The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
— Robert Burns
Once upon a time, in a land filled with wi-fi, 24-hour news and too much fast food, our teacher Ms Molloy prepared for the school year ahead.
Ms Molloy knows she has a big year ahead of her — new students, an updated curriculum, a daily goal of 10 000 steps (always tracked on her wrist), and the usual aches and pains that come from dealing with a few high-maintenance parents and their long-suffering kids.
What Ms Molloy doesn't realise is that this year she will create a ripple effect that will change a family's life forever, for the better, and that countless others will benefit from her teachings.
Why? Because Ms Molloy lives her life on-purpose and she has a plan. Without a plan, purpose can be meaningless, and a purpose without meaning quickly loses its way.
Ms Molloy's purpose is to make a measured difference in the development of her students, particularly those from disadvantaged families. Her how, which helps her to act with her purpose in mind, is evident in the way she treats her students: with respect, equality and a firm eye on their future.
This is why Ms Molloy's teachings are not just about school but also about life — and, specifically for this assignment, about business.
I am the narrator, by the way, better known as the voice that appears as a thought bubble above people's heads. I am that guiding, nagging feeling we all get when our gut tickles away at our conscience. I jump forward or backward in time to hold a mirror up to the truth when the occasion requires.
But back to Ms Molloy. Every year Ms Molloy asks the kids in her class to build their own organisation. She loves the hands-on teaching experiences it gives. But this year she wants to take it further, to immerse the children as much as possible in their assignment, so that the lessons on business, humanity and life are abundantly clear and felt by all — through the how, or the doing, as Ms Molloy often calls it.
To kick-start these sessions and frame them in a little context, she plans to introduce what she calls New Big Words.
Each year Ms Molloy's New Big Words change to reflect the tide of trends and the shift in the global picture. Today she is at her desk at home with the fresh smell of autumn blowing through her window and a cup of tea sweating on the coaster.
She's doodling away in the big white sketchpad that she buys ten at a time from the local stationers and fills solely with words. Those clean paper surfaces always help the right words to flow forth, and her sketchpad moments give her great satisfaction.
This year, Ms Molloy has decided that her New Big Words are ‘humane', ‘humanity', ‘ethical' and ‘collaborate'. These four words are vigorously circled in her sketchpad, springing forth from the mind map that surrounds them. She's chosen these words to show her students how they can become courageous leaders who put humanity into the heart of smart business, with good outcomes resulting when grounded in the details of doing.
But on with the story. It opens at the start of a new school year at Glen Fark County Elementary, in a Grade 3 classroom where there are more Frozen lunchboxes and Minecraft drink bottles than one could even imagine.
Welcome to Ms Molloy
The playground at GFC Elementary School, New Jersey, is buzzing with the frenetic kind of excitement that goes nowhere and everywhere all at once.
It is the first day of the new school year, which means plenty of tears and heartache. ‘And that's just the parents', Ms Molloy thinks to herself as she scrapes old adhesive off the classroom walls with her fingernail.
Ms Molloy is not your typical teacher (if there even is such a thing). She values teachings that are humane and ethical and thinks large scale: for the collaborative betterment of humanity. It might sound rather large and lofty, but Ms Molloy is nothing if not serious about her ability to teach others.
Her teaching tactics divide the parents and teachers around her. Some love her purpose-driven teaching style while others resent their child missing out on the participation prize they had earmarked for display.
Reg...
