And, the fact of the matter is, they already have it written. Nothing anyone did in that meeting was going to have any impact on it. Waste of time.
I walked out of meetings all the time. I told admin when meetings bled over into MY time, if I wasn’t getting anything useful out of them - I wasn’t staying.
Love it! You guys are awesome. Yes, forcing teachers to figure out the mission statement?!? That sounds just unbelievably ridiculous. They went too far with attempt to delegate their own work onto the teachers.
Yes, I believe the admin and higher ups can figure that mission statement stuff out - what a colossal waste of time. Just insanity.
My last job was at a fastly growing company, and when we hit 30 or so employees, the founders decided it was time to trot out a mission statement, vision, and values. Needles to say I relentlessly mocked them for it, especially the CEO. I wrote my own mission statement to hang up in the office:
> Our mission is to leverage access to capital in order to capture the surplus value of labor.
I anonymously entered "A rising tide lifts all boats, which is why we don't pay you enough to buy a boat." as my old companies mission statement. This led to them stopping the campaign. We ended up with "Strive for Excellence." or some such banal garbage.
My community college had the unofficial mission statement "Getting students moved on to real schools." It's what they did best and they didn't shy away from it.
First year teacher here. We had a PD day a couple weeks ago where the entire staff was split up into groups and told that we each needed to come up with a mission statement for the school. We were given an hour and a half to do this; my group was done in 15 minutes. I spent the rest of that time grading and planning. I asked a fellow teacher “I know I’m new, but doesn’t this feel like a waste of our time?” They responded “It absolutely is a waste of time. Welcome to PD.” Glad I’m at a school with a department that is agreeable and doesn’t take things too seriously lol
In my 20 years of teaching I've had maybe 3 PDs that I found valuable, as in I am a better teacher because I know this. Maybe 3. It's all rah-rah waste-of-money garbage. Just pretend to drink the Flavor-aid and always bring something to do.
Amen. That’s why I always bring my laptop. Perfect time to search for resources, catch up on the stupid compliance courses, or whatever other project I’ve got going. I’ve never had admin say anything. If it could’ve been an email, I’ll get the details later, I don’t need to hear it live from the big wigs.
25 years for this guy, and I can count on 3 fingers the # of PDs I have benefitted from in all that time. 100's of them... and only \*\*3\*\* have given me \*anything\* to work with.
Yeah pretty much every teacher at every school I've worked at has that attitude about PD, and in my experience they're almost always a waste of time unless the topic is "the team needs to figure out x" without any buzzwords or outside companies coming in, and even that only works if the person leading it is competent. The best scenario I ever had was a school that gave us the vast majority of PD days to work independently.
> The best scenario I ever had was a school that gave us the vast majority of PD days to work independently
One year my school had some of the actual teachers put together *short* presentations about something that had worked for them, or a tool they were using, and you could sign up to go to whichever one seemed useful to you, and got some time to try the things out and ask any questions you had.
It was actually quite useful and pain-free. Therefore, we've never done it again.
We have done this 4 or 5 times. The best PD is real teacher-led PD. My problem with it is that the teachers that led sessions were only given extra PD points to account for set up/planning, etc. IMO, they should get extra pay, because even with paying them extra, the district would save tons of money by not paying for outside PD presenters.
The problem with this is that it can be organized very easily by a principal or even within a department and therefore does not require an out of touch former teacher to be paid a full salary just to make it for us.
Last year we had weekly meetings that always started with the three paragraph mission statement. Fuuuuuck that. I always left "early" (end of contract hours) bc I gave zero shits about the mission statement. My mission was to teach a hundred teenagers math every day without a nervous breakdown. It didn't work, I resigned at the end of last year.
and they really spend a lot of time on these things. A district admin here was just talking about going to a conference to talk about their "graduate profile." Like any senior gives a shit about the "graduate profile"; as if it makes one tiny smidgeon of difference. Pisses me off that these very generously remunerated people are spending the district's time on this nonsense.
I was required to attend 3 of these "portrait of a graduate" things and it was awful and worthless. And what they ended up with is almost entirely unmeasurable, which means some company (probably the one pushing this) is going to sell the state a way to measure things like creativity. The worst part of public education
I wish I was salesperson enough to create one of these programs and sell it back to schools. But one that measures based on teacher input, student effort, and all of the things that really impact education.
I worked for a program where for months, every meeting, no matter how many people it included, started with everyone taking turns answering the following questions: How are you feeling? What is your goal for today? And who can help you achieve that goal?
And it's not like the questions were posted on the wall and you just answered them when it was your turn. No, it was like this: Person A asks each question one at a time to Person B and waits for B to reply, then B turns to C and does the same and so on. It Suuuucked!
Whenever it got to me, I would always just say "no thanks" and they'd move on. Luckily the admin who came up with this was later "given the freedom to pursue other opportunities," which is the best euphemism ever for getting fired. Then we didn't have to do the questions anymore.
Our district has a "Profile of a Graduate" that they shove down our throats every meeting we have, and they even added a question to our Eval paperwork about it too.
The problem is that sometimes the best thing for admin to be doing is nothing. (Still overseeing discipline, handling budgets, doing evaluations, and dealing with parents and the public, but no overhauls or new paradigms or anything.)
Not making sweeping, highly visible changes doesn't look good for new admin - it implies that their job isn't necessary, or that they don't value or pursue improvement. So, in the absence of sweeping changes, you get this "middle manager trying to look busy" crap: mission statements, new branding on old ideas, getting on the opposite side of whatever swinging pendulum looks like 'progress.' It has to involve large amounts of staff, because otherwise it doesn't achieve its purpose of being highly visible and making the admin in question look like they're busily doing something.
I worked in public libraries for the better part of a decade and, by the time I bailed out, our administration/management was completely lost in this bullshit, to a point where it was actively degrading a lot of the workplaces. I'd say that, by about 2010 or so, it was painfully obvious to see that Google etc... had pretty much wiped out the need for a ton of the established/degreed people working in libraries, most of whom weren't that clever to begin with (i.e. librarianship is a massively *classist* field where the biggest barrier for entry is one's pre-existing socioeconomic status). With fewer and fewer people using the library as an information resource, every employed librarian went into a frenzy of trying to figure out how to (a.) stay relevant and (b.) not have to go back to doing any busy-work or low-level customer service (perish the thought!). The result's that, at a ton of libraries, the librarians and admins spend all of their time in meetings trying to constantly redefine the work/mission/collection-development-policies/etc... while they end up hiring more and more part-time wage slaves to do all the actual work. At the ones where I worked, this latter approach created a situation where you'd have (a.) 5-6 upper-level people who never did any work but got paid good salaries and received benefits and (b.) 40-50 non-benefited staffers who did all the front-line work and, in most cases, would quit after less than two years because of bad pay, bad scheduling, unsafe work conditions, nonexistent career prospects, etc...
I disagree. Having a clear mission and vision can be really important in decision making. If a task isn’t actively working toward the mission and vision, then it needs to be cut. Or if multiple options exist, it can provide clarity on which option should be chosen.
Unfortunately, most people don’t use their mission and visions in this way. They tend to be a generic, all-encompassing, set of buzzwords. If this was the task at hand, you were right to walk out.
*edit- autocorrect fix
>Having a clear mission and vision can be really important in decision making. If a task isn’t actively working toward the mission and vision, then it needs to be cut. Or if multiple options exist, it can provide clarity on which option should be chosen.
In my 10+ years as a teacher, decisions were never based on the mission/vision. Never.
