-Comprehensive: They cover a wide range of educational goals.

-Student-Centered & Empowering: The primary focus is on student empowerment, enabling them to become independent, discerning, and responsible users of information.

-Adaptable: They acknowledge the dynamic nature of information, technology, and educational needs, stressing the importance of being current and anticipating future changes.

Linking for Learning evaluates Illinois school libraries and provides tools that support school librarians. While Empowering Learners supports staff and students in correctly using information and creating ideas. Both mission statements really discuss the importance of the school librarian to the culture of the school and the student’s learning. Reading through both of those vision statements it really makes you realize how much the school librarian does for schools and the many different facets that they are a part of not only for the student, but the staff. 

What I learned about Mission & Vision Statements

Mission statements should be a simple and succinct sentence that includes what you do, how you do it and who you are doing it for. It was really interesting reading the 50 excellent nonprofit mission statements and seeing how simple they are. I know I would get bogged down in wanting to tell you all the little details but it really can be done in a simple sentence.

While a mission statement is about what you are already doing, a vision statement is about what you are working towards. Vision statements are realistic goals that you and your organization are working towards fulfilling. I think before looking through all these examples I would have had a hard time telling you the difference between a mission or vision statement. I am feeling more confident in my ability to start creating a mission and vision statement.

One takeaway from the materials this week is a question that can be answered in two ways: “Is it the library or librarian that is most important?” (Tennant, 2014). By answering this question, strong mission and vision statements can be created. I also learned the difference between the two statements which (even though I’ve been in education forever) I’ve never thought about. A mission statement is a succinct statement that describes why the organization or program exists. Whereas a vision statement describes a long-term desired change. I can now understand the importance of both. It is necessary for libraries to continue providing the best materials, education, spaces, and development in all areas, so a vision statement is necessary to continue to work towards a greater good.

What I Learned

The overlap of both statements from Linking from Learning, show a way that each is measurable. Providing data is necessary to see if the current mission is working and if the vision needs to be refined at all. Further, both seem to value the importance of lifelong learning for all and continued professional development for librarians.

The mission statement is a little more specific because it directly and concisely states the purpose of the library. However, the vision statement is more general; it includes more stakeholders and more general terms for what the library hopes to accomplish. The AASL statements focus on strong leadership and education, as well as up-to-date services in multiple areas including technology.

I also noticed that one of the statements includes the importance of meeting goals at local, state, and national levels which is also crucial to a successful program (and yet another idea that I didn’t think about prior to this activity!).

The key take aways in these readings and post is familiarity and competency in creating mission statements. Mission statement, Vision Statement and Strategic plan often are used together, however they are not used interchangeably.

All of these serve a purpose towards guidance and decision making by providing a common ground of why and a base line of expectations. They ultimately tell others who you are as an organization and why you should matter to them.

I have a lot of experience with this subject. Being an entrepreneur with a marketing background and past work experience as a professional consultant, and retreat facilitator, strategic planning, visioning and creating mission statements are definitely in my area of expertise.

I really enjoyed the create your own mission and vision statement worksheets. These are well organized, attractive to look at and handy. I also appreciated the lists of non for profit mission statements. Learning from the examples of others is an excellent strategy.

There are many key ideas that overlap in these two examples of mission/vision statements.

• Focus on students’ intellectual and personal growth (critical thinking, love of reading, lifelong learning)

• Collaboration with teachers and school community

• Emphasis on information literacy and technology

• Importance of access to diverse resources

• School librarians as instructional leaders and advocates within the school

• Preparing students for the future (adapting to changing educational and tech needs)

I learned that the primary focus of a library should be the students. This seems obvious but it means to focus on not just providing materials but also promoting growth and responsibility. These mission statements also promote how librarians are not just book pushers. They are educators and an extension of the classroom learning. As librarians, we also need to be forward thinkers and utilize new innovations, ideas, technology, and ideas in education.

-mission and vision statements are simple. They are just statements, they aren't long paragraphs or pages.

-mission statement is about what you are doing while a vision statement is goals and what you're working towards

-mission statements are generally more specific than a vision statement

What I Learned

-the mission and vision statements for school libraries are student centered.

-the statements are to be empowering

-the statements should be adaptable to fit the needs of the school library and the students

-I really liked the linked handouts for this week, including the worksheet

I appreciate the shorter ones. When statements are a paragraph, it is hard to focus on the take away and harder to remember what it said. The longer ones I found myself reading over and over again. I get why they are instructed to not have big words or specific jargon. I do wonder how often the statements are updated or edited. I imagine over time, things and management changes. Also how often ALL stakeholders are involved in the creation and implementation. I looked up the statements from my school-Acero Schools. The mission, vision and values are clear & concise.

I also noticed that despite a lot of our other material for this topic stressing brevity and succinct, clear wording, both of these statements felt a little verbose. For me it was helpful to chop of the starting sentences and use those at the quick goal. This let me better view the subsequent material as an outline of how to fulfill the mission in brief terms. I know I have the tendency to become flowery with my prose, so this is a good reminder that actual missions don't need to be the 8 word catch phrases we read, but there is still a balancing factor necessary.

Other Key Ideas:

-There is a significant importance placed on collaboration and providing active space and opportunity for such

-Space seems deliberately left to make room for technological changes while still promising integration and guidance

-School library statements need to understand the school library serves a varied range of interests (staff, administrative, community) while also have a student focus

Key Ideas:

• Mission statements focus on providing an overview of what is already happening and what it looks like

• Vision statements are grounded in where we want to go and what we hope to achieve

• A good mission and vision statement is succinct and user-centered

• IFLA school library guidelines state that mission and vision statements should be reflective of the ALA rights and responsibilities, as well as considering additional guidelines that would be library-specific

• Librarianship, when done well, always considers the users' needs first

Key take aways

Statements don't require and are preffered without buzz words.

A school library has many different objectives/goals and a statement needs to be vague but specific enough to reflect all that the library does

The way for a school library to be impactful relies on their ability to provide space, information, safety, instruction, and technology

- Statements should be short and concise, but still have enough information to excite stakeholders/patrons.

- Its writer(s) needs to be informed of the patrons that will be interacting with the services provided, as well as their anticipated, future needs.

What I learned:

- I really resonate with the statements that are quite short. I found that I kept getting distracted with reading longer paragraphs, especially if both the mission and vision statements were longer.

- At first, I was a bit confused at the difference between the mission and the vision statements, but I think by reading through the examples, I was able to distinguish the difference (now vs a future goal).

- I especially liked the worksheet to help work through and brainstorm. I felt that it made me think a lot about how to make my statements more concise and specific.

Second, I understand much better the heavy lifting that a Mission Statement must do in just a few words.  The Intro to Mission Statements worksheet helped quite a bit by breaking it down into a formula to be put together, but I still found myself struggling to be concise enough, to keep my Mission Statement to less than 14 words.  The article, “50 Example Nonprofit Mission Statements”also helped a lot in visualizing what an effective Mission Statement looked like.