Several years ago, Friendship Valley Elementary School in Westminster,
Maryland, was just a partially completed shell. The new building obvi-
ously lacked a physical core at that point, but the school lacked a spiritual
core, too. The building had been assigned a principal but no staff mem-
bers or students. As construction crews shaped the outward appearance of
Friendship Valley, the principal, and eventually the staff, needed to cre-
ate a vision for why Friendship Valley had been built and what the school
would achieve once students walked through its doors.
Senge (1990) says that in its simplest form, a vision answers the ques-
tion “What do we want to create?” (p. 206). He believes a vision generates
a sense of commonality that permeates the organization. Wheatley (1992)
describes a vision as organizational clarity about purpose and direction.
Where would Friendship Valley finds its clarity, purpose, and direction?
The search ended soon after a presentation by Arthur Costa on “Cre-
ating Schools as Homes for the Mind.” Staff members read The School as
a Home for the Mind(Costa, 2007) several times, and they identified key
features of a home for the mind. As construction crews finished building
the physical shell of Friendship Valley, staff members enthusiastically took
up the work of constructing a home for the mind inside the new school’s
classrooms, offices, and halls.
333Bringing a Vision to Life
Curtis Schnorr and Thommie DePinto Piercy