School Leaders & Educators
School leaders say that their school spirit has never been higher.
A superintendent says those students at that school are happier and more respectful than most he encounters.
A teacher says she was on the brink of leaving a school until they established their core values, and began deliberately creating their culture- and now, she would never dream of teaching anywhere else.
Another teacher would love to work at that school, because they value teachers who want to inspire and help children become the best they can be; they want children to feel good about themselves, and connect with- and be inspired- by those who care about them.
We love hearing these things. We live to hear these things.
Our mission: to inspire these things.
If you’re reading this, you too love hearing these things. You realize that children are the most important investment we make in our future, and you’re part of a team that bears the tremendously powerful and noble responsibility of shaping and teaching hundreds, possibly even thousands, of children simultaneously.
But you’re also likely faced with dilemmas so many other schools also face. Drop out rates, perhaps, or bullying, or fighting, or even just general apathy stemming from a curriculum that standardizes students, rather than inspiring them to express their unique gifts, passions, and talents to the world. Children never come standard. Under the current system, our students aren’t inspired or supported in owning their unique gifts, thus stagnating progress.
At Got Core Values℠, we build cultures. We foster a system through which students, teachers, families, support staff, administrators and community partners collaborate together to articulate and, via consensus, define their true, authentic core values. This empowers the entire school community to create a thriving school environment, inspiring students to shift their perspective from, ‘I don’t want to go to school today,’ to one of, ‘I get to go to school today!’ and inspiring faculty and staff to shift their perspective to one of ‘I get to go to work today!’
Really: we survey teachers, students, their families, support staff, community members, and administrators like yourself regarding their core values. Then, we facilitate the wordsmithing process to distill the responses into core values that all members of the community agree upon. Then, it’s just a matter of living those values: because everyone agrees, “This is how we do things here,” accountability establishes itself from within, and students strive towards greatness.
It’s a five-stage process and our team is here to help you all along the way.
1. Educate
Your school community will learn why culture trumps test scores.
2. Define & Connect
Every member of the school community’s individual core values will be combined into a common language of your school’s core values. This is truly a fun and inspirational beginning to integrating core values into your school.
3. Embrace
We’ll get you to the point where everyone agrees: “This is how we do things here!” so that your school’s core values are infused into every detail of school life.
4. Find Your Purpose
Inspiring students and staff to think bigger, beyond the school walls so that they learn to define their strengths, trust their inner voice and give back to their communities.
5. Live Your Culture On Purpose
Consistently: Listening, Learning & Improving. We will define the behaviors that make the collective values actionable and committable for the long run! We’re here to teach you how to refine and improve your culture through all the ups and downs that naturally occur in every environment and succeed in creating the type of school where students wake up saying “I get to go to school today” and teachers and staff wake up saying “I get to go to work today”!
By defining and clearly conceptualizing a community’s core values, we change the way students, teachers, parents, and communities at large perceive themselves, catalyzing passionate, positive change that ripples throughout the whole. It’s never too early to start thinking about our core values as human beings. We break idealism down into a realistic, pragmatically planned process, challenging students to think critically early and to live lives of integrity based on a culture they have a hand in crafting.
By working with Got Core Values℠, you’ll be empowered to help students identify their strengths, and teach them how to apply their strengths beyond schoolyards and classrooms. We empower you to foster your own passion so that you can do what you do best: foster their passions, and help them grow into the potential that only a teacher can see, in the way only a teacher can. We support and encourage you in being and expressing the amazing person that you are so that you may do the amazing work you do; there are few positions more righteous than the educators of children.
Students discovering their strengths, confidently growing into their own potential; empowered, passionate teachers nurturing and fostering that potential, guiding it towards possibility beyond school yard fences; students, in turn, discovering the value of community, and wanting to contribute to it. Just imagine it. As the communally created culture permeates the various facets of school life, parents are more and more thrilled with their child’s answer to their perpetual question, “So what did you learn at school today?”
Just imagine it – now realize that it’s happening as you read these words. Realize you, your students, your faculty, your school, and your community as a whole can actively create your own culture, and you can all reap the benefits as your students, wide-eyed and passionate and inspired, go into the world as better human beings thanks to your work.