Homecoming Week

I’ve had a bittersweet weekend.  One of my aunts who has been very involved in my life, especially when I was a child and young adult, passed away this week.  I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend at her and my uncle’s beautiful ranch in the Flint Hills.  It’s been great to be at the ranch and spend time with family.  I will be going back to Eldorado as soon as school is out on Monday and be gone on Tuesday to attend the funeral. 

On Monday Sue and I will attend the Pratt County Spelling Bee along with all of the finalist from Skyline.  Please have the students meet me in the lobby at 8:40 so they can check in with me and get on the bus.   On Monday we will be welcoming Harmony Harts, our new middle school teacher.  She will be here to take care of paper work and get acquainted and will start teaching very soon after.  Also on Monday, keep Marcia in your thoughts and prayers, as she will be undergoing back surgery. 

Wednesday, all of K-6 will start the day with the Chinese Acrobats.  This should be a very fun and captivating assembly.  We will load the busses at 8:20 and hope to be back at school about 10:00.  Most of you will end the day with the faculty meeting, but the lucky few will have a PDC meeting following that.  The faculty meeting might look a little different that it has in the past.  We are going to watch a video and spend some time talking about it and we’ll be hearing what Bjorn and Carrie learned about the Common Core at recent workshops.  If you have things that you would like to have addressed at the faculty meeting please let me know by the end of the day on Monday.  

On Thursday be sure and tell Denise "Happy Ground Hog Day", if I remember right it's one of her favorite special days!

Friday is the Career Fair for students in grades 7 – 12 and the Winter Homecoming Assembly.  You will probably see lots of extra activity and people around the building throughout the day.  I love having our graduates back, it amazes me how fast the time has flown by between the days when they were little people sitting in the chairs in your classrooms to now when they are doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc.

I’m already excited to write next week’s blog post, by then I bet we will have had an addition to the Skyline family, Marcia will be on the mend and I’ll only own one home, there’s so much to look forward to!

Happy Birthday Kansas!

I hope all of you had a good weekend!  We kept it pretty simple this weekend at our house between Skyline (and Attica) boys basketball, trudging along with our remodeling project and of course there was a lot of NFL in my living room on Sunday.  In case you haven’t heard – the Skyline boys’ basketball team won the 54 Classic! 

   

I enjoyed the Spelling Bee this year more than I ever have.  A few days before I had been in a classroom where students were learning the “ch” sound and another room where they were learning some of the rules for changing singular to plural.  The Spelling Bee was a neat opportunity to see some older students put all that sort of information together and do some amazing spelling! 

It looks like the calendar events for this week for K-6 will be Kansas Day Activities on Friday and Ruth Ann’s class having their read-a-thon on Thursday.  If your class has any activities going on Friday for Kansas Day would you please post it here so we will know what each other is doing.  This would also allow me to possibly stop by and see any special activities your class has going on.    

I’m sorry I had to miss the K-2 Principal’s Club lunch last week; I would like to schedule that for this Wednesday unless that creates a conflict with something else.  If you see a conflict let me know, otherwise we’re on.  On Friday at the 3/4 Principal's club we had great entertainment watching Mr. Neifert and Mr. Nation shoot baskets from half-court with their backs to the basket!   And the crowd roared when Mr. Neifert made it!  Not quite the Globetrotters, but it was sure exciting!  

I do hope you have a great week, I know your students will!  I just started reading a new book, Leaders of Learning.  The authors begin the book by pointing out that no generation of educators in the history of the United States has ever been asked to do so much for so many.  I know that you are feeling that challenge everyday in your classrooms.  The more time I get to spend in our classrooms and in conversations with you,  the more blessed I feel that we have a really, really awesome staff that is committed to the challenge for the sake of kids.  I have been so encouraged by some dramatic changes in students lives because you hung in there, determined that they could succeed.  THANKS for all you do!

Becca    

The Start of a New Semester!

First of all, I’m sorry this blog post is a little late.  Starting a new semester has always been a little overwhelming; starting a new semester with my new responsibilities seems a bit more O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-I-N-G.  Just hang in there with me; I’ll get the time management part of this figured out.  I do want to make it clear that my highest priority is to support you and what goes on in your classrooms.  When I get busy I sometimes don’t catch the obvious – so please be sure and communicate with me so that I know what kind of support will help you the most.

One thing that a lot of you have mentioned over the last several weeks is teacher aids.  I did get that finished up this afternoon; I’ll be emailing you individually to let you know the who & when of your student aid situation.  Please keep in mind that the high school kids have until the end of the day on Thursday to change their schedules, so there could be changes to student aids until then.  So if your aid is working well for you and still showing up on Friday; do the happy dance!  (I’ll let you know of any changes.)

As far as what is going on this week….

Spelling Bee on Wednesday @ 8:30 in the multipurpose area.  Huge thanks and appreciation to Sue for organizing that event for us! 

Principal’s Club for K-2 on Thursday and 3-4 on Friday.  I am going to start doing this on two days again since I’ll be covering both age groups.  I realize this is rather late notice of that change, if it causes a problem with your schedule please let me know and we’ll do something different. 

Pooh Day at the Library on Friday for the Kindergarteners. 

Thanks for the thoughts you posted about the mission statement last week.  If you still have some thoughts you would like to add about that please feel free to do so. 

Have a great week!

It's the Week to Wrap up the First Semester!

Gosh that first week back at school went by fast!  Lots of you have welcomed me to my new office and new role, thanks so much, your support means the world to me.  Other than the Lady T-Bird's close win on Friday and some progress on our bathroom remodeling project, our big event of the weekend was that Adam came home on Saturday afternoon with a sweet dog from the humane society.  (He’s quite a believer in the philosophy of sometimes forgiveness is easier to get than permission; and once again it worked out for him, we all just laughed and loved on the new dog!)  I hope you had also had a good weekend!

