This chapter looks at how a school's mission, vision, and core values support its instructional practices. Specifically, it explores how disciplinary and multimodal literacy support and maintain cultural responsiveness. School administrators are provided with ways in which they can step fully into the role of a culturally responsive leader. Furthermore, this chapter offers six resource files focused on these supports as a foundation for leaders to move toward and grow with and in their culturally responsive practices.
TopMission, Vision, And Core Values
NPBEA’s (2015), Standard I is titled, Mission, Vision, and Core Values. Standard 1 is further broken down into seven explicit sub-standards which support CRL through the development and implementation of the mission, vision, and core values. It states that “effective educational leaders develop, advocate, and enact a shared mission, vision, and core values of high-quality education and academic success and well-being of each student” (p. 9). This emphasis on each student is essential to CRL.
A school’s mission should be the roadmap toward the school’s vision (Kruse & Gray, 2018) and answers questions such as:
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Who will support the vision?
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What is being developed?
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When will milestones be assessed?
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Where will the vision lead the school?
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Why should stakeholders support the vision?
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How will the vision be realized?
Further, a strong mission should offer guidance for developing and defining academic and cultural success factors, as well as seeks alignment with the vision through relevance to the community via engagement, motivation, and resources. By situating a school’s mission through the lens of CRL, leaders can safeguard “respect for and appreciation of diversity” (Fiore, 2022, p. 31).
While a school’s mission is a roadmap, a school’s vision is the destination. However, this destination may not remain a fixed point, rather it acts as the school's North Star supported by the mission and core values (Kruse & Gray, 2018). It offers stakeholders an outlined description of the organizational direction and future goals designed to support a school’s purpose and future advances (Great Schools Partnership, 2015; Kruse & Gray, 2018). Sorenson and Goldsmith (2018) further provide that leaders must do more than “facilitate the development, articulation, and implementation of a school vision, the leader must also be a steward of that vision” (p. 9). According to NPBEA (2015), school leaders must focus on improvement of every level in order to bring a vision to fruition. They must be “tenacious change agents who are creative, inspirational and willing to weather the potential risks, uncertainties and political fall-out to make their schools places where each student thrives” (p. 4) which in turn, supports CRL.
If the mission is the roadmap and the vision is the destination, then core values are the roads, rails, and air on which the mission guides stakeholders, as travelers, toward the vision. A school’s core values are a set of beliefs held by stakeholders centered on what they believe to be true about themselves and students (Kruse & Gray, 2018). NPBEA (2015) offers that effective leaders should “articulate, advocate, and cultivate core values that define the school’s culture and stress the imperative of child-centered education; high expectations and student support; equity, inclusiveness, and social justice; openness, caring, and trust; and continuous improvement” (p. 9). Therefore, it is essential these values are communicated to and embodied by schools, as they offer a communal sense of aspiration, commitment, growth, and responsibility as a foundational guide for CRL and practices that extend to students and beyond.