Throughout last year, the school developed a new strategic plan. If you attended Saturday’s Grand Opening event, you received a copy of Where We All Venture Further. This booklet includes the foundational elements of our new plan. Presently, we are working with staff on the operational elements of the plan, which we will share with the community in November.
One of the important outcomes of the new plan is an updated vision, mission and values. I believe that our vision, which states “Greenwood will lead in providing a customized, engaging and character-building experience that prepares our students to make a positive difference in the world” is both aspirational and inspirational.
When updating our founding mission, Board members and staff felt it was vital that the mission continued to emphasize that Greenwood continues to “embrace a student-focused education,” as we exist to serve students. Besides inspiring students, we also felt that “challenging” students should be an important part of the revised mission. The founding belief of inspiring students to lead fulfilling lives continues, but has been expanded to indicate we also believe that “knowledge, skills and character” are essential in the pursuit of a fulfilling life.
Values quite simply are our beliefs and what we hope to pass on to our students. For the past several years,Greenwood’s values have been expressed through our focus on intellectual, performance, moral and civic character. We try to infuse these four pillars of character in all of our student programs, as they articulate the complex way in which we see character develop. As a way of helping stakeholders better understand these aspects of character, our updated values statement lists examples of each of these character pillars. Our hope is that a broader understanding of our values will enhance our existing culture of character within the school.
Throughout this year, we will focus on communicating to the Greenwood community how our expanded facilities support our updated vision, mission and values.