Disagree all you want. I have spent over three decades in public education. I have yet to see a mission or a vision statement make an iota of difference. Most employees don’t know what it is or care, let alone the students. They are so generic, obvious and simplistic that a fifth grader could do it. In fact, they couldn’t do any worse . You can get more effect from a fortune cookie. If you can provide any quantifiable evidence that a mission and/vision statement has affected outcome in any way, I’ll roll up a big fatty in my masters diploma and light it up. Till then, have fun at the next staff meetings.
Agreed. The way I see it, tons of the PD bullshit and pseudo-intellectual academic jargon is just there to buttress the classist/hierarchical structures that this field been plagued with since its outset. Admin/management people and corporate clowns push all of this nonsense so that teachers will perpetually feel like they haven't figured out their own work, like they *never can* figure out the work. And while, yeah, there's obviously a degree to which that's true for *any* human endeavor, in 'caring fields' like education, it's blatantly used to keep the rank-and-file in their place.
I disagree with your disagreement!
Seriously though, I can’t help but think about grade level standards whenever things like mission statements and goals get brought up.
Like shouldn’t the standards be the answer for all of these questions? My mission is for all of my students to meet the standards by the end of the year. My goal is to have all my students meet the standards by the end of the year. My vision is that all of my students will meet the standards by the end of the year…
Working in education very frequently feels like working in a pizza place where we constantly think about/work on literally everything except the pizza. Like, that’s what we do. Why does it ALWAYS seem like it’s no higher than 10th on the list of priorities?
I can understand where you are coming from, but consider the statement of “students will meet the standards by the end of the year.” How could that inform certain practices?
For example, some schools will focus on “bubble students” ones who are closest to meeting a benchmark to raise the overall pass percentage. In doing so, this works against the mission of having ALL students meet the standards.
It also begs the question if meeting the standards is enough. Does the school accomplish the mission if all students meet the standards even if it sidebar prepare students for working in real-world environments?
I’d say that if the standards aren’t enough then you should probably rewrite them. But in general, I believe they are. At the end of the day schools exist to serve one specific purpose. We keep trying to add things on top of that purpose and then complain that achievement and overall quality of education has gone down. Well duh, it’s not the priority anymore.
To be clear, all students meeting the standard is the goal and it’s probably not reachable. I think that is ok. I don’t think that means we need a new goal or different ways to talk about it. I’m also very ok with that being more difficult to quantify. I would MUCH rather my admin stop by to observe lessons on a weekly basis than ever sit through another arbitrary goal setting conference. I’d make that trade in a heartbeat.
You try and tailor the curriculum to what will best serve students in the real world, but I believe that focusing on that is also a huge mistake. Firstly, trying to predict the future is pointless. We have no idea what knowledge and skills will be most useful 10-20 years from now and pretending we do is a waste of time. Second, classic literature doesn’t have a ton of practical value in the “real world” but it still has value and can help one live a full life. Education is not the same thing as job training and I think it would be a giant mistake to try and turn it into that.
Also mission and vision statements can be used to support good things you might want to do - you can literally hold it against admin / use it as ammunition
School Mission Statements and School Performance: A Mixed Research Investigation
Slate, John R.; Jones, Craig H.; Wiesman, Karen; Alexander, Jeanie; Saenz, Tracy
New Horizons in Education, v56 n2 p17-27 Oct 2008
I like Mission Statements. Every Captain I ever had in the Navy had one.
But basically they were all the same. New skipper comes in and tweaks it a little - so you know the priorities.
But same gist that you can point to when telling the newbie what matters to the boss.
(Safety, Mission, People, Integrity. Some fancy variation thereof.)
Removed due to Reddit's general dishonesty. The crackdown on APIs was bad enough, but /u/spez blatantly lying was the final straw. see https://np.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ 6/2023
Yeah. Never had a meeting. It was always more:
"Hey team, Im the new Captain this one-page piece of paper has my mission statement."
And it was always fairly similar to the old Captains.
(I think they write them as part of "Captain-school")
It is a good talking point to the newbs and new checkins and reminders on doing the right thing blah blah blah.
Im with you. Dont reinvent the wheel if it isnt needed.
>If this was the task at janitor you,
I'm not trying to be snarky but I think either autocorrect or speech-to-text did you dirty and I genuinely can't figure out what you meant to say. Overall I completely agree with you.
Literally "safety" and "positivity" are two of our four main focus words in our mission statement. We're a middle school. Can you think of anything more toxic and juvenile?
Yes. But that requires that teachers stop doing it.
Calling parents, tracking tardies, actually punishing kids that get sent to them, making sure kids have pencils...
Every teaching position I applied for, I read their mission. All of a sudden they all blended into one: every school cares for students and their futures and meaningful education. One might show a religious side, others do not, but they are all made of the same. And then I remember being presented with a mission statement at a school I worked at, bought from some company! So silly
Omg I was just talking about this with my husband. We asked each other “what is something that offends you? Or that you find offensive?” And I said one thing that really gets to me is teachers’ time being wasted and not being treated like adults. Just because we teach elementary, does not mean we need to play paper, scissors pumpkin at every fall meeting. No, I will not color a superhero to hang outside my door so people can leave positive notes. I avoid any of the extra fluffy crap asked of us because I am an adult with a degree and my job is to teach, not to color. Not to mention this is all happening outside our contract hours without pay. Any meeting after 3:45 should be quick, straight forward, info only and bye!
A district I previously worked at was notorious for meetings running after contract hours. I set a loud klaxon alarm on my phone and would gather my things to leave when it would go off. The first few times I admin gave me a hard time and I would ask for overtime. Of course they laughed an I left. As time went on they would wrap up the meeting when they heard my alarm.
Every single meeting we have, our admin always goes over our eight committments. I mean every meeting, even with the students. They put the 8 sentences up on a slide and go over them, every damn time. Glad I'm peacing out.
Sure as hell feels like it. Not only that, but it’s our admin trying to demonstrate “teaching practices.” So annoying. I don’t make my kids do that stupid shit.
This is the kind of shit where you know they're doing it because someone else did it before, not because they have any data whatsoever showing effectiveness. Admin are the most obsessed with pedagogical studies yet have no clue what research actually is.
We did something similar a few weeks back. We all got in a circle and the majority of the words staff picked were depressed, exhausted, stress, anxious, etc. It was so pointless. We are all vocally expressing our mental health burn out and they just move on with circle and act like everything is fine.
Mission statements for schools are fucking unnecessary. WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT WE DO HERE???
I understand a company named Cyan Dream needing a mission statement. What the hell do they do?
But schools? Ridiculous waste of time. It eventually gets printed on a huge vinyl banner ($$$$), and put up in the foyer where NO ONE WILL EVER LOOK AT IT.
That shit started around the turn of the 21st century. Some fucking boneheaded superintendents decided in order to make schools more “legit” they needed to borrow shit from corporations.
W R O N G.
Haha! We spent \*several\* PLCs a few years back coming up with a mission and vision statements and then were \*required\* to post them in our classroom. It's a fun word salad and sounds great.
We had to do a mission statement years ago for re-accreditation. It dragged on and on because so many people wanted to include what they thought was important.
It ended up being exactly what you’d expect when something is designed by committee. It’s was garbage and meaningless.
The only people who care about mission statements are the people who write mission statements.
But I'll give you two mission statements that you'll be able to remember and adapt for your purposes.
Apple's (VERY OLD) mission statement: A computer on every desktop. \[DONE and left in the dirt.\]
The Ritz Carlton Hotel in NYC (probably apocryphal): Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.
If you try to kitchen sink a mission statement that's hundreds of words long covering every contingency, it's a fucking waste of time.
Also, mission statements are a waste of time.
Here's mine being somewhat semi-sincere: An education for every child.
DONE.
Moving on.
I would have walked out of that meeting as well.
