Purpose Project

Help us celebrate and clarify the purpose of independent schools for a new day.

As Independent Schools, we need to communicate our resonant and relevant purpose as a means of reinforcing the valuable work that takes place in our schools and of identifying ourselves accurately and compellingly for the next generation of communities, families, and students.

It is not enough for independent schools to be "defensible." We must show that we are purposeful and necessary contributors to the lives of students and families, as well as our communities.

Through The Purpose Project, a partnership between John Gulla, Executive Director of the E. E. Ford Foundation, and Ross Peters, Managing Partner of EXPLO Elevate, participants will help develop language that makes this purpose explicit. The Project will also seek to examine and better articulate the purpose of independent schools, while embracing the vast diversity of independent schools who each seek under their mission statements to impact student experience for the better.

Join the conversation!

To partner with families in helping to grow a fully self-actualized human being by always focusing on what is in the best interest of the student
Learning in a safe intellectual community so that failure is ok, disagreement is ok, curiosity is ok: teaching students to manage their minds.
Experiential opportunities, application based learning, authentic connections, exploration and understanding of their personal learning
They are ready to shape a better world in a future that is uncertain and fraught
the space and permission for their voices to matter in their classrooms and lives working with supportive adults who take time to hear and mentor them
To meet peers of "class" who will potentially affect their future in positive (I.e. class and $$) ways.
develop a social conscience
Develop voice and confidence to become global leaders
To learn to share their voice and to listen authentically to the voices of others
To be thoughtful and engaged citizens
To become the best versions of themselves
A space to be curious, to make mistakes, to experience joy, and to grow
To be confidently equipped to navigate the future that lies ahead
Agency
To create life long learners
To connect with others
To understand their agency and their responsibility to live fully in relationship to others
Personal Transformation
They will be able to advocate for themselves and others
Teach them to think and express clearly
To build the leaders we need
To learn their potential and to be accountable to use that for good
Discover themselves and learn more about the complex and interconnected world we live in
Prepare good citizens
Experience, opportunity and values.
To know their place in the history of the school and community
To discern
Personalized and designed around their needs
Personalized instruction that empowers students to grow independently.
To understand learning and themselves as learners.
Individual attention and nurturing
To help them find their voice
To be known deeply and to know themselves and others

Develop leaders and engaged citizens
To love your neighbor as yourself
Creating an intentional community that helps students develop the tools to be citizens and leaders of a diverse democratic society
To cultivate thought
Cultivate talented, empathetic, engaged, and responsible citizens
developing humans who know how to engage in messy and difficult problems within pluralistic communities
Enrich and diversify voices in education and the future
Providing a mission-driven school option to state-driven/board of education driven schools
To support democracy: to try, even imperfectly.
Educating for excellence and with moral purpose
Our independence, agility, and responsiveness mean we can iterate and evolve quickly
Making the public a better society
Students learn to be better citizens, supporting the future of the society at large.
To empower the next generation to lead, educate, and challenge the status quo.
We are often incubators and R&D for K-12 education writ large.
Develop engaged citizens and leaders who will act to fight injustice
Developing change makers who need a distinct type of learning
Our graduates are independent thinkers who challenge the status quo
To share innovations in teaching and learning with all educators
Meaningful and informed contributions, cultivating and supporting future engaged thoughtful citizens, ensuring our schools reflect the community where it
Our students realize the importance of adding value to the community around them....both at the boarding school and where they reside the rest of the year.
To give parents compelling options for partnership in raising their children to be the people they're intended to be
Developing future power brokers who will not leverage it for evil.
Engaged citizens who share their greatest gifts and talents to contribute to our community
To be a thought leader as an education institution
The values lived by indy school community members impact their communities.

