Uncovering Our School's Mission

Here’s our school mission – what it is that we claim to do as a school:

Providing a safe, nurturing environment for a diverse community of learners to develop academic potential and ethical character leading to productive citizenship in the 21st century

• Through our charter, we have collectively contracted with Mitchell County and with the State of Georgia to carry out this mission. 
• Through our registration process and family contract, we’ve collectively committed to our parents and students to carry out this mission.  
• When we each signed a contract to work at BCCS, we committed ourselves individually to carry out this mission.  

Each of us must understand and own our mission.   

I revisit this frequently and ask myself, am I fulfilling this mission?  What do I need to do better?

It is our mission – we are tasked with – providing.  That doesn’t just happen.  By definition, provide means to make available; to furnish; to supply or equip.  We have to put it out there for our students to receive.

Safe: physical and emotional safety are necessary for learning to occur. Psychology tells us this – kids can’t learn when they have unmet needs for safety.  We can create safety by how we treat students in our classrooms, on our playgrounds, in our lunchroom, on our athletic fields.

Nurture – to feed & protect; to support and encourage. Our words and actions, our attitudes, build up others or tear them down.  Our mission is to nurture – to build up.  Even when someone needs to be corrected, our mission compels us to do this in a nurturing way.

Environment –the social & cultural forces, influences & conditions that shape the life of a person or a population;  

Providing a safe, nurturing environment: we are tasked with ensuring our students and our staff are surrounded with supportive, encouraging conditions characterized by both physical and emotional safety. For many of our students, a day at school is the best eight hours of their day.  For some of us, school may be an escape from less-than-desirable conditions at home.  We can control our school environment through how we choose to respond; remember, we set the tone in our own classrooms.

Diverse – although the State may define diversity in terms of color, we know our diversity takes many forms.  We have students and staff from all walks of life – different economic circumstances, different cultural traditions, different religious practices, different family makeup, different educational backgrounds, and more. 

Community references the common denominator we share – our school; we’re all in this together!

A diverse community requires that we open our hearts and minds to understand where children and parents are coming from; they may not have grown up like we did; they may not accept responsibilities as eagerly or as responsibly as we expect; their differences, though, should not create a barrier to benefitting fully from being a part of the community.  

It is our mission – our responsibility – to bring each one into this shared community, to teach them how to participate fully, to gain all that is available to them.  They want it – that’s why they’re here; they just may not know how to get it.

Learners – we all are learners, not just our students, but we, too, must be continually in learning mode.  I invite you to embrace learning with a growth mindset for yourself, as well as for your students.  We will be on a significant learning path this year as we learn our new curriculum and new pedagogy with our Eureka Math, Lucy Calkins writing, inquiry based learning, and for some of you, new courses or grade levels, entirely.  

But that’s not all we must learn.  You’ll have a new set of students and new set of parents, new challenges along the way.  What you’ve always done before may not be the most effective for the outcome needed, so I encourage you to seek out, to learn.  To become the most effective teachers, we must be learners first.

To develop: to bring out the capabilities or possibility of; to bring to a more advanced or effective state.  This is movement forward – from one level to the next, often through incremental steps, toward effectiveness or mastery

Academic – that’s the measure of a school – the content we teach

Potential – that which is possible or capable of becoming

Develop academic potential – our mission requires that we move students toward their best academic performance, leading them to becoming all that they can be – their potential.  This is different for every person, but we must not allow ourselves to become comfortable with mediocre, with less than what we and our students are capable of.

But academics, as we know, is not the sum total of our mission.  BCCS was founded on the premise of developing good citizens, which necessitates a strong ethical character, as well.  We are charged with helping students develop ethical character – instilling our Blazer Spirit values in every student and every employee.    

We’ve distilled these traits into our acronym BCCS BLAZER SPIRIT: Baconton – our community, Citizenship, Civility, Sportsmanship, Blazer – one who leads the way, Loyalty, Accountability, Zest, Esprit de Corp, Respect, Self Discipline, Perseverance, Integrity, Resilience, Initiative, and Teamwork.

That is, developing academic potential and ethical character leading to … productive citizenship

We want our students to become producers, to be able to work, to hold jobs of their choosing, to support their families as they grow into adults, to be able to and to desire to give back to their community, participating in our democratic republic as an informed voter, possibly as an elected or appointed official, making life better for all, but above all, being able to take care of oneself financially & intellectually, and contributing to society in a meaningful way.  Productive Citizenship

In the 21^st century.  Our society is changing, and what was good enough years ago, simply isn’t anymore.  Our students must be prepared for this fast evolving world we live in, able to learn and adapt quickly, to be able to place themselves on the cutting edge.  

This new generation of workers will need to develop skillsets as innovators, creators of new ideas, problem solvers, decision makers, effective communicators, collaborators, to be able to research and inquire, to be media literate, technologically savvy, flexible & adaptable, self-directed. 

This is a huge task: our mission.  But it’s just the beginning, the statement of what we will do. This mission demands great accomplishment, excellence.   

In a Nutshell
How do you live this mission?  What aspects of your daily activities put this mission into action?