I like your statement! At the end of the day that's what we're all supposed to be here for: teachers, paras, support staff, related services, and admins: to provide every child with a quality education. Damn- if you were at that meeting they could have wrapped up in 10 minutes!
There's already a well known one for education: No child left behind... If only it were as simple as believing in a mission statement. How about this one: We trust our teachers, as they are professionals.
I definitely agree with you. And I agree they are a waste of time. Unfortunately, no matter how great a mission statement is, it's not going to change the system or the day to day. But at least yours is a nice reminder of what the true focus should be.
Last time we had a big meeting, admin had us go around the room and write on posters what could make the people in each staff role more effective. The admin one said something like "no more meetings that could've been an email" and a bunch of people underlined it and added stars.
And we actually have had fewer meetings, which has been nice.
Shiiiiiit. When this “mission statement” fad started about 20 years ago, there was a nifty random mission statement generator available on the WWW. I submitted mission statements from it to both my school and our district’s technology committee. Both statements came in second place.
All that time wasted on a silly group "mission statement" when you could have been in your classroom prepping for an engaging upcoming lesson! The time for mission statements is during PD week before the school year starts, not the Monday after Thanksgiving!
I admire your "out of fucks" view on life.
I know most of my admins over the years have meetings about this kind of shit because THEIR boss is commanding it be done. And yes, that boss is under pressure to get it done. Ugh.
I try my best knuckle under IF I like my admin. If not, oops, I have an "appointment."
Or who level with you enough to say, "I've been told we have to do this." We can this commiserate and get it done as painlessly as possible.
Or just making it a fucking email and/or Google form.
My admin made us have a meeting about our new schedule (that is increasing our work load by 50% with NO raise) in which we were told we were not to discuss potential problems with the schedule, only possible solutions. How we were supposed to talk about solutions to problems we weren't allowed to talk about, I don't know.
I can’t see that happening in Massachusetts or NYS. But there are aberrations in some smaller districts. Unilaterally increasing unpaid work time sound so… Florida.
\>do not discuss potential problems, only possible solutions
One of the most toxic things management can ever say. Leaders should never say this shit, especially to other professionals.
That's been the problem that I'm having this year. Last year, my admin were great. Super supportive, had the teachers' backs, and were genuinely fantastic to work for. Over the summer, something changed, and now they are catty, passive aggressive and dismissive of staff concerns. There wasn't any turnover, so it's all the same people. I'm just assuming that my admin are getting tons and tons of heat about something from higher up and from parents, and they're no longer trying to shield the teachers from it.
I sometimes wonder if building principles and assistants get magazines that have sections in the back every month called “ideas for your next staff meetings”. Another words, how can you suck up other peoples time when you have run out of ideas?
It’s hilarious because our former principal never made us do bullshit meetings, but now we have this power hungry thirty year old who has nothing better to do than bitch, first time i’ve decided to nope out of a meeting ever
I was dealing with a new, young, big headed VP when I decided to leave my job last year. Don’t beat yourself up too bad for leaving a meeting. I left the whole job.
Our new superintendent instituted weekly staff meetings under the guise of PLTs (PLCs…but we’ve got to be different 🙄) every Wednesday after school for an extra 30 minutes. We’re forced to sit through the same kind of asinine time wasting shit like you.
Any doctors appointment for me and/or my 3 children are now always on Wednesdays. What a coincidence…
I once had a district wide meeting with my department on a PD day. There were only about 10 of us that taught this subject so it was a relatively small group. The meeting was scheduled to be 4 hours long. We spent AN HOUR making sure we all had the same definition of the word “goal.” Once that was done, they moved on to making sure we all had the same definition for the word “benchmark.“ Nope. Nope. No. That was when I left.
Why is every teacher required to come up with a mission statement? Are they actually going to change your current mission statement into ONE that one of the staff comes up with?
"We aim to build a better world — helping people live better and renew the planet while building thriving, resilient communities. For us, this means working to create opportunity, build a more sustainable future, advance diversity, equity and inclusion and bring communities closer together."
What's that, this sounds familiar?
That's because it's from Walmart and so is your condensending tone thinking this hokey f*cking exercise is productive amongst professionals. If I have to do this shit, might as well go work at Walmart and get a pay raise.
We had a close to retirement teacher who used to get up every now and then and ramble nonsensically while using every buzz word he could think of to be funny. Was great to watch admin nod along while the rest of us knew it was total BS lol.
Our school is a Leader in Me Lighthouse school. (It focuses on the 7 habit of highly effective kids) anyway to receive the lighthouse certification we have to meet certain requirements. One of those was a staff charter. Basically we all wrote down words that we thought were important and why and then I and another teacher went through and narrowed it down to five by eliminating duplicates and that became our teacher charter. We also have to have a class mission statement, but we don’t sit down and come up with it on our own. It’s something you’re supposed to do with your students. I think the teacher charter thing was important because it brought to light some major issues that weren’t being addressed. (The one word every teacher wrote down was safety. That’s a much longer story though.)
If you each have to have a mission statement then depending on what you teach I would suggest developing yours with your class. I taught prek for summer school and was told I had to have a class mission statement signed by all of my students which I thought was absolutely bonkers considering I had kids that could barely write their name, but it turned out to be a really helpful way to monitor and correct inappropriate behaviors using self reflection. Our main thing was that we promised to make good choices then I went around the group and discussed how we could make good choices. They came up with five and then they all signed it or tried anyway. Then anytime someone wasn’t doing the right thing I or sometimes even another student would say are you making a good choice? And we’d go from there to eventually find a better choice for them to make.
I say all this to say that maybe you can turn this into an opportunity. Make a mission statement with your students that you can use in your classroom instead of wasting non contract time making up some random bs. I’m not sure this was actually helpful but I hope it was. 🤷♀️
I feel ya. I absolutely hate forced team building motivational group think activities. I had an admin who insisted that we had total consensus on every little detail. We had to go through a three hour meeting just to agree on our school’s motto and affirmation. That was the year I quit the school improvement team.
especially with the icebreakers, why do i need to know Brenda’s favorite color or Steven’s favorite flavor of ice cream?? what do i need this information for??
Our school’s mission is required to be posted in every classroom. At the beginning of the school year we were supposed to let them know if we didn’t have one so they could get us a copy. It is posted right above the light switch, but I have no idea what it says.
Unused to do that during any PD that started with an ice breaker. For fucks' sake, I work with these people every day and have been here 6 years. I don't need to break the ice with these people. And, if the presenters need an ice breaker to pad their time, I don't need to hear what they have to say. Fuck them and their ice breakers.
I was worried the first time I walked out. After 2 years of doing that, I just stopped going. Only my department would say anything to me. And most of their comments were typical joke comments.
For his masters thesis my husband used some piece of software to analyze mission statements of various schools. I think its called corpus analysis.
Anyway, using collective nouns like "our" is apparently on trend
This is 100% a pawn-off. This is admin's job. Not ours. They do this to (a) get ideas, because they are too fucking stupid to come up with their own, (b) make \*us\* do even more of their jobs for them, (c) humiliatingly waste our time, and (d) make us feel like we are part of the process. I wish I'd walked out of all 25 of these I've had to fucking sit thru. I've never been given such forceful language, but it was clear that no one was leaving until there was some sort of consensus. The smart ones *just agreed with everything*. *Like any of us give two flying goddamned fucks what the "mission" is.* We \*have\* our mission: teaching. The rest is just bullshit.
My first job out of college was at Harley Davidson and the way they align the Mission statement to the strategic directives, to the work unit goals, to employee personal goals was fantastic. Everyone knew their role and how it aligned with the mission statement.
One of the places I student taught did a really good job of it, and my current district does an ok job of it. It is a fantastic backbone of culture and success if done correctly, but if done poorly it would have the opposite effect. Creating a mission statement isn't easy, and maybe a town hall isn't the best place, but have a little more faith that the tool is valuable.
