Mission Statement Assignment

The speaker discusses their international school's mission statement, which focuses on curiosity, compassion, innovation, and iteration. They explain why they chose these key words and how they relate to the school's goals. The speaker believes that their school's mission statement sets it apart from other international schools in the region. They compare their statement to two other schools and reflect on its strengths and areas for improvement. Overall, they feel that their mission statement is cohesive but may need more emphasis on social and emotional learning. All right, so my international school's mission statement is led by curiosity, compassion, innovation, and iteration, we equip today's brightest minds to be tomorrow's greatest leaders and problem solvers. So I'm going to walk you through the motivation of this a little bit, broken it down into various aspects of key words and key aspects of the statement, and then explain why I've chosen to highlight those. So the first word is curiosity, and I chose to use this word because kids are genuinely open and curious, and this keeps the idea that this school isn't necessarily an assembly line or, you know, a place of work that just pumps out workers, but it's a school, and kids can be curious and have fun, and curiosity also has a potential for innovation, which leads me to my next key word, being innovation. So technology is part of our ever-changing world, and a lot of the time innovation is linked to technology, and because my international school is located in Kuala Lumpur, it is an up-and-coming business and international innovation hub, and I feel that families will be particularly drawn to the school if they know that there's an innovation focus, because that's where the jobs in this region of the world, and specifically this country, are headed. I also really like, in the article we read by Christopher Branson, he really discusses that innovation is what kind of sets up organizations to be competitive and successful, so I wanted to keep that in my mission statement as well. The word compassion, now compassion is really important because not only are we teaching kids to be, you know, successful and innovating and creating new things for a business and technology world, but it's really important, especially in an international school setting where you do have a bunch of diverse students and families and beliefs, that students learn how to be compassionate and accepting and understanding of one another. So I wanted to keep that in the mission as well, because that's a very key principle for me personally, and I believe in the school system in general. And the fourth word I'm going to touch upon is iteration. So I really want it to be known that at my school, it's okay and even encouraged to make mistakes, because if we make mistakes, that means that we're trying, we're going out of our comfort zone, we're doing new things, and then we can learn from them and make them better. And so carrying on to that theme of innovation, mistakes happen before innovation does, and I want that to be known, that that is something that we support. So moving on to the kind of second half of the statement, when I say today's brightest minds and tomorrow's greatest leaders, I purposely put that in because every parent thinks this of their child. Every parent thinks that their child has this potential, and every child does have this potential, and so I want families to understand that the school believes in their child. The school genuinely believes that their child could be the leader of tomorrow and to solve these pressing global issues, and that they would be surrounded by like-minded peers who also would have that potential as well. So it would be really high-quality students being challenged by other high-quality students as well. And then last but not least, the final kind of word or phrase I'm going to touch upon is problem-solving. So it proves that students can adapt and still succeed even when the world changes because it will change. By the time that these students are ready to go to the workplace, the world will look different, and so I want to emphasize to families that even though the world will look different than it does today, they have gained these problem-solving skills, and they're going to be able to adapt to whatever problems are facing them that we can't even imagine of right now. So they're getting that practice. And those are kind of the key words that I wanted to emphasize in my mission statement. And now comparing it, I've compared it to two other international schools in the region. The first one is the International School of Kuala Lumpur, ISKL, and the mission statement is that ISKL recognizes that each student is an individual, that all children are creative and need to succeed. Therefore, ISKL fosters a safe, healthy, and creative learning environment, emphasizing on the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of each child. So I actually love this mission statement. I think it's amazing. I actually kind of wish I took some more of that to be in my own, but I think it's more focused on the social, emotional learning and skills, and in that way, it differentiates from my own. So I don't feel that our mission statements are overly competitive. The second one I chose to compare it to is the Sunway International School, and I chose this one because it's one of the two current schools in KL that has the IB career program, which is a selling aspect of my school, so I wanted to compare it that way. And their mission statement is to provide quality, holistic international education for the development of creative, collaborative, intellectual, critical, and socially responsible global citizens. Develop, support, and foster student achievement, well-being, and lifelong learning, committed to excellence, integrity, and humility, which is also really great, but I do feel that this mission statement is a little bit more kind of just like ringing off key words and buzzwords and key concepts, and isn't necessarily as cohesive and holistic as ISKL's, so I think it's also great, but once again, it doesn't have that innovation and problem-solving focus like mine does. So my overall reflection is, for a first try, I think mine is all right. I think it flows, and I do think that I purposely thought of what I wanted to get out of it, who I was aiming the mission statement towards, and I chose the words very purposefully, so I think I did well on that. But after reading more examples both of my classmates and of these other two international schools, I'm a bit worried that mine might be a little bit too focused on that innovation theme, and I would probably, in my second iteration, have some more social, emotional, and holistic learning aspects to it. So that's my statement, and I hope you enjoyed it.