8/8/2019 CVHS Mission, Brand, And Marketing Plan

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CVHS and The Future

Here, I offer a sketch of 3 essential areas for CVHS to consider whencontemplating the future:

The Mission

Our school is set up more for personalized learning than most other schools are:

we have a school-within-a-school design, professional learning communities, and anadvisement system, all of which are designed to ensure that no student remains unknown.

To keep up in our competitive environment, however, our school is going to have

to push the envelope of personalized learning to a much greater degree. With innovationslike COVA and The Big Picture Schools, we cant afford to talk personalization without

walking it as well.

Thus, our renewed mission statement should highlight personalization. Andabove and beyond this should be one more ingredient: our school should stress character-

building and emotional development. Anya Kamanetz inDIY Uand Daniel Goleman inEmotional Intelligenceboth stress the practical importance of EQ, how it leads to

fulfilling lives, and how it is the main differentiator for career advancement once a personpasses the threshold into a new career or station in life. Since this is the case, it would be

foolish for my school not to focus on it.

Thus, our mission should read something like this:

Castle Views intentional focus is to set students on the exciting and fun journeyto discover their gifts, talents, and passions, to develop these through study and action,

and to build their character for the effective implementation of their gifts.

The Brand

I want our brand to be cool and hip. Im thinking about how the author Dave

Eggers branded his 826 Valencia literacy campaign. He and his staff made the websiteand their individual writing centers (which are often located in the back of pirate supply

stores) attractive and playful so that their student-customers might be more prone toexplore the territory.

InA Whole New Mind, Dan Pink stresses the importance of playfulness, and thats

what our school needs to go after. We talk so much about rigor, but I fear were goingto get rigor mortis if we dont stop to realize what kids (and adults too, I believe) want,

which is seriousness mixed with fun, and meaning mixed with a little mayhem.

8/8/2019 CVHS Mission, Brand, And Marketing Plan

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The Marketing Plan

Because were in the Web 2.0-era, Id like to market our school through the tips

and strategies found in Dan Schwabels bookMe 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve

Career Success. Ive only skimmed the book thus far, but it gives invaluable informationabout leveraging technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and various blogging platformslike Blogger and Wordpress to develop an online ethos and persona that is attractive to

customers, or, in our case, parents, teachers, and students.

Our school would also do the traditional marketing actions like calling parent andcommunity meetings, sending out newsletters and purchasing newspaper ad space, but I

truly believe that our biggest leverage point would be using the aforementionedtechnology. We simply cant be afraid of it, but this, unfortunately, is the normal

response when a new technology is introduced.

For example, back in Platos day, the new technology was writing with the stylus.For Plato, this was anathema. He thought that writing, as opposed to direct, face-to-face

communication, would hurt Athens by corroding the memory of Athenians and byweakening democratic discourse (because speakers would no longer be present to defend

what they had written).

The same dynamic is at work today: how many times have you heard thatFacebook means the demise of real social interaction? Yet, this is the kind of technology

to reach students. (I can speak from personal experience here: Im reachable on emailand at school throughout the school day, but kids reach me most frequently on

Facebook.) We need to stop being pollyannas about this, realize that the days of LittleHouse on the Prairie are over, and get on board with what is hip and cool to our

customers.

My marketing plan, at every step of the way, will keep this focus in mind.