When Ruth and I wrote the mission statement for Two Writing Teachers (TWT), it was – in a word – hard. It’s tough to boil-down the purpose for doing something. After many iterations, we came up with a mission statement that fit what we were hoping to do with TWT.
Today was the first day of our school’s Summer Institute, which helps us get ready for the year ahead. One of our first tasks of the day, for all of the teams within our school, was to create a team purpose statement that reflected our mission (in our case, as a grade level). After revising several times, we came up with: “We come together to plan, revise, and celebrate the work we do in each of our classrooms.”
Until today, I never thought of a grade-level having a team purpose statement. However, I’m thrilled we were challenged to do this since it definitely helped us iron-out who we are and why we come together. (This activity is one I highly recommend if your grade-level colleagues are game.)
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 