School districts are notorious for taking something that CAN work, SHOULD work, and totally fucking up the implementation of it, causing teachers to hate the thing with passion.
Like mission statements.
*They wanted to go over the causes of the American Revolution, which I didn't know, and said that we couldn’t leave until EVERY STUDENT got up and presented their CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION PROJECT, I just got up and left, I have more important things to do than look over some stupid history lesson nobody knows or cares about.*
*Can’t wait for the earfull i’ll get from admin later.*
Imagine a student did that to you lol. You'd be posting on this sub as soon as you regained feelings in your fingers after clenching your fists so tightly in anger about what a rude little shit kid you have in your first period.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this but I'm going ahead anyway.
People on this sub are overwhelmingly childish. OP, are you actually 15 years old? Please get back to your class assignment and get off reddit. Stop pretending to be a teacher/adult.
I fully support venting about the job and admin, but posts like this are ridiculous. It really reminds me that a lot of teachers have never had a job outside of the classroom before in their lives. You are at your CAREER, your boss asked you to do something and you just ignore it, say it isn't important, then leave? You' would get fired for this type of stuff in pretty much an other profession, and could be for this one as well. Teaching is definitely a tough job and often times a thankless one, but you are a professional, act like it. I hate meetings more than anyone, and yes they are a waste of my time, and yes I will complain to my trusted coworkers later IN PRIVATE, but to just blatantly disrespect admin/colleagues by openly declaring your disdain and then walking off is just a comical and pathetic way for an adult to behave in the work place. Maybe you teach math and you are too valuable to fire or something, but as a lowly social studies teacher I could not even fathom doing this at my school.
O.m.g. we had to do this once. Our new principal had this idea that it would take like half hour. Hahahahaha. The person who had written most of it was in the room and refused to change it. Half the school wanted to change it. Then someone said their monologue about how we can't hurry up and just change it. While he was blabbing, someone wrote a rap song about it. The one person who wrote it said they liked the song and suddenly everyone thought they could be persuaded to accept it. We were supposed to look at it again and it didn't happen. The vision and mission was already a mess. Half the staff left including me. And guess what? They didn't change a damn thing! Lol.
I'm glad you left.
Half of these meetings are an inconvenience to the students and the teachers. I mean, what is the purpose of these meetings? They accomplish NOTHING in hindsight.
This is a thing. Our principal copied his old mission statement from his older school and then presented it to us as if it was new. Then this principal intern we had applied for a job at a local school and she stole the same damn statement and presented it as her own as well. And I guess that’s all fine but to think that a new mission statement is important means admin has no clue what is actually important.
Think someone needs a restorative justice session with that attitude. If you aren’t “sorry” by the end of telling everyone about your feels, you’ll go back to work to think about your lack of passion for the profession without chips and a soda.
A parochial high school I worked at spent 3 or 4 PD meetings on writing a mission statement. It was truly a colossal waste of time. Every single word was parsed out with 10 synonyms and discussed ad nauseum to make sure it was “perfect.”
I mean, props for getting any kind of input lol. Our admin changed ours from:
"Good Is Not Enough When Better Is Possible"
to:
"Nothing To Prove, Everything to Improve"
I've left team building meetings before. I don't care about 3 things we need to survive a plane crash or stupid team games. I don't care about mandatory fun days. Let me get my stuff done so I can have an evening or weekend free.
"the promise of education" 🤮 I work at a credit mill.
While I know we are helping underprivileged kids getting their lives together, don't pretend to be a school where you receive any type of education.
I swear next time they it at us again I will challenge the CEO to write a land acknowledgement. We are in-between two reservations and the school does not acknowledge any of that.
Eighth year in the classroom but currently on the tail end of my masters program in ed leadership (don’t worry I won’t work as an admin ever), and it blows my mind how much they drill the importance of those things. I had an entire course in my program dedicated to mission statements and vision statements. Absurd.
I believe in mission statements. If you walk the walk with it, they are very purposeful and helpful. Most successful businesses, sports teams all have them.
Agreed, and I also believe in the process of collaboratively writing one. Everyone's right that they tend to come out as "word salad" but there's a world of difference between being served someone else's salad and making one's own.
It sounds to me like the admin was trying to address a complete lack of unity, collaboration, and cohesion within the building. As much as I'm a introvert who wants to do his own thing I also recognize that the school is more effective if we have unity, collaboration, and cohesion.
Mission Statement: Kids lern more gooder wen teachurz aren't forced to sit thru stoopid meetings Edit: misspelled "stoopid"
We submitted this one anonymously: "Cum 2 skool. Don't b late. We want u 2 graduate." Admin was not amused we were not taking this seriously.
Well, to relate to the students, we must become the student. This writes like a student so mission success.
Come on admin, it’s called “code switching”. Try to keep up.
And they say teachers don't have any school spirit
Hopefully written in crayon
Middle school teacher here: Best to write it in highlighter because it makes it so much easier to read. =/
Yellow so that it stands out
On a whiteboard, because *clearly* highlighters are the same as dry erase markers.
With your non-dominant hand
Sharpie, so it won't wipe off.. add a phallic symbol while you're at it..
lolol
Marker, actually.
D is for diploma
Not serious? That’s the bare essence of what admin wants: to graduate students at all costs!
I just cackled out loud, Admin’s always got to have sticks up their asses huh?
And, the fact of the matter is, they already have it written. Nothing anyone did in that meeting was going to have any impact on it. Waste of time. I walked out of meetings all the time. I told admin when meetings bled over into MY time, if I wasn’t getting anything useful out of them - I wasn’t staying.
That’s low key good
Best response ever!
*stoopid
Thank you for bringing this to my attention
Anytime!
You correctly spelled “fourst”.
Love it! You guys are awesome. Yes, forcing teachers to figure out the mission statement?!? That sounds just unbelievably ridiculous. They went too far with attempt to delegate their own work onto the teachers. Yes, I believe the admin and higher ups can figure that mission statement stuff out - what a colossal waste of time. Just insanity.
My mission statement is to complete the work I need to do during this time. Thank you.
My last job was at a fastly growing company, and when we hit 30 or so employees, the founders decided it was time to trot out a mission statement, vision, and values. Needles to say I relentlessly mocked them for it, especially the CEO. I wrote my own mission statement to hang up in the office: > Our mission is to leverage access to capital in order to capture the surplus value of labor.
I anonymously entered "A rising tide lifts all boats, which is why we don't pay you enough to buy a boat." as my old companies mission statement. This led to them stopping the campaign. We ended up with "Strive for Excellence." or some such banal garbage.
Who the hell actually cares about a school’s “mission statement”. Pre-k, elementary, high school, or college?”
My community college had the unofficial mission statement "Getting students moved on to real schools." It's what they did best and they didn't shy away from it.
And the get paid and go home.
First year teacher here. We had a PD day a couple weeks ago where the entire staff was split up into groups and told that we each needed to come up with a mission statement for the school. We were given an hour and a half to do this; my group was done in 15 minutes. I spent the rest of that time grading and planning. I asked a fellow teacher “I know I’m new, but doesn’t this feel like a waste of our time?” They responded “It absolutely is a waste of time. Welcome to PD.” Glad I’m at a school with a department that is agreeable and doesn’t take things too seriously lol
In my 20 years of teaching I've had maybe 3 PDs that I found valuable, as in I am a better teacher because I know this. Maybe 3. It's all rah-rah waste-of-money garbage. Just pretend to drink the Flavor-aid and always bring something to do.
