The Pride
Director's Note Michael Callan Director
Our Vision Empowering students to create solutions for tomorrow’s challenges. Our Mission ISK inspires and nurtures passion, creativity, and ambition in pursuit of a better world. Most great schools have a Mission and/or Vision Statement. A Vision Statement describes what the future looks like if we are successful and a Mission describes how we will make our Vision a reality. So how do we know if we are on track to realize our vision and if the approach in our Mission is working? We must unpack both our Vision and Mission and look at the data. Focusing on key verbs and nouns will help us identify the data we must collect. I spend my days observing and looking for evidence for these verbs and nouns and what I see makes me smile. Empowering is a courageous and foundational word with strong commitment. It guarantees a high level of student agency, student voice, and student choice. It purposefully strays from the traditional approach of the teacher as the “sage on the stage” and shares the process and responsibility of learning with students. Students are given the freedom to question and explore. Dedicated blocks of learning suddenly spread over days and there is a selfdirected momentum to the learning process. In our vision, we link ‘empowering’ with ‘create solutions’, therefore our students must be engaged in problem identification and problem-solving. Our Mission requires us to inspire and nurture passion, creativity, and ambition. Where is the evidence for this
4
approach and this result? While there are high profile and award-winning examples of this such as Plastiki Rafiki that I have written about in previous posts, there are many smaller examples of how we are embedding our student empowerment to create solutions throughout our school. Day 8 in Elementary is an example of embedding agency and problem-solving at a young age. Last Friday, students arrived at school with an extra skip in their step. Dozens of Elementary students proclaimed that this was going to be the best day ever as it was Friday AND Day 8!
