I often say that founding Designers for Learning was like dumping out a 1,000 piece puzzle and having to put it together without seeing the picture on the box. In truth, it’s like encountering THOUSANDS of puzzle pieces and having to figure out which go with MY puzzle and then trying to figure out what my puzzle looks like. As I meet new people that inspire me, I wonder where (if) they fit within the puzzle. Today was such an example. With hope, this opportunity does, but I digress.<\/p>\n
While I don’t have the benefit of seeing the picture on the box or knowing what pieces I’m looking for, I do have our mission statement as a guide:<\/p>\n
“Our nonprofit\u2019s mission is to provide educational resources and service-learning experiences designed to promote all aspects of literacy.”<\/p>\n
Early on, I used to chuckle at advice to create a mission statement. It seemed more for external positioning. However, it’s how our board makes decisions on direction. We could do so many things! I hear amazing ideas daily. We have such a vast and supportive network. However, we can’t be all things. So … our mission statement serves as our picture on the box. If I encounter an interesting puzzle piece that doesn’t seem the right fit in that picture, I put it in a separate pile – for later … or maybe never.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I often say that founding Designers for Learning was like dumping out a 1,000 piece puzzle and having to put it together without seeing the picture on the box. In truth, it’s like encountering THOUSANDS of puzzle pieces and having to figure out which go with MY puzzle and then trying to figure out what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,270],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}