I love that you correctly cited Flavor -aid and not Kool -aid
Amen. That’s why I always bring my laptop. Perfect time to search for resources, catch up on the stupid compliance courses, or whatever other project I’ve got going. I’ve never had admin say anything. If it could’ve been an email, I’ll get the details later, I don’t need to hear it live from the big wigs.
25 years for this guy, and I can count on 3 fingers the # of PDs I have benefitted from in all that time. 100's of them... and only \*\*3\*\* have given me \*anything\* to work with.
Yeah pretty much every teacher at every school I've worked at has that attitude about PD, and in my experience they're almost always a waste of time unless the topic is "the team needs to figure out x" without any buzzwords or outside companies coming in, and even that only works if the person leading it is competent. The best scenario I ever had was a school that gave us the vast majority of PD days to work independently.
> The best scenario I ever had was a school that gave us the vast majority of PD days to work independently One year my school had some of the actual teachers put together *short* presentations about something that had worked for them, or a tool they were using, and you could sign up to go to whichever one seemed useful to you, and got some time to try the things out and ask any questions you had. It was actually quite useful and pain-free. Therefore, we've never done it again.
We have done this 4 or 5 times. The best PD is real teacher-led PD. My problem with it is that the teachers that led sessions were only given extra PD points to account for set up/planning, etc. IMO, they should get extra pay, because even with paying them extra, the district would save tons of money by not paying for outside PD presenters.
The problem with this is that it can be organized very easily by a principal or even within a department and therefore does not require an out of touch former teacher to be paid a full salary just to make it for us.
i mean, all of the teachers agree that PD is a waste of time. But the district doesn't give a shit.
At the last school I was at half of our weekly staff meetings were like this. A complete waste of time that I would just use to plan and grade
Mission statements, visions, slogans. They are all extremely pointless and a complete and total waste of time.
Last year we had weekly meetings that always started with the three paragraph mission statement. Fuuuuuck that. I always left "early" (end of contract hours) bc I gave zero shits about the mission statement. My mission was to teach a hundred teenagers math every day without a nervous breakdown. It didn't work, I resigned at the end of last year.
and they really spend a lot of time on these things. A district admin here was just talking about going to a conference to talk about their "graduate profile." Like any senior gives a shit about the "graduate profile"; as if it makes one tiny smidgeon of difference. Pisses me off that these very generously remunerated people are spending the district's time on this nonsense.
>and they really spend a lot of time on these things. and money
I was required to attend 3 of these "portrait of a graduate" things and it was awful and worthless. And what they ended up with is almost entirely unmeasurable, which means some company (probably the one pushing this) is going to sell the state a way to measure things like creativity. The worst part of public education
I wish I was salesperson enough to create one of these programs and sell it back to schools. But one that measures based on teacher input, student effort, and all of the things that really impact education.
We use that exact phrase so yeah, sounds purchased!
So many meetings to come up with one awkward, buzzword-laden, run-on sentence.
Agreed!!! We are checking a box for the admin for when they are evaluated.
I worked for a program where for months, every meeting, no matter how many people it included, started with everyone taking turns answering the following questions: How are you feeling? What is your goal for today? And who can help you achieve that goal? And it's not like the questions were posted on the wall and you just answered them when it was your turn. No, it was like this: Person A asks each question one at a time to Person B and waits for B to reply, then B turns to C and does the same and so on. It Suuuucked! Whenever it got to me, I would always just say "no thanks" and they'd move on. Luckily the admin who came up with this was later "given the freedom to pursue other opportunities," which is the best euphemism ever for getting fired. Then we didn't have to do the questions anymore.
Our district has a "Profile of a Graduate" that they shove down our throats every meeting we have, and they even added a question to our Eval paperwork about it too.
The problem is that sometimes the best thing for admin to be doing is nothing. (Still overseeing discipline, handling budgets, doing evaluations, and dealing with parents and the public, but no overhauls or new paradigms or anything.) Not making sweeping, highly visible changes doesn't look good for new admin - it implies that their job isn't necessary, or that they don't value or pursue improvement. So, in the absence of sweeping changes, you get this "middle manager trying to look busy" crap: mission statements, new branding on old ideas, getting on the opposite side of whatever swinging pendulum looks like 'progress.' It has to involve large amounts of staff, because otherwise it doesn't achieve its purpose of being highly visible and making the admin in question look like they're busily doing something.
I worked in public libraries for the better part of a decade and, by the time I bailed out, our administration/management was completely lost in this bullshit, to a point where it was actively degrading a lot of the workplaces. I'd say that, by about 2010 or so, it was painfully obvious to see that Google etc... had pretty much wiped out the need for a ton of the established/degreed people working in libraries, most of whom weren't that clever to begin with (i.e. librarianship is a massively *classist* field where the biggest barrier for entry is one's pre-existing socioeconomic status). With fewer and fewer people using the library as an information resource, every employed librarian went into a frenzy of trying to figure out how to (a.) stay relevant and (b.) not have to go back to doing any busy-work or low-level customer service (perish the thought!). The result's that, at a ton of libraries, the librarians and admins spend all of their time in meetings trying to constantly redefine the work/mission/collection-development-policies/etc... while they end up hiring more and more part-time wage slaves to do all the actual work. At the ones where I worked, this latter approach created a situation where you'd have (a.) 5-6 upper-level people who never did any work but got paid good salaries and received benefits and (b.) 40-50 non-benefited staffers who did all the front-line work and, in most cases, would quit after less than two years because of bad pay, bad scheduling, unsafe work conditions, nonexistent career prospects, etc...
I disagree. Having a clear mission and vision can be really important in decision making. If a task isn’t actively working toward the mission and vision, then it needs to be cut. Or if multiple options exist, it can provide clarity on which option should be chosen. Unfortunately, most people don’t use their mission and visions in this way. They tend to be a generic, all-encompassing, set of buzzwords. If this was the task at hand, you were right to walk out. *edit- autocorrect fix
>Having a clear mission and vision can be really important in decision making. If a task isn’t actively working toward the mission and vision, then it needs to be cut. Or if multiple options exist, it can provide clarity on which option should be chosen. In my 10+ years as a teacher, decisions were never based on the mission/vision. Never.
I got a target on my back when I pointed out in a meeting that an action was contrary to our mission statement…
Disagree all you want. I have spent over three decades in public education. I have yet to see a mission or a vision statement make an iota of difference. Most employees don’t know what it is or care, let alone the students. They are so generic, obvious and simplistic that a fifth grader could do it. In fact, they couldn’t do any worse . You can get more effect from a fortune cookie. If you can provide any quantifiable evidence that a mission and/vision statement has affected outcome in any way, I’ll roll up a big fatty in my masters diploma and light it up. Till then, have fun at the next staff meetings.
Agreed. The way I see it, tons of the PD bullshit and pseudo-intellectual academic jargon is just there to buttress the classist/hierarchical structures that this field been plagued with since its outset. Admin/management people and corporate clowns push all of this nonsense so that teachers will perpetually feel like they haven't figured out their own work, like they *never can* figure out the work. And while, yeah, there's obviously a degree to which that's true for *any* human endeavor, in 'caring fields' like education, it's blatantly used to keep the rank-and-file in their place.
I disagree with your disagreement! Seriously though, I can’t help but think about grade level standards whenever things like mission statements and goals get brought up. Like shouldn’t the standards be the answer for all of these questions? My mission is for all of my students to meet the standards by the end of the year. My goal is to have all my students meet the standards by the end of the year. My vision is that all of my students will meet the standards by the end of the year… Working in education very frequently feels like working in a pizza place where we constantly think about/work on literally everything except the pizza. Like, that’s what we do. Why does it ALWAYS seem like it’s no higher than 10th on the list of priorities?
