Building Without a Map: Vision and Vulnerability

Some schools grow with a plan. Others grow with purpose—and build the plan as they go.

A few weeks ago, I spent time with a small secondary school in Romania, as part of an international inspection team. It wasn’t just the scale that made this visit different—it was the sense of vision, the humility in the leadership, and the determination to give students something that hadn’t existed before.

There’s no ready-made roadmap for building a school culture from scratch. No checklist for courage. What I saw instead was something far more powerful: a team willing to learn publicly, to make mistakes, to course-correct, and to keep going.

Despite being a young and growing school, what stood out most was the clarity. The team wasn’t chasing trends. They were anchored. And the students? Eloquent. Positive. Humble. Confident. Not performative—just secure in who they were becoming, and proud of what they were part of.

Their cultural capital didn’t come from having “all the things.” It came from being part of something that mattered. That grew. That made space for them to grow too.

I left the school thinking not about limitations—but about possibility. And how often, in education and in life, we wait too long for things to be perfect before we move forward. This school didn’t wait. They started walking without a map, and made the road by walking it.

That’s vision. That’s vulnerability. That’s leadership.

💡 Reflective questions:

For practitioners:
Where in your own practice are you building without a map—and how are you protecting space for trial and error?

For parents:
What kind of vision does your child’s school live out—and how do you see it day to day?

For students (if sharing with learners):
What’s something your school does that makes you feel proud to belong?