What I Hold True, How I Live It Out, Why It Matters: A Values Statement

Questions are from Hans Mundahl, head of Sant Bani School, Sanbornton, NH, as delivered to the ISANNE LEADS leadership cohort at Holderness School in Holderness, NH on January 24, 2019.

What do I hold to be true?

• The single most valuable human endeavor is community. We all deserve access to a community that is inclusive, safe, supportive, and constructive.
• Every person has value as a sentient, independent thinker and agent. We are all inherently connected to our own mutual growth on these fronts.
• The roots of every community are the relationships we foster; healthy relationships are fostered through mutually given respect, direct communication, empathetic mindsets, and sincere care.
• Every community must be interested in meeting its members' basic needs: food, water, shelter, health, care, compassion, and a commitment to met potential.
• We grow best when our basic needs are met, and when we engage in authentic learning experiences and solve real problems that impact ourselves and others in a positive way.
• The causes of social and economic equity and justice, full inclusion, environmental sustainability, and the alleviation of poverty, are foundational to the existence of every community, regardless of its location or makeup. Communities exist and flourish to the extent that these things are positively affirmed.
• We learn and work best in these communities, and maintaining them is required constantly.
• Our ability to purposefully brainstorm, engage, reflect, and repeat makes our maintenance of communities possible.

Relationships and community are the core of the human experience. They make us who we are, from core to skin, and they must be positively maintained.

How do I live it out?

• I strive every day to own my own actions, pay kindness forward to others, engage in active listening, remedy my own biases, and back every decision and moment with a guarantee of purpose.
• I put my roles as a parent and a partner in the highest priority, and regard them as a representation of what I hold to be true.
• I work on direct, honest, clear communication. I promise that my communications are sincere and purposeful.
• I maintain three core passions: education, chess, and physical activity and environmental interaction. I believe they best embody the things I hold to be true. I build communities of people around them, in hopes that they feed their bodies, minds, and spirits. I inject my enthusiasms and beliefs about the inherent value of every person into them. I work to include everyone in them and remove barriers to their access.
• My teaching, learning, and work are consistent with these values, with current educational research, and with the developmental needs of children and people.
• Where I fall short in these endeavors, I take responsibility and work to correct any wrongs. Where I achieve in these endeavors, I make plans for further positive work.

I do things that build up people and communities, and I am dedicated to making space for all people within them.

Why does it matter?

• We live in a time where poverty, instability, and fear are not only significant but loom large over everyone. 
• Despite this, people yearn to be empowered and powerful, just as they've been promised they can be.
• Communities, both in my sphere of passions and in the world at large, have been closing their doors to people, and we are seeing the consequences in real time.
• It is now more important than ever to actively affirm the positive value of every person; it is ever more important to affirm the value of people who have been marginalized and excluded.
• It is also more important than ever to insist every person work to resolve views and actions that prove problematic.

These things matter because they are the critical work of communities of people. Every community and person has an inherent interest in these values.
---------------------------------------

All answers are mine, written in Bangor, Maine on February 10, 2019. These values are constantly open to constructive reflection and revision, and will always be maintained as a representation of my evolving self.