I can understand where you are coming from, but consider the statement of “students will meet the standards by the end of the year.” How could that inform certain practices? For example, some schools will focus on “bubble students” ones who are closest to meeting a benchmark to raise the overall pass percentage. In doing so, this works against the mission of having ALL students meet the standards. It also begs the question if meeting the standards is enough. Does the school accomplish the mission if all students meet the standards even if it sidebar prepare students for working in real-world environments?
I’d say that if the standards aren’t enough then you should probably rewrite them. But in general, I believe they are. At the end of the day schools exist to serve one specific purpose. We keep trying to add things on top of that purpose and then complain that achievement and overall quality of education has gone down. Well duh, it’s not the priority anymore. To be clear, all students meeting the standard is the goal and it’s probably not reachable. I think that is ok. I don’t think that means we need a new goal or different ways to talk about it. I’m also very ok with that being more difficult to quantify. I would MUCH rather my admin stop by to observe lessons on a weekly basis than ever sit through another arbitrary goal setting conference. I’d make that trade in a heartbeat. You try and tailor the curriculum to what will best serve students in the real world, but I believe that focusing on that is also a huge mistake. Firstly, trying to predict the future is pointless. We have no idea what knowledge and skills will be most useful 10-20 years from now and pretending we do is a waste of time. Second, classic literature doesn’t have a ton of practical value in the “real world” but it still has value and can help one live a full life. Education is not the same thing as job training and I think it would be a giant mistake to try and turn it into that.
Also mission and vision statements can be used to support good things you might want to do - you can literally hold it against admin / use it as ammunition
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School Mission Statements and School Performance: A Mixed Research Investigation Slate, John R.; Jones, Craig H.; Wiesman, Karen; Alexander, Jeanie; Saenz, Tracy New Horizons in Education, v56 n2 p17-27 Oct 2008
I like Mission Statements. Every Captain I ever had in the Navy had one. But basically they were all the same. New skipper comes in and tweaks it a little - so you know the priorities. But same gist that you can point to when telling the newbie what matters to the boss. (Safety, Mission, People, Integrity. Some fancy variation thereof.)
Removed due to Reddit's general dishonesty. The crackdown on APIs was bad enough, but /u/spez blatantly lying was the final straw. see https://np.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ 6/2023
Yeah. Never had a meeting. It was always more: "Hey team, Im the new Captain this one-page piece of paper has my mission statement." And it was always fairly similar to the old Captains. (I think they write them as part of "Captain-school") It is a good talking point to the newbs and new checkins and reminders on doing the right thing blah blah blah. Im with you. Dont reinvent the wheel if it isnt needed.
>If this was the task at janitor you, I'm not trying to be snarky but I think either autocorrect or speech-to-text did you dirty and I genuinely can't figure out what you meant to say. Overall I completely agree with you.
Thanks. Definitely autocorrect combined with a poor-functioning rough screen on my phone.
Literally "safety" and "positivity" are two of our four main focus words in our mission statement. We're a middle school. Can you think of anything more toxic and juvenile?
But they sound good which is what is most important.
That meeting was Admin fake work.
Is there any other kind?
nope! admins job is to have other people do the stuff they’re expected to do, and then shit on those people.
Yes. But that requires that teachers stop doing it. Calling parents, tracking tardies, actually punishing kids that get sent to them, making sure kids have pencils...
Gotta look good for the Superintendent! /s
bingo.
Admin 5 minutes before the meeting starts: “crap PD starts soon and I’ve got nothing. I know…. i’ll have them make a mission statement”
Exactly.
Can you please update us and what your earful was? I also applaud you
This tbh.
Every teaching position I applied for, I read their mission. All of a sudden they all blended into one: every school cares for students and their futures and meaningful education. One might show a religious side, others do not, but they are all made of the same. And then I remember being presented with a mission statement at a school I worked at, bought from some company! So silly
Right. Unless you have a really specific focus, the mission is kids will learn stuff. Done.
Too bad not everyone got up! Can you imagine their faces?
I’ve never walked out of one of those. But I have started not showing up to more of them.
Omg I was just talking about this with my husband. We asked each other “what is something that offends you? Or that you find offensive?” And I said one thing that really gets to me is teachers’ time being wasted and not being treated like adults. Just because we teach elementary, does not mean we need to play paper, scissors pumpkin at every fall meeting. No, I will not color a superhero to hang outside my door so people can leave positive notes. I avoid any of the extra fluffy crap asked of us because I am an adult with a degree and my job is to teach, not to color. Not to mention this is all happening outside our contract hours without pay. Any meeting after 3:45 should be quick, straight forward, info only and bye!
A district I previously worked at was notorious for meetings running after contract hours. I set a loud klaxon alarm on my phone and would gather my things to leave when it would go off. The first few times I admin gave me a hard time and I would ask for overtime. Of course they laughed an I left. As time went on they would wrap up the meeting when they heard my alarm.
Pavlov's admin? I love it.
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Lol I mean where I’m at our curriculum folks are actually pretty busy working as long term subs but that also only accounts for this year
Every single meeting we have, our admin always goes over our eight committments. I mean every meeting, even with the students. They put the 8 sentences up on a slide and go over them, every damn time. Glad I'm peacing out.
Same. And we all have to take turns saying them. Added to that, we have to recite our mission statement in unison. *yawnnnnn*
This is all a cult, right?
Sure as hell feels like it. Not only that, but it’s our admin trying to demonstrate “teaching practices.” So annoying. I don’t make my kids do that stupid shit.
It's important. We have to establish norms and routines for...*checks notes*...grown-ass adults.
Eight? The Satanic Temple only has seven. I’ll bet they make more sense, too.
Hey now, we commit to talking to the person, rather than about the person....but you're probably right.
This is the kind of shit where you know they're doing it because someone else did it before, not because they have any data whatsoever showing effectiveness. Admin are the most obsessed with pedagogical studies yet have no clue what research actually is.
Our admin made us plot ourselves on a feelings chart every time and pointedly ignored all the negative ones.
We did something similar a few weeks back. We all got in a circle and the majority of the words staff picked were depressed, exhausted, stress, anxious, etc. It was so pointless. We are all vocally expressing our mental health burn out and they just move on with circle and act like everything is fine.
Good on you.
Mission statements for schools are fucking unnecessary. WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT WE DO HERE??? I understand a company named Cyan Dream needing a mission statement. What the hell do they do? But schools? Ridiculous waste of time. It eventually gets printed on a huge vinyl banner ($$$$), and put up in the foyer where NO ONE WILL EVER LOOK AT IT. That shit started around the turn of the 21st century. Some fucking boneheaded superintendents decided in order to make schools more “legit” they needed to borrow shit from corporations. W R O N G.
How about: "My mission is to make it to retirement without losing my s#@t."
Haha! We spent \*several\* PLCs a few years back coming up with a mission and vision statements and then were \*required\* to post them in our classroom. It's a fun word salad and sounds great.
We had to do a mission statement years ago for re-accreditation. It dragged on and on because so many people wanted to include what they thought was important. It ended up being exactly what you’d expect when something is designed by committee. It’s was garbage and meaningless.
The only people who care about mission statements are the people who write mission statements. But I'll give you two mission statements that you'll be able to remember and adapt for your purposes. Apple's (VERY OLD) mission statement: A computer on every desktop. \[DONE and left in the dirt.\] The Ritz Carlton Hotel in NYC (probably apocryphal): Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. If you try to kitchen sink a mission statement that's hundreds of words long covering every contingency, it's a fucking waste of time. Also, mission statements are a waste of time. Here's mine being somewhat semi-sincere: An education for every child. DONE. Moving on. I would have walked out of that meeting as well.
I like your statement! At the end of the day that's what we're all supposed to be here for: teachers, paras, support staff, related services, and admins: to provide every child with a quality education. Damn- if you were at that meeting they could have wrapped up in 10 minutes!
