A leader in progressive education since 1921, LREI teaches children to be independent thinkers who work together to solve complex problems. Students graduate from our diverse community as active participants in our democratic society, with the creativity, integrity, and courage to bring meaningful change to the world.
–Approved by the Board of Trustees, October 6, 2014
Yesterday you should have received an email from LREI introducing our new mission statement—not a new mission, we are not leaving behind our ongoing commitment to progressive education. We are, however, sporting a leaner, crisper statement of our core principles.
For many years the school had quite a long mission statement that grew out of our need to offer a more detailed description of our goals and purposes. Well written, thoughtful and, in the end, quite long lasting, the former mission statement served the school well.
For the past few years a number of us have felt that it was time to refresh the statement. The goals for our writing process were to have a more concise statement, to have a more focused—progressive forward—statement and to have a statement that is accessible and of which we can be proud. We feel we have achieved all of these goals. It was quite gratifying to the members of the committee that wrote the statement that when we shared the it with the teachers they felt that it described and supported their work with your children.
“How do we use the mission statement”, you might ask. We once had a teacher who carried a copy of our mission in her back pocket. While I might have suggested a pocket on which she did not sit, I admired her desire to have her teaching be mission driven. The mission states our beliefs to the wider-world. The mission statement is printed in almost all of the school’s publications and is on our website. The statement is printed on the back of the name cards used at our Board of Trustees meetings, asking the trustees to consider the mission throughout the conversations. I often read the statement when making a challenging or weighty decision—is my decision consonant the school’s essential beliefs? Would Elisabeth Irwin, undoubtedly the author of our original mission statement, approve of the direction in which I am headed?
In the coming weeks, I look forward to sharing additional thoughts on our new mission statement and the values embedded therein.