Greetings,
GreenMount Community,
I am happy to report this morning that our Open House on
Saturday was very successful. In spite
of the rain and the lack of parking (the grass area is temporarily off limits
due to mud), we had 25 families visit and all seemed very enthusiastic about
our school. As in the past, we also had
families visit who are considering us for their children who will spend another
year or two in pre-kindergarten. This is
a great indicator of how the word about GreenMount has spread in communities. Our thanks to all the parents who came to
help with this event and especially to our students, who always demonstrate the
very best face of GreenMount as they show their knowledge of and pride in the
school they attend. We talked about this
today in our morning meeting and how their participation in the tours and the
feedback we have received about them is a good indicator of how “excellent”
they are. We are all very proud of our
student emissaries.
On Wednesday evening, we will have an All Family Parent
meeting starting at 6:30 p.m. This is an
important meeting for parents to attend as we will be discussing the state of
the school and the contracts for next year.
We have planned the meeting to last only about an hour or so, and we
hope to have you out of here before 8:00 p.m.
I hope to see everyone at this important school community function.
On Friday, the staff had our second Student Support
Meeting. At these meetings we discuss
all students, noting their strengths and any needs they may have academically
or behaviorally. When reporting on
observed strengths we are focused on how we can best accommodate students’
interests and areas in which they can see specific achievement. We know that the best way to encourage
academic growth is to build on success.
When identifying needs of students, we discuss strategies that we can
use to help students in areas where they may be struggling.
We
can also develop specific plans, which we call Individual Intervention Plans
(IIPs). These plans contain one or two
specific goals for a student and several strategies that teachers and parents can use. The plan is created by the staff with parent
input and approved at the earliest possible time so that we can begin our
interventions. Included in the plan are
the titles of people who are responsible for implementing it. This creates a clear mandate for everyone
involved to be accountable. Then each
month a benchmark meeting is scheduled so that the team of teachers and parents
can review the plan to see if the strategies are working. At that point we can alter the strategies and
eventually agree as to whether a student’s goal has been met. We may decide to include another goal in our strategies
or simply concentrate on any remaining goals.
The IIP, unlike and IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) is not an
official document that would carry weight in a school attended after
GreenMount. It is strictly an in-house
plan that we create to help students.
For an “official” IEP plan, parents will have to request a team meeting
at their home public school to determine if a disability exists. An IEP created must be implemented by any
school that the student attends.
We all have our areas of strength and needs, and as
adults we can readily identify them. We
must let our children know that they are just like us (and we are just like
them). We all have struggles and
victories and we all are constantly working to grow, no matter how old we get
to be. When I was a young, new teacher,
I commented to a much older 6th grade teacher that I admired the
fact that she seemed to know just about everything about life and especially
teaching. Her reply to me summed up the
idea of life-long learning when she said, “No, Steve, I have much to learn –
God isn’t finished with me yet.”
Cheers,
Steve
