As you head back to school you may find yourself in long-winded meetings wrestling over your institution’s “mission statement.” I hope you don’t have to go through such torture, but you might. The mission has always seemed pretty darned obvious to me: give kids the best academic experience possible. Done. Now can we get to work in our classrooms?

A reader recently asked me what our mission statement is at ReadAloudPlays.com. I guess they felt inclined to subject me to the same kind of torture their admin was inflicting upon them. Well, our mission is pretty straight forward: Craft plays scripts that teachers will want to use because kids love them and learn from them. Done.

But, I guess I can’t shake all those teacher inservice sessions in which admins demanded we define the meaning of every jot and tittle, that we crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s, that we really descended into that rabbit hole of core beliefs, because here I am defining what exactly we believe at ReadAloudPlays.com.   

We believe that reader’s theater represents an excellent way to teach reading and engage students.

We believe that repetition leads to fluency. (See our free product citing the brain research.)

We believe scripts should be well-crafted. (I spent more than twenty years writing professionally for Scholastic.)

We believe in creativity. When I create a play, I’m trying to do something unique with it. We don’t believe AI can duplicate that.

Despite various benefits to AI (its ability to compile and summarize data, for example), we believe it will be detrimental to the arts.

We believe in live theater. We think live performances (of theater, music, etc.) will grow in demand due to the proliferation of AI-generated junk recordings and publications.

We believe standardized testing in its current form (a multi-billion dollar industry) is wasteful and unnecessary.

Though we believe in accountability, we don’t believe standardized tests accurately measure success. Nor do they hold all participants accountable (e.g. the students, their parents, and the community).

We believe “low performing” schools are reflective of struggling communities; not the other way around.

We believe voucher schemes are designed to funnel tax money to private interests and give tax breaks to wealthy people.

We believe schools are not businesses and shouldn’t be viewed as such. (See Jamie Vollmer’s book, Schools Can’t Do It Alone.) 

We believe business “efficiency” is a myth. (According to Harvard Business School, 80 to 90 percent of all businesses fail due to inefficiency, mismanagement, or a lack of demand. Those that succeed do so mostly because they land upon a “viral” product or service, not because they’re efficient.)

We believe in libraries.  Communities with functioning library systems are historically safer, healthier, and better educated than those without.

We believe computers in schools should be extremely limited, that online programs are poor replacements for real human instruction. (See The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle)

We believe teaching requires highly dedicated people (like you!).

We believe that social media and video games are highly addictive and damaging to their users and that the decline of reading is directly correlated to the growth of digital devices. (See The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.)

We believe the standard social media algorithm is damaging to society and should be restricted.

We believe in respecting copyright. We only create plays from material in the Public Domain or for which we have explicit license.

So there you have a long-winded, in-depth mission statement that’d make any administrator call for a second in-service session in November (right when report cards are due). But at least you have an idea where we stand.

Suffice it to say, when we create a play, we’re thinking first about how kids will enjoy it, secondly about what they’ll learn from it, and thirdly about how useful it will be to the teacher. We’re not getting rich doing this (just as none of us went into teaching dreaming of $$$). We’re doing this because we believe in the power of reader’s theater plays. If you’re into that, check out all the great stuff we have for back to school such as fun introductory plays like our Winnie the Pooh collection, The Sky is Falling, and Cyclops: The Monster in the Cave.