Strategic Design: A Community Effort

This semester's focus was on developing our program's core values, mission, and vision. This process was driven by learning coaches and staff. We worked together on establishing our school communities' core values on curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We brainstormed words to define the core values of our school environment. These core values define how the members in our school community interact with one another. We also discussed what traits that we wanted our OVS graduates to exhibit (see below).

The strategic design process and conversations around what we value has been refreshing to witness and facilitate, because what I already knew in my heart came through on the many chart papers, post-its, and dry erase boards. We were already working towards the same goal, we already were aligned in our values as a school community. This was just an opportunity for us to articulate, and now celebrate, that we are truly all in THIS together. Now we have now defined what THIS, is.

As I stated in our coffee chats this week, that our year three experience for the OVS community will be one of clearly defined roles and goals. We are working hard to eliminate assumptions and provide clarity regarding who we are, what we do, and why we do it. Our vision is our rallying cry for what we know we can achieve, and that is to be a community of learners who are Future ready, today.

Our mission defines how we will get there:
Omaha Virtual School is committed to empowering life-long learners by developing collaborative relationships. Within our community, we provide an innovative, personalized learning experience. Success in this mission will cultivate critical thinkers who have the tools to contribute to a changing global society.

Our core values are our shared agreements of the beliefs that (see below core values chart):

• guide our behavior and interactions 
• govern how we will work together as we carry out the mission and vision 
• define qualities that are foundationally desired to be both modeled by our educational practices and established in the practices of learners.

OVS Graduates are:
Critical thinkers
Aware of how they learn
Life-long learners
Goal-setters
Able to learn from and persist through failure
Collaborative
Able to work on problems and persevere
Independent
Passionate
Forward thinkers
Analyzers
Self-motivated
Resilient
Respectful
Responsible
Self-advocates
Leaders
Hopeful
Culturally aware
Globally responsible
Contributors to democracy

We are still wordsmithing these items, but we wanted to celebrate and share our progress with you.
Thank you all who have contributed to our conversations throughout this process. It was rewarding and necessary for us to continue to learn and grow together in order to support our learners.


If you have any questions or concerns about our process, mission, vision, or core values, please contact Wendy.

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