Monday August 22, 2011

Change and Teamwork workshop-8:00-4:00 today
8:00-12:00 noon tomorrow
Open House 5:30-7:30 Tuesday. After the workshop, staff are free to leave campus but everyone must be back on campus by 4:00.
Please don't try to have every detail perfect for open house-the purpose is to meet and greet new families and students. Every bulletin board or display doesn't have to be finished. sign Focus on the people you will spend the next 180 days with.

Make sure you sign in daily-22 people did not sign in on Wednesday.
You should have signed up for Monday and Tuesday's workshop-"Change Readiness and Team Building" is the title and the location is Gibson. Please arrive by 7:45 to get signed in.
Lunch on Monday is being catered and it is a working lunch so plan on not leaving campus.
If you have a name tag, please wear it starting Tuesday night at Open house. If you have a name tag from another school, you can wear it (maybe cover the name)-the district is not making name tags at this time and we won't get ours until after fall pictures.

Schedule for this week-
Specials start Thursday and it is week A
Thursday August 25-Week A day 1
Friday August 26-Week A day 2
There will be a fire drill on Tuesday August 30. State law mandates a fire drill must be held with seven days of the first student day.
Please make sure fire drill exit maps are posted properly. Practice fire drill protocol with students prior to Tuesday. Please see Mrs. Snipes if you need a map or further help.

Two more of the Paradoxical Commandments:

If you are successful you will win false friends and true enemies-Succeed anyway!

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow-Do good anyway!

I understand without any commentary, some of these may seem pessimistic, but I want to put them all out there before saying a whole lot. I am going to try to get copies for everybody eventually.
Finally, there were three important values I wanted to share last week at the meeting but everyone was so tired, I didn't get to it.
These three simple ideas should be the cornerstone of how we should approach any challenge facing us this year and how to overcome them:

1. Don't blame the children.
2. It's more about the learning than the teaching.
3. Hope is not a strategy.

I will spend time talking about these ideas often and openly, trust me.