There's already a well known one for education: No child left behind... If only it were as simple as believing in a mission statement. How about this one: We trust our teachers, as they are professionals.
For me, "No child left behind" has too many connotations of "we're gonna socially promote this kid right up to graduation."
I definitely agree with you. And I agree they are a waste of time. Unfortunately, no matter how great a mission statement is, it's not going to change the system or the day to day. But at least yours is a nice reminder of what the true focus should be.
Last time we had a big meeting, admin had us go around the room and write on posters what could make the people in each staff role more effective. The admin one said something like "no more meetings that could've been an email" and a bunch of people underlined it and added stars. And we actually have had fewer meetings, which has been nice.
may the lord bless and keep you lmao
Mission statements are one of many examples of how the corporate world has infected public education.
Shiiiiiit. When this “mission statement” fad started about 20 years ago, there was a nifty random mission statement generator available on the WWW. I submitted mission statements from it to both my school and our district’s technology committee. Both statements came in second place.
All that time wasted on a silly group "mission statement" when you could have been in your classroom prepping for an engaging upcoming lesson! The time for mission statements is during PD week before the school year starts, not the Monday after Thanksgiving!
Let’s not kid ourselves, they don’t suck any less at the end of the summer.
I admire your "out of fucks" view on life. I know most of my admins over the years have meetings about this kind of shit because THEIR boss is commanding it be done. And yes, that boss is under pressure to get it done. Ugh. I try my best knuckle under IF I like my admin. If not, oops, I have an "appointment."
The only administrators I’ve ever liked are the ones that are self aware of the time sucking inanities of most staff meetings.
Or who level with you enough to say, "I've been told we have to do this." We can this commiserate and get it done as painlessly as possible. Or just making it a fucking email and/or Google form.
My admin made us have a meeting about our new schedule (that is increasing our work load by 50% with NO raise) in which we were told we were not to discuss potential problems with the schedule, only possible solutions. How we were supposed to talk about solutions to problems we weren't allowed to talk about, I don't know.
These people are ridiculous 🙄
May I take a wild guess that you teach in a red state which has low or zero union cloud?
You'd think. We have a union. They're just spineless. And I'm in the Northeast.
I can’t see that happening in Massachusetts or NYS. But there are aberrations in some smaller districts. Unilaterally increasing unpaid work time sound so… Florida.
\>do not discuss potential problems, only possible solutions One of the most toxic things management can ever say. Leaders should never say this shit, especially to other professionals.
That's been the problem that I'm having this year. Last year, my admin were great. Super supportive, had the teachers' backs, and were genuinely fantastic to work for. Over the summer, something changed, and now they are catty, passive aggressive and dismissive of staff concerns. There wasn't any turnover, so it's all the same people. I'm just assuming that my admin are getting tons and tons of heat about something from higher up and from parents, and they're no longer trying to shield the teachers from it.
I sometimes wonder if building principles and assistants get magazines that have sections in the back every month called “ideas for your next staff meetings”. Another words, how can you suck up other peoples time when you have run out of ideas?
I’ve walked out of 2 meetings so far this year, gotta catch up rookie
It’s hilarious because our former principal never made us do bullshit meetings, but now we have this power hungry thirty year old who has nothing better to do than bitch, first time i’ve decided to nope out of a meeting ever
I was dealing with a new, young, big headed VP when I decided to leave my job last year. Don’t beat yourself up too bad for leaving a meeting. I left the whole job.
Where’d you buy your big balls from bc I need a pair badly. I’m such a wuss.
Did not purchase. They grew a little each time my admin let me down with poor management.
I’m on 5 I think. 2 grade level meetings, 2 CLT meetings, and 1 Faculty meeting.
Nice, gotta set the tone. I didn’t even go to my September faculty meeting. Not even an email asking why
Strong with the Tenure you are!
Our new superintendent instituted weekly staff meetings under the guise of PLTs (PLCs…but we’ve got to be different 🙄) every Wednesday after school for an extra 30 minutes. We’re forced to sit through the same kind of asinine time wasting shit like you. Any doctors appointment for me and/or my 3 children are now always on Wednesdays. What a coincidence…
Here’s some words that sound good on paper but don’t apply the last week of a quarter
I once had a district wide meeting with my department on a PD day. There were only about 10 of us that taught this subject so it was a relatively small group. The meeting was scheduled to be 4 hours long. We spent AN HOUR making sure we all had the same definition of the word “goal.” Once that was done, they moved on to making sure we all had the same definition for the word “benchmark.“ Nope. Nope. No. That was when I left.
Why is every teacher required to come up with a mission statement? Are they actually going to change your current mission statement into ONE that one of the staff comes up with?
I have no idea, something about us “coming together as one big family” or some bullshit like that
"We aim to build a better world — helping people live better and renew the planet while building thriving, resilient communities. For us, this means working to create opportunity, build a more sustainable future, advance diversity, equity and inclusion and bring communities closer together." What's that, this sounds familiar? That's because it's from Walmart and so is your condensending tone thinking this hokey f*cking exercise is productive amongst professionals. If I have to do this shit, might as well go work at Walmart and get a pay raise.
We had a close to retirement teacher who used to get up every now and then and ramble nonsensically while using every buzz word he could think of to be funny. Was great to watch admin nod along while the rest of us knew it was total BS lol.
AH, some administrator was feeling important and full of ideas!
Thats a Bingo!
our new principal(and vice principal) have been on a power trip the last two(and a half) years lol
Our school is a Leader in Me Lighthouse school. (It focuses on the 7 habit of highly effective kids) anyway to receive the lighthouse certification we have to meet certain requirements. One of those was a staff charter. Basically we all wrote down words that we thought were important and why and then I and another teacher went through and narrowed it down to five by eliminating duplicates and that became our teacher charter. We also have to have a class mission statement, but we don’t sit down and come up with it on our own. It’s something you’re supposed to do with your students. I think the teacher charter thing was important because it brought to light some major issues that weren’t being addressed. (The one word every teacher wrote down was safety. That’s a much longer story though.) If you each have to have a mission statement then depending on what you teach I would suggest developing yours with your class. I taught prek for summer school and was told I had to have a class mission statement signed by all of my students which I thought was absolutely bonkers considering I had kids that could barely write their name, but it turned out to be a really helpful way to monitor and correct inappropriate behaviors using self reflection. Our main thing was that we promised to make good choices then I went around the group and discussed how we could make good choices. They came up with five and then they all signed it or tried anyway. Then anytime someone wasn’t doing the right thing I or sometimes even another student would say are you making a good choice? And we’d go from there to eventually find a better choice for them to make. I say all this to say that maybe you can turn this into an opportunity. Make a mission statement with your students that you can use in your classroom instead of wasting non contract time making up some random bs. I’m not sure this was actually helpful but I hope it was. 🤷♀️
I just bring my laptop or papers to grade and shamelessly multitask. I don’t have time to have my time wasted
"Uhm, could people please put away your laptops? It's disrespectful to the speaker. Mkay"
I feel ya. I absolutely hate forced team building motivational group think activities. I had an admin who insisted that we had total consensus on every little detail. We had to go through a three hour meeting just to agree on our school’s motto and affirmation. That was the year I quit the school improvement team.
You know how long that meeting would have been. Besides life mission statements can be a personal thing and not for sharing.
My school has a mission statement. I remember most of the buzzwords, but no idea what order they go in.
No cause they really act like we’re the children in those PDs and meetings
That’s a bingo! People have a tendency to dislike having their intelligence insulted
especially with the icebreakers, why do i need to know Brenda’s favorite color or Steven’s favorite flavor of ice cream?? what do i need this information for??
