April 2, 2011

Writing on a blog has been way down on my list since my last posting. I have had so many busy things going on in my life. We finished out a most wonderful year last school year in the downtown area at Discovery Center. It was indeed a magical year for both teachers and students. We had record reenrollment and finished out the year with a stellar student driven musical.

The students and teachers finished up the year feeling euphoric over all our accomplishments.

Summer set in and would you know it? I had surgery and my job at The Summit was changed. I moved out of teaching into the office and left my passion of upper school behind. I was so blown away by all the changes and losing time for my surgery recovery gave me even more concerns.

It took me most of the first semester to figure out what I was doing in administration. It was not because I was incapable of doing the job...I just did not know what the job was. My job description

changed three times in 4 months and I had hard time knowing what was expected from me. The brightest spot for me is that I once again became upper school director. It was and will be the highlight of my year.

Adjusting to upper school director along with doing my other two jobs of community relations director and daily operations director has been a ride...one that I hope will minimize during the forth coming year. Still, in my loves, is the upper school director position. Working with teachers and students to make all of us better is so energizing. I will not minimize the fact that I am proud of what I have accomplished with after school programming and the new format for Summer at the Summit. I have met some great parents through my new position and seen a much broader picture of the school functions, especially in operations and finances.

As the days are drawing to a close for the 2010-2011 school year it is time to reflect and use my resources to get energized for the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. I have great hopes for the year to come.

October 25, 2009

I can hardly believe that October is coming to an end this week. It seems like we just started school and now Christmas is on our doorstep. This weekend the time changes and I hate the dreary dark winter evenings. It makes me sad to travel home in the dark from a full day at school.



This week is full of activity as we have our fall chili cook off on Tuesday with live entertainment from our Summit upper school. The students have also generated charts through the architecture school at Drury University with ideas for a new school building. On Wednesday the students will go to see Alice in Wonderland at the Springfield Little Theater and on Friday they will go to Rutlege Farm to perform Thriller.



There is no school on Friday and my team and I will be working on accreditation all day long. It is going to be tedious work but will benefit the school tremendously whenever the work is done. Accreditation will give us opportunities for grants that we do not currently enjoy.



I am excited that four locations will be announced for the new school building. I really like the downtown area and hope it is at least one proposed location. The opportunities for education are numerous in the downtown area with a plethara of activities centered at the higher learning facilities and fine arts facilities. We have been downtown now for three months and have barely scratched the surface of the underlying educational opportunities available in this area.



School is settling down and the kids are doing great. We have parent teacher conferences in a few weeks and I look forward to sharing with all our parents about the wonderful things going on in upper school with their student.

October 5, 2009

It has been a while since I have been able to post. Things are really busy at the school and now that the fall weather has set in, the students have gotten a bit more energetic.
I am really proud of our new venture in performing arts. It is a joy to see the students moving in choreographed moves and having fun while doing it. It is amazing to see how far the students have come in such a short period of time.

Friday we will be having our first after school outing with a bonfire and hot tub experience at Mrs. Bowerman's house. Last year we had a hay ride and bonfire and it was a lot of fun. This year we could not get the hay wagon so the hot tub will have to suffice. The students should enjoy getting together and I am excited to visit with the parents and touch base with where the individual families are at this point.

We scheduled our first dance for November 13,2009 at MGYM. This is a half day for the students and hopefully we will have a good turnout. This time, no parents but the students may bring a friend. I will need to get a few parents to help with refreshments. We are thinking about doing a masquerade dance since it is on a Friday 13th date.

In the next few minutes I will be visiting all my student's blogs. So far the worst thing I have seen is a total destruction of English grammar.

September 22, 2009

Another week started and already the days are filling up before they seem to have gotten started. I have heard for years that block days are seemingly endless but for me they don't seem to be long enough.

The students in my middle school writing classes are finishing up their family newspapers and some of them are really good. There are so many skills that are learned in a project like this. First of all students have to think about what is going on in their families and then they have to verbalize it in the third person. Adding pictures takes more skill on the computer and in the brain power is challenged as students search for just the right picture to complement their stories. Then comes the organizational part as well as managing time to get it all together by the due date. The older students have managed this a little better than the younger ones.
I have always found that meeting deadlines is problematic for middle school students. I am interested to see if this type of writing project can facilitate the deadline mentality with more fervor than simply assigning a homework essay or a timed essay in the classroom.

Writing provides such an outlet for emotional creativity and it is sad that by middle school many students hate to write. It does seem to be easier for the older students but the sixth grade, especially the boys, have a difficult time writing for pleasure or just coming up with an idea of what to write about.

September 9, 2009

It has been a while since I have had time to enter new information on my blog. The days at the Discovery Center fly by and Friday's at Wesley are hurried and busy. I wonder what it would be like to have planning periods again and to be able to go home and relax? I guess it is a trade off, teach at an innovative new school where material is always current and I have liberty to be creative on every front or return to the days when my textbooks told me exactly what my lessons were to be each day. There wasn't near the liberty or the work in those days.