Just a quick FYI regarding the mission statement that we came up with prior to Christmas break….

A question has came up as to "why did we do that when the PDC committee had just recently devoted lots of time and energy to coming up with a new mission statement?"  That’s a great question that deserves some attention.  The main reason is that the mission statement drafted by the PDC committee is for our district.  For the sake of coming up with a school improvement plan that is specific to K-8, we really needed to draft a separate mission statement.  The district mission statement still defines the direction for the district and we are certainly a part of that.  I believe that K-8 really needed to work together as a collaborative group to draft a statement that defines what’s most important to us and where we are headed so that we are certain that we are all headed to the same place for the same purpose.  (Besides for the fact that it’s just a good practice for us to share a common vision, KSDE was requiring us to do it since they see K-8 and the high school as two schools.) 

The mission statement that we left that meeting with was…

The Skyline Elementary/Junior High community will 

provide a safe and caring environment of engaged, passionate learners 

and successful 21st Century citizens. 

One staff member suggested the following rewrite of the statement since the first draft really does not describe the impact of our work on students.  The change in wording is very slight, but the word 'develop' describing our role as educators and the unity implied by the word 'community' are both pretty significant.  Her suggested rewrite is:      

The Skyline Elementary/Junior High School will

provide a safe and caring COMMUNITY TO DEVELOP engaged, passionate learners

and successful 21st Century citizens.

Would you please think about that change in wording and if you are able to see the blog, comment back here with any suggestions you have.  (Or if you can't blog, email me, and I'll post it.)  If coming to a consensus will require more than a blogging conversation then we will finish up this process at the next faculty meeting, otherwise we’ll be done and ready to move on before then. 

Lets move on to a few things we have going on this week…….

  

One of the shifts that I hope we will make, at least within the grade school, is for all of us to become more aware of and involved in what is going on across the different classrooms and grade levels.  One of the things that research backs up is that when we all put our heads together to reach ALL kids that student performance will skyrocket.  OK, that might be a little dramatic – but it will go up!  So I will be telling you a few things going on that may not seem relevant to you at first, but it’s all important when you look at the ‘big picture’.

Monday – 5^th & 6^th grade teachers along with Marcia, Dani, Denise, Brenda & DeGaye will meet to go over the students’ Aimsweb math test scores.  We hope to look at the data from that test and then collaborate to come up with plans that will result in students learning even more.  Gathering meaningful data and then collaborating to improve student performance is something that we will be putting more emphasis on across all grades. 

Tuesday – At the beginning of the year we formed a Professional Learning Community for the 5^th/6^th grade Project Based Learning program. On Tuesday they will be meeting to work together in a team approach to support those teachers, encourage student learning and ensure the success of that program. 

Wednesday – Administrative Council meets after school.  So be sure and let your reps (I believe that is Michelle and Ruth Ann for K-6) know of questions/concerns that you would like to see addressed by that group.    

And Friday we will wrap up another semester.  According to the calendar it looks like you will have Friday afternoon and Monday to take care of some of the work you to do close one semester and begin another. 

I plan to start spending more time in your classrooms.  My goal is to sit down and observe in at least three classrooms a week.  Being in your rooms helps me get to know you better as a teacher, helps me know the students better and just gives me a better picture of our learning environment as a whole.  As I mentioned earlier in the year, when I’m in your classroom feel free to ignore me or put me to work, whatever works best with what you have going on at the moment.  I am finding that watching you teach and students learn tends to really provide me with a huge emotional boost, thanks for being that kind of staff!  I am amazed and encouraged over and over again at the energy and engagement I see the classrooms. 

If you ever doubt for a second how important your work is, just keep in mind one of my favorite quotes…

“Teaching creates all other professions.”        

Thanks for all you do and have a great week!

Becca

This is a HAPPY day for me!

I just want to tell all of you that I am truly excited about being the K-6 principal at Skyline!  As I look back on the sequence of events over the last couple of years it just makes me feel very blessed to be at this point.  If you're interested I'll tell you a little about that sequence of events, if you aren't interested, just skip to the next paragraph.  I had been checking about taking classes to get my license to be an administrator for several years, I just hadn't found a program that caught my eye and motivated me to actually do it.  At the end of the 09/10 school year I realized that the time had come and I really needed to challenge myself with something a little different if I was going to stay content in my career.  So Adam and I headed to KSU, he went to football camp and I went to talk to an advisor in the College of Education.  I learned what classes I would take if I went down that path at KSU, by the time I left I was enthused about starting their Ed Leadership program.  I remember telling the advisor I met with that "I really don't know what I want to do, I want to get into administration, but I don't really want to leave my school -- I love my school, it's a very unique and awesome place!"  I'll always remember she said "it sounds like you just need to reinvent yourself", and I nodded and thought to myself "what the heck does that mean?!?"  Well now, almost two years later, I think I understand what she meant.  After 18 hours of classes, lots of reading, lots of writing, lots of trips to Manhattan and lots of tuition - I really do have fresh enthusiasm and knowledge  for being a leader in education -- I think this is what reinvention must feel like, and I must say - I like it!

It's great to have this opportunity with what I consider to be an awesome staff!  I am very lucky lady!  I consider this to be a very different role for me, we'll talk more about that later.  I'm going to use this blog to try to maintain some communication with the K-6 staff.  I hope it will be easy for you to access this and keep up with what I am thinking and give you a chance to respond.  This certainly doesn't need to replace good 'ole face to face communication that we also need to have, please don't hesitate to come and see me if you have questions/concerns/etc.  My plan is to post at least once a week with plans for the week and as things come up.