Let’s look at the NVUSD Mission statement: Transforming lives by instilling and inspiring lifelong learning in every student. NVUSD’s reason for existing is to--transform lives. Transforming lives means different things to different people. In this context, it seems a little vague. Whose lives? Perhaps they are addressing their target audience that is made-up of school-age students. I think they need to be more explicit.
The mission statement spells out the primary goal as --instilling and inspiring lifelong learners. Inspire and instill are semantically related and may be used as synonyms. So what is so important that it had to be said twice? What’s more, how do we as an organization know when we have affected our target audience in this way. It seems that if we are to follow our mission statement, we should have a priority standard that clearly defines this as a goal. I am not sure how we would assess such a broad, all-encompassing standard.
To continue our examination of the mission statement, we need to determine who needs to be inspired. A closer look at life-long learners presents more ambiguity. Precisely when do we determine that a student is a life-long learner? Is the student’s life over at graduation? Some think graduation is the beginning of life. Again the mission statement provides no clear direction. Words like providing, offering, and supporting do not automatically yield inspiration or instill lifelong learning.
Including NVUSD in the mission statement does spell out the territory as Napa Valley, a collection of hamlets that range from American Canyon in the South to Yountville in the North. Once again, a broad geographical area that includes a diverse population, each with different academic needs.
Does the mission statement lend itself to policies that will accomplish this lofty albeit indeterminable goal? NVUSD spells out six goals:
Goal 1: Student Learning, Achievement, and Access
Goal 2: Effective Employee Relations and Resource Management
Goal 3: Robust Communication, Community Engagement, and Advocacy
Goal 4: Tactical, Proactive, and Efficient Asset Management
Goal 5: Equity-centered Leadership and Inclusive Organizational Culture
Goal 6: Strategic, Impactful Governance and Policy Implementation
Of these goals, none speak to instilling or inspiring. None address life-long learning. Only the first goal mentions the school district’s target audience. Are student learning, achievement, and access separate entities? John Hattie and Michael McDowell both tell us that teacher clarity is paramount to student learning. Yet, goal one does not give me clarity as to what my students are to learn. Once again, the mission statement and goal 1 are much too broad and ultimately unusable. Further, the goals read more like the Table of Contents to an Organization’s Operations Manual. An Operations Manual may cover legal requirements, but it does not aid a teacher in day-to-day decision-making.
Lastly, there is no mention of 21st Century Learning. Personally, I prefer goals that are achievable in my life-time. The term 21st Century was au courant in the year 2000. Now we are 21 years in, and we will wear out the term before the century ends. It is time to give us short-term achievable goals. The state of change is accelerating, and it is difficult to determine what will be possible in 5 years, let alone when my 4th graders graduate from high school. The goal will be entirely out of reach in 79 years when the 21st century ends.
When the teaching standards were created, they were meant to create cohesion so that students everywhere would learn the same content. Teachers had a clear target as to what they needed to teach. They knew what they wanted their students to learn. Challenging teachers to determine if the students were able to learn what was taught and what they needed to do if the students did not learn or needed more support. Professional Development aimed to provide teachers the tools to accomplish these tasks. Yet Professional Development did not follow up to see if teachers had learned from the Professional Development offered. Teachers that needed support were left to their own devices. Rather than create cohesion amongst educators, professional development was often fragmented and led to widely divergent outcomes. Teachers interpreted Professional development sessions in different ways, and when it was used in the classroom, the impact on student achievement was not explicitly tracked.
Ideally, the mission statement should be overarching but directly connected to policies attached to student learning outcomes. Our purpose is to teach our students to learn content and strategies to support their learning in the future. As Michael McDowell says, “Teaching for transfer.”