Developing Purpose with Your Early Childhood Education Program's Vision and Mission Statements |

Why do you work with children? What is the purpose of your program? Building your program is more than just incorporating what you do every day. Before you can decide what you do each day and how you do it, you must realize why you chose to work with children in the first place. Let’s talk about developing purpose with your early childhood education program’s vision and mission statements.

Building Your Why Statements

Building your program’s purpose surrounds understanding your why. A why statement is your personal pedagogy around the philosophy you hold working with children. There is no right or wrong statement regarding a why statement. It is simply your own personal reasons for working with children.

Building your why statement is easy. You simply answer the questions:

What did I hope to do working with children?
What did I want to accomplish?

How to Develop a Vision Statement for Your Early Childhood Program

Once your why statement is written, you can move to your vision of how that looks for you. Think about your vision as your big picture. It’s a way of moving your why statement into a big-picture how statement.

Most childcare providers find this in a conceptual framework or theory. Conceptual frameworks focus on a specific method’s view of a research program, whereas a theoretical framework or theory is a broader general view of the research.

Some examples of conceptual frameworks are Maria Montessori’s work, Reggio Emilia’s approach, and Waldorf. Theory examples are more broad in thinking, like theories developed by Piaget or Vygotsky. Understanding the big picture of our why statement helps us move into our program’s mission.

For example, your why statement may be, “I work with children to help them understand that people care about them.” Then, you build your vision by reviewing the approach in Vygotsky’s social relationship theory. So, your vision may be “To build social relationships for young children.”

Vision statements are typically short, one-sentence that is a big-picture view of your program.

How to Create a Mission Statement For Your Child Care

Mission statements become more detailed by adding in our “how.” Now that we have created our why and big-picture vision statements, we can begin to outline how we will accomplish this purpose. We build our mission statements by tying in our theory or conceptual framework and the methods used to create our vision.

Using our example, our mission would be, “Our mission is to create reliable relationships for children, built on the theory of social relationships, as a foundation of resilience and to prepare children for a successful future.”

Connecting Your Program Purpose With What You do Everyday

Building our why statements, outlining our vision, and creating our program’s mission allow us to move to what and how we want to accomplish our goals. Building our program strategies is found in our policies and procedures and outlines exactly how we will achieve them.

To do this, we can use what is called reflective practice. Reflecting on our work allows us to become self-aware of what we do each and every day. It will enable us to think critically about why we do what we do and begin to spark ideas about changes in our practices that will meet our vision and mission.

Using a reflective journal can help us think about our work in a new way. When we start reflecting on our program plans, our productivity increases. Reflecting on our practices includes asking important questions about the work we do each day and why we do it.

When we reflect on our practices, we can begin to create specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals. These S.M.A.R.T. Goals can help us as we prepare our work each day to build your program design.

Your program design will help you support your mission and vision and allow parents to confidently choose your program. Learn more about building your program’s purpose.

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Kathy Banks, EdD. Early Childhood Education

Kathy Banks, Professional Development Lead for brightwheel, has 36 years of early childhood education experience. She has held various positions, including teacher, director, multi-site director, Head Start director, CCR&R, and QRIS Director. She currently adjuncts at several colleges and universities and continues to support and inspire educators through training and practical strategies. Kathy has her Ed.D. in Early Childhood Education and is a nationally certified Family and Consumer Science Developmental Educator. Her experience and education make her a scholarly expert in child development and the realities and challenges of teaching and directing every day.