The Role of Conversation, Contention, and Commitment in a Professional Learning Community

Wow! Great article and I think the author speaks directly to some of the issues we will be tackling at Ustach this coming year. “Mission Statement” I will be honest, just the utterance of the words “Mission Statement” cause a deep feeling of frustration and resentment deep down in my core. I have worked at too many schools that have a “Mission Statement” that is irrelevant, not recognized or known by the staff, and worse of all, not implemented. I have also been part of many conversations about Mission Statements and how they relate to student learning, that are similar to the one quoted in the article,

“We can’t promise a high-quality education to all students. The best that we can do is to provide the opportunity for a good education. Then it is the students’ responsibility to take advantage of that opportunity. It is not our fault if the students don’t work hard, if we don’t have parental support, or if the town doesn’t give us a big enough budget. At a certain point, our students’ success is simply out of our hands.”

There was even a point early in my career that I agreed with the above mentioned statement. After all, there is only so much we can control and our students come to us on so many different levels with varying resources to help them achieve. As I became a father and developed as an educator, I realized that my viewpoint was adult-centered and not child-centered. Let me explain:

 My father owns a small but successful Heating and Air Conditioning business in the City of Oakdale. I worked with my father many summers as a young boy and watched how he interacted with his employees. I saw first hand the expectations he placed on them and how he behaved when they met those expectations, he celebrated them. Unfortunately, I also observed what he did with the employees that didn’t meet his expectations, he FIRED them. The above mentioned “Mission Statement” quote seemed to apply in the case of my father’s business and the way he behaved with adults that had the "opportunity" to learn and change but didn't.  It made sense to me. After becoming a father, I tried to apply that same reasoning to raising a child. I soon discovered that, what I call the “learning opportunity” theory didn’t work with my son. I realized very quickly that there were many times my young son didn’t meet my behavioral expectations or failed to follow rules, not because the opportunity to do so was absent or the expectations or rules were not clear, but because he was a child. I could not FIRE him as my father did with his adult employees; I instead took full responsibility to change my son’s behavior. Failure (FIRED) was not an option. He needed me to direct and instruct him on how to properly behave because he didn’t think like an adult but like the child he was.

It is easy to forget that we work with children, not adults. They need us, even when they think or act like they don’t, they really do. We must take full responsibility for their education. This responsibility extends beyond “providing them the opportunity to learn” There are things we cannot control but instead of using those things as excuses, we should focus on using the resources that we can control, to do our very best to educate and prepare these students for the future. Just as failure with my son is not an option, failure with our students cannot be an option! We must convince our staff that anything less than a pledge to ensure the success of each student, is unacceptable! The question remains HOW?

I believe that through the three C’s we can achieve a Common Purpose (really a Mission Statement but without the built in resentment) that the staff creates, that the staff are committed to, that ensures student learning, that is collaborative, and that focuses on results.