Creating a space where children and childhood are held sacred and kids can reach their full potential as intellectual and spiritual beings
potential for access to programming as in college town model
Meaningful and informed contributions, cultivating and supporting future engaged thoughtful citizens, ensuring our schools reflect the community where it
inspire students to reach beyond themselves to make a difference in the world.
School innovation
Access to privilege
Partnership
Strong school leadership should engender a symbiotic relationship with the community where both school and community benefit from opportunities to learn
"From ChatGPT: Independent schools provide a wide range of advantages over public schools. These advantages include smaller class sizes, personalized instruction...
Creating the leaders our communities need to drive the changes our society needs
a space for and model of civil discourse
Developing future community leaders
To become the best versions of themselves
Connection through shared values
Make life-changing opportunities for children and families who might not otherwise have them
To be of service
For parents to network.
Children in a mission driven environment, living, learning and sharing together.
A body of people with purpose who can help
To prepare individuals who will wrestle with the challenges of the community
Independence from limitations of public education .
That they will be infused with people who advocate for themselves and others.
Choice in schools

Build communities conducive to human flourishing
Challenging education leads to critical thinking on every topic throughout life
proof of the central, defining variable for effectiveness: workable adult:student ratios
Valuing robust libraries and not letting a change in elected leadership clear the shelves.
Learning happens when you take risks.
Provide a valued based education that mirrors the values of our families and local community
to serve all students, even those who don't thrive in public systems
Disrupters
Model civil discourse, empathy, problem solving, critical thinking skills necessary for functioning democracy in an unconstrained manner
Independent schools serve as laboratories for different educational models
Cultivate authentic space for students to explore and understand-support them in identifying their values and space in the future world
As an incubator for new ideas
What we do in independent schools matter - for more than just those who attend our schools
Importance to learn how to think
Trying new ways and innovating education and not doing something just because it's always been done.
Use our resources to create laboratories for teaching and learning
Thought leaders and looking at the model through the lenses of the children/learners
Give valuable alternatives
Independent schools need to show what is possible in education with freedom and choice and voice in place
Be a collaborative and active presence
To be thought leaders and research centers for the next generation of education
Our role is: THIS. Having it, imperfectly, is enough.
We need to keep the students at the table... it is their futures
Provide models generally safer from potentially censorial pressures, a la Florida

Create an amazing "We are independent school in" campaign that shares myriad stories.
We are not an elite school but we help create elite learners and leaders.
Part of the challenge of telling a better story is that we are so different from each other in many ways
We are often education as it should be/can be.
Acknowledge our challenging histories
Acknowledge the contradictions and nuances in our schools' existence/work and tell the stories of our schools' work towards growth, improvement, and chan
Fact: We've never turned a stud at away base on tuition needs.
Change our tuition model so we are not elitist.
insist there is a place for mission driven education in healthy communities
All children deserve an exceptional education and there should be many options for our nation's youth
Highlight the transformational experience that we offer and that puts students in position to transform the lives of others
First listen to the criticisms of our community so we can better tell our story.
Invite productive interrogation about why we do what we do - start a dialogue
What research says
We first HONOR ourselves with flexible tools (mindset/emotional) to tell our stories.
We need to better understand our own impact before we can tell the stories we need to.
We need to firmly know our abilities, recognize our weaknesses, understand our communities and identify the misconceptions
Don't tell the story in contrast to public schools
Celebrate outcomes from a human perspective.
Define a good life
Connect positive impact to experiential education through compelling storytelling
Tell the human story of the school, through students an alumni
Give voice to our students, families, and teachers to tell their stories.
Stories of alums.
Focus on how we can ensure schools are serving all students within a community
We have to use the same pedagogical practices that reach diverse learning styles--telling the story with words, images, voices, experiences, etc.
We should be telling many stories.
Stories of alums
We foster a love of learning.
Give our students the microphone
Through student work and in their voice
Embrace the many stories that make up "our" story
Don't begin w/ an apology
Many diverse perspectives
National mar-com.
Start with the why
Start with our unique gifts, and how we use them to contribute to something bigger
The best storytellers are first and foremost excellent listeners.
Ensure it's not a single story

Help us celebrate and clarify the purpose of independent schools for a new day.

Join The Purpose Project

The Purpose of Independent Schools