Organizational Development

Comment by Kim Carter on January 26, 2010 at 10:30pm

We seem to be a very New-England-y group... I did send out invitations to others. If you get a chance, send some invites out to others you think might be interested in joining this conversation!

Comment by Kevin Fahey on February 27, 2010 at 3:21pm

Colleagues,
The SRI Organizational Development Work Group is writing this with some information, and more than a few requests for help.
At the end of the January 2010 SRI Winter Meeting, a group of volunteers met to begin to think together about the wide variety of issues that this new organization must face. The volunteers self organized into work groups whose focal points were (1) the SRI Resource Guide, (2) communication and outreach, (3) professional learning events, (4) managing the Bay and Paul Foundations grant award and (5) organizational development. The Organizational Development Work Group was charged to, “Assist the SRI community and Board to develop a mission driven organization whose structures model the core values and practices of its members.” At the January meeting, Kevin Fahey, Kim Carter and Deborah Zawislan volunteered to help organize the Organizational Development Work Group. Frances Hensley offered to act as liaison between the group and the SRI Board.
Our thinking so far has been straightforward. If SRI is to be a mission driven organization, then it needs a clear statement about the purpose of the organization, who it serves and how it serves. The mission needs to be clear, concise and supported by the organization’s stakeholders. Moreover, the mission needs to be the standard by which all of SRI’s work is measured.
To begin to develop a clear mission statement, we are posting on the Organizational Development Work Group’s Ning a number of documents. The first is the value statements that were created at the January 22 meeting. The second is the 3-2- 1 responses that the members of the Organizational Development Work Group shared at the end of the January initial work group meeting. The third is the set of the answers to the question about the SRI mission statement that was asked as part of the follow up Winter Meeting Survey. These are all data that can be used to gather a sense of what the SRI mission statement might be.
On the Ning, we are also posting an invitation to give us your ideas about our mission statement. Please feel free to describe what the important elements of our mission might be. We need to think together about the purpose of SRI, about who it serves and how it serves. You could write a few phrases, make some suggestions about essential concepts or even create a draft mission statement. What is important is that we need lots of help, lots of good thinking and lots of perspectives.
Our goal is to spend a month gathering input, looking for themes and getting as many perspectives as we can. By the beginning of April, we hope to start to pull together some draft mission statements for another round or two of feedback. Again, the more folks and the more perspectives included in this effort, the better the mission and the organization will be. By the end of April we would like to have a draft mission to submit to the SRI Board.
We understand that this is an ambitious timeline; however, it seems that if we are to be a mission driven organization then the work of crafting that mission is both urgent and important. Once we can clearly articulate our mission, then we can move toward thinking about governance, board structure and membership, strategic planning, and the rest of the organizational development work that will define SRI.

Thanks for all your good work,

Kevin Fahey
Frances Hensley
Kim Carter
Deborah Zawislan

Comment by Heidi Vosekas on March 11, 2010 at 12:47pm

Hi All - I recently asked the SRI board of directors about developing a tag line for SRI to use on print materials and on the website. A few suggestions were given and now I bring the question to this group - as I know you are the group working on crafting a mission statement. A tag line, in my mind, would be a synthesis of our mission statement - the two should be aligned.

The suggestions from the board thus far are:
- closing the equity gap one student at a time
- transformational learning in the service of educational equity
- transformation learning that enables the closing of the equity gap

Might you all be able to give some feedback on these suggestions, maybe offer other possibilities based on what is developing with the mission statement? I am hopeful we can reach agreement so that I can use a tag line in print materials - but I also aware that this is an issue of identity and need to be careful about rushing to a decision.

Thank you!
Heidi

Comment by Margaret Maclean on March 11, 2010 at 1:13pm

Haven't we used in the past
"teacher collaboration in service of student learning"
I don't know where i got it but i have been using that tag line for a while.....Margaret

Comment by Heidi Vosekas on March 11, 2010 at 1:18pm

Yes, when we were with NSRF we used the line "student learning in the service of student achievement" They still use this line, so we (SRI) need something different! However, you can continue to use that line as much as you'd like!
Heidi

Comment by Margaret Maclean on March 11, 2010 at 1:43pm

OK

I am not so keen on the 3 suggestions they are not clear in terms of what we actually do.
I think the word collaboration needs to be in what we finally decide.
M

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