So then I try something like,

To help myself and those around me discover and pursue their passions by becoming more passionate learners.

or perhaps

To help myself and those around me discover and pursue their passions by becoming better learners.

Yuck. It's about now that I remember why I was better suited to teach mathematics than language arts, and then I dial back my outrage (at least a little) about my school's mission statement. So I try changing the order,

To help myself and those around me become better learners and discover and pursue their passions.

Maybe a little better, but it's awkward with the multiple 'ands', and I still don't quite like the phrase 'better learners.' So then I'm reminded of another post where I reference something David Jakes wrote talking about culture, and I wonder if somehow my mission statement should try to talk about a culture of learning.

To help myself and those around me develop a culture of learning; one where we help each other discover and then pursue our passions.

Getting closer, but I'm still not sure I can really do it in one sentence. But when I start adding sentences, it gets too involved and less clear. So does that mean it's "mission impossible" for me as well? If I can't articulate what I'm trying to accomplish, what my purpose is, does that mean that I'm doomed to fail? Maybe.

What about your school's mission statement? Or your sentence? Do you have something straightforward and meaningful that your school - and you - can rally around? I'm obviously still struggling with my own, but I think for those of us working in schools, it's something important to talk about. And, even if we don't come up with one perfect sentence or one perfect mission statement, I think we should be willing to post what we do have in each and every one of our learning spaces, and ask our students to hold us just as accountable as we hold them.

Twitter Chat with (and without) a Purpose

I just left a long comment over on Bud Hunt's blog and thought it might be worthwhile to duplicate it here. First, please go read his post and considering participating in the #engchat conversation on June 27th.

Then here are the comments I left (first very brief comment, and then the follow-up comment when Bud asked me to say more):

I wonder how this conversation intersects with the idea of “productive eavesdropping” here and here.

 Follow-up comment:

Well, I’m not exactly sure where this #engchat conversation is heading, but my overall sense of it is that some folks may be concerned that there’s a whole lot of talking around the various chats on Twitter (and outside the chats), but that perhaps it’s not all that useful because the talk isn’t very purposeful and doesn’t translate into change. That made me think of your earlier musings around “productive eavesdropping” and perhaps how that has a role to play in this conversation.

I think we need to be careful about insisting on everything having a clear purpose. I’m in favor of purposefulness as much as the next guy, and I agree that sometimes we engage in non-productive behavior (whether in meetings at school or online). But I also think we can learn a lot in situations that don’t have a well-defined purpose; that learning (especially online) can occur serendipitously and often without a fixed, defined plan going in.

It’s awfully hard to tease out what effects my online experiences have had on my own practice, so let me use my wife as an example (with her permission). She got on Twitter about two years ago, initially very much as a lurker but more recently as more of a participant. Twitter, in turn, hooked her up to conversations on blogs and she’s now a very active user of Google Reader and just started her own professional blog. It has definitely impacted her practice and it’s fascinating to watch as she now is helping bring other staff members in her building into these spaces.  The conversations, at least among many in her building, have definitely changed, and they’ve changed at least somewhat due to my wife’s “unpurposeful” (at least initially) use of Twitter. As an even more concrete example, her very experienced Building Resource Teacher decided to attend ISTE this year for the first time (she did not attend last year . . . when it was in Denver), at least partially as the result of these conversations.

I guess I think we need to be careful of dismissing the usefulness of “idle” chatter on Twitter and in other spaces. I think for many of us, we may not always be using it purposefully, yet the accumulated effect of the conversations ends up changing our practices (for the better), sometimes in small ways and sometimes in larger ones. I think that simply being involved in conversations, sometimes as active participants and sometimes as more passive observers, is an important part of the ongoing learning process, even when it doesn’t have a clearly defined purpose. That’s not to say that conversations with purpose are bad; they’re not. But it is to say that we need to be very careful about dismissing the usefulness of things that may not appear to have a purpose to us (in the learning place we’re currently occupying), but may very much have a useful purpose for someone else.

Your thoughts?