Our program faculty have all recently left school or district level positions and work as colleagues in an educational leadership master’s program leading to principal licensure. In August, 2007, in response to multiple catalysts (Buskey & Jacobs, 2009), we began having serious conversations about our desire to redesign our program. Given that our state requires all program completers to take the School Leadership Licensure Assessment (SLLA) from the School Leadership Series (ETS.org) in order to be licensed, we considered our data for 2006-2007. Our state cut score is 155/200. For the twenty-five (25) completers, our candidates had a 100% pass rate. The mean was 182 and range 171-199. So, we had acceptable evidence that our program was meeting state expectations for licensure. The overriding issue for us was the desire to critically examine our program focus as evidenced in our curriculum and student actions on completion.
By September of 2007, we were talking about how changes in our master’s program could/would articulate with the doctoral program. Our group included five people working in the master’s program, along with two colleagues in the doctoral program in educational leadership. At a critical juncture in our discussions, we were invited to a state meeting of professors of educational leadership to discuss potentials for the redesign required under the newly enacted HB 536 (2007) in our state. Since we were all attending the meeting, we decided to go early and spend the day working together to develop a mission statement for our Master’s in School Administration (MSA) program.
Our university had contracted for a branding study to be done for the university, but the focus was on the primary mission of the university, which is residential undergraduate programs. The expectation in our college and university at the time was still that each program and/or department would have a mission statement, thought there was no effort to enforce those expectations.
We arrived with sticky notes, chart paper, our laptops, and our own ideas about what is important in developing leaders for our schools. We spent the first hour discussing and writing down our individual ideas about leaders and leadership preparation. We then discussed what a mission statement would mean to us and to our students. We were enthusiastic about the possibility of redesigning our program based on a clear and shared mission. We set about identifying the common ideas from what we had generated individually, so that we could use those concepts in developing our mission statement. Over the next hour we identified some common key descriptors: ethical, moral, leader, life-long learner, sharer, open-minded, creative, personal responsibility, on a journey, courageous, progressive, caring, serving, continuous, action, risk taking, integrated, etc.
We used our common ideas to craft a mission statement we were sure would define us as a special group. We read our mission and then sat in silence. “The purpose of our program is to help others develop leadership capacity that will ensure successful learning environments for each student.” We were genuinely dismayed. Our mission statement, the result of so much effort and collaboration, sounded like every other educational mission statement we had ever read.
After a break, one of our colleagues said, “I recently watched a video by Guy Kawasaki on developing mantras. Maybe what we need is a mantra, not a mission statement.” So after pulling up the video, we all stood around a laptop and watched as Mr. Kawasaki explained the difference in mission and vision statements and why a mantra provided a clearer and more focused way of thinking about your organization. He defines a mantra as “three or four words that explain why your product, service, or company should exist" (Kawasaki video, 2004).
After watching the video, we looked at our words on the board and literally within 3 minutes we developed a mantra (see exhibit 1). We stepped back and were really all shocked at how quickly it evolved. Or so it seemed. We knew, of course, that we had been discussing our beliefs about leadership and leadership preparation for school principals. We had already spent close to two hours working through a process with which we were all familiar. What we were not ready for was the power and excitement that the development of this mantra provided. We decided to “sleep on it” and revisit the mantra the next day after the state meeting (although most of us wanted to work together rather than attend the meeting)! The development of the mantra and its implications for guiding us on this journey of redesign provided interesting discussions on our ride back from the state meeting. People played around with the words. They discussed whether we could really use the mantra in a meaningful way. Some wondered if this was just another “thing” that we took time to do and would ultimately end up on the “wall” or on a shelf. Time would tell.
We revisited the mantra several times over the next couple of weeks deciding on a final version and defining exactly what each word of “Live your leadership journey courageously” meant for us (See exhibit 2). Almost three years down the road, we have come to understand what this mantra has done for us as we used it to drive the ReVisioning of our program (Buskey & Jorissen, 2008). We have taught it to our students. Perhaps more significantly, we have tried to live it ourselves.
In addition to our own use of the mantra, our students draw upon it as most of them are challenged to be full time educators and part-time master’s students at the same time.
