A Circles of School Readiness Reflection 
 

The Importance of Vision &

Mission Clarity to 

School Readiness and

Family Engagement

Imagine this: Each day that you come to work, you are consciously saying to yourself:  "I am helping to prepare a child who will become the President of the United States;"  "I am helping to prepare the person who will invent the cure for cancer;" and, "I am helping to develop the parents who are raising the children that will make those things happen."

"I am clear about why I came to work today."

With such clarity and focus, how do you think staff might be working with parents and their children each day?

Here, in ClearView Village's New Day Head Start and Early Head Start programs, everyone is confident and clear about their vision and mission.

A huge step to achieving successful –100%– parent engagement is in developing program staff who, themselves, are engaged 100%!

And that begins by everyone being immersed in a clear program vision and mission for the development of parents and their children for school readiness and beyond.

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To begin, the program's leadership

(

director, governing body, policy council, parent committees and management team)

 s

ets a clear vision and 

ambitious goals 

for

par

ent, family, and community engagement.

Source: The National Center on Parent, Family,

and Community Engagement • Office of Head Start 

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Lighting the fire of school readiness engagement, requires programs to establish visions and missions that are: Bold - Radical - Revolutionary and Game Changing!

In ClearView Village, the New Day programs show how ambition starts with the vision.  The community has declared:

We envision developing each parent

to raise their children in families

inspired to create positive changes

in their lives and in their communities;

wherever they may live.

The New Day Head Start & Early Head Start mission is:

• Bold, because they take the risk of making their mission's achievement data focused.
• Radical, because staff breaks with tradition and takes-up the challenge of developing and enabling parents with both quantifiable school-readiness and quality of life skills.
• Revolutionary, because its implementation will cause a dramatic change in the way staff creates partnerships with each parent; intentionally focusing on learning, development and achievement.
• Game Changing, because it will transform community perceptions of the program.

Notice, that a 21st century mission is no longer a pie in the sky statement proclaiming some fuzzy notion for creating drive, purpose, and engagement in staff.

How would your bold, radical, revolutionary, and game-changing vision and mission statements read?

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This has been an InVenTure™ –  creating a wormhole through the professional development galaxy of education, training, and technical assistance.

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Welcome to ClearView Village™

– Home of the Circles of School Readiness –

Where:

• Families bloom
• Communities are cultivated and
• Learning is harvested.

Our Motto: It takes a learning village to raise a school ready child.

ClearView Village is a professional learning community designed specifically to help Head Start and Early Head programs develop game-changing approaches to school readiness.

This is the village where everyone becomes the student: management, the education staff, family services staff, parents, members of the policy groups (policy councils & policy committees) and members of the governing bodies (boards, tribal councils, etc).


Two main questions are most important in the ClearView Village Learning Community:

1. What do children need to learn to be successfully ready for school?  And,
2. What do I need to learn to make that happen? 

Are you ready for the InVenture™?  Come, join us on Wednesday, August 1, 2012 as we explore:

The Importance of Mission Clarity to

Head Start Family Engagement

© 2012 AKRA - AC Learning Design Studios