Greetings, GreenMount Community,
So what’s up with Michelle Obama choosing the
same designer as last year!? What does this portend for the next four
years? Obviously, the President had no
say in this decision, for if he had, he surely would have tried to spread the
fame and recognition among other deserving American designers. Now I am worried. Who’s running things in the
White House? You heard the President say
it himself: “People will find fault with me, but they cannot find fault with my
wife.” Maybe Michelle should choose the
course of our economic recovery! Come to
think of it, she probably could do a good job, and I would dare the Speaker to
find fault with her. Okay, enough of my astute political
observations.
Today,
in our Morning Meeting, we celebrated the Ravens’ victory and I asked the
students why they had won. Many students
gave the answers to how they won
until finally a few students got the idea and started talking about the spirit
of the Ravens, their camaraderie and the team ethic that they displayed,
especially during the post-game interviews.
One student thankfully mentioned effort,
practice and hard work, which is written on the wristbands that every
student received a few weeks ago. We
keep mentioning these attributes because they are the essence of what it takes
to be excellent in whatever one chooses to do.
It will be helpful if you also remind your children about these
attributes of excellence so that these ideas become part of what each student
believes. This is how we change a
culture. This is how we reach our goal
of truly becoming an excellent school. The
notion of following an idea is actually called followership. Organizations
become institutions when their members follow an idea or an ideal – not
necessarily people. When an organization
become an institution, everyone knows and shares the same ideals, so that when
a new member comes on board, they quickly feel the sense of specific ideals and
see many models of how these ideals are exemplified. We are well on our way to becoming an
institution. We have many students in
our midst who, without even thinking about it, practice the wristband
attributes daily in everything they do. Through their modeling and our
attention to their accomplishments we grow more students with the same
followership.
Finally,
don’t forget the All Parent Meeting tomorrow night. We will give out contracts and you will have
an opportunity to shape the future of our school with a special vision
activity. Think about what our school
will be in five years. What will it look
like? What will you hear in the
classrooms? What will be the feeling that you have when you walk in the door of
our school? These and other thoughts
will help us create our five-year vision and establish new bearing points as we
move our school forward. We have come a
long way in the last five years, and it is exciting to think about what the
future holds.
Cheers,
Steve
