ABSTRACT
Soon after I began my tenure as principal of our school, we began examining our current school mission. Early on in our leadership team meetings, we decided that for the following year, creating a new mission, motto, and vision, along with faculty value statements, would be one of our priorities. We spent a fair amount of time learning about the purposes of mission, vision, value, and goal statements and how best to craft them throughout the school year so that we would be prepared to facilitate the adoption process early in the following school year. Although our value statements would be written only after gaining a consensus from all staff, I hoped that one of our adopted statements would refer to our commitment to ongoing professional development. In my experience, the very best schools are those that are staffed by teachers who are continuously trying to improve as professionals.
