Growing up, I was called Curtis by my family and close friends. When people were not happy with me, they used a different inflection in their voice or called me by my last name.

 

As I have matured over the years I have found that those closest to me still call me Curtis and colleagues call me Dr. Jones or Col. Jones. All of these names
describe relationships from the very personal
to the very impersonal.

 

This past week, we relooked at the words in our current mission and vision with a consultant from the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement.

 

As we looked at our current mission statement, "To prepare students for tomorrow by providing a quality education today", our discussion made us realize that words matter here, too.

 

We also realized that we have two mission statements that are displayed. The second one says, "Preparing students for tomorrow by providing a quality education today".

Yes, there is a difference between 'to prepare' and 'preparing'.

 

While we could have worked through that nuance of words, the conversation we had was do we want to 'prepare students' or do we want to 'prepare all students'? So we had a discussion about inserting the word 'all' into our mission statement. Then the conversation changed to from saying 'all students' to 'each student'.

 

And I know some must be thinking "How much time did they waste thinking about 'each' versus 'all', or putting 's' on the word 'student'? Maybe about 10 minutes because we all felt so strongly about the words.

 

When you think about preparing all students for tomorrow by providing a quality education today, you tend to think about all the students in the classroom and its activities.

 

A different mental picture comes to mind if you say we want to prepare each student. That means we will differentiate instruction and that individual education plans will be used. It says we won't forget about students on the high end of achievement, in the middle, or at the bottom.

 

'Each student' has a different implication than 'students'.  I ask you to join us in relooking our current mission and vision statement. Should we modify it? Should we talk about preparing "each student", "all students", or leave it as it is?

 

Regardless of the decision, the most important activity is our conversation about what we want to accomplish with our mission statement.

 

The other part of the morning was relooking our vision statement. And while I won't go into those details at this time, I will share with you that our current vision, at least in my view, is not verifiable. It's hard to measure annually if we're becoming world-class or if we're the first choice for families.

 

I'm intrigued by the idea of relooking our vision statement to move us to a place where we all want to be - to one that talks about what our graduation rate will be in the next five years, and how we compare to similar Georgia systems and RESA school systems. We need a vision we can understand, measure, and support.

 

Over the next months we will continue this process of relooking our current mission and vision. We'll have conversations with school system stakeholders and I ask you to participate - I want to hear from you.

 

In the end, I believe we will be able to rededicate ourselves to a new mission and vision statement.

 

I dare you to thoughtfully consider the message our words send.