It is amazing to me that this year marks the final year of our three-year strategic plan. It is time to begin planning for the future. In some ways, ‘planning for the future’ seems fruitless as the future is an unknown entity. However, in our minds, planning for the future is exciting. Not just because the creation of a dynamic and purposeful road map enables the best possible learning environment for our girls from Grades 1-12, but also because of the process through which we intend to create our plan.
In a few days, our community will receive a message from Brian Denega, Chair of the St. Clement’s School Board of Governors, with a link to an important survey in which we wish to gather people’s thoughts about the School and its future. Ensuring that we have diverse insights and perspectives will be very important to our strategic direction.
As with previous strategic planning processes, the Board and Administration are currently working with a facilitator on a strategic assessment of our current plan and will be reflecting on an environmental scan of our competitive landscape and key business and educational trends. The group will review and use our community’s feedback to identify the School’s desired goals and outcomes.
New to our planning process will be the manner in which we develop our strategy. After reflection and research on a number of ways to do so, the School believes that the engagement of those who work to educate our girls daily is paramount. As such, we will be engaging our entire staff in a design-thinking process as the next step in determining tactical approaches for enacting the School’s strategy. A human-centred approach, design thinking involves ideation, prototyping and testing of ideas to identify powerful and innovative ways to ensure our girls are prepared for an increasingly complex future.
This important process will be overseen by our Board of Governors and the School’s Administration. We thank you in advance for your participation in our survey, and we look forward to keeping our community informed along the way.