What Makes Our School Great!

If I am going to want my blog to be taken seriously, I better start posting more than once a year. Many thoughts have been running through my head regarding education. It's amazing how when you first start teaching, your thoughts on education don't extend much past the four walls of your classroom. When you are in Year 15, you are constantly thinking big picture and what is both right and wrong with education extending far beyond your immediate situation. At this point, I could write a novel of thoughts both positive and negative. So maybe I should stretch this out and make several posts over the next several weeks. And maybe I can even get some of you to join in for some dialogue. That brings me to where I should start? And as I would hope my nature usually dictates, I will start with the positive. I will start by explaining why Chaska Middle School-West, the school that I teach at, is so successful. 1. Administration is absolutely fantastic. I have learned through my years of teaching that being an administrator is an amazingly difficult job. As a teacher, 90 percent of my time if not more is spent with the students. As an administrator, your "spread-thin" time is spent with students, teachers, other staff, parents, community, administrators at other schools in and out of your district, government officials, local authorities, outside educational organizations, and then of course your own boss: the superintendent and school board. Quite honestly, I have no idea how they do it. Our school has two of the best around. I think the way they are successful is that they trust the people around them to do their jobs. They set expectations and don't micromanage. This leaves them with time to deal with the issues and problems that come up that truly need their attention. They also understand kids and where we need to take those kids in order to be successful in life. They will do anything they can to make our kids outstanding citizens. This goes beyond just being able to test well in math and reading on two days in April. This extends to all areas of academia and beyond. 2. We treat the students with respect and let them learn in a comfortable yet safe environment. Through our Star Program, we make it very clear to students what the expectations for success are and what will happen when poor choices are made. Then we follow through as a unified staff with consistency. Since the Star Program was implemented a few years back, I am amazed at how little discipline issues we have at our school. Not to say, problems don't come up. And there will always be those few kids that don't respond. (You have to keep in mind that if the parents are not doing their job, it's very hard for us to make up for that.) However, the statistics that are kept by our amazing dean of students show that behavior referrals continue to go down year after year. 3. The opportunities for kids are incredible. We are allowed as teachers to offer so many cool things for kids. This includes after school clubs such as the music things I get to do (rock band, marching band, jazz band, country/bluegrass, guitar, country/bluegrass, hip hop, Mariachi, music technology, movie band, etc.), the art clubs that are very talented art teacher offers, the graphic novel club one of our language/arts teacher has started, and the phy ed extra curriculars that are offered. Then there are school wide activities like History Day, the Medieval Banquet, the Veterans Day festivities, Pennies For Patients (raising money to find a cure for leukemia) and our Evening with the Stars event. It's also great that our school believes that learning can take place outside of our four walls. Being able to go to places like the Festival of Nations, Orchestra Hall, the Science Museum, art museums, and skiing as well as discipline specific field trips like a Mexican restaurant for Spanish, and a band festival for Music. These are all activities that help kids retain knowledge, use their knowledge and give them positive memories from their middle school years. Oh yes, I could go on and give more. But as I said to start this entry, I need to stop and save some thoughts for later posts. Teachers, parents, students: I want to hear why your school is incredible and what makes it that way. Because I think the last thing I want to add to this post is that what makes our school great is that we are always looking for ways to make our school better. And there are plenty of schools out there doing amazing things. So let's hear it!