Today the students read an article sent to me by one of my parents about how blogging has caught on among teenagers. I was inspired to see that through blogging teens really have a voice in their world with a live audience. There was precious little I could have done in my teen years that anyone knew about except maybe my immediate family. I hope my students will continue to develop the power of the pen. Their minds are sharp and they think...there is no reason why they should not write.

Tomorrow I have a busy day setting up collaborating educational venues between MSU and the Summit. Dr. Fred Groves will meet with Mrs. Sweeney and I to discuss the possibility of becoming one of our board members. Dr. Groves is on the same page with the Summit and I am
so excited that Mrs. Sweeney will have the opportunity to meet with him.

In the afternoon we are going to check out the newly renovated bowling alley at MSU and I have a meeting with the director at 2:00. A partnership with MSU recreation will open the door for college PE credit in a few years. I am so encouraged my alma mater is there for me in these young days of the Summit. I am proud to be a graduate of MSU.

We will ride Bearline for the first time tomorrow, and I am pleased to be able to utilize this transportation system to make access to the campus even more convenient. The downtown location has really helped with the continual transportation needs of an upper school.

Right now I have our high school at the Midtown library. Once again utilizing the community resources around us. The students are researching the VietNam War and it is bringing back some tender childhood memories. My dad was army in those days and missed being shipped out by about 12 hours. He got orders to go to Ft. Leonard Wood and his outfit got orders to go to VietNam 12 hours later. I remember the stress the war caused my family and the friends lost in battle. It was a sad time in my life and I remember praying every night for the war in Vietnam to end. I did not understand the politics but I could understand the grief that was around me due to the war.

I guess for now I shall end my babblings and hopefully some of my students will know me a little better after reading my thoughts.

August 26, 2009

I can't believe we are half way through the week. These days are just flying by. Having school in such a busy place sure keeps me on my toes. I was absolutely blown away today when I heard our kids practicing their Spanish conversations. I expected fabulous things out of our old timers but the new kids who have only had Spanish for 3 days were amazing. I could not believe that they could already speak the language, even if it is only a few words. Wow!!

I met with the Discovery Center today and we began brainstorming some things our kids can do to help the museum. Mrs. Duncan suggested that we meet with her instructors in a few weeks and pick their brains on new ideas of how to use the museum more effectively. I suggested that we also train the students as museum curators and on high traffic days they could be stationed at the exhibits and help visitors understand the ins and outs of the exhibits. She really liked that idea.

When I walk through this place and realize the opportunities it is a "goose bump" moment. There are so many teachers that would love to be in my shoes and then I realize I am in my shoes and then....I can't believe it!!!!

Our history lessons have been on JFK this week and I have really enjoyed reliving some of my past. It is amazing how much JFK and President Obama correlate with one another. It is also creepy how close we came to a war with the Cuban missile crisis. I remember hearing about this event when I was a kid but I had no idea what the real deal was. Thank God, or I would have been so scared I probably would have never gone to sleep. You see, I am from a military family background!!!

Well it is almost time to wrap up another school day. It has been good and in a few minutes I have a staff meeting with my favorite middle school teachers in the world...The Dream team!

August 22, 2009

Well, the first half week of the 2009 school year is over. It went by in such a blur I am having trouble remembering all that took place. This year I work two jobs for the Summit, one as a full time teacher and the other as a part time administrator. I come home for the day after working as a teacher to then spend the next few hours working as an administrator. I am having trouble adjusting to this schedule and suppose it will get easier as I get more in the groove.

This afternoon I have to figure out what the school lunches will be next week. I have never had to do this job and quite frankly I don't like it. I have enough trouble trying to figure out what my family will eat each week. You know, when you go to school to become an administrator there is a whole lot of stuff they forget to tell you about that naturally comes with the job.

Not only will I be figuring out school lunches but I also have to go purchase a pencil sharpener and a marker board for Mr. Keech. I have to wait to hear from Mrs. McNew as to whether I will actually be installing the board at the dance studio tomorrow.

Classes went well this week. The first day was pretty much a lost cause since we didn't have Internet but all in all it worked out. I love the lesson plan I came up with for middle school. I had the students put their name in the center of a word document and then list the first memory they have of their life, the first time they remember getting in trouble, their first best friend, and the first trip they remembered taking. They then put a graphic with each item that described the item. Then we went around the room and shared our lists. I learned a lot about my students from this activity. Next week we will take this exercise and write our first piece. Hopefully this was adequate brainstorming to get a pretty good essay about some firsts in life.

I met with a parent this week who is going to help me with the high school class in creating a podcast. I am very excited about this opportunity as I will be a learner as well. I am so glad that I understand that I will never be too old to learn and I don't know all the answers. It makes the classroom stimulating for me and helps me stay fresh.

Since I need to hunt and gather supplies for next week I will close these reflections and move on to yet another part of my life.