Harney School Improvement: New Harney School Improvement Blog

Monday Morning MEMO!

You are not merely here to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.

Woodrow Wilson

This week, as we prepare for our kids to arrive on Monday, it brings to mind why we entered this noble profession of teaching. No teacher at our schools entered this idealistic career path to become wealthy, or because of the plush working conditions, or because of the generous monetary bonuses, or even because they just wanted the chance to hang with cool teachers! Instead, each of us heeded this calling because: (1) we wanted to make a difference and (2) we felt that we had the capability to do so. As President Wilson suggests above, we are here to enrich the world, if not our stock portfolios. We enrich the world each day that we work to fulfill our school mission: teaching, inspiring, and motivating all learners at our school.

This upcoming Monday, will begin my eleventh “Opening Day” in Harney and fifteenth overall with a calm confidence that this may be the best one yet. This sense derives from the confidence I have in every teacher in our buildings. I've seen many of you in action and have heard the great stories from children and parents as well. We all have a great opportunity to be a little part of something big because we are teachers. The “big” opportunities we have to impact the future are the result of thousands of “little” efforts. On Monday, we set the stage for yet another year together leading impressionable young people. I take great comfort in knowing that these impressionable adolescents are at our school, where their minds, emotions, and values are shaped by some of the finest role models in the history of education. These young people will go on to become our future. We will produce many noble citizens who go on to greatness. We also must confront the inevitable fact that others will take a different, even tragic path. All we can do is remind ourselves to “remain vigilant every day lest we lose one fragile opportunity” to do whatever we can to encourage the former and reduce the likelihood of the latter. At our schools, we will do this both purposefully and intuitively, because our staff has fostered a culture of care which permeates our school. Individually and collectively, the care we have for our profession is palpable.

At Harney Schools, we are widely known for caring about our curriculum and—even more importantly—caring about our kids. At New Educator Orientation, while I was a new teacher in Meridian, I heard our mentor leader remark that she would much rather hire a teacher of average smarts with a caring attitude than a highly intelligent teacher with a subpar attitude. She went as far as to offer an acronym for success as a teacher: C.A.R.E.—Commitment, Attitude, Responsibility, and Enthusiasm. Although I concur wholeheartedly with these four keys to success for educators, this is not exactly innovative thinking. Rather, it affirms what we already know at our school: human relations skills are even more important than specific teaching skills or content knowledge. As we visit each classroom in our schools, I'm sure to observe each of you setting the tone for a culture of caring in your classrooms, classrooms where teachers and students care about learning, care about each other, and care about our community.

The first week of school—indeed, even the first minutes of the first class session—sets the tone for the entire year. If our students leave school today feeling serious and excited about themselves as learners, and about you as their teacher, then, my friends, we are halfway home. As you progress through the remaining weeks of this school year, I encourage you to reflect on our mission and values.Remember, too, that our kids will meet any expectations we set for them as long as we are firm, fair, and consistent with these expectations and build relationships with our students so that they will want to meet them. Finally, remember that the primary way we accomplish this positive relationship-building with our kids is simply by caring deeply about them as learners and as young people.

Again this year, each of us has a fantastic opportunity awaiting: to be “a little part of something big”…i.e., playing a role in what our own future will look like! Because I work with the best teachers anywhere, I am confident that our kids will make us all extremely proud throughout the year and later in life. Thanks for molding the minds of our future politicians, lawyers, actors, athletes, and religious leaders. May you all be blessed with a healthy and happy year at school and at home. I mentioned on Thursday that I honestly think this will be the finest year in our county's storied tradition of noted excellence. I offered many reasons, but there are only two that truly matter:

1. Our students

2. The returning and new teachers we have standing ready to teach them, guide them, and care for them.

Understanding the prodigious task of working with l students and exhibiting the level of care and commitment necessary to succeed are but two signs that we are committed to Teaching with Passion again this year.

Enjoy the ride!

Eric

Kudos/Citation to Jeff Zoul for above blog post information and blog adaptation from Buiding School Culture and Improving Your School One Week at a Time! You can see Jeff's blog at http://jeffzoul.blogspot.com/.

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