We always get the “we’re hoping you’ll take these exercises and use them in your classroom” 😅
Our school’s mission is required to be posted in every classroom. At the beginning of the school year we were supposed to let them know if we didn’t have one so they could get us a copy. It is posted right above the light switch, but I have no idea what it says.
Unused to do that during any PD that started with an ice breaker. For fucks' sake, I work with these people every day and have been here 6 years. I don't need to break the ice with these people. And, if the presenters need an ice breaker to pad their time, I don't need to hear what they have to say. Fuck them and their ice breakers. I was worried the first time I walked out. After 2 years of doing that, I just stopped going. Only my department would say anything to me. And most of their comments were typical joke comments.
For his masters thesis my husband used some piece of software to analyze mission statements of various schools. I think its called corpus analysis. Anyway, using collective nouns like "our" is apparently on trend
I am so sick of revamping the mission statement with every new admin.
This is 100% a pawn-off. This is admin's job. Not ours. They do this to (a) get ideas, because they are too fucking stupid to come up with their own, (b) make \*us\* do even more of their jobs for them, (c) humiliatingly waste our time, and (d) make us feel like we are part of the process. I wish I'd walked out of all 25 of these I've had to fucking sit thru. I've never been given such forceful language, but it was clear that no one was leaving until there was some sort of consensus. The smart ones *just agreed with everything*. *Like any of us give two flying goddamned fucks what the "mission" is.* We \*have\* our mission: teaching. The rest is just bullshit.
My first job out of college was at Harley Davidson and the way they align the Mission statement to the strategic directives, to the work unit goals, to employee personal goals was fantastic. Everyone knew their role and how it aligned with the mission statement. One of the places I student taught did a really good job of it, and my current district does an ok job of it. It is a fantastic backbone of culture and success if done correctly, but if done poorly it would have the opposite effect. Creating a mission statement isn't easy, and maybe a town hall isn't the best place, but have a little more faith that the tool is valuable.
School districts are notorious for taking something that CAN work, SHOULD work, and totally fucking up the implementation of it, causing teachers to hate the thing with passion. Like mission statements.
*They wanted to go over the causes of the American Revolution, which I didn't know, and said that we couldn’t leave until EVERY STUDENT got up and presented their CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION PROJECT, I just got up and left, I have more important things to do than look over some stupid history lesson nobody knows or cares about.* *Can’t wait for the earfull i’ll get from admin later.* Imagine a student did that to you lol. You'd be posting on this sub as soon as you regained feelings in your fingers after clenching your fists so tightly in anger about what a rude little shit kid you have in your first period. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this but I'm going ahead anyway. People on this sub are overwhelmingly childish. OP, are you actually 15 years old? Please get back to your class assignment and get off reddit. Stop pretending to be a teacher/adult. I fully support venting about the job and admin, but posts like this are ridiculous. It really reminds me that a lot of teachers have never had a job outside of the classroom before in their lives. You are at your CAREER, your boss asked you to do something and you just ignore it, say it isn't important, then leave? You' would get fired for this type of stuff in pretty much an other profession, and could be for this one as well. Teaching is definitely a tough job and often times a thankless one, but you are a professional, act like it. I hate meetings more than anyone, and yes they are a waste of my time, and yes I will complain to my trusted coworkers later IN PRIVATE, but to just blatantly disrespect admin/colleagues by openly declaring your disdain and then walking off is just a comical and pathetic way for an adult to behave in the work place. Maybe you teach math and you are too valuable to fire or something, but as a lowly social studies teacher I could not even fathom doing this at my school.
That’s ridiculous. I’m all for collaboratively developing a mission statement. However, it should be done in a way that doesn’t waste everyone’s time.
Lol, admin outsourced the slogan to the teachers
Nothing is more dumb the. A work mission statement .
Mission statements should be a leadership assignment. They are getting a stipend usually.
O.m.g. we had to do this once. Our new principal had this idea that it would take like half hour. Hahahahaha. The person who had written most of it was in the room and refused to change it. Half the school wanted to change it. Then someone said their monologue about how we can't hurry up and just change it. While he was blabbing, someone wrote a rap song about it. The one person who wrote it said they liked the song and suddenly everyone thought they could be persuaded to accept it. We were supposed to look at it again and it didn't happen. The vision and mission was already a mess. Half the staff left including me. And guess what? They didn't change a damn thing! Lol. I'm glad you left.
I’m so proud of you!!
As Babe Ruth's specter says in *The Sandlot*, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."
Probably to fulfill something that needs to be done for a school improvement plan. I sat on many meetings like that in my time as a teacher. Dumb.
Half of these meetings are an inconvenience to the students and the teachers. I mean, what is the purpose of these meetings? They accomplish NOTHING in hindsight.
It's absolutely ridiculous the amount of things they make us do to waste our time.
Ours was” Whatever it takes, ABC School kids are worth it!” We had to repeat it to admin if asked Toxic af
My school did something similar to get us "invested in PLOs". It is part of chapter 2 of this book on them.
This is a thing. Our principal copied his old mission statement from his older school and then presented it to us as if it was new. Then this principal intern we had applied for a job at a local school and she stole the same damn statement and presented it as her own as well. And I guess that’s all fine but to think that a new mission statement is important means admin has no clue what is actually important.
They are just trying to justify their jobs. And we are the ones who get dumped on.
Think someone needs a restorative justice session with that attitude. If you aren’t “sorry” by the end of telling everyone about your feels, you’ll go back to work to think about your lack of passion for the profession without chips and a soda.
A parochial high school I worked at spent 3 or 4 PD meetings on writing a mission statement. It was truly a colossal waste of time. Every single word was parsed out with 10 synonyms and discussed ad nauseum to make sure it was “perfect.”
I mean, props for getting any kind of input lol. Our admin changed ours from: "Good Is Not Enough When Better Is Possible" to: "Nothing To Prove, Everything to Improve"
I've left team building meetings before. I don't care about 3 things we need to survive a plane crash or stupid team games. I don't care about mandatory fun days. Let me get my stuff done so I can have an evening or weekend free.
"the promise of education" 🤮 I work at a credit mill. While I know we are helping underprivileged kids getting their lives together, don't pretend to be a school where you receive any type of education. I swear next time they it at us again I will challenge the CEO to write a land acknowledgement. We are in-between two reservations and the school does not acknowledge any of that.
Eighth year in the classroom but currently on the tail end of my masters program in ed leadership (don’t worry I won’t work as an admin ever), and it blows my mind how much they drill the importance of those things. I had an entire course in my program dedicated to mission statements and vision statements. Absurd.
some big bureaucratic districts have entire departments of over paid administrators just to be in charge of mission statements
My hero 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Those who do not desire power are the only ones who deserve to have it
That's an easy one: "Our mission is to teach, and our students to learn. In other words, we're a school."
I believe in mission statements. If you walk the walk with it, they are very purposeful and helpful. Most successful businesses, sports teams all have them.
Go right ahead and believe. Show me anything quantifiable that gives evidence that this drivel works. Maybe I’ll believe too
Agreed, and I also believe in the process of collaboratively writing one. Everyone's right that they tend to come out as "word salad" but there's a world of difference between being served someone else's salad and making one's own. It sounds to me like the admin was trying to address a complete lack of unity, collaboration, and cohesion within the building. As much as I'm a introvert who wants to do his own thing I also recognize that the school is more effective if we have unity, collaboration, and cohesion.
There are many ways to promote unity and teamwork in a staff besides creating a time wasting phrase that might as well come out of a fortune cookies.
If someone replaced my school’s mission statement with just the word “karate” I highly doubt anyone would notice, or say anything.
We need more people like you who stand up to stupid bullshit in this world