Creating Your Personal Vision

Having a clear sense of vision or purpose for your school is important. Besides having your own personal vision you must work collaboratively with teachers, families, staff and students to develop a clear and compelling vision for your school.

It all begins with your personal vision. That vision consists of the most fundamental beliefs about life, about your work, and about relationships with people. I suggest you use a four-step process to develop your vision statement.

Step 1: Think about your personal and professional life. Describe what you would like to achieve and the contributions you would like to make. Think of it as something already accomplished. Describe what it looks like and feels like. For example, imagine hovering in a hot air balloon over your life. Imagine your life as successful as it might be---what would you see? what would you feel? what would you hear?

Step 2: Consider your self-image, relationships, personal interests, and community based on the things you wrote in step 1. Examine each item in your draft statement to be sure it still fits.

Step 3: Develop a list of values and identify those that are most important in your life. Once this is done, review the list and rank them from most to least important. Remove the least important. Re-rank if appropriate. Check for relevance with your earlier statement. Eliminate any item that is not relevant.

Step 4: Use the items from the first three steps to develop a statement about who you are. Review and edit the statement as often as needed until you believe it accurately reflects your vision.

Final Note: The job of a principal begins with vision. If you don't have a vision, or haven't revisited it recently, you won't have a clear direction when pressures mount. I suggest that you take the time to develop your own vision and to build shared vision for your school community.