Each week Head of School, Steve Warner, addresses
GreenMount parents in a weekly letter. This is his letter from September 19,
2011.
Greetings GreenMount Community,
There
must be a high-pressure system over us today.
Students, parents, AND teachers were just shuffling in as we began the
day among many yawns and sighs. And this is our first full week of school! Later, however, I visited every classroom,
and things are chugging along quite nicely.
Also
this morning, I had a good discussion about excellence with the students at the
Monday Morning Meeting. We talked about
the first bulleted item under the Academic Pillar, which states, “put forth my
best effort.” How many times have we, as
teachers and parents, told our children to “do your best” and “try to do your
best”? What does that mean? As adults, we understand that if kids or
adults give something their best effort, it is likely that they will be
successful. Just like many of you have
reached some pinnacle of success, you can look back and see that the success is
based largely on the effort – the time and energy you put into your goals that
led to success. But was it simply a
matter of doing your best, or was it more than that? At some point, did you realize that your work
had to be more than just a result of your best effort? Did your best effort result in
excellence?
Today,
we talked about the fact that sometimes we call our work our best effort just
to be done with it and move on to the next thing. Sometimes, our “best effort” is simply just
getting things done. The students
admitted that, sometimes, something they acknowledged as their best effort may
not have actually been excellent. Then
the conversation led to a discussion of what it means to have done excellent
work. One student said that excellent
work shows that you are committed; that you are determined to “do your
best.” Another said that excellent work demonstrates that you care about what
you do. Ms. Elaine added that excellent
work requires many revisions as she described her attempts to draw the Lorax, a
favorite Dr. Seuss character. The
analogy was a good one because her final product, not yet completed to her
satisfaction, will show a commitment to getting it right and her caring for
producing something that is excellent.
So,
how are our students to be led to think consistently about creating excellent
work? First, they need the vocabulary to
understand what we are talking about and then they need the tools to do the
job. Parents built an excellent deck for
our learning cottage. They were
committed to quality, cared about the final product, and were willing to do
things over until they reached their goal.
Our staff is working to develop the language of excellence that we all
can speak. Today, that language came
from the students. Let’s all talk about
being committed to quality work. Let’s
all talk about caring about that which we produce. And let’s all be willing to
refine our work until it is indeed excellent.
If parents and teachers are all speaking the same language, and if we
are all providing our students with the tools they need, excellence will become
the standard that is not just a word, but an ethic.
“Desire
is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an
unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will
enable you to attain the success you seek.” - Mario Andretti
“Want
of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.” - Benjamin Franklin
Cheers,
Steve
