It's easy for systems to get mired in the details and forget the mission, that's why it is essential to keep the mission upfront with regard to what we do and why we do it as an educational organization.
As I think of this, I'm wondering which document best tells what our collective teaching/learning organization is about.
I think of this today for many reasons. First, I just read that our high school won a robotics competition. That excites me and makes me think it's a perfect fit for our collective mission which is to be successful with modern age learning and teaching.
I also spoke with a colleague recently who lamented the weaknesses of our teaching/learning organization. As I listened, I thought that I don't want our schools to become weak and how can we work against that. One way is to make sure that we all agree on the mission and work to achieve it, and whenever there's a problem, use the mission as the first point of assessment.
For example, with regard to an issue I recently put a lot of time into, I'll keep the mission upfront. When we have the meeting about the issue, I'll be thinking, how does our collective work with regard to this situation support our central mission as a teaching/learning organization? What can we change in this situation to better meet the mission.
I believe that people in general like to work with a common mission in mind, and they like to help one another be successful with that mission. I will do more thinking about this in the days ahead.