A Good Value

During this last week a number of the Dalat administrators, school board, and members of the development office had a chance to work with a world-class consultant to help develop strategies for achieving our 5-year strategic plan. During our two days together we spent some of our time looking at and discussing Dalat’s purpose.

There were the obvious answers related to being a school, but one of the most fundamental answers we landed on is that Dalat exists to teach children that they have value and worth.

See we live in a world that does not value you if you are not pretty, smart, rich, powerful or a combination of one or more of these. Without at least one of them, you are pretty much disregarded and overlooked by the world. It is why people pursue money with such passion, spend so much money on makeup and clothes, attend incredibly costly universities and pursue positions of power. Simply, these are the things the world tells us over and over again are important. If we want to matter and if we want purpose and meaning it is found in these four things.

At Dalat, however, we fervently want to teach a very different message to each child that walks on to our campus. We want our students to know that who they are right now is special and important. We want them to know that they have meaning and value and that they were born for a purpose. We want our students to know that we love them, care about them, and want the best for them.

This is one of the key reasons we exist and I personally would not want to work at a school that does not have this